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It's time to topple the tyrant Mugabe

This article is more than 15 years old
The international community must bring to an end the vile regime that is destroying Zimbabwe

When Jesus Christ wanted people to know what he was doing, he chose a passage from the Old Testament to describe his mission. It was a passage from the prophet Isaiah, written to encourage a disillusioned and demoralised people. It looked forward to a new day when there would be justice for people being treated unjustly and in poverty and release for the oppressed. It promised new life for the present and hope for the future.

President Robert Mugabe was right when he said only God could remove him. That's exactly what happens. No tyrant lives for ever. No cruel regime lasts. God acts. And he is acting. An international chorus is at last being raised to bring an end to Mugabe's brutal regime.

As cholera devastates a Zimbabwe already on its knees, our Prime Minister, our Foreign Secretary and the US Secretary of State have all called for an end to the regime of Mugabe. Now these voices must unite for a further call to bring an end to the charade of power-sharing that has enabled Mugabe to remain in office, assisted by his ruthless politburo.

Mugabe and his corrupt regime must go. Lord Acton said: 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' How can anyone share power in a thoroughly corrupt regime?

The sterility of the power-sharing agreement can be seen through this broken land where its people die from eating anthrax-infected cattle or from starvation. Where sewers are open and there is no running water in towns hospitals any longer. A place where there is no electricity to operate the most basic services. A land where cholera is claiming more lives by the day.

The time has come for the international community to recognise that the power-sharing deal signed in September is dead. The impasse within the South African-sponsored negotiations between the MDC and Zanu PF has been sustained by a Mugabe regime which is unwilling to give up power and refuses to recognise the rule of law.

Last week in London, I spoke to the father of Ben Freeth, the man who had his farm seized on the day Mugabe was sworn in as President. Ben was abducted from the farm while both he and his father-in-law were unconscious with severe head injuries. Ben's mother-in-law had her arm broken and had a stick from the fire thrust into her mouth for refusing to join in pro-Mugabe songs. She was made to sign a bit of paper with a gun to her head. The paper said that they would not challenge the seizure.

In a search for justice, Ben, with other farmers, brought his case to an international court with international jurisdiction. At the end of last month, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) tribunal of five judges sitting in Namibia ruled unanimously that the farm seizures had been unlawful, that the 75 white farmers who brought the case had been discriminated against on the basis of their race and that compensation should be paid. The Zimbabwean Minister of State for National Security responded by saying that the tribunal was 'daydreaming because we are not going to reverse the land reform exercise ... we will take more farms'.

The time for any negotiated settlement which leaves Mugabe and his regime in power is over. Mugabe has had the opportunity to share power and to restore the land that he brought to ruin. Instead, that path of ruination has become a slope falling away into a humanitarian disaster.

Where are the African governments or leaders with the courage of Julius Nyerere, the former President of Tanzania, who ousted Idi Amin after recognising that his neighbour had become a tyrant and who marched an army into Uganda to bring an end to the killing fields? In Uganda, we were beaten, tortured, abused and hundreds were murdered, but never did we starve to death or see the level of suffering which is to be found in today's Zimbabwe. We went into exile but not by the millions as Zimbabweans have.

We look for leaders of resolution and courage to lead the people of Zimbabwe out of their suffering. The late Dr Martin Luther King Jr said: 'We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.'

Mugabe may well brand anyone who criticises him as a 'colonialist' or an 'imperialist' for any action they take, but the people of Zimbabwe look to the international community, especially the SADC, to heed the cries of their suffering and the voices of our own conscience.

More than 20 years ago, Joshua Nkomo gave an address at the funeral of Lookout Masuku who had been imprisoned for an alleged plot to overthrow Mugabe. Nkomo's words need to be heard afresh, not least by the President of South Africa, Kgalema Motlanthe, and Mugabe's neighbours.

Nkomo said: 'We cannot blame colonialism and imperialism for this tragedy. We who fought against these things now practise them. Our country cannot progress on fear and the false accusations which are founded simply on the love of power. There is something radically wrong with our country today and we are moving, fast, towards destruction. There is confusion and corruption and, let us be clear about it, we are seeing racism in reverse under the false mirror of correcting imbalances from the past. In the process, we are creating worse things. We have created fear in the minds of some in our country. We have made them feel unwanted, unsafe. We cannot condemn other people and then do things even worse than they did. We cannot go on this way.'

The time has come for Mugabe to answer for his crimes against humanity, against his countrymen and women and for justice to be done. The winds of change that once brought hope to Zimbabwe and its neighbours have become a hurricane of destruction with the outbreak of cholera, destitution, starvation and systemic abuse of power by the state.

As a country cries out for justice, we can no longer be inactive to their call. Mugabe and his henchmen must now take their rightful place in the Hague and answer for their actions. The time to remove them from power has come.

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