Posted by TheBlackList on December 20, 2008 at 5:51pm
JAMAICA GLEANER:
EDITORIAL - Give no quarter to Mugabehttp://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20081218/cleisure/cleisure1.html
Published: Thursday | December 18, 2008
Professor Rupert Lewis, whom this newspaper holds in high esteem for his usually incisive analyses of political issues, has, surprisingly, displayed the kind of moral relativism that could probably mean death to thousands of Zimbabweans and ruin for their country.
In a letter this week, Professor Lewis, who teaches in the Department of Government at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), upbraids us for calling on the Jamaican Government to withdraw the Order of Jamaica from the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, and for the Caribbean Community (Caricom) collectively to impose sanctions on the administration in Harare. Caricom countries, we feel, should begin by suspending diplomatic relations with Zimbabwe.
Action against Mugabe
Professor Lewis' complaint, insofar as we understand it, is that we urged action against Mr Mugabe "without mentioning the role of Britain in the theft of land in Rhodesia from 1889 until the 1950s and the failure to honour the Lancaster House agreement of 1979 in support of British funding for a legal transfer of land".
Moral cowardice on our part is how he described it. Oh, he did throw in that he does not support "Mugabe's recent acts".
And what are these acts? It depends on how far back you decide to go.
Mr Mugabe was once a hero, particularly to people in the African Diaspora, which includes the majority of citizens in the Caribbean. He led the liberation war that overthrew white-minority rule in what used to be Rhodesia, giving inspiration to the anti-apartheid struggle elsewhere in Southern Africa.
For nearly three decades, since the end of the war and Zimbabwe's independence, Mr Zimbabwe has been leader of Zimbabwe and, latterly, its ruler. Like many many politicians who have held power for long, Mr Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party have come to view Zimbabwe as private property, of which they are beneficial owners.
Credible political challenge
As is so often the case, when leaders behave with impunity, they lose popular support and face credible political challenges. Democracy became a nuisance to Mr Mugabe, to which he responded with the physical battering of opponents and the rigging of elections. It is not surprising that as Zimbabweans lost confidence in the government and social and democratic institutions cracked, the country's economy collapsed. The real issue of land in that scenario was an emotive card that Mr Mugabe could play and for which he went to the deck any and every time he found himself in trouble - as was the case in the grab of white-owned farms that have been distributed to party supporters, to grow unproductive.
The truth is, the failure of Britain to fulfil the terms of the Lancaster House agreement is no- where near the core of Zimbabwe's economic meltdown or the cholera that now runs rampant in the country. Zimbabwe has a political problem of another kind: an aged megalomaniac named Robert Mugabe, who has grown delusional and who poses a grave danger to his own people and to the security of Zimbabwe's neighbour.
Jamaica and Caricom have a moral responsibi-lity, as kith and kin, to act before that country descends further into what is beginning to resemble crimes against humanity.
We insist, Jamaica must take back the OJ and with our partners in the region, create distance between ourselves and the obviously naked king of Harare.
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