Africa should condemn human rights violations in Zimbabwe and South Africa should consider threatening action against its neighbour, South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said on Monday.
Tutu told Reuters he believed many Zimbabweans felt betrayed by the failure of African leaders to condemn a widening crackdown on opponents of Robert Mugabe’s government.
The intensified repression followed the beatings by police of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and several dozen other officials of the Movement for Democratic change.
”Many people in Zimbabwe now will be saying at the very least there ought to be a universal condemnation of President Mugabe,” said Tutu, the 75-year-old former Archbishop of Cape Town.
Africa seems ”so reluctant just to call a spade a spade. Human rights violations are human rights violations”.
Images of a battered and bruised Tsvangirai going to court triggered condemnation from Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler Britain, the United States and other Western countries, but the response from Africa has been largely muted.
Tutu, who took on South Africa’s apartheid government as the country’s first black bishop, said African countries were unwilling to condemn the 83-year-old Zimbabwean leader because of his history as a ”freedom fighter”.
Mugabe has traded on his legacy of helping end white minority rule and says he is being punished for taking white-owned commercial farms to distribute among black Zimbabweans.
While Tutu said he has the ”highest regard” for Mugabe, he criticised him for ”destroying an incredible country”.
His comments followed a public statement last month in which Tutu blasted African leaders, saying they feel ashamed for their silence on events in Zimbabwe.
”Especially South Africa should say ‘look here, we have tried to persuade you, maybe we ought to be beginning to threaten to turn off the tap’,” Tutu said.
South African President Thabo Mbeki has been singled out for particular criticism for his policy of ”quiet diplomacy” toward Mugabe’s government. Among other things, Zimbabwe is dependent on South Africa for the bulk of its electricity and any economic pressure brought to bear by Mbeki’s government would have a huge impact on Zimbabwe’s devastated economy.
Meanwhile, Ghana’s President and current chairperson of the African Union,John Agyekum Kufuor, said there should be concern about the crisis in Zimbabwe.
He was speaking after arriving at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on Tuesday where the Zimbabwean issue was high on the agenda of talks between himself and Mbeki.
”When the leader of the opposition gets beaten up, for good or ill, naturally all concerned should be worried,” Kufuo said.
He said he was planning to learn from Mbeki what the situation in Zimbabwe was like.
”He lives next door, and I want to learn from him before I shoot my mouth [off],” he said. – Reuters, Sapa