Great African Leaders

Letters from France
Great African Leaders
By Robert Thompson
Jul 10, 2008, 10:54

(in reply to the article "US-British efforts fail to isolate Zimbabwe")

In a previous article, I have already warned against verbal and other attacks on Robert Mugabe by such criminals as George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and James Gordon Brown, but I take issue with Abayomi Azikiwe regarding Mr Mugabe. Insults from such major offenders are a delight for such a man as Mr Mugabe, who can point to them and say "and they dare to criticise me!".

Unhappily, I do not know what, if any, relationship he has with the great "Zik" (Nnamdi Azikiwe, a great democrat and the first president of Nigeria), but if he has he should take the latter as an example of how to behave in a democracy. Like other great African leaders who have come to the fore during my life-time, such as Kenneth Kaunda and Nelson Mandela, he knew how to accept electoral (and non-electoral) defeat from his political opponents.

Let us not think that because a bunch of ruthless criminals make rude comments on Mr Mugabe, he must be worthy of support, because he has shown that he is, in his comparatively small way, as nasty as they are, and as another great African, Desmond Tutu, has said he should make all Africans feel ashamed.

For preference, judge Mr Mugabe by the standards of the honest and decent, and condemn him for all his cruelty, of which one of the clearest examples was the massacre by his "war veterans" when they tried to wipe out all possible support for Joshua Nkomo, a genuine freedom fighter who believed in making their country a shining example of democracy in southern Africa.

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