Vidal justifies injustice
I agree with John Vidal (“The hypocrisy of Mugabe’s critics”, July 8) when he labels the West hypocritical. Robert Mugabe escaped censure when he slaughtered 20 000 people in Matabeleland in the 1980s because of the West’s double standards.
But does the fact that the World Bank-funded projects requiring the eviction of 10-million people justify the inhuman treatment meted out to Zimbabwe’s urban poor? Can Vidal name an instance elsewhere where evictions were carried out so callously? Were they also carried out before establishing the numbers affected and where people would be relocated?
Doesn’t the mere fact that no one can come up with an accurate figure of those affected indicate the vindic-tiveness and lack of planning of Mugabe’s programme? Even the -education minister cannot answer questions about the future of children whose education has been disrupted. His lame response is that he cannot give details of his plans because he does not know how many children there are!
If the intention was to provide better housing, where would funds come from in a country that cannot afford fuel and food for its starving population? Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa told Parliament that the housing project now being touted was not budgeted for because it was not on the cards. In other words, there is no money for the project.
Suddenly Mugabe talks about a clean city! Why did he not see the dirt when he still enjoyed the support of the urban voters? Under his leadership, Harare residents, over two decades, experienced an unprecedented deterioration in service delivery, while charges skyrocketed. When urban centres rejected Zanu-PF in municipal polls, we started noticing an improvement in service delivery. Mugabe’s response was to hound Movement for Democratic Change councillors out of office.
Why did Mugabe go against his own laws, which stipulate that before illegal structures are pulled down, written notice must be given and the occupants given a chance to regularise their circumstances? Why did he go against a court order that protected residents of Porta Farm, who he dumped there in his quest to impress Queen Elizabeth? Isn’t that hypocrisy of the highest order?
If the issue is “illegality”, why have we not seen bulldozers go into Sam Levy’s Village, an upmarket shopping mall and office block constructed illegally in the early 1990s?
What about the fresh flower vendors of Africa Unity Square, who made a livelihood in a country with a 75% unemployment rate? Even Ian Smith’s government, obsessed as it was with cleanliness, left them alone.
If the evictions can be justified, as Vidal would have us believe, why did Mugabe tell reporters in Libya that he was not aware anyone had been rendered homeless?
It is misleading to say African leaders do not want to condemn Mugabe because they recognise the injustices of the colonial land ownership system. The injustices were not an issue for Mugabe before the February 2000 referendum, which clearly indicated he no longer had majority support.
African leaders are an unprincipled and fickle lot. They said they would not condemn the evictions because they consider them an internal matter. Why, then, does the African Union have a peace-keeping force in Darfur?
Vidal, you are wrong to justify an injustice simply because you are irked by the West’s hypocrisy. It is quite legitimate to condemn the West while condemning Mugabe for his cruelty against his own people. — Abigail Mphisa, Rosebank, Cape Town
Because “only three” people may have been killed in Zimbabwe’s Operation Murambatsvina, and because forced removals in developing countries are “not unusual”, we must contain our outrage and be grateful that the situation is not worse.
Vidal is 100% correct in condemning the West for not speaking out against greater tragedies in other countries. But it should not repent for its silence in other instances by remaining quiet about Zimbabwe. Nor should we accept the lower human rights standards because it is “only” Africa. — Amanda Atwood, Harare, Zimbabwe
Mugabe’s critics are probably guilty of exaggeration, and the criticisms of the World Bank and similar organisations are undoubtedly hypocritical, given their track records. The urbanisation overwhelming most African cities is a continent-wide problem.
But do these factors justify the breaking down of shacks and forced removals?
It is depressing to see Vidal attempting to deflect criticism from Mugabe’s onslaught on his most vulnerable citizens by denigrating his critics. — Judy Olivier, Johannesburg
Vidal asks: “No one is suggesting that half the population has fled in terror — so where are all those alleged terrorised people?”
Everyone I know in Harare has been directly or indirectly affected by Operation Murambatsvina, and more than half the city’s people are now housing refugees from the pogrom. Many more victims continue to sleep in the open, in very cold weather. These are families with children, the elderly and people weakened by HIV. Is this not terror?
Your justification for the pogrom — that it has happened in many other situations without an international outcry — is tantamount to condoning genocide.
The ruling party’s proposed reconstruction programmes in housing and trading facilities are designed to enrich well-connected state looters at the expense of struggling urban and peri-urban Zimbabweans. — R Gunner, Mount Pleasant
The AU’s pronouncement that the governance crisis facing Zimbabwe is an “internal” matter is itself rank hypocrisy. By this definition, all African crises are internal, including those in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda, Burundi and Togo — and, formerly, apartheid South Africa.
As an African, I believe such statements explain why the AU has achieved so little. It is because of its great respect for “internal matters” that Africa is a huge scar on the world.
The AU only intervenes when people are dead. As long as it tries to mitigate rather than prevent crises, it is doomed to remain as ineffectual as its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity. — Richard Mati-kanya, Johannesburg
Vidal forgets that Zimbabwe is our immediate neighbour — the humanitarian crisis occurring there is of profound moral and political concern for South Africa.
