Archivo etiqueta «Zimbabwe»
By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 30/06/08):
Robert Mugabe’s disregard for democracy and human rights is shared to varying degrees by many of the leaders who have been urged to condemn him today at the African Union summit in Egypt. Publicly defenestrating Zimbabwe’s self-declared president might create an uncomfortable precedent for them – and for this reason among others, is thus unlikely to happen.
Hosni Mubarak, veteran host of the meeting of the 53 AU countries, may be said to have set the standard to which others have fallen. He has been repeatedly returned as president with over 90% of … Seguir leyendo
By Martin Ivens (THE TIMES, 29/06/08):
How Bill Clinton brightens a room. Last week he dropped into town to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday. One minute he was hobnobbing with Elton John and Robert De Niro at a charity dinner – corporate tables a snip at £100,000 – the next he was seen leaving No 10 in what the fashion writer of The Times gushingly described as “a dazzling pistachio shirt, an eye-popping striped tie and a raffish summer jacket in dove grey, the season’s most fashionable shade”.
The only raincloud on our man of mode’s sunny horizon was Mandela’s … Seguir leyendo
By Jonathan Steele (THE GUARDIAN, 28/06/08):
While Zimbabwe’s obscene charade of a runoff election played itself out yesterday, foreign reaction still seemed stuck in two grooves: either Mugabe-bashing or hand-wringing. The former is well justified, after everything the Zimbabwean president has done over the past few months. But, however muscular the rhetoric, it will be no more effective in producing regime change than passive despair.
There is a third way. It goes beyond denunciation and punishment, though it involves bitter medicine. The only route that will avoid yet more bloodshed is a negotiated transition of power in which legal immunity … Seguir leyendo
By Matthew Parris (THE TIMES, 28/06/08):
In politics as in our personal lives, just six words comprise one of the commonest falsehoods around. Those six words are: “It can’t go on like this.” But it can. I’ve come to the melancholy conclusion that in Zimbabwe it must.
This weekend there will be voices in our Prime Minister’s ear suggesting how in one bound he might cast off his dithering reputation. To help to broker the toppling of Robert Mugabe (they will whisper) might be just the sort of history-making that rescued Margaret Thatcher from doldrums at home, before Galtieri invaded … Seguir leyendo
Por Simon Jenkins, columnista habitual del diario The Guardian y un gran experto en Historia militar (EL MUNDO / THE GUARDIAN, 27/06/08):
Robert Mugabe está dejando en ridículo el intervencionismo de corte progresista. Se ha convertido en un regalo de los dioses para caricaturistas, políticos y comentaristas. Las elecciones de hoy en Zimbabue son un buen ejemplo de ello. En occidente lo retratan blandiendo palos chorreantes de sangre. Lo sacan de pie, en actitud de triunfo, sobre un montón de calaveras. Es un Bokassa copiado de un Idi Amin copiado de un Charles Taylor. Es uno de esos tipos … Seguir leyendo
By Timothy Garton Ash (THE GUARDIAN, 26/06/08):
Whether you believe in him or not, it’s time to give God a helping hand. Robert Mugabe, the Catholic mission school boy turned tyrant, says “only God” can remove him from power in Zimbabwe. In that case, I’m rooting for God. Go for it, Lord. (Silence on high. Damn.)
What we see in Zimbabwe today is naked political terror, orchestrated solely to extend the reign of a once legitimate but now illegitimate ruler who has led his people to a hell on earth. Destitution, murder, rape and mass beatings are the order of … Seguir leyendo
By Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe (THE GUARDIAN, 25/06/08):
In the course of the last few tumultuous months, I have often had cause to consider what it is that makes a country. I believe a country is the sum of its many parts, and that this is embodied in one thing: its people. The people of my country, Zimbabwe, have borne more than any people should bear. They have been burdened by the world’s highest inflation rates, denied the basics of democracy, and are now suffering the worst form of intimidation and violence … Seguir leyendo
By Peter Godwin, the author of When a Crocodile Eats the Sun (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 24/06/08):
In these last few weeks, the full nature of Robert Mugabe’s repressive regime in Zimbabwe has been cruelly exposed. With his increasingly brazen resort to torture and hit squads to terrorize his own people, Mr. Mugabe has crossed a moral line. Some United Nations lawyers now say there is enough evidence to charge him with crimes against humanity.
