These are the kind of double standards and hypocrisy that allow the Mugabes of Africa to continue; because the entire world, at least Africa, knows that the West are selective, when it comes to outrage against tyranny and the suffering of Africans.
[Black Star News Editorial]
It is with the utmost reluctance that we take on a man of the cloth.
A great and brave one at that, who was almost a singular figure –together with Winnie Mandela– in fighting apartheid, when Nelson Mandela was still incarcerated.
We speak of non other than Archbishop and Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu himself, who will deliver a speech to The British Council today.
The Bishop recently, through the BBC, urged President Obama to “come down hard” on African dictators.
It is the right call and we concur. It is not the right messenger, however.
We urge you, good Bishop, to try some of your own medicine before offering such advice to President Obama; where have you been good sir, with respect to the great tyrant in Uganda?
You are ever condemning Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe; and rightly so. Yet, surely, Mugabe is not the worse dictator in Africa. Surely, Uganda’s genocidal tyrant is more than 100 times worse than Mugabe.
So what’s with the silence? Why is it always Mugabe this; Mugabe that; Mugabe this; and Mugabe that?
Recently, a reverend of less renown, one John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, U.K., has also been barking “Zimbabwe! Zimbabwe!” even as a tyrant destroys his own country of birth, Uganda, and he doesn’t utter a word. Is it not the church that teaches that charity begins at home?
Good Sir, is it merely a coincidence that the British condemn Mugabe every day and also have nary a word to say about the excesses of Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni?
Mugabe has become the world’s convenient African punching bag, in order to divert focus from worse tyrants and kleptocrats.
Yes, Mugabe deserves much of the condemnation. He refused to cede space for genuine domestic opposition. This allowed the British –ever eternal colonialists at heart– to team up with their cousins in the United States and impose wicked sanctions against Zimbabwe’s people. The kind of destructive sanctions they were never willing to impose when their son, the late Ian Smith, was running the show.
Bishop Tutu you have also condemned the suffering imposed on Iraqi civilians as a result of the U.S. sanctions and then later, the invasion. In fact, you have said President Obama should apologize to the people of Iraq on behalf of the U.S. for the invasion.
It is not an unreasonable suggestion; yet, again, it reeks with the same double standard and hypocrisy which has eroded some of your prestige in recent years. Ask others, if you think we make this up.
As far as this newspaper can tell, good Bishop Tutu, you have never uttered a word against the genocidal dictator in Uganda.
So, let’s examine his ledger:
You must know that his army invaded Rwanda, an ethnically volatile country in 1990, stirring the hornets nest; four years later, the result was genocide.
You must know that his army invaded and occupied the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1997-2003 and that while there looted resources, raped civilians, and committed another genocide. An estimated more than five million Congolese perished.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2005 found Uganda liable of genocide in Congo and granted $10 billion in damages. The International Criminal Court is investigating the same crimes and could indict Museveni, in the same manner in which Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was indicted.
Nary a word from you, good Bishop Tutu.
Within his own country, Uganda, under the guise of fighting a vicious yet ragtag insurgent army called the Lord’s Resistance Army –another instance of the Lord’s name being invoked in vain–Museveni has depopulated his own citizens of Acholi ethnicity.
He confined more than two million in concentration camps for more than a decade and more than a million may have died. And, do you believe that it’s merely a coincidence that it was only two years ago that he started “peace talks” with the LRA, and then suddenly this year discovery of oil fields in Acholi have been announced?
Mugabe has never been this macabre; no, not even Ian Smith was so fiendish. Yet, nary a word from you, good Bishop?
While you have correctly decried the suffering of Iraqi civilians as a result of the sanctions and war; what of the suffering of Zimbabweans due to the criminally insane U.K. led sanctions?
The sanctions had nothing to do with human rights. It’s as clear as daylight. Otherwise, don’t you think the British would have already imposed sanctions against Uganda? Instead, the British rewarded the dictator by allowing him to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting two years ago; what about the common health of Congolese, Rwandese, and Ugandan victims of the tyrant?
So there you have it, good Bishop.
These are the kind of double standards and hypocrisy that allow Africans to be decimated. It also emboldens the Mugabes of Africa; because all of Africa, know that the West are selective, when it comes to outrage against tyranny and the suffering of Africans.
Where is the outrage right now as U.K. proxies from both Uganda and Rwanda decimate the people of Eastern Congo? Where are the sanctions?
In the old days, the church sanctioned genocide during the period of colonial conquest. Is it not ironic that the church today, with African faces, stand silent in the face of Western sanctioned genocide?
You see, we expect this sickening behavior from die-hard colonialists; not from exalted sons of Africa.
May the creator forgive you, good Bishop.
