Thursday, June 30, 2005

UN mission to Zimbabwe

Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of housing agency UN-HABITAT, has been in Zimbabwe since Sunday on a mission to assess the crackdown and has visited Harare's oldest township of Mbare, one of the worst hit by the crackdown. "We had very good discussions, constructive discussions," she told journalists after talks with the veteran Zimbabwe leader. She declined to take further questions.

"She is a United Nations director of Habitat and belongs to the United Nations and not to stupid Blair," the 81-year-old leader said. Tibaijuka said she would report only to Annan.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for her report. Mrs. Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka will be under a lot of pressure from many sides to water it down.

First, she is a Tanzanian national; predictably, President Mkapa of Tanzania was the first to support Mugabe and his criminal "Operation Murambatsvina" that has left hundreds of thousand homeless and deprived them of their livelihood. Hopefully he will be called to account for his egregious statements as requested by Baroness Park of Monmouth on 20th June 2005 while discussing the Africa Commission report in Parliament.

Second, in a week the G8 Summit will be held in Edinburgh and Africans will want to play down the Zimbabwe issue as much as possible in fear that it might reduce their chances of aid and debt relief.

Third, she is a UN employee and must have learned early on that it doesn't pay to search for truth; taking dictators' declarations and promises at face value is the way to go.

In this depressing scenario, some sanity surprisingly pops up now and then:

REUEL Khoza, chairman of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) Business Foundation, has accused the African Union (AU) of "shirking its responsibility" by not intervening in Zimbabwe's crackdown on poor urban settlements.

A drop in the ocean.

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