When the AU was formed in 2002 as a successor of the OAU, one of its main objectives was to achieve peace and security in Africa and to promote democratic institutions, good governance and human rights. It was also going to promote and defend common African positions on issues of interest to the continent and its peoples.

The Zimbabwe crisis is just the latest indication of why we must place no confidence in the ability of either the AU or its young brother SADC to handle regional problems as well as sail this continent onto the path of development. Their inaction on Zimbabwe is shocking and appalling to say the least and it smacks of both lack of will and incompetence.

Mugabe derives his spunk from the indifference and silent support of his peers. Ejecting him from the AU and verbally condemning his actions would probably have made some difference in his behavior or at least lessened his confidence. But only a few leaders like the late Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa, Botswana’s new President, Seretse Khama Ian Khama and lately, Kenyan Prime Minister, Raila Odinga have dared to be vocal about Mugabe’s self-imposed government and have even called for his and Zimbabwe’s suspension from the AU. The rest of the whiteheads especially in SADC have been inexplicably maintaining what Odinga calls a “diabolical conspiracy of silence bound by personal misdeeds and complicity in refusing to condemn their neighbors,” especially Mugabe. The same culture of impunity is what nurtured the excesses of the continent’s infamous dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko of the DRC and Uganda’s heartless Idi Amin under the banner of predecessor OAU’s founding principle of respect for national sovereignty.

In trying to understand why the AU and the SADC are toothless bulldogs barking endlessly from the periphery, Odinga postulates that African leaders are an old dictators’ club that have an inherent fear of criticizing each other. This is because, as Mugabe so rightly put it at the Sharm el Shaik, Egypt AU summit, they too have skeletons rattling in their closets.

It is thus not surprising that the AU has failed to put the people of Zimbabwe first and to stand up for democracy. In an ironic joint statement, the AU/SADC pledged “As guarantors of the implementation of the agreement, both AU and SADC will spare no effort in supporting its full and effective implementation.” What have these two organs done in the face of Mugabe’s latest unilateral declaration of cabinet? Again, as was the case in Kenya, the party that should have rightly taken over power is being forced by regional pressure to concede to an increasingly unworkable compromise deal and endless mediation processes by an inefficient go-between who insists on a concept of quiet diplomacy that only he understands. Recently, in response to a legal application filed against it by the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum two months ago, SADC has for the first time acknowledged that Mugabe should not be recognized as a legitimate head of state. But the organization rejected the demand to refuse to allow Mugabe and his government to participate in future SADC activities. Its excuse was that former South African President Thabo Mbeki, the SADC appointed mediator, was able to facilitate a power sharing deal to end Zimbabwe’s political crisis.

What ‘African’ common position are the AU/SADC defending when they fail to condemn errant dictators who hold whole starving nations to ransom in order to protect selfish interests?

In its thirty-nine year history, the OAU could only be judged as an abysmal failure. It failed to challenge any major dictator on the continent and stood idle while civil wars, ethnic conflicts, poverty and disease ravaged ordinary Africans. Its only success was in preserving the notion of sovereign borders in Africa. Wole Soyinka once described it as a “collaborative club of perpetual self-preservation.” The AU is the new OAU under a different name: its membership is the same and there are no new institutions to suggest that it will be any more effective or less selfish than its predecessor.

As a pan-African organization, the AU must be willing to stand up to African dictators and military rulers that have been the real causes of bloodshed and poverty on the continent. So far the AU has failed in this mission: Mugabe is still a revered charter member of the AU and it has failed to recognize Morgan Tsvangirai as the country’s rightful elected leader. If we start to question the complacency of the AU, we start to ask, why was it tolerable that a tyrant lost an election, imprisoned, killed and molested those who dared oppose him, then proceeded to reelect himself to the presidium, and no action was taken?

The AU has failed the people of Zimbabwe by its unwillingness to deal effectively with the political crisis that was single-handedly constructed by one dictator. For months they have insisted on mediation and dialogue when decisive action has been called for. The AU has failed too often or remained inert when it should have acted, and its internal procedures are often agonizingly inadequate for the challenges it faces in problem countries. For far too long, and with immensely destructive consequences, the AU has downplayed the dimensions of crises in various African countries and the urgency of large-scale humanitarian intervention. This is particularly true of the situation in Africa’s largest country, Sudan with the longstanding and ongoing conflict in Darfur that stretches as far back as 2003. Look also how dictators recently bulldozed their way into leadership in Kenya.

