Legion of Angels News Archive

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The head of South Africa’s ruling party and favorite to win the 2009 presidential election, Jacob Zuma, has called for Zimbabwe’s rival leaders to implement a power-sharing package for the sake of the country.

Speaking after discussing the crisis in Zimbabwe Tuesday with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Zuma said: “I think we share the same views that a quicker solution in Zimbabwe is desirable for the sake of the Zimbabwean people and the country.”

“We also agreed that the Zimbabwean leaders should be urged to complete the package which is already on the table so that it is implemented for the sake of the Zimbawean people.”

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and his rival Morgan Tsvangirai on September 15 agreed on a power-sharing accord that divides the government ministries among them and would keep 84-year-old Mugabe as president and make Tsvangirai the prime minister.

However, negotiations to break a five-week deadlock to form a unity government were postponed on Monday after Tsvangirai refused to go to Swaziland for a meeting with Mugabe and four other regional leaders, saying he did not believe Mugabe’s side was negotiating in good faith.

Washington has threatened new sanctions against Zimbabwe if Mugabe does not respect the September 15 agreement.

Tsvangirai has not been granted a full passport for nearly a year and is only allowed to travel on emergency travel documents valid for a single trip.

Source — Yahoo!

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, after nearly three decades as the country’s unchallenged leader, has agreed to share power with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, officials announced Thursday.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, who mediated the talks, did not immediately offer details but said the agreement would be signed and made public Monday.

“I am absolutely certain that the leadership of Zimbabwe is committed to implementing these agreements, Mbeki said. “This is an outcome that comes out of decisions arrived at by the leadership of Zimbabwe.”

Tsvangirai earlier also told reporters the parties “have got a deal.” There was no immediate statement from Mugabe.

The agreement follows two months of negotiations between Mugabe, 84, who has ruled with an iron hand since the country’s independence from Britain in 1980, and former union leader Tsvangirai, 56, his fiercest opponent for the past decade.

They had been deadlocked over how to share power after Mugabe’s unopposed re-election in a June ballot that was boycotted by Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and condemned around the world.

“In the end, out of all of that process, has come an agreement that is a unanimous agreement, arrived at without any reservation by all the negotiating parties,” said Mbeki.

Violence after disputed election
Tsvangirai had been refusing to back down on his insistence that he should be head of government and preside over Cabinet meetings, relegating Mugabe to a ceremonial position. Mugabe had shown little willingness to relinquish much power.

Mbeki has been in Zimbabwe since Monday trying to resolve the impasse. For a year, he has been trying to bring Mugabe and Tsvangirai closer together, insisting — despite accusations he was biased in favor of Mugabe — that his policy of refusing to confront or publicly criticize either party was the best approach.

“The agreement has once more underlined our often-stated view that only the people of Zimbabwe, acting with the support of the international community, can author their own destiny,” Mbeki’s government said in a statement.

Others, including African leaders traditionally reluctant to criticize one of their own, had been increasingly impatient with Mugabe, who has been accused of trampling on Zimbabwean’s political rights and ruining the economy of what had once been the region’s breadbasket. Neighboring countries coping with Zimbabwean refugees were among the sharpest critics.

Tsvangirai’s party won the most votes in legislative and presidential elections in March, but he did not win enough to avoid a runoff against Mugabe. An onslaught of state-sponsored violence against Tsvangirai’s supporters forced him to drop out of the presidential runoff.

Mugabe kept Tsvangirai’s name on the ballot and was declared the overwhelming winner of a runoff that was widely denounced as a sham.

Economy in ruins
Much of Mugabe’s popularity at home and across the continent is linked to his image as a proud African leader unafraid to defy the West. Tsvangirai, who lacks Mugabe’s anti-colonial credentials, has said Zimbabwe needs to work with the West to overcome its economic and political crises.

A political settlement would free the leaders to address Zimbabwe’s severe economic problems — which include having the world’s highest inflation rate and chronic food and fuel shortages. Millions of people have fled to neighboring countries in search of work.

Foreign investors have been wary because of the political uncertainty. Western governments are poised to help with grants and loans, but will not deal with Mugabe, who they denounce as a dictator.

Source — MSNBC

UNITED NATIONS - Russia and China vetoed U.S.-proposed sanctions on Zimbabwe’s leaders Friday, the global community’s latest attempt to take action against an authoritarian regime widely criticized for a violent and one-sided presidential election.

Western powers mustered nine votes, the minimum needed to gain approval in the 15-nation council. But the resolution pushed by the Bush administration failed because of the action by two of the five veto-wielding permanent members.

The other three nations with veto power — the U.S., Britain and France — argued that sanctions were needed to respond to the government-backed violence and intimidation against opponents of President Robert Mugabe during Zimbabwe’s first round presidential vote in March and runoff in late June.

