From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 15 December

Tutu 'baffled' at Zimbabwe debacle

Cape Town - Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said on Monday that he was baffled at events at and comments following the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) in Nigeria. The retired cleric was commenting in a statement on the ongoing furore regarding decisions on Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe pulled his country out of the 54-nation group of former British colonies two weeks ago after the Commonwealth decided at a summit in Abuja to extend the suspension of the Southern African state. "I respect the African leaders who participated in that meeting, some more than others," Tutu said. "But I have to confess that I have been baffled with what appears to have happened there and the reactions of some of the participants." Tutu explained he was also at a loss to understand the reasoning for a lifting of the suspension of Zimbabwe. He presumed Zimbabwe was in the first place suspended to persuade Mugabe to change his policies, to respect the rule of law and to curb violence against non-Zanu PF members. "What most observers seem to say is that at best the unsatisfactory status quo, which led to the suspension, remains unchanged. Many more contend that things have got worse. I am afraid I do not understand on what grounds an appeal for the lifting of the suspension could have been made."

He also questioned how it could be claimed that a majority vote on the question could be labelled undemocratic. "It seems heads of state voted and in terms of the votes, if reports are to be believed, the decisions appear to have been arrived at in the time-honoured manner as in the re-election of the Commonwealth secretary general when an overwhelming majority voted for him. "It seems that the normal voting procedure was followed also in deciding on whether to lift Zimbabwe's suspension or not," Tutu said. He also expressed his sadness that South Africa declared the last elections in Zimbabwe legitimate if not free, saying that had been a distressing semantic game. "Had we had something similar in 1994 here at home with the NNP [New National Party] being declared a winner despite the elections not having been free but legitimate we could have quite rightly shouted foul." He added that while nations did not normally interfere in the domestic affairs of other sovereign nations, it had made a difference in South Africa's case.

"Had the international community invoked the rubric of non-interference then we would have been in dire straits in our anti-apartheid struggle. We appealed for the world to intervene and interfere in South Africa's internal affairs. We could not have defeated apartheid on our own. What is sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander too," Tutu said. "We have great expectations of the peer-review system of the African Union but it will be a futile exercise if we are not ready to condemn human rights violations unequivocally without fear or favour whatever the struggle credentials of the perpetrator. Human rights are human rights and they are of universal validity or they are nothing. There are no peculiarly African human rights. What has been reported as happening in Zimbabwe is totally unacceptable and reprehensible and we ought to say so regretting that it should have been necessary to condemn erstwhile comrades. "The credibility of our democracy demands this. If we are seemingly indifferent to human rights violations happening in a neighbouring country, what is to stop us one day being indifferent to that in our own?" Tutu asked.

After the Chogm summit, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) contradicted each other on Zimbabwe's suspension. Blair told his House of Commons that the "fact is that every single Commonwealth member signed up to the Abuja statement on Zimbabwe - including the other 19 African members of the Commonwealth, despite the strongly held doubts of some of those countries". But the SADC expressed "strong disagreement" with the decision, saying the "Commonwealth has always operated on the basis of consensus". The weekend press also reported that President Thabo Mbeki had shocked foreign diplomats and some local observers by justifying Mugabe's forcible seizure of white farmland as "perhaps inevitable". The Sunday Independent newspaper said they also reacted with "dismay" to what they called Mbeki's "deeply offensive" remarks written in his weekly electronic letter in his party's website journal, ANC Today. These included the charge that Britain opposed Zimbabwe's readmission to the Commonwealth this week merely to protect its "white, settler, colonial kith and kin" and that Western powers were using the demand for Mugabe to respect human rights simply as a tool for "regime change".

ZWNEWS