Forty prominent African leaders - including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former UN head Kofi Annan have signed a letter calling on Zimbabwe to hold free and fair elections and for current president Robert Mugabe to end his state-sanctioned campaign of violence and intimidation against opposition politicians.
The letter is a good step by some of Africa's most prominent faces, but what's really needed is action by Zimbabwe's neighbors. Botswana just became the first country to lodge a formal protest with Zimbabwe's treatment of opposition politicians, citing the arrest of two high-ranking members from the opposition MDC party.
As I've talked about on other posts here, many of Zimbabwe's neighbors have been awfully silent as Robert Mugabe destroys his own country in a desperate bid to stay in power. Dozens of opposition party members have been murdered in the past few weeks, with many more arrested or beaten either by government forces or groups loyal to Mugabe. Yet the leaders of neighboring countries have largely been silent, not wanting to take on Mugabe, who is still regarded by many as a hero in Africa's struggle against colonialism. Mugabe has done his part to play up post-colonial paranoia by saying over and over that the opposition MDC party is merely a front for colonial powers that want to get Zimbabwe back. The BBC quoted Mugabe as saying that an MDC victory would hand Zimbabwe back to "our former oppressors, the whites".
Frankly I can understand wanting to view Mugabe as a hero because he did lead the fight to overthrow colonial rule in Zimbabwe. But what he did 30 years ago cannot be used as an excuse for his actions today. The idea behind independence movements across Africa was to let people rule themselves, not to be ruled by bureaucrats in far-off European capitals. Its time now for Africa's home-grown leaders to stand up to Mugabe - who has become the type of tin-pot dictator that has caused the continent so much misery in the years since the end of colonialism.
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