Threats by Mugabe to pull Africa out of the UN are absurd, bizarre and destructive!

By Tichatonga Mangwana

So the old man Mugabe is back from a trip to the United Nations. He addresses his supporters upon arrival in Harare. And his main contribution to the UNSC (United Nations Security Council)? The suggestion that the UNSC must be reformed: Africa demands two permanent and five non-permanent seats. Failure to get these, he suggests, Africa, alongside Russia and China, should form an alternative and breakaway organization.

As the good African saying goes, when a person dies, he doesn’t feel the pain at all. The pain is felt by those he leaves behind.The same ‘law’ applies to a stupid person; he doesn’t feel the effects of his stupidity;it`s felt by those around him. Yes, when you are a fool, it is sometimes beneficial to zip up and leave people guessing than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

A Kenyan workmate who initially regarded Mugabe in high esteem: a nationalist, pan Africanist and an African hero came running to my office a few days ago, laughing uncontrollably. He had just finished reading from the Yahoo News website Mugabe is mooting mobilizing African leaders to think about the benefits of pulling out of the United Nations.

The old man is amazingly crazy, he says. But this is what I have been impressing on Zawadi, my Kenyan friend, that Zimbabwe is a country ruled by fools.For more than 30 years, Mugabe and ZANU PF have been overrating Zimbabwe`s economic potential and its influence in global politics. Who cared when Mugabe dragged Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth? And who will care if Mugabe drags Zimbabwe out of the UN?

What has the UN done for Zimbabwe?

To comprehend the point I am making, let’s dispense with the United Nations` contribution to Zimbabwe, in general.

There are a total 26 UN agencies working in Zimbabwe. The UN has done considerable work in Zimbabwe lately. It has been busy providing coordinated, focused, and coherent response to national development priorities through the Zimbabwe United Nations Development Assistance Framework (ZUNDAF) for the period of 2012-2015 (The UN, 2016).

Together with the government and Development Partners, the United Nations is at the moment involved in developing a new ZUNDAF for the 2016-2020 cycle to continue providing well-coordinated support for the achievement of the 2013-2018 Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) as well as the Post-2015 Development Agenda (UN, 2016).

Even as Old Mugabe is ranting and fulminating about a UN pull out, the UNWHO donated 33 cars, IT equipment and other material worth not less than USD $2 mil to the Ministry of Health to help with immunization (Herald, 27 Sept, 2016).

Various UN organs such as WHO, UNICEF, ILO, UNAIDS, UNDP have done splendid job in various capacities to help Zimbabwe.In the 2011 financial year alone, the UNCF`s total contribution was $240 670 000, while in 2012, the UN was part of the Global Fund to fight AIDS and TUB, contributing $191, 637, 584, 000.

According 2013 statistics, total assistance to Zimbabwe amounted to US$811 mil, of which US$92 mil was humanitarian aid. Zimbabwe is therefore not a country that can lift a middle finger to international humanitarian organizations such as the UN.

All told, besides monetary assistance, the UN has been involved in promoting  sustainable growth, decent employment opportunities, providing basic social services to millions of Zimbabweans such as education, health, nutrition, water and sanitation, promotion of good governance and the rule of law as well as food security. Various UN agencies have also been supporting the crafting of laws and policies that ensure women`s empowerment, equality and equity.

Who cares if Mugabe drags Zimbabwe out of the UN?

Genuinely, who cares if a poor African country with an unemployment rate of over 90%, a country where people with master`s degrees work as supermarket till operators, voluntarily withdraws from the UN?

Who cares for a country led by a 94 year old geriatric which spends 97% of its income of civil servants’ wages and then threatens to pull out of the United Nations? Mugabe and cronies in ZANU PF exaggerate Zimbabwe’s potential and influence and want to foolishly make everyone believe that without Zimbabwe, the global community is weak.

Mugabe’s and ZANU PF’s style of leadership is hinged on the belief that foreign policy directly emerges from domestic policy. Consequently, Mugabe’s headaches at home must always become everyone’s dilemmas. The old man wants to drag everyone in Africa into the mud with his destructive policies. But unfortunately international relations doesn’t always work that way.

Security dilemmas

Mugabe wants to redirect public attention from his failures at home by making destructive and spineless criticism of the UN.

Political scientists like to speak of ‘security dilemmas’: situations in which a person acts to make himself safer by seeking to score success abroad to cover up for failures at home, but in doing so diminishes the security of others, in this case trying to destroy the economies of other African countries by encouraging them to pull out of the UN together with Zimbabwe.

With Mugabe`s level of thinking and the thinking of those around him in ZANU PF, it is interesting and at the same time appalling to learn how much damage and destruction is going on in Zimbabwe under Mugabe`s leadership considering that Zimbabwe is under the governance of these dumb fools.

Charity begins at home!

