Comfort Ero and Piers Pigou
29 June 2009
guest column
Just ahead of this week’s African Union summit in Libya, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma has advocated an old and discredited approach for dealing with African heads of state facing international justice, write Comfort Ero and Piers Pigou.
When a leader of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress speaks on such critical issues as impunity for the perpetrators of human rights violations, the rest of Africa listens. We listen because we recall with passion how apartheid was dismantled, ushering in a new era of democracy for South Africa.
So it comes as a shock that President Jacob Zuma used the recent meeting of the World Economic Forum for Africa to call for a continental policy favouring impunity. Sharing a roundtable conversation with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Zuma proclaimed that the “world has changed” and that we must “do things differently and … not emphasise punishment” in dealing with leading perpetrators of serious crimes.
His statement is embarrassing and retrogressive, especially because the world has indeed changed – but not in the ways Zuma assumed.
What has changed is that over the last two decades a global consensus has grown that amnesty for violent crimes is morally and legally unacceptable. Africa led this change in many respects, and the newly-democratised South Africa enthusiastically supported the creation of the International Criminal Court in 2002.
What Zuma now proposes is not a “new” approach but an old and discredited one that would reinforce outdated visions of an Africa which resists human rights and is willing to tolerate the worst forms of brutality.
At a time when Radovan Karadzic is being brought before the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, Charles Taylor faces justice before the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and Peru has tried and convicted Alberto Fujimori, Zuma has chosen to make the worst kind of rationalization for African exceptionalism.
Even worse, Zuma’s statement was made just ahead of this week’s African Union summit in Libya, which has on its draft agenda at least two reports dealing with attempts to bring to trial African heads of state. Zuma’s “new” approach, coming just as the continent faces pressures from some of its leaders to thwart justice, threatens to undermine the legitimacy of international humanitarian law.
Zuma’s approach would protect the perpetrators and architects of violence at the expense of redress for their victims. Not only is no thought given to providing reparation to victims of such violence, but their right to see justice done would be extinguished. When societies fail to make victims’ needs a priority, those societies risk new cycles of violence.
President Zuma did not distinguish between short-term peace processes and durable peacebuilding. His “bold approach” would do more to promote political violence as a means of gaining power than promote peace. He would invite leaders of political violence to look forward to impunity and a mansion in a neighbouring state.
Zuma presents this position – a safe retirement home for African despots – as being “for the sake of our people,” when clearly this protection is antithetical to the public interest. His position suggests that domestic, regional and international legal commitments can be airbrushed away, cloaked under the rubric of the pragmatic notions of what best serves Africa.
Many commentators assume Zuma’s remarks refer mainly to President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Zuma is indeed faced with a serious problem in Zimbabwe that is likely to be resolved only when Mugabe is persuaded to step aside.
Mugabe’s decision to leave the scene will likely depend on guarantees of impunity being extended to members of his inner circle. That is all the more reason that accountability should not be bargained away. Prospects for sustainable transformation in Zimbabwe require more, not less accountability, extending to economic crimes and corruption.
Perhaps Zuma’s public remarks are a tactical gamble, presenting himself as “on side” with the recalcitrant leaders while knowing full well that Africa’s political leadership can provide no meaningful guarantees of impunity. If this benign interpretation is true, is it worth the egg that has landed on his face as a result of appearing an apologist for the continent’s perpetrators?
Comfort Ero is deputy director of the Africa Program of the International Center for Transitional Justice. Piers Pigou is a senior associate at the ICTJ.
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President Zuma has allied himself with Mugabe before. Mugabe was behind the what is known as the “silent genocide” He actively removed white productive farmers, most of whom disappeared without a trace. This subsequently caused food shortages across the country causing even more citizens of Zimbabwe to disappear. While this was happening South Africa provided Zimbabwe with financial and political support. I can only muse as to President Zuma’s need for impunity. Is it perhaps because he or some of his fellow politicians require impunity themselves? Or could it be because it would free them to commit crimes against humanity in order to better their status. As my fellow South Africans still seem to have a hard time reconciling the past, I can only predict heinous crimes being committed against target groups, especially minority groups including the white population of the country.
