Dear Sir,
It is very disheartening that the African Union has not come out as strongly as it should have done on the Zimbabwean Question. The situation in Zimbabwe has been deteriorating for a decade now and because of the concept of the built in "Non-Interference" clause in the charter, you have Mr Robert Mugabe perpetrating crimes against humanity to which the AU turns a blind eye. Today Morgan Tsvangirai has withdrawn from the run-off and you, the African leaders will line up to congratulate Mr Mugabe for his "victory". The question that will not be on the lips of any one of you is "how many people have been killed, how many people have been maimed, how many people have been displaced, how many women have been raped?" Your only pre-occupation will be how many bottles of champagne are being chilled now that Tsvangirai is out of the way.
The African Union, we have always feared, is just an old boy's meeting place to hold annual parties and for member governments to give jobs to their supporters to. The positioning of the AU and the other useless body called SADC has just been to posture against Britain, America and other so-called former colonial powers when our own leaders have been worse than the colonial masters not only in terms of stealing resources, but in terms of killing opponents and other forms of brutality which our parents never envisaged when they fought against colonialism.
Mugabe's megalomania where he is even claiming to be next to God or even God himself will lead him to claiming God's throne itself because you, the AU, choose not to do anything. The tragedy though is that as he makes those weird claims of his, Zimbabweans citizens are being killed, maimed, raped, intimidated and displaced. Tomorrow, you will line up to pat each other's backs with Mugabe for a "good job". It is a shame that you, the AU, exist in our name as Africans when you let the ordinary people you represent being treated worse than animals. Not even the slaves that were shipped to the Americas all those centuries ago were treated in the manner Mugabe has treated Zimbabweans in the last decade or so.
Kwame Nkrumah and other true Pan-Africanists who sacrificed their lives for the African peoples' cause must be turning in their graves that we are still driving spears up each other's backsides just to keep mad men like Mugabe in power while the AU does absolutely nothing. Look at Darfur, the other blight of the continent, look at the xenophobia in South Africa. All you do as the AU is to posture against Britain, against the US. All this against the backdrop of the champagne that pops in the posh Addis Ababa hotels. Mugabe is no different from Foday Sankoh, from Charles Taylor, from Jean-Pierre Bemba. He deserves a place of shame at The Hague and the best force to capture him is the African Union. If the British or Americans do it for you, you will cry foul as usual.
As it is, I will not be surprised if you will be the first ones to CONGRATULATE Mugabe and join him at the National Stadium to toast his sham victory. As I write, Namibia's army chief, Lt. Gen. Shalli has already assured him how his country will not interfere in Zimbabwe's internal matters.
Surely, you must be ashamed of yourselves!
Gershom Ndhlovu.
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