By Clapperton Mavhunga
It baffles the mind that instead of sending a commission to find out where Jestina Mukoko and other abducted and missing human rights activists are, SADC is busy going to Botswana to investigate useless claims about non-existent dissidents.
Because, if South African President and SADC chair Kgalema Motlante says that the regional body does not believe that Botswana is training MDC dissidents, why is the region wasting time and money investigating what is already known?
In fact, is it not shocking that SADC admits to receiving and watching videos of the tortured activists “confessing” to such training when the entire world is shouting hoarse for their release?
It borders on the absurd that the body is not taking action on what is already factual: that people have disappeared, are being abducted almost daily for exercising their democratic right, and meanwhile those who have not been disappeared are dying of cholera like flies.
South Africans, please be warned that today it is us, you’re next! Your government is complicit in the suffering of Zimbabweans. By your inaction, you are responsible for what is happening in Zimbabwe, because it is your government that is protecting Mugabe.
If you say ‘No More!’, Mugabe will be history. How about putting pressure on the ANC, which is facing an election next year, to tell them that you can only vote for them if Mugabe goes first?
As Zimbabweans, we are no longer sure where you, South African citizens, really stand. During apartheid, you knew where ordinary Zimbabweans stood: we demonstrated in the street for your freedom. We know where your government stands: with Mugabe.
This is no longer a case of begging. Despite FIFA saying “Plan B is Dead”, there CAN be a Plan B.
If you feel, as Zimbabweans do, that this is Africa’s World Cup and not just your own, how about using the Cup to demand that you, my brothers and sisters, will not let your country host the World Cup unless your government gets Mugabe out?
What is a soccer game at FNB when your brothers and sisters are dying of cholera because of a tyrant your government is protecting—in your name?
Just as the dockworkers and unions in your country teamed up to stop the Chinese ship from offloading weapons that would pass through SA to kill Zimbabweans, so too with a “Get Mugabe Out Or No 2010 World Cup” campaign.
It is a cause that, with your help can torch every soccer, rugby and cricket stadium in the world, from a Kaiser Chiefs and Sharks game to the English Premier League and baseball in north America. “Get Mugabe Out or Else the World Cup” is a dirty game!
We know that industry and your government have pumped in billions of rands, all of which will go to waste if it loses the right to host this cup. There is no bigger issue upon which an entire world is united than soccer, the Fifa World Cup in particular.
Realize that the pressure will still mount without your participation. Just like ordinary citizens redeemed America by electing Barack Obama, you, the South African people, can redeem the image of SA on the Zimbabwean issue by forcing your government to change course and kick Mugabe out.
If your government is convinced it is doing the right thing on Zimbabwe, how about putting the issue of intervention—by sanctions or force—to a referendum?
Or is the notion that “THE PEOPLE SHALL GOVERN” just words?
Why not get out into the streets and tell your government and the world that you want your government to “Get Mugabe Out or You Will Not Accept a World Cup Stained in the Blood of Zimbabweans”? Blood that your government now has on its hands?
The worsening poverty in your country is being caused overwhelmingly by the increase in immigrant populations which your government has not budgeted for. This extra expenditure is eating into money that could be better used to create your own jobs, alleviate your own poverty, and invest in your own future and that of your own children, and attract non-citizens with needed skills, not refugees which your own government is inviting through its protection of Mugabe.
It’s simple economics.
Zimbabwe is no longer an issue of “the sovereignty of a next door state”. It is now a domestic problem for South Africa if all a country can export is bugs and problems, if it has no budget whatsoever and all services are gone. When a next door neighbor comes for breakfast, lunch, and supper at your house every day, is he still a neighbor or part of the family? Is his still his own welfare or your own? Think about it.
The other time you took your anger upon citizens who are being persecuted by their own government. Now you know that it is your own government which is inviting them by protecting their tyrant.
If your government does not act, your own lives will get worse. Zimbabwe has collapsed. Citizens are fleeing to your country to get medical treatment and nonexistent jobs which you yourselves can’t get anyway.
It’s not that Zimbabweans are doing nothing. They are fighting to get the AU and UN to act. Even the UN Secretary-General Ban ki Moon and your own elders, including Madiba, have agreed that action must be taken and Mugabe is the problem. But your government is blocking every effort towards UN intervention. Nothing has changed since Mbeki.
When are you, fellow brothers and sisters, going to demand that South Africa respects the will of the people of Zimbabwe to fight their own dictator without your government deliberately protecting him?
People of South Africa, if you care deeply for the World Cup, tell your government to act on Mugabe. Because if you do not, just like countries boycotted and cut all sporting ties with your country to fight apartheid, that same world is beginning to think that the World Cup should go some place else.
Yesterday it was the anti-apartheid movement. Today’s Anti-Apartheid Movement must, surely, be to get rid of Mugabe.
Because, fellow brothers and sisters, the argument Nelson Mandela used to plead for South Africa to host the world cup was that it would be “Africa’s World Cup”. It would benefit the entire region and continent.
Think about it. People come by night, drag a courageous woman in her pyjamas, while her own son watches, knowing this may be the last time to see her mother. That is how Jestina Mukoko was abducted.
Think about it. People come by night to take your husband or father. It is said that freelance journalists Shadreck Manyere took his infant child in his arms and hugged him for close to a minute, knowing this may be his end.
Think about it.
How would it feel to fill the stadiums in 2010, satisfied that this was the Cup that brought down Mugabe? Or would you rather that this was the Cup that Mugabe brought down.
Unless, of course, Mugabe is right that no African nation is “brave enough” to fight him.
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