Mugabe’s government has denied responsibility for the bloodshed surrounding the vote, which he won in the runoff after his sole rival — opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai — dropped out because of attacks on his followers. Tsvangirai’s party reported Friday that at least 113 of its members were killed in political violence since March.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad harshly criticized the vetoes, saying “China and Russia have stood with Mugabe against the people of Zimbabwe.”

The action put an end for now to efforts to apply more international pressure on Mugabe’s regime and force it to share power with Tsvangirai.

It follows a recent summit where African Union leaders adopted a resolution calling for dialogue in Zimbabwe, but did not directly criticize Mugabe or the runoff vote. The AU leaders said they were “deeply concerned” about the situation but their only promised action was be to support “the will” for a unity government.

The proposal would have imposed an arms embargo on the southern African nation and an international travel ban and a freeze on the personal assets of Mugabe and 13 other officials. It also called for a U.N. special envoy for Zimbabwe to be appointed.

But Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said sanctions would have taken the U.N. beyond its mandate in trying to punish political disputes by “artificially elevating them to the level of a threat” to international peace and security.

Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose nation is one of Zimbabwe’s major trading partners, expressed similar sentiments, saying Zimbabwe should be allowed to resolve the political crisis on its own.

“The development of the situation in Zimbabwe until now has not exceeded the context of domestic affairs,” Wang said, adding that sanctions would “interfere with the negotiation process.”

Mugabe and Tsvangirai both say they are willing to share power, if only during a transition to new elections, but differ on who should lead the government. The long-ruling ZANU-PF party wants Mugabe at the head, something the opposition and Mugabe’s critics in the West have rejected.

Mugabe, in power since the country gained independence from Britain in 1980, has been accused of holding onto power through fraud and intimidation and trampling on people’s rights. Western powers and rights groups also accuse him of overseeing an economic slide blamed on the collapse of the key agriculture sector, after often violence seizures of farmland from whites. Mugabe has claimed his actions are aimed at benefitting poor blacks.

In addition to dodging sanctions, Mugabe “will be coming” to the U.N. General Assembly in September, said Zimbabwean U.N. Ambassador Boniface Chidyausiku.

Supporters of the resolution had expected Russia and China to abstain because of the depth of the crisis in Zimbabwe.

“They read the situation wrong,” Chidyausiku said. “It’s the arrogance of the Americans. They think they can rule the world. They can’t.”

Khalilzad said the vote called into question Russia’s reliability as a Group of Eight partner because he said it had indicated earlier that it would abstain.

“The U-turn in the Russian position is particularly surprising and disturbing. Only a few days ago the Russian Federation was supportive of a G8 statement which said, and I quote, ‘We express grave concern about the situation in Zimbabwe,” he said.

In London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the vetoed measure “will appear incomprehensible to the people of Zimbabwe.”

South Africa, a Zimbabwe neighbor that holds one of the council’s non-permanent seats, led the opposition to the sanctions, arguing that Zimbabwe is not a threat to international peace.

Voting for the resolution were Belgium, Britain, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia, France, Italy, Panama and the United States. Voting against were China, Libya, Russia, South Africa and Vietnam. Indonesia abstained.

Washington is considering tougher unilateral sanctions by expanding the list of about 130 officials now banned from visiting the U.S. and hit with financial penalties.

The European Union and Australia have imposed their own limited sanctions on Zimbabwe’s government, and the EU likewise is studying whether to add to travel bans and an asset freeze already in place on Mugabe, his Cabinet ministers and top ruling party officials.

Source — Yahoo!

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Nigeria. Rwanda. Uganda. Ethiopia. Gabon. Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe has plenty of competitors for the title of “least democratic in Africa.”

But while he has been singled out for condemnation by the West, leaders of other autocratic states in Africa have largely been able to avoid sanctions and isolation. Many have friends in Western capitals. Or play a strategic role in the war against terrorist groups. Or sit on oil.

With corrupt and authoritarian governments close to the norm on the continent, it is not surprising that African leaders ignored Western demands that they censure Zimbabwe’s president at a summit this week and some welcomed him with hugs.

As Mugabe himself has asked: How many African leaders can point a clean finger at him? How many held a better election than his one-man runoff that followed a campaign of violence against his foes that induced the opposition leader to quit the race?

While some African leaders have condemned Mugabe, many admire him for thumbing his nose at the West and pointing out its perceived hypocrisies, like the Bush administration appealing for human rights in Zimbabwe while facing criticism over the U.S. prison at Guantanamo.

“We Africans should learn a lesson from this,” Gambian President Yahya Jammeh said in praising Mugabe’s election to a sixth term.

“They (the West) think they can dictate to us and this is not acceptable. Africans should stand for Zimbabwe. After all, what did the West do for Africa?” said Jammeh, a former army colonel who seized power in a 1994 coup.

Just a decade ago, much of Africa was gripped by hope as a wave of democracy swept the continent.