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change and Mr. Mugabe’s opponent in Friday’s runoff presidential election, had little choice but to … Seguir leyendo
By Knox Chitiyo, head of the Africa programme at the Royal United Services Institute and a former co-director of the Centre for Defence Studies at the University of Zimbabwe (THE GUARDIAN, 24/06/08):
Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to pull out of Friday’s presidential run-off is disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. Ever since the March 29 election and its bitterly contested results, opinion in Zimbabwe had been divided over whether or not the Movement for Democratic Change should be part of this second-round vote. Tsvangirai will be criticised for withdrawing, but his MDC was damned if it did, damned if it didn’t.… Seguir leyendo
By David Aaronovitch (THE TIMES, 24/06/08):
Maybe this time,” sang Lord Malloch-Brown on the Today programme yesterday. “Something’s bound to begin. It’s got to happen, happen sometime. Maybe this time I’ll win.”
Well, all right, I am – like postmodernist scholars – decoding the metatext. What the Minister of State for Africa, Asia and the UN actually said was that the mood around the world had so turned against Robert Mugabe and his various cronies that their combined diplomatic effort would bring him down.
Till now, Lord Malloch-Brown allowed, there had only been a “fairly limited set of measures” taken … Seguir leyendo
By Peter Hain (THE TIMES, 22/06/08):
Robert Mugabe patted me on the knee as we sat in his favourite London hotel, his wife Grace recently in from one of her infamous shopping trips that put even Imelda Marcos to shame.
“I know you are not one of them, Peter; you are one of us,” he said, acknowledging me as a son of Africa with an antiapartheid record, including campaigning against Ian Smith’s racist white-minority regime, which had imprisoned him in the old Rhodesia.
My Foreign Office officials were delighted. So were his. After a period of bad relations, at last … Seguir leyendo
By Zakes Mda, a South African writer and the author of Cion (THE GUARDIAN, 21/06/08):
In Johannesburg, Robert Mugabe was given a rousing welcome by Africans from across the continent. As he addressed the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, we ululated and sang his praises, and after his brief speech we gave him a standing ovation. He spoke of the wonderful work he had achieved in Zimbabwe with his “agrarian reforms” in a country where 70% of prime land had been owned by just 4,000 white farmers.
Here was an African leader who was prepared to redress the … Seguir leyendo
By Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats (THE TIMES, 16/06/08):
In less than two weeks the fate of the people of Zimbabwe will be determined by the result of a run-off presidential election. If Robert Mugabe is allowed to steal that election the tragedy will be complete. The scale of the catastrophe that Mugabe has precipitated in his country is almost unimaginable. In just ten years, life expectancy has plummeted from 61 years to less than 36 – the lowest in the world. The economy has disintegrated – inflation by the official measure stood at 164,900 per cent … Seguir leyendo
By Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society and the author of the forthcoming Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (THE TIMES, 09/06/08):
The next three weeks in Zimbabwe will be the most traumatic in its history. Robert Mugabe has declared war on the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), NGOs and churches to reverse the electoral defeat he suffered in March. It is a war on unarmed people. Can he win it and what would victory mean?
Scenario one: When the votes are counted after a peaceful, well-organised and credible election on June 27, President Mugabe concedes defeat, congratulates … Seguir leyendo
By Anne Applebaum (THE WASHINGTON POST, 03/06/08):
With an unerring sense of timing, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe arrived in Rome yesterday, thereby demonstrating the profound limitations of international diplomacy. Indeed, it’s hard to think of any other single gesture that would so effectively reveal the ineffectiveness of international institutions in the conduct of human rights and food aid policy. Even someone standing atop the dome of St. Peter’s, megaphone in hand, shouting, “The U.N. is useless! The E.U. is useless!” couldn’t have clarified the matter more plainly.
For Mugabe is in Rome at the invitation of the U.N. Food … Seguir leyendo