Why I am not running by Morgan Tsvangirai

(Note: Today I am doing something that I rarely do on this blog: Reposting verbatim text that first appeared elsewhere. Given the current situation in Zimbabwe, though, the results of which I saw for myself on a recent visit to South Africa, and the conditions of which I have blogged about here before, I feel compelled to share with readers the following declaration of Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change political party in Zimbabwe. Mr. Tsvangirai’s statement was printed this evening in the Guardian newspaper. MD)

Why I am not running

My people are at breaking point. World leaders' bold rhetoric must be backed with military force

By Morgan Tsvangirai

The Guardian

Wednesday June 25, 2008

(Read the original article here)

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 at the hand of a government purporting to be of and for the people. Zimbabwe will break if the world does not come to our aid.

Africa has seen this all before, of course. The scenario in Zimbabwe is numbingly familiar. A power-crazed despot holding his people hostage to his delusions, crushing the spirit of his country and casting the international community as fools. As we enter the final days of what has been a taxing period for all Zimbabweans, it is likely that Robert Mugabe will claim the presidency of our country and will seek to further deny its people a space to breath and feel the breeze of freedom.

I can no longer allow Zimbabwe's people to suffer this torture, for I believe they can bear no more crushing force. This is why I decided not to run in the presidential run-off. This is not a political decision. The vote need not occur at all of course, as the Movement for Democratic Change won a majority in the previous election, held in March. This is undisputed even by the pro-Mugabe Zimbabwe electoral commission.

Our call now for intervention seeks to challenge standard procedure in international diplomacy. The quiet diplomacy of South African President Thabo Mbeki has been characteristic of this worn approach, as it sought to massage a defeated dictator rather than show him the door and prod him towards it.

We envision a more energetic and, indeed, activist strategy. Our proposal is one that aims to remove the often debilitating barriers of state sovereignty, which rests on a centuries-old foundation of the sanctity of governments, even those which have proven themselves illegitimate and decrepit. We ask for the UN to go further than its recent resolution, condemning the violence in Zimbabwe, to encompass an active isolation of the dictator Mugabe.

For this we need a force to protect the people. We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force. Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not trouble-makers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns.

The next stage should be a new presidential election. This does indeed burden Zimbabwe and create an atmosphere of limbo. Yet there is hardly a scenario that does not carry an element of pain. The reality is that a new election, devoid of violence and intimidation, is the only way to put Zimbabwe right.

Part of this process would be the introduction of election monitors, from the African Union and the UN. This would also require a recognition of myself as a legitimate candidate. It would be the best chance the people of Zimbabwe would get to see their views recorded fairly and justly.

Intervention is a loaded concept in today's world, of course. Yet, despite the difficulties inherent in certain high-profile interventions, decisions not to intervene have created similarly dire consequences. The battle in Zimbabwe today is a battle between democracy and dictatorship, justice and injustice, right and wrong. It is one in which the international community must become more than a moral participant. It must become mobilised.

· Morgan Tsvangirai is leader of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe

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(An interesting addendum, all things consdered. MD)

Tsvangirai reverses peacekeeper plea

26 June 2008

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The British newspaper The Guardian printed a letter Thursday from Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in which he denied writing a commentary printed in the paper a day earlier.

Tsvangirai said the commentary did not reflect his position or opinions regarding solutions to the violence and political crisis in Zimbabwe, and he emphasized that he does not advocate military intervention in his country -- a call made in Wednesday's article.

"Although The Guardian was given assurances from credible sources that I had approved the article this was not the case," he wrote in Thursday's letter.

A spokeswoman for The Guardian said the letter had been authorized by a Tsvangirai representative with whom the paper had dealt in the past, as well as Tsvangirai's representative in the Zimbabwean capital.

"The article was supplied to us and we had no reason to doubt the authenticity," said the spokeswoman, who asked not to be named.

The Wednesday editorial in The Guardian, which the paper said was penned by Tsvangirai, called for U.N. peacekeepers.

"We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force," the editorial read.

Tsvangirai made the same call in an interview Wednesday with CNN, by phone from Harare. Asked whether he had requested peacekeepers from the United Nations, he indicated that he had.

"It's a proposal we are requesting," Tsvangirai told CNN. "It's because the violence is continuing, and it's violence that is being committed by armed forces against unarmed civilians. And all we are doing is to try to call for these peacekeepers so that normalcy can return and people can feel safe."

