The Most Rev. John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, says the situation in “Zimbabwe cannot any more be seen as an African problem needing an African solution – it is a humanitarian disaster” and that Britain needs to overcome “colonial guilt” which he says has paralyzed a response to that nations needs under a regime that Sentamu has likened to that of Idi Amin.
Even as the Archbishop calls decisive action a moral duty, President Robert Mugabe has turned his reputation as a freedom fighter into a symbol of African resistance to the West, even as the political structure and economy of his nation deteriorate.
Sentamu writes in The Observer:
The statistics alone are devastating: the average life expectancy for women in Zimbabwe is 34 years; for men, it is 37. Inflation rages at 8,000 per cent; the shelves are empty of bread and maize; in the hospitals and clinics, children die for lack of vitamins, food and medicine, while the ravages of AIDS are exacerbated by government indifference.
In the cramped townships now home to those supporters of the opposition whose homes Mugabe destroyed in a frenzy of destruction called ‘Clean Out the Filth’, there is no electricity or fresh running water and sewage spews out of the dilapidated buildings. The first cholera deaths were reported last week.
The Archbishop, who suffered at the hands of Idi Amin’s regime in his native Uganda, compares the Zimbabwean regime of Robert Mugabe to Amin’s saying,
Britain needs to escape from its colonial guilt when it comes to Zimbabwe. Mugabe is the worst kind of racist dictator. Having targeted the whites for their apparent riches, Mugabe has enacted an awful Orwellian vision, with the once oppressed taking on the role of the oppressor and glorying in their totalitarian abilities.
Like Idi Amin before him in Uganda, Mugabe has rallied a country against its former colonial master only to destroy it through a dictatorial fervour. Enemies are tortured, the press is censored, the people are starving and meanwhile the world waits for South Africa to intervene. That time is now over.
Sentamu calls for targeted sanctions against the regime, saying that sanctions could not hurt the poor than they are now.
Watch this interview on the BBC.
The Archbishop is not alone in calling Mugabe a tyrant, but in a strange way, Mugabe uses this very criticism to solidify his position in Zimbabwe.
Peter Kagwanja, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, says that while Mugabe repels the west, he attracts much applause in Africa:
In less than seven years, Zimbabwe has witnessed the fastest peace-time economic dip in history since Weimer Germany – plunging one of Africa’s strongest economic and regional breadbaskets into a crisis with 4 million people reportedly starving and in need of food aid.
Mugabe may have lost the economic war, but he has won every political battle with the West. As the oldest freedom fighter still in office, he has always drawn the biggest applause in African meetings, including the recent SADC summit. The Africa-West standoff has emboldened him and turned him into a symbol of African resistance, a liberation hero.
Even though foreign humanitarian aid has flowed steadily to the poor in Zimbabwe, the West’s asset freezes and travel bans on Mugabe and a hundred of his associates and spouses are seen in some quarters as “racial” retribution for his seizing of white farms and handing them over to black Zimbabweans. But invoking a moral mission, the West insists that its “smart” sanctions have targeted elements of the ruling elite “engaged in actions or policies to undermine Zimbabwe’s democratic processes or institutions.”
Kagwanja says that Mugabe’s status as elder statesman and anticolonialist hero has ensured unwavering regional support. His article provides useful background as well as concrete steps that might give form to Sentamu’s call for moral courage in responding to this humanitarian crisis.