In addition to the above mentioned criticisms from Liberia, Faul lists the other outspoken leaders who have chosen to speak out against the abuses of power by ZANU-PF:"A younger generation of African leaders appears willing to break from the clubbiness that has characterized the governing elites on this continent where authoritarian rule has long been the norm.
Among the most outspoken has been Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Liberian president who is the continent's only female leader.
On a visit to South Africa this week, she was the first African leader to support proposed U.N. sanctions against Zimbabwe's leaders, saying they send a "strong message" that the world will not tolerate violence to retain power.
"It's important, because it's the first time that we are seeing on the African continent that leadership has transitioned from the old perceptions," said Chris Maroleng, a South African political analyst.
"We're seeing more leaders beginning to embrace their own democratic notion," he added."
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They include Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, a lawyer who is his country's third leader since independence in 1964; former army commander Seretse Ian Khama of Botswana, Africa's most enduring democracy; and Nigeria's Umar Yar'Adua, only the third civilian leader since 1966, though he still is fighting a court battle over his fraud-riddled election.
Mugabe's June 27 runoff "was neither free nor fair and therefore the legitimacy of his presidency is in question. He cannot wish that away," Kenya's Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula told The Associated Press."
Faul explains how the lack of criticism from the African Union after the election showed the weakness of the AU to live up to its declared principles state at its 2002 reconstitution, replacing the discredited Organization of African Union:
"The African leaders also retained South African President Thabo Mbeki as mediator for Zimbabwe, ignoring the Zimbabwe opposition's rejection of him and widespread condemnation that his 8-year-long "softly, softly" approach to Mugabe has hastened Zimbabwe's collapse.
Liberia's Sirleaf said the African Union could only maintain its credibility if it pronounced the June 27 runoff unacceptable.
The prevailing African silence over Mugabe marks a landmark failure for the union, set up in 2002 to replace the discredited Organization of African Unity, which had become little more than a dictators' club. The new union was to be the flagship for an African renaissance based on democracy and Africans solving African problems.
At its inaugural summit in 2002, leaders committed themselves to holding fair elections at regular intervals, to allow opposition parties to campaign freely and to set up independent electoral commissions to monitor polls.
Mugabe failed on every point.
While the old organization pledged noninterference in member states, the new union includes a Peace and Security Council, structured on the U.N. Security Council, that has the right to intervene when human rights are grossly violated or crimes against humanity perpetrated.
The only African intervention has been to send troops to back Comoros government soldiers in ousting a coup leader from the remote Indian Ocean island of Anjouan in March — an easy target."
This week, AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping arrived in South Africa to help guarantee negotiations would start, and it appears today, according to the Associated Press, that an agreement has been reached for talks to begin.
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