Here is what old Mugabe wants to see happening: the UN should be reformed. The Security Council must have African permanent members and non-permanent members.

And this is coming from someone who has rejected the urgent and persistent need at home to have the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission reformed so that, for once, Zimbabwe must hold free, fair and credible elections. Charity begins at home, comrade.You cannot demand something that you are denying your own people at home!

Mugabe is demanding that African countries have a voice in the UNSC? Why not lead by example and give Zimbabweans a voice at home also?When it comes to foreign policy, the geriatric Mugabe depicts some delusional and day dreaming antics all the time.

This is not to say the United Nations is a perfect global mechanism to maintain peace. It’s not. In fact, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, mentioned that the UNSC is in need of urgent reforms. Certainly Africa needs more representation on the UNSC.

Africa is a continent torn apart by civil war, poverty and recently terrorism in north-west and East Africa. More representation on the UNSC will help in many ways in getting effective and timeous interventions in areas where this is needed.

However, as pointed out, Zimbabweans and other right thinking people will agree that you cannot demand certain rights and privileges that you yourself is denying others. It malignantly contrives, it’s hypocritical and smacks of double standards on Mugabe`s part.

Back in Zimbabwe, Mugabe refuses to allow basic human rights such as freedom to petition his government and the freedom to have a different opinion to that held by his ZANU PF sycophants. Anyone with a differing opinion to his are labeled enemies of the state.

As I write, there are no less than 70 people languishing in degrading and filthy Zimbabwean jails for merely criticizing Mugabe and asking his government to listen to a simple statement: “Zimbabweans are hungry.”

His response is to unleash the police to brutalize unarmed and defenseless citizens and charge them with trumped up treason charges. This same person then addresses the United Nations to demand equality, justice and reform!

There is a new Constitution in Zimbabwe which Mugabe and his ZANU PF bootlickers have not adhered to. Three years on, devolution has not been implemented and basic human rights are brazenly ignored. Certainly, Mugabe has legitimate concerns, but no one will take him seriously because, literally speaking, Mugabe is coming to court as a complainant when his own hands are dripping with blood.

Someone will say, well, when Mugabe delivered his speech at the UN, a good number of African heads of state cheered him on. Of course, this is what Mugabe doesn’t understand. When Mugabe dragged Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth, and despite African heads of states cheering him on in December 2003, who else pulled out?

As Zimbabwe walked out, in fact, a few countries were stampeding to for Commonwealth membership such as Algeria, Madagascar, and the former British colony of Yemen and condominium of Sudan.

Mozambique became the first former non-British colony to join the Commonwealth and later Rwanda (2009). This is evidence to show that despite the cheers, nobody in Africa, from Cape to Cairo, take old Mugabe seriously at all, including some African dictators like Kagame!

Let us stay with Zimbabwe`s walk out of the Commonwealth in 20004. If Zimbabwe pulled out and no one else did, despite other African leaders supporting Mugabe, doesn’t this show that if Mugabe decides to call it a day with the United Nations, he will do it alone?

I agree that the Commonwealth is very far from being a democratic organization compared to the United Nations and some other International Organizations.

But in spite of this, as mentioned before, many countries in Africa, particularly non British colonies, have been joining the Commonwealth lately, wittingly. Mugabe is just that useless and toothless old man barking at the wrong tree. He should be focusing on the myriad of problems facing his country before he can talk of reforming the UN.

But of course all these do not matter to Mugabe and his ZANU PF thugs. To him, that the country is not doing well economically is an immense show of the value of patriotism and sovereignty.Mugabe’s ideas and world view doesn’t belong to this generation. I do not know how much ink must be spilt for this to sink into Mugabe`s head which is full of water.

Who does Mugabe represent?

When Mugabe rants against the United Nations pretending to represent the African voice, no one should take him seriously because he is not mandated to speak on behalf of African nations. He is not speaking on behalf of the African Union (AU).

He is not the Chairman of the African Union. Zimbabweans do not share in his childish hallucinations about the United Nations and therefore he is most probably airing his own personal misgivings on the United Nations.

Mugabe must know that countries that he regard as allies, particularly China and Cuba, are not pursuing isolation any more. These countries are moving towards global participation and integration at an unprecedented scale.

It is only Mugabe, in his Disney world, that think a poor and poverty stricken country that he leads can mobilize nations to form an alternative international organization and succeed.

The Soviet Union, after 1945, was in a far better position to do it than Zimbabwe, by convincing its satellite states east of the Iron Curtin to do so but knew they would not survive. Mugabe can rant all he wants about the United Nations but all that the does and say will be thrown into the political dustbins of history.It’s all but chasing the wind.

So, kudos rafiki Zawadi, you are spot on! What a wretched country Zimbabwe is!

Tichatonga Mangwana is a researcher based at the Institute of Research for Development in Kenya. He can be reached at [email protected] or www.tichatongamangwana.wordpress.com