Mortal racist blow for MDC

Somewhat unexpectedly, he won the March 2008 election in Zimbabwe.

Immediately after that he left for an extended visit to neighbouring states. Then he returned and decided to take part in the run-off election for president. But a week before the election, he took refuge in the Dutch embassy and withdrew the MDC from the election.

For this forceful behaviour, he received worldwide approval, except from SA President Thabo Mbeki.

In the same week, the international icon of courage, perseverance and fairness, SA's own Nelson Mandela celebrated his 90th birthday in the UK.

I couldn't help thinking back to my third year at university. We were listening to the evidence in the Rivonia trial and also to Mandela's statement about what he was prepared to live and die for.

We didn't understand it very well, or didn't want to or couldn't understand it, but we nevertheless shared the disappointment of our economics lecturer when Mandela and his co-accused weren'tgiven the death sentence.

But this week, Tsvangirai wasn't prepared to pay nearly the same price as Mandela was in 1965. Now he's apparently prepared to work with Zimbabwe's legally elected president, Robert Mugabe, in a government of national unity.

Yes, President George Bush, Mugabe is a legally elected president.

You also had problems with those last few votes in Florida where the voters' choices weren't all that clear.

Change Africa perception

But the political argument isn't my point.

As my colleague Bruce Whitfield showed on the cover of this week's Finweek, Africa can no longer afford the Mbeki/Mugabe fiasco.

Africa needs to become known in the world not for its racist and xenophobic politics, but for its human achievements, such as Nelson Mandela proved this week.

I'm using the word racist again. Mugabe is a proven racist. To achieve his aims, he drove whites away, especially farmers, rather than creating wealth for his country.

His knowledge of economics, wherever he may have acquired it, doesn't understand the concept of baking a larger cake and sharing it for the benefit of all. He preferred taking everything there is, destroying it and then trying the distribute the crumbs.

To our dear state president: your friend Mugabe is a racist and also displays xenophobic tendencies. He's power-crazy and has destroyed a country's economy.

In case you don't know, Mr Mbeki, the annual per capita income in Zimbabwe is now less than one-twentieth of what people in Swaziland earn.

It would be better to respect the king of Swaziland at the cost of your friend Mugabe.

The West - let's say the leaders of the white world like Bush, Brown and Merkel, to mention just a few - has openly given its support to Tsvangirai. Is that perhaps the reason, Mr Mbeki, why you're so opposed to supporting the clearly more democratic and less despotic Tsvangirai rather than Mugabe?

Western countries, as well as SA's whites, if I may be allowed to be racist, were right to favour a new government in Zimbabwe, even if it had been under the leadership of a lightweight like Tsvangirai. We were right - yes, I wanted to be part of it - to want to create a new Zimbabwe.

We were keen to transform Zimbabwe from a country of poverty into one of the world's jewels.

A success story that would've brought the humanity of Africa just as much favourable publicity as Nelson Mandela's birthday celebrations in London.

Wouldn't that have been a wonderful birthday present for Mandela, who, incidentally, is our idol too?

Tsvangirai, you took that opportunity away from us, because you were not prepared to walk the full length of the path. Sorry, Mister SA state president, there's an increasing taint of racism, not only in our country, but also in your southern African leadership.

For the Western world - Brown and Bush and others like you - your support for an African political party is often an automatic mortal blow for that party or democratic freedom movement. Perhaps the Zimbabwe fiasco will make racism easier to understand.

- Fin24.com