It is unfortunate that the political leadership of South Africa have shown no growth with regards to human rights or ethics. As a native South African I have experienced apartheid and persecution based on skin colour and I would have hoped that those who are educated and in charge of our people, would stop these banalities against humanity and follow the example of countries such as Canada and France. Legal action should be taken against criminal action which includes those leading to the senseless deaths of innocent people. If President Mugabe is to receive impunity for the crimes he has committed in life, then all the murderers and thieves in South African jails should be set free. Is president Zuma prepared to deal with those levels of violence that would result from such a release?
My only hope is that innocent South Africans will be at the ready to defend themselves.
But you should know that Zuma is walking along the same old road that our beloved Mandela and the confused church man Tutu both walked happily, receiving great uluration and approval from the west. THis road is the one route where the oppressed and abused are brought together with their oppressors and abusers ... namely, Mandela and Apartheid murderers and members of Apartheid secret police. Remember Soweto slaughters, Sharpville killings, Steve Biko. Tutu decided it was best to forgive and forget and move forward. Apparently I agreed with Tutu. Mugabe had earlier set an example with the Rhodesian farmers and mercernaries. And yet now every one of you do not want Tsvangirai to do likewise. Why not? Of course its all about land ... mind you the rhodesians ran a racist country and they got the farms from people who did not own the land in the first place. Stolen property is stolen property. Remember the land apportionment Act.
"Crimes against humanity" is a fiction of the legal mind, which is epistemologically virgin, but practically potent.
The concept of 'humanity' is a robustly contested; hence, hanging a law on it is an act of political prejudice, not an objectively grounded act.
How many Europeans living in what some call the "West" have lately been charged with this political prejudice, dressed in the alleged majesty of the law?
It is interesting to note that the world suddenly wakes up to the ills of human rights and democracy now. It is like these concepts never existed before. The West took a blind eye ever since 'civilisation' came to Africa.
Listen, our own black people disappeared during apartheid, some were confined to tanks of sulphuric acid. The secret police, BOSS etc have committed heinous crimes, Thabo Mbeki's sibling just disappeared for good, school children massacred Steve Biko , Sharperville archtects, killers of all sort, have been let scot free. How do you define human rights? None of these people have been brought before a tribunal. When does this concept really start?
Thousand were massacred in Nyadzonia in Mozambique, Chimoio, Zambia, innocent refugees women and children, escaping Rhodesians and Smith. When this genocide took place then Human rights never existed. So it is now we speak of bringing Africans to the ICC? So the world started to wake up to human rights. We only descover democracy when the blacks are attaining self determination and are being watched every step along the way.
We do not condone what African leaders have done and sure they should be hauled before the ICC or whatever but what happens or happened to killers who have exterminated the black population in southern Africa. Do not get Zuma out of context. Justice has never been carried when it came to apartheid period. Zuma is right. Certain things need to be put right before we proceed. You see, if you want to be called an icon, forget the past and preach the continued dominance of one race by the other. Bring the other Africans to condemnation, have them hanged, and let the killers of Africans run free. Zuma is right.
The crucial and crushing fact is that European driven capitalism values African lives at perhaps a buck a life. Perhaps there are traditions in INVADERLANDS that differ, but they are on the fringes of socio-political power.
Of course, there is nothing new here: the fact reported in the above paragraph is well attested in the history of human cruelty and barbarity.
New, however, is this fact: the plethora of vultures hovering the African horizon looking for "human rights violations," rights rooted in the traditions of Europe, rights that took a hike during what Karl Marx called "primitive accumulation" or, in my diction, INVADER THEFT of life and treasure.
One conclusion is obvious: European conceptual xenophobia is the one-sided foundation of the chatter of "human" rights. The so-called human rights groups, "liberals," according to the political lexicography of INVADERLANDS, dare not raise their hue and cry in the mentioned lands, for they will be met by robust criticism by "conservatives" who, to their shame, must claim the predominantly negative and heritage of INVADERS in Africa.
Obviously, the problem is that there are no African seeded structures to counter the chatter, the chatter of NGOs really---political and historical ignoramuses, really, shock troops of the European xenophobic conceptualization of the world, really.
Meanwhile, the "scholars" of Africa (scholars are meant to conserve a culture's literary tradition) prefer life in INVADERLANDS, where their contributions strengthen Europe and simultaneously weaken Africa.
Sad, indeed!
And this comes from the idiot who says hitler was nice to some jews. DickinCat you should be tried in the same court because you are a crime against the human race espescially everytime you right on the forum.
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