Asked then whether he had received any response from the United Nations to his call for peacekeepers, Tsvangirai said no, but he hoped the United Nations would urgently consider the move.

Thursday's letter from Tsvangirai was an apparent reversal of his call for U.N. peacekeepers.

"By way of clarification I would like to state the following: I am not advocating military intervention in Zimbabwe by the U.N. or any other organization," Tsvangirai wrote.

Tsvangirai said his party, the Movement for Democratic Change, wants an African solution to the crisis, specifically one from the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC).

He said he is asking the SADC and the larger African Union to lead an initiative, supported by the United Nations, to manage the transition of power.

"We are proposing that the AU facilitation team sets up a transitional period that takes into account the will of the people of Zimbabwe," he wrote.

Tsvangirai withdrew earlier this week from a presidential runoff election, scheduled for Friday, against President Robert Mugabe, citing pre-election violence that the MDC said has targeted its supporters. The U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned Zimbabwe's government for the violence.

Mugabe says the violence has targeted his own ZANU-PF party.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission ruled that Friday's vote would go on as scheduled despite Tsvangirai's withdrawal, although U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the SADC had urged a postponement.

RIGHTS: In South Africa, Zimbabwean Refugees Find Sanctuary and Contempt

RIGHTS: In South Africa, Zimbabwean Refugees Find Sanctuary and Contempt

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

JOHANNESBURG, May 4, 2008 (IPS) - As the autumn sun sets over South Africa's most populous city, the halls of downtown Johannesburg's Central Methodist Mission fill with weary figures, many far from home, seeking solace within its walls.

On every spare inch of space on the floors and narrow staircase of the mission -- and on the pavement outside -- the destitute curl up to find shelter as best they can from the chill wind that moves between the tall buildings in this city. Mixed in among them every night are hundreds of refugees from South Africa's northern neighbour, Zimbabwe, who have fled their country's slow-motion economic and political implosion.

"We sleep outside in the streets. Sometimes we spend days without eating anything; we spend weeks without working," says Owen Muchanyo, a 23-year-old secondary school teacher of mathematics and science from Chitungwiza, a town south of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.

He has been in South Africa for three months. "It's better to sleep on the streets, where my life is somewhat safe, than to sleep in a house when my life is in danger."

Read the full article here.

NYC to Wal-Mart: fuhgeddaboudit

Saying "thanks, but no thanks" but to union-hostile, low-wage jobs with employer-provided healthcare often worse than the meager public health benefits available to its employees, upon my arrival from Europe, New York City succeeded in doing me proud once more by prompting Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. to exclaim “I don’t think it’s worth the effort.” Scott was referring to the efforts of Wal-Mart, one of most visible manifestations of corporate banality, to come to the five boroughs.

In a city of such dizzying variety of choice, the New York Times opined yesterday that, in addition to union-led opposition to a New York invasion by the chain, “Wal-Mart, a cost-minded retailer known for its dowdy merchandise, and New York, a city of excesses known for cutting-edge style, have long had an uneasy relationship.”

Damn straight, and hopefully this beautiful city will resist the malling of America for many years more.

In Zimbabwean, meanwhile, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was detained by police for several hours in an apparent attempt to keep him from addressing reporters on the spiraling violence by the government of Robert Mugabe against the citizens there. Tsvangirai was eventually released, but this situation requires vigilance.

An interview with me, conducted in Spanish, was published on the Haitian media outlet AlterPresse, after originally appearing in the New York Spanish-language publication La Voz. It can be read here.

Slaves in paradise, Tsvangirai to hospital and Tracy Quan downtown

My new article for the Inter Press Service, on the Esclaves au Paradis (Slaves in Paradise) exhibit, Father Christopher Hartley and the state of Haitians laboring in the Dominican Republic, was published yesterday and can be read here. I was going to post it yesterday but thought that, given the situation with Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, it could wait until today.

Reuters reports today that Tsvangirai is now in intensive care with a broken skull, after having been released from police custody along with 30 other opposition figures arrested on Sunday. But, given the track record of the Zimbabwe government up until this point, it would appear that this crisis is far from over and continued vigilance is required. Many thanks to all of you who wrote, called or faxed the Zimbabwean embassies in the U.S. and the U.K.

On a far lighter note, my friend Tracy Quan will be having a reading tonight at East 9th Street’s Manhattan nightspot Solas, for any of those who are in town, celebrating her "special relationship with the Upper East Side," a neighborhood I have never been able to afford to live in (being a Brooklyn and Queens boy) but have visited from time to time.