The AU has only been good at issuing statements. The AU’s fine words at the moment are little consolation to Zimbabwe’s hungry, oppressed people. Once more, like its predecessor, the AU is set to fail the people of Africa.

Here at Kubatana, we are enough of politicians fiddling whilst Zimbabweans starve. Our current electronic activism campaign encourages people to get in touch with the offices of the President and the Prime Minister designate to urge them to stop stalling and start governing.

Getting contact information for the President’s office, though, was no easy matter.

First off, when I used the numbers in the telephone directory, as soon as I asked for contact information they’d transfer me to the Ministry of Information. No wonder Zanu PF wants to keep control of the Ministry of Information. It would be too hard to reconfigure all the telephone lines to separate them from the numbers for the President’s office!

When I finally got through to the right person, I asked for their email address. I could hear the receptionist shouting across the office to one of her colleagues –

“These people want our email address. Can I give it?” She asked.

“Which people?” Her colleague asked.

“These people on the phone. They’re calling from Harare. They want the email address for our office. Can I give them?”

“Who are they?”

“They’re on the phone.”

“What do they want?”

“They want our email address can I give them?”

“No. Don’t give them our email address. We don’t know who they are.”

The whole exchange reminded me an awful lot of trying to get Zanu PF’s email address.

She then came back on the line and told me they weren’t on email so she couldn’t give me the email address. So I asked for fax number. She said the fax was down. So if I have an urgent message for the President’s office? How am I meant to get it to them? She told me to phone the Ministry of Information.

It took four more phone calls and uncountable inter-office transfers for them to eventually give me their fax number – and to get them to give me a fax tone when it rang.

This is exactly what needs to change in the new Zimbabwe. As much as we need government to start governing again, this must be a New government, with a new attitude about itself and its responsibilities to the people, and a new approach towards listening to Zimbabweans and responding to what we want.

Fax the President’s office on +263 4 251641 and let them know that you want a new government – and you want it now.

I’ve been thinking lately about the ways in which politics – particularly Zimbabwean politics of late – is performance. These words from Tinashe Chimedza give voice to the concerns many Zimbabweans are raising about The Deal.

Pass me the cognac

The elites scramble for power and profit
The poor become footnotes
We write epitaphs ‘rest in peace Cde Tonde’
The bubbly flows
Pass me the Borboun
Am tired of the imported Cognac
More drivers, another motorcade
Four more motorcades
Another charade
Dish me my share of toil
‘Ndakadashurwa’ – any questions?
The rubble will eat tomorrow
Who wants to jump with them anyway,
The commoners, teach them culture first
Am waiting for my OBE
They are fodder, my cdes remind me
Lets dance ball room tonite
On the bellies of the filth

~ Tinashe L Chimedza

“Zanu yaora Baba . . . Zanu yaora Baba . . . .” It’s the middle of the night, the 25th of June 2000. I’m in a car full of MDC activists and we’re careening through the streets of Harare, singing our lungs out, high on the promise of a Parliamentary election in which the MDC, barely nine months old, might just win the majority of elected seats. As it turned out, we were close but not quite. And the giddy optimism that, just maybe, we could put Zimbabwe back on the path to democracy in a matter of months, not years or decades, proved hollow.

Eight years, four elections, untold campaigns, and uncountable political-broken-heart moments later, I’m older, wiser, and a bit more jaded about the whole process. So when Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and Robert Mugabe signed their agreement on “resolving the challenges facing Zimbabwe” yesterday, I have to confess to no small amount of cynicism.

But, thinking that it was perhaps unfair of me to be so suspicious of a moment where so many were finding hope, I decided to take my cynicism to the streets and have a look around. I’ve long said that I will know that Zimbabwe is on the right track again when Harare’s Seventh Street – the road past State House – is no longer closed after dark. So I was disappointed, last night, to find it still barricaded, and I’ve been thinking about things like attachment, expectations, and anticlimax.

