dential run-off in November! And yet the same Ecowas, Mbeki tells us, cannot even publish its own election observer mission report! May the ancestors have mercy on us! And Mbeki was not finished. In the end, he said, “the United
Nations elected to abandon its neutrality as a peacemaker, deciding to be a partisan belligerent in the Ivorian conflict... Ultimately, this found expression in the blatant use of its military capacities to open the way for [the rebel forces supporting Ouat- tara] to defeat the Gbagbo forces and capture Gbagbo, under the shameless pretence that it was acting to protect civilians.” And now comes the powerful president of the Republic of
France. Mbeki went on: “France used its privileged place in the Security Council to position itself to play an important role in determining the future of Côte d’Ivoire, its former colony in which inter alia, it has significant economic interests. “The AU is also not without blame, as it failed to assert itself
The fallen IMF man, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, can afford a wry smile
proceed... Agreements relating to what needed to be done to create conditions for free and fair elections were wilfully and contemptuously ignored.” The man from South Africa continued: “However, the very
people [France, USA, the UN, the West, the ‘international commu- nity’] who insist on the sanctity of the rule of law as fundamental to all democratic practice, elected illegally to recognise the pro- visional result announced by the chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on his own as the authentic outcome of the presidential elections.” And, as the IEC chairperson did not have any constitutional
right to do so, “Gbagbo,” Mbeki said, “proposed that to resolve this matter, which bears on the important issue of the will of the Ivorian people, an international commission should be established to verify the election results... The proposal was rejected by the international community – despite the fact that it would have resolved the electoral dispute without resort to war, and despite the fact that some election observers questioned the fairness of the elections, especially in northern Côte d’Ivoire.” Gbagbo’s proposal was rejected out of hand, because, accord-
ing to Mbeki, “
...the global system, in its interests, while shouting loudly about universal human rights, only seeks to perpetuate the domination of the many by the few who dispose of preponderant political, economic, military and media power.” And the crime of all crimes? “To this day,” Mbeki revealed,
“the Ecowas election observer mission has not issued its report on the second round of the [Ivorian] presidential election. Why?” Mbeki asked, baffled. And this is the same Ecowas, under the chairmanship of Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, which was so trigger-happy that it wanted military action to take out Gbagbo just days after the last ballot had been cast in the presi-
to persuade everybody to work to achieve reconciliation among the Ivorians, and therefore durable peace... Instead the AU has asserted the ability of the major powers to intervene to resolve [the most important African challenges] by using their various capacities to legitimise their actions by persuading the UN to authorise their self-serving interventions.” So, why am I troubled by Mbeki’s revelations? My worry flows
from two sources. One: The alarming gullibility of our people. Countless Africans bought hook, line and sinker “the shameless pretence that [France and the UN were] acting to protect civilians” in Côte d’Ivoire when in fact (again to paraphrase Mbeki) the UN was merely entrenching former colonial powers on our continent! The second source of my worry in fact frightens me. Former
President Mbeki had not gone on holiday on Planet Mars when the “shameless pretence” was being perpetrated in Côte d’Ivoire. Yet he chose silence! He was the AU envoy to Côte d’Ivoire whose report on the elections had been so unpalatable to those per- petrating the “shameless pretence” that it was shelved. While berating Ecowas for not publishing its own election observers’ report, Mbeki has said nothing about his own AU report that is still not published. More importantly, why didn’t Mbeki write the Foreign Policy
article before France and the UN completed the “shameless pretence” in Abidjan? His words would have carried a lot more weight then than now! In fact, he reminds me of Tony Blair’s former secretary for international development, Clare Short, who did not know when to resign, to stop Blair and Bush from attacking Iraq in 2003. You know what: I am going to set up an NGO, dear readers,
and I hope you will kindly donate your mite to my NGO, which aims to solicit for funds to buy two eternal wristwatches from Switzerland, for both Clare Short and Thabo Mbeki, so that next time they will know exactly when to resign or speak out! Remember, it was Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia who said:
“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” Yes, “our lives begin to end” as Martin Luther King Jnr put it, “the day we become silent about things that matter.” gNA
New African June 2011 | 9
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