It began with the extraordinary sight of protesters in the West African state of Benin taking hammers to a statue of Lenin. Within three years, 26 countries had held multiparty presidential elections on a continent known for one-man rule.

When elections in South Africa ended white minority rule in 1994, there was not one single-party state left in sub-Saharan Africa. Western nations tied aid to free elections and severed ties with dictators they had supported in the name of the Cold War fight against communism.

But the optimism, backed by theories that opening socialist economies to the free market would help pull Africa out of poverty, has evaporated and the democracy movement has stalled.

Today, only 21 states, including Botswana and South Africa, hold relatively free elections. Many of the remaining 31 are ruled by despots, including many offering the illusion of democracy with elections like those Mugabe held.

Who’s to blame?
Rights activists put much of the blame the West.

“It seems Washington and European governments will accept even the most dubious election so long as the ‘victor’ is a strategic or commercial ally,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a recent report.

Among countries he singled out as sham democracies are oil-rich Chad and Nigeria; Uganda, whose President Yoweri Museveni’s friendship with President Bush has shielded him from criticism; and Ethiopia, a major U.S. ally against Islamic militants.

Other oil producers that have managed to avoid international condemnation include Angola, which hasn’t held a presidential election since 1992, and Gabon, where President Omar Bongo seized power in a 1967 coup and now reigns as Africa’s longest-serving leader.

“Countries that have made a point of overtly aligning themselves with U.S. narratives and policies regarding terrorism appear to have benefited not only from financial and military support but seem successfully to have diverted attention away from their internal poor governance and human rights abuse,” said Akwe Amosu, senior analyst at the Open Society Institute in Washington.

Tragic tale
Much of the West’s focus on Zimbabwe is tied up in the sadness of seeing one of Africa’s great success stories fall apart so completely.

When Mugabe led Zimbabwe to independence in 1980, the country already had developed industries and an agricultural base that made it nearly self-sufficient because of years of U.N. sanctions imposed against a white supremacist regime.

Mugabe abandoned his guerrilla movement’s policies of “scientific socialism” that called for nationalizing industries and land and instead encouraged a fairly free economy that grew and allowed him to make major investments in education and health care.

Zimbabwe blossomed and became a showcase for the continent, held up as an example to then white-ruled South Africa of an economic and multiracial success created by a black man. But the world’s high hopes were short-lived.

In 2000, Mugabe sent out his loyalists to begin violently seizing white farmers’ land out of revenge for their refusal to support a referendum to consolidate his power. That led to the collapse of a thriving commercial farming sector that exported food to Zimbabwe’s neighbors.

Downward spiral
The economic meltdown has left a third of Zimbabweans hungry and caused inflation to run at a mind-boggling 4 million percent. Out of a population of 12 million, some 5 million Zimbabweans are thought to have fled to other countries.

Yet while Mugabe has presided over this catastrophe, he still casts a spell over many Africans. Thousands of supporters thronged the airport at Zimbabwe’s capital Friday to greet Mugabe when he returned from attending the African Union summit early in the week.

Zimbabwe is “the single greatest challenge … in southern Africa, not only because of its terrible humanitarian consequences but also because of the dangerous political precedent it sets,” said U.N. deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro, Tanzania’s former foreign minister.

Source — MSNBC

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - A Zimbabwe prison officer used a hidden camera given to him by a British newspaper to film how he and his colleagues were forced to vote for Robert Mugabe in last month’s widely criticized presidential runoff.

The Guardian posted the film on its Web site Saturday and said in the film and accompanying stories that the officer, Shepherd Yuda, fled Zimbabwe on Friday and was now with his family in an undisclosed location.

International observers said the June 27 runoff was not free or fair, largely because of violence against opposition supporters. There also were reports of ballot tampering as described in Yuda’s film, with members of the security forces and others not allowed to vote in secret.

Repeated attempts to reach Zimbabwe’s government spokesman for comment Saturday by telephone were unsuccessful.

Zimbabwean officials have rejected criticism of the election, which opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of as the only other candidate. Mugabe was declared winner on June 29 and took the oath of office within hours of the release of results.

The film, which lasts about 10 minutes, shows a senior official identified as a member of Mugabe’s party handing out postal ballots to Yuda and other prison workers and watching as they mark them. It is clear they feel they have no choice but to vote for Mugabe, for fear of what the senior official might do if they vote for the opposition.

Later, in private, Yuda sits in front of the camera and says that marking an “X” on the ballot next to Mugabe’s photo “was the most difficult moment of my life.”

Other scenes in his film show prison workers speaking fearfully of a colleague’s relative being abducted by militant Mugabe supporters, and a meeting at which prison workers are told to vote for Mugabe.

It also shows some famous prisoners, including No. 2 opposition leader Tendai Biti and civil rights activist Jenni Williams. Biti, charged with treason, and Williams, charged in a separate case with disturbing the peace, each have since been released on bail.

Source — MSNBC