Lobby the G8 - If Zimbabwe is not a test of African peer review, what is?

ZWNEWS ^ | June 24, 2002

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Monday 24 June, 2002

Lobby the G8

author/source:ZWNEWS published:Mon 24-Jun-2002 posted on this site:Mon 24-Jun-2002

Article Type : News

If Zimbabwe is not a test of African peer review, what is?

With only days to go before the June 26-27 summit in Kananaskis, Canada of the G-8, it is essential that the leaders of the world?s most powerful nations make a return to democracy and the rule of law in Zimbabwe a FIRM condition of granting or pledging any of the billions of dollars of aid that African nations are seeking.

The New Partnership for Africa?s Development (Nepad), a project cherished by President Thabo Mbeki, envisages granting around US $64 billion in Western aid to the continent while, as part of the deal, African leaders "peer review" each other for standards of human rights and good governance. President Mbeki, meanwhile, literally continues to prop up - at huge financial cost to his own country - the ever more repressive and brutal regime of Robert Mugabe in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

President Mbeki only reluctantly went along with the decision to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth after the violent and stolen presidential election in March. At a recent African Economic Summit in Durban, he said that an African Union summit would decide "what sort of steps should be taken" against African governments that do not match up to standards of human rights and good governance. Such Nepad-aimed vague words cannot be allowed to paper over the Zimbabwe crisis. It is a travesty for President Mbeki to talk about African peer reviews on democracy, human rights and good governance while he supports one of the world's most odious regimes through a combination of financial subsidy and failure to act.

The G-8 groups Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States. If you have already written or emailed the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrietien, another of the leaders, your local parliamentary representative, or the summit office in Kananaskis, Canada, please do so again. If not, please get writing now with this simple message:

The situation in Zimbabwe is too desperate, the brutality, starvation, and repression too great in human misery for excuses about African leaders being reluctant to criticise each other. President Mbeki needs not only to criticise, he needs to stop keeping the Zimbabwe regime in power. This quite simply is the price for Nepad funds. If Zimbabwe is not a test of African peer review, what is?

Please also lobby Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrietien. The Prime Minister has a website - www.pm.gc.ca - and can also be contacted at the following addresses:

Office of the Prime Minister 80 Wellington Street Ottawa K1A 0A2 Canada

1-613-941-6900 (fax) pm@pm.gc.ca

There is also a Canadian Government website dedicated to the Kananaskis G8 Summit at www.g8.gc.ca. On that site (under ?Contact Us?) is a facility to send your comments regarding the forthcoming G8 Summit.

Please seek assurances that the Zimbabwe crisis will not be brushed aside, and that aid and investment under the Nepad plan will be withheld while Mugabe is permitted to hang on to power.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has no public email address. Letters should be addressed to him at:

10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA

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