Mugabe threatens UN with AU walkout over reforms - another contrived skunk fight. By Wilbert Mukori

“Chidembo kana choda kuramba mukadzi chinoshereketa!” (When the skunk (bad husband) wants to desert the wife, it will do anything and everything to provoke a fight, beat her up and then divorce her for “starting” the fight!)

When President Mugabe warned UN Secretary – General, Ban Ki-Moon that Africa will, en mass, walk out of the UN if the continent’s demands for two permanent Security Council seats are not met; this was just him, the skunk, itching for a fight.

There is no stopping a skunk, with a hidden agenda, itching for a fight.

“We are supposed to be free and independent Mr Ban Ki Moon; supposed to be free— the 54 countries (of Africa). We come to the United Nations for the ceremonial (General Assembly); every year, September, we are there,” said Mugabe at the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is there to hand over the AU Chairmanship to Chad’s President Idriss Déby Itno.

“We pay lots of money, go there and attend the General Assembly and make speeches, go back home: year in year out.

“But the bosses in the Security Council say you shall never have the powers that we have as permanent members … Reform the Security Council!” thundered Mugabe to thunderous applause from the gathered African leaders.

Mugabe, out of your own mouth cometh thy judgement!

Mugabe is fighting for Africa to have the same power to veto UN Security Council resolutions that the five permanent members have. This is rich coming from the man who has systematically denied the Zimbabwean people the freedoms and basic human rights including the right to a meaningful free vote and even the right to life! In any case giving one or two of Africa’s tyrants the veto would not help advance the post independent Africa’ call for democratic change.

If these African leaders were not suffering from collective amnesia then they would remember that it was the AU itself which resolved that Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections, Mugabe’s claimed were free and fair, were not. The AU would only grant Mugabe political legitimacy after he agreed to implement wide raging democratic reforms and to form a GNU. Sadly none of the reforms were implemented so Mugabe rigged the 2013 elections.  

Mugabe is facing an ever tougher election in 2018 than in 2008 because the national economic is now in total meltdown and Zanu PF popularity is rock bottom. To remain in power Mugabe will have no choice but to once again rig the elections; something the West, the UN and the Zimbabwean people themselves are set to object to with renewed vigour.

Last week VP Mnangagwa confirmed the Zanu PF regime will renew its banning UNPD, although it is the one paying for Zimbabwe’s new biometric voting system, and all the Western nations’ election monitors from observing the country’s next elections. The fight with the UN over reforms is a contrived in that when the regime is criticized for rigging the elections it will counter and accuse the West is punishing it because Mugabe’s repeated demands for UN reforms.

Mugabe played the same dirty trick of picking a contrived fight when he accused the British of reneging on their promise to fund Zimbabwe’s land redistribution programme. So when he was accuse of rigging the 2000 and 2002 elections he countered claiming the elections were free and fair and accused the British and their Western allies of punishing him for seizing white owned farms.

When the AU and SADC both refused to endorse Mugabe’s claim that the 2008 elections too were free and fair, Mugabe had no counter accusation then. If the AU sided with the West in condemning Mugabe’s vote rigging in 2018 he will accuse the African leaders in turn of hypocrisy; many have turned a blind eye to vote rigging in Africa with a number guilt of committing the same crime themselves – to as extensively but enough and that is all Mugabe needs. The few leaders with a clean bill of electoral health, Mugabe will accuse them of being puppets of the Wests taking orders to play hardball with him even though his megaphone diplomacy has accomplished nothing.

In 2003 Mugabe took Zimbabwe out of the British Commonwealth when it was clear the country was going to be kicked over its failure to hold free and fair elections. If push comes to shove he will walk out of the UN and AU too rather than hold free and fair elections and lose.

If the truth be told; Africa does not need the two permanent seats complete with veto powers. Africa has had its share of dictators, despots and tyrants. There is the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi who ruled Libya for 42 years (he did not bother with the niceties of elections); Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak, was schooled in vote rigging, he ruled Egypt with an iron fist for 30 years; President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir of Sudan has been indicted by ICC for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur; we know Mugabe and his checked track record; etc. The thought of any of these tyrants wielding a veto is very worrying indeed for Africa and the world at large!

Africa’s democratic institutions, where they still exist, are very weak to deal with serious institutionalized crimes like genocide, crime against humanity, etc. The presence of rogue states like China and Russia wielding the UN Security Council veto has allowed many African tyrants to get away with murder as long as they had Chinese and/or Russian support. Africa needs a strong UN and adding the number of rogue states with a veto will make the UN even weaker than it is!

How ironic that Mugabe should be using demands for an African UN veto as a smoke screen to hide his more sinister plan to continue denying millions of Zimbabweans the right to free, fair and credible vote. But then it is to be expected given his skunk mentality!

“Ichokwadi! Chidembo kana choda kuramba mukadzi chinoshereketa!”  (Yeah up! There is no stopping a skunk itching for a fight to hide its more sinister agenda!