Speaking with others on my street, the general mood was “let’s wait and see.” So I’m taking their advice and doing my level best to reserve my judgement until we see how things pan out. But I’m sceptical about a power-sharing agreement, particularly about one that seems simply to have expanded the size of the Cake of National Elite so that everyone can have a slice. And I’m wondering how is it all going to work. Where will Morgan sleep as Prime Minister? Will he move into Zimbabwe House, over the road from Bob? The Zimbabwe I dream of is one without any head of state motorcade – not two. And I’m waiting for the Zimbabwe without any head of state portraits on the walls – not two.

In the past few months, we’ve asked Zimbabweans what they think about a Government of National Unity, and what changes they’d like to see in a New Zimbabwe. Once the country starts making progress towards these issues, I’ll know it’s time to celebrate.

I’ve never aspired to be a politician. I’m too sensitive, couldn’t handle large numbers of people voting against me and polls tallying whether or not the people like me. I don’t have the stamina for shady systemic webs of bureaucracy and patronage. I know very little about fighting an unjust war or how to name commissions and operations. Recent efforts to keep up with pressing political on-goings such as, the opening of Parliament in Zimbabwe and Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska/Republican Vice Presidential candidate, have made me rethink what makes one suited for politics. I’m thinking it all has to do with having the appropriate office décor.

It wouldn’t be so bad as Speaker of Zimbabwean Parliament because the big white chair the speaker sits in looks quite comfortable. But, I’d be afraid to put my head back out of fear that the tips of the ivory horns would gouge the back of my skull and the resulting blood would stain the nice white chair. The clear glass podium would stress me out; all of Parliament could see if my socks had a hole or if they were mismatched.

I most certainly couldn’t be Governor of Alaska/Republican Vice Presidential Candidate. I’ve never shot a bear three times the size of me, or any bear for that matter. I’ve never even shot a gun nor would I ever think of shooting a gun, except the kind that squirts water. And I’d prefer to have a blanket draped over the back of my couch not a bear. In my book, king crabs ought to be either a meal or left alone in the sea. I don’t understand a king crab as a paper weight on a coffee table.

What is it with politicians and their grandiose office décor? Isn’t it enough their power hungry mindsets? Do they really need to exude and flaunt that power through their office décor? Just as more politicians who can cry and show compassion are needed world over, I think it would be nice to have politicians who use chairs, blankets, and paper weights more in tune with the realities of everyday people.

I highly recommend the work of Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah for anyone wanting a refreshing, honest take on life, politics and everything in between.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe and Morgan Richard Tsvangirai held hands. Mugabe grinned. Tsvangirai grinned. Arthur Guseni Oliver Mutambara grinned. Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki grinned. They all grinned and were happy together. It is surreal, this orgy of grinning, this sudden, blinding flashing of teeth: barely a month ago the pictures of torture camps filled television and computer screens, photographs of burnt bodies illustrated the stories of horror from Zimbabwe.

She writes, in her recent sobering and though provoking piece on the Memorandum of Understanding and inter-party dialogue. On her blog, she recently published John Eppel’s short story – Boys will be boys – a truth is stranger than fiction account of the petty squabbling reportedly happening behind the scenes at the interparty negotiations.

We made the story available to our SMS subscribers recently, and one wrote in:

Well, if indeed it is true that the inter-party talks have degenerated into a war about mini-bars and who has the best rooms, then God help us. Why would we, claiming to represent the wishes of the people, stoop so low? The people back home sleep on rumbling empty stomachs and our leaders fight over the fat of the land. The people back home sleep in overcrowded one roomed shacks and yet our leaders see sense in fighting over who has the better room. The people back home only have darkness as their best view thanks to ZESA blackouts and our leaders haggle over who has a better view of the magnificent terrain. That is the sad reality about power. Once our leaders begin to taste good things as is the case now, there is no telling what lies ahead of us after these talks. The gloves are off and we now see the true colours of our erstwhile leaders. For them it’s about fame, glory, power, prestige, and money. I mean, does it matter to our leaders that people died for the cause of democracy? What are the families of the deceased meant to think when they hear that the democracy their loved ones died for is now the flip side of a coin that has “bedroom suites, minibars, topless waiters etc” on the other side? We have betrayed the martyrs of the struggle. Surely, they turn in their graves in regret.

God help us indeed.