Africans should hang their heads in shame over what is happening in Zimbabwe, Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu said on Friday.
”We Africans should hang our heads in shame,” the Anglican archbishop said in a statement released from Cape Town.
”What an awful blot on our copybook. Do we really care about human rights? Do we care that people of flesh and blood, fellow Africans, are being treated like rubbish, almost worse than they were ever treated by rabid racists?”
His words came as Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai left a Harare hospital in a wheelchair after being beaten by members of the country’s security forces.
Tutu, who was at the outspoken forefront of opposition to the apartheid regime in South Africa, asked how what is happening in Zimbabwe can elicit ”hardly a word of concern, let alone condemnation”, from African leaders.
He said that just when one thought that the news out of Zimbabwe could not get worse, ”sure as anything, it does”.
”What more has to happen before we who are leaders, religious and political, of our mother Africa are moved to cry out ‘enough is enough’?”
He expressed gratitude for the fact that the Congress of South African Trade Unions had spoken out so courageously on the issue.
”I share its consternation at the silence from those we would have expected to speak out on behalf of the voiceless, the powerless ones …
”Oh Africa, my Africa, oh Africa our Africa, why are we betraying you so viciously in Zimbabwe, in Darfur, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, why are we letting you down so horribly badly?”
Earlier this week African Union chairperson John Kufuor, who is also president of Ghana, said the organisation found the turmoil in Zimbabwe ”very embarrassing”, and was doing all it could to help.
The latest outcry over Zimbabwe comes after police broke up a weekend opposition meeting and reportedly savagely beat members of the opposition, including Tsvangirai, during and after arrests. — Sapa