About 300 000 families have been affected and 22 000 informal traders have been arrested for operating without licences by the government-sanctioned “Operation Restore Order” and “Operation Murambatsvina” (drive out the rubbish). The sheer callousness of the police conduct towards defenceless people trying to eke out an existence is epitomised by Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, who said: “We must clean the country of this crawling mass of maggots.”
Worst affected are vulnerable elements — women, children, the elderly and Aids sufferers — who braved the winter weather to keep vigil over their meagre items of personal property salvaged from the onslaught.
The South African government has remained silent while a humanitarian disaster, similar to the forced removals under apartheid, is taking place beyond our northern border.
Our silence will be interpreted as support for the brutal conduct of a dictatorial regime. Richard Goldstone, one of South Africa’s most eminent international lawyers, who has great knowledge and experience of genocide trials, has commented that it is for South Africa’s own sake that President Thabo Mbeki should be speaking out. — Dr GE Devenish
While the AU may deem the Zimbabwean housing demolition to be an “internal affair”, it is worth noting that the bulldozers were powered by cheap South African fuel, and that the refugees generated will, in the main, end up in South Africa, adding to our poverty and putting additional pressure on our housing programme.
No African country is an island. — Peter Auld, Sandton
Jaw-jaw, not war-war
The terrorist attack on innocent civilians in London must be unequivocally condemned by all peace-loving people. But so should be the violent death of innocent people in Afghanistan, Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq.
Our morality and anger must not be racially or regionally selective. Peace, stability and prosperity are not only meant for certain races or nations.
War and terrorism can never be midwives for peace. We must call on all military powers, conventional and terrorist, to ensure that differences are resolved through negotiations, and not war. — Phillip Musekwa, Germiston
After the London bombings, non-Muslim world leaders will again have the opportunity to analyse and tell the global community how peaceful Islam is and how most British Muslims do not support the attacks.
This is nothing less but a campaign to fabricate an evil perspective of the religion and to divert attention from the atrocities happening in countries such as Iraq, where the planned chaos created by the Western forces will reign for decades to come.
The fact is that there is a war and a “tit for tat” cycle of violence. I cannot understand why there is so much fuss about the London bombs, as worse levels of terror are a daily event in places like Iraq. — Sadick Mohamed, Cape Town
‘In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, may peace be upon the cheerful one and undaunted fighter, Prophet Muhammad, God’s peace be upon him.”
This is the opening sentence of the statement by the organisation linked to al-Qaeda claiming responsibility for the attacks on London — a call to arms in the name of God.
Those of us who believe in a “merciful, compassionate” God are sickened by this, as it puts forward an image of a God that delights in the massacre of innocents.
What is required from our Muslim friends is a total and unreserved condemnation of all such acts supposedly perpetrated in the name of Islam, acts perpetrated not only against Christians, but Muslim Londoners and the liberal world at large. — James Dray, president, South African Liberal Students’ Association
Terrorism is like cancer or HIV/Aids is to the human body; it is a war on ourselves. If we hunt down the enemy, we hunt ourselves. Let’s choose rather to examine our world with fresh eyes. Why are people so angry? — Roger Maitland
Is Zuma-basher an ex-spook?
In his book, Tomorrow is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa’s Negotiated Revolution, Allister Sparks introduces an National Intelligence Service (NIS) agent named Maritz Spaarwater.
“Spaarwater, a tall, lean man with a greying beard and debonair manner, was an old hand in the espionage business … At this time (1989), he was the NIS chief director of operations, which meant he was in charge of all intelligence gathering.”
Could this be the same Maritz Spaarwater who wrote a letter to the Mail & Guardian last week headlined “The power Shaiks”, in which he interrogates my and the Shaik brothers’ involvement in the “struggle” to defend African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma?
If it is, it is no wonder that this has-been spook seems so rattled and anxious about our agenda.
It is not surprising that an old-order henchman would be uncomfortable with our “struggle” to defend a liberation struggle hero — whom Spaarwater calls our “compromised political patron” — and to ensure the methodical abuse of Zuma’s rights is stopped.
That same Constitution that Spaarwater invokes to demand that we explain ourselves is the one that guarantees a person’s innocence until guilt is proved by a court of law.
And if Zuma is “compromised”, what would that make Spaarwater and his fellow apartheid cronies who took immense delight in the dishonour unleashed on the deputy president? Paragons of virtue and morality? — Ranjeni Munusamy, Sandton
Diversity
With reference to the letter “What about the white youth?” (July 1), Stellenbosch University offers the Andrew W Mellon programme as part of an extensive range of postgraduate bursaries for deserving young South Africans.
The university is serious about promoting diversity among staff and students, and is aware of the dire shortage of young black academics in South Africa. The New York-based Andrew W Mellon Foundation has made a substantial grant to enable us to increase our black staff. Through the postgraduate and postdoctoral programme we are preparing deserving black scholars for research and academic careers. — Piet Steyn, senior director, research, Stellenbosch University
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