By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

CONTRARY to the neo-Rhodesian view (stated in The Standard of February 1 2015) that the elevation of President Robert Mugabe to Southern African Development Community (SADC) Chairman and African Union (AU) Chairman was so routine and symbolic as to be a non-event since these posts were allocated rotationally – – there are in fact several profound stories emerging especially from the President’s AU elevation.
The first is the staggering failure of so-called ‘young African leaders’ whom the G8 powers had identified and promoted with the aim of eclipsing and undoing Mugabe’s legacy consistent with Anglo-Saxon regime change designs against Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular.
The second story is the demonstration of African living law about the role of elders in leadership preparation and the African belief that the youths give birth to their ancestors because the ancestors are already ahead of them and ahead of history.
This is directly related to the first story: There is a new realisation that the ‘young African leaders’ would not have failed so glaringly if they had heeded Robert Mugabe’s warnings over the last 20 years.
There is also a realisation that had it not been for the Anglo-Saxon-sponsored institutionalisation of disrespect, slander, defamation and demonisation against Mugabe, Africa and Zimbabwe would have benefited more from his leadership and example than we can expect now.
The third story is the interpretation of the massive and peculiar nature of the demonisation of Mugabe over the last 18 years in contrast to the seemingly sudden triumph of the man as demonstrated by his SADC and AU elevation.
The fourth story is that of white-sponsored ageism as an imperialist propaganda tool against Zimbabwe and Mugabe.
Mischief makers already argue that Mugabe’s triumph means that efforts to defend and protect him, especially through the law, were unnecessary, counterproductive and wasteful of energy and resources which should have been spent prosecuting really hard-core crimes.
I shall for now focus on the first, with a few elements of the third.
Some mischief makers are saying the President should be defended from disrespect and defamation everywhere else, but not through the law, and definitely not through media regulation.
Defamation and libel laws are not only primitive, but also unconstitutional, we are told.
History shows that the Anglo-Saxon powers sponsored a whole industry to institutionalise disrespect for Mugabe and Zimbabwe. They funded the SADC Tribunal to supplement damage inflicted through frivolous local cases.
Later South African courts were roped in to do the same.
The latest cases were those taken to Brussels by former Rhodesian settler farmers and they had real material impact because they resulted in the confiscation of Zimbabwe’s diamond earnings.
We then had to mount expensive missions to recover the money.
So there are several conclusions from this brief account of litigation meant to institutionalise the defamation of Mugabe and Zimbabwe through abuses of the courts.
The entire illegal regime change agenda was based substantially on dignifying contempt of the African through the courts.
The AU woke up to this reality when Uhuru Kenyatta, one of the supposed ‘new African leaders’ fell victim to the same Anglo-Saxon machinery and was supposed to perish at The Hague the same way Slobodan Milosovich had.
The defence and protection of the institution of African leadership is a moral, spiritual and strategic duty.
No African in his right mind would argue that western trained journalists, technocrats and neoliberal lawyers should have the final say on how African institutions must be defended.
Most of the cases filed against Zimbabwe and Mugabe were significant for their propaganda impact than for their legal value.
The dismal failure of the so-called ‘new African leaders’ identified and encouraged by imperialism against Mugabe and Zimbabwe was partly because they disregarded the elder statesman’s advice.
What were some of the blunders or failures of the ‘new African leaders’?
They included:
l The willingness of some ‘new African leaders’ to join whites in condemning Zimbabwe’s land revolution.
l The support by South Africa, Gabon and Nigeria of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 which opened the door to NATO to bomb Libya and support wholesale state terrorism against the Government of Muammar Gaddafi. The so-called ‘new African leaders’ installed by NATO in Libya started their rule by wiping out all dark-skinned Libyans and African guest workers once legally employed by Gaddafi. Free passage via the new chaotic Libya has internationalised otherwise local insurgencies in Central and West Africa.
l Nigeria’s decision (under former President Olusegun Obasanjo) to side with Australia, the UK and US against President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa during the 2002 ‘Commonwealth Troika’ which later led to Zimbabwe’s departure from the Commonwealth.
l Nigeria’s collusion with Europe (under President Olusegun Obasanjo) to surrender former Liberian President Charles Taylor to the ICC which was followed by the installation of Ellen Sirleaf Johnson (a protégé of the World Bank and US stooge) as President of Liberia.
l Allowing Western powers to shape the governments which emerged in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote d’Voire after internal conflicts there.
l The refusal of South Africa (during Nelson Mandela’s presidency) to support the SADC intervention to stop genocide in DRC. This refusal was couched in anti-Mugabe rhetoric.)
l The use of the so-called African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as an anti-Zimbabwe, Western-funded platform by-passing the AU and violating AU principles.
l Efforts by the ‘new African leaders’ to abuse former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s diplomatic achievement in the Global Political Agreement (GNU) in Zimbabwe, by turning it into an extension and institutionalisation of illegal regime change instead of the shield for Zimbabwe’s sovereignty which Mbeki had intended.
l The uncritical endorsement of the International Criminal Court Act by Kenya and more than a dozen other AU members, which many now regret.
All these ‘mistakes’ were made mostly because of the prevailing climate of disrespect for President Mugabe and Zimbabwe as sponsored and driven by white powers.
Dr Blessing Miles-Tendi has found in his studies of Zimbabwe-UK relations that demonisation discourses and processes are intended to reduce options between countries to only two: either war or sanctions, with the sanctions serving as preparation for war or a substitute for war.
Like the Latin words ‘dolus eventualis’ used to confuse Oscar Pistorius’s murder case, the spoken and written attacks on Mugabe and Zimbabwe would be impossible to repeat without provoking violence if they were put into indigenous language and the context of African living law.
The historical reality is that it is the decades’ long build-up of seemingly small insults and expressions of disrespect against Mugabe and Zimbabwe which accumulated and congealed into a wall of negativity between Mugabe/Zimbabwe on one hand and the ‘new African leaders’ on the other hand.
This wall remained intact until the national, regional and global context shifted drastically and brought it down.
But it was not neoliberal reform which brought down the wall.
It was partly the tragedies arising from the costly blunders of the ‘new African leaders’ which changed the context. Libya and Boko Haram are two of those tragedies.