Zimpapers Logo

Isdore Guvamombe Reflections
Back in the village in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve, a man with the most beautiful wife and one who plants a fruit tree by the roadside face the same predicament, every passerby wants to have a feel. To get to the beautiful woman or the roadside fruit tree some use orthodox others unorthodox means; some become so paranoid and obsessed to the point of stealing and raping.

Africa is such a beautiful place and indeed Africa is rich in natural resources to the point where it has attracted many European suitors, some of them genuine, fair and humble; while others are crude rapists, disguised as good suitors.

Africa and its vast untapped mineral resources is under siege from Western Europe which cannot set its hands off this extremely beautiful continent and its rich in natural resources.

One such tool that has been used by Western Europe is the International Court of Justice, a cruel lopsided discredited court so bent on exclusively punishing African leaders identified as a threat to the Western foreign policy of plunder that it should, in fact, be renamed the International Court of Injustice.

When ICC was introduced to Africans, it was presented sugar-coated as a sweet platform to enhance good governance, democracy and accountability but as soon 32 countries in Africa signed for it, the crafters celebrated that they had “yoked the primitive political beasts” that threaten the Western’s access to the much needed natural resources.

Many African leaders then realised that after all, they had become low-hanging fruits on a roadside tree. Damn it!

Unless Europe think we are dimwits, there is no explanation as to why out of the about 900 cases at ICC, less than 10 are from outside Africa. The writing is on the wall. ICC is meant to punish African leaders believed by the West to be a threat to their plunder. Who has killed many people in modern day the world than what the combination of George Bush the son and Tony Blair? But these men – the extreme excess of evil – still brazenly walk tall and even lecture human rights to the world. Fetid!

There is no doubt that for Africa this is the time to withdraw from ICC and form the African Court of Justice. Africa must determine its politics. Africa must define its future. Africa must define its own security. Africa has enough qualified, if not over-qualified judges to handle any case of leadership excess, once the continent establishes its own court.

If Africa liberated itself from colonialism which had become too entrenched it defies logic while Africa cannot just withdraw from ICC. It is stupid at this stage to deny that the ICC has not been fair to Africa. It has neither been fair to progressive thinking Europeans. The ICC has become a shame. It has brought more harm than good to Africa.

One does not need a village soothsayer to be told that the future of Africa is not at ICC but at forming its own African Court of Justice.

African leaders must never claim to understand total independence unless they have the power to determine the future of the continent and the power to point out who has wronged who on African soil and then prescribe punishment.

Back in the village it is only a stupid cow that cherishes the prospects of going to the smartest abattoir. Death is death. There is no smart death. We would rather have our own less flamboyant African Court of Justice than have a flourishing International Court of Justice that is European in misdeeds, smell, aura and thinking. It is very dangerous for any African leader to be taken to the ICC where you know you obviously will be subjected to unfair Eurocentric judgment.

Karitundundu the ageless village autochthon of wisdom and knowledge says a goat should never expect to win a case where a leopard is the judge.

Not even reforming the ICC is enough, Africa must just come up with its own court of justice and deal with its own matters purely from African humanism and hence from an African perspective. Africa is not Europe. Africa will never be Europe. Africa is Africa. We must start to stop seeing justice from the spectacles of Western Europe but from African spectacles. We are a people who came from liberation struggles a few decades ago and we should not forget that the same people we fought, blood and thunder are the same who established ICC. Karitundundu weee!