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• West in bid to scuttle ascension

•  . . . issues veiled threats

Sadc chairman President Mugabe flanked by executive secretary Stergomena Lawrence Tax and Organ Troika chairperson Jacob Zuma during the double Troika Summit on the Peace and Security situation in the region which was convened at the African Union Headquarters Old Plenary Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, yesterday. — (Picture by Presidential Photographer Joseph Nyadzayo)

From Caesar Zvayi in ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
ZIMBABWE is cautiously confident of landing the African Union chairmanship when the 24th Ordinary Session of the General Assembly opens here today, despite spirited attempts by the Anglo-Saxon alliance to scupper President Mugabe’s ascension.

President Mugabe is the incumbent first vice chairman of the continental body and is in line to take over the rotational chairmanship which is now the turn of the Sadc bloc, which he chairs.

Sadc leaders have since endorsed Zimbabwe’s candidature, but the country’s traditional detractors who have a hold on donors who sponsor 60 percent of the AU budget, have been issuing veiled threats that the AU should not countenance being chaired by a man and country under sanctions.

This is despite the fact that the AU has long condemned the illegal Western sanctions which are estimated to have cost Zimbabwe over $42billion in lost revenue in addition to contracting the economy by a factor of over 40 percent since the turn of the millennium.

Presidential spokesman Mr George Charamba yesterday slammed the West for trying to make sanctions an issue for the electability of Zimbabwe saying the sanctions are illegitimate and illegal.

‘’They (the West) don’t interrogate the sense behind the sanctions. They move instead from unilateral sanctions as a fact to trying to make it a precondition for election and I think Africa is understanding enough to know that you can’t start from the premise of an illegality, which is what the sanctions are.

‘’We will start from the premise of the leadership that Africa requires to tackle those problems including the sanctions on Zimbabwe. These are not UN sanctions, so no one in the west can have the moral status of starting an argument on sanctions as if the sanctions are legitimate in the first place. But you and me must know that we must always budget for that opposition from the West,’’ he said.

The US, which is believed to be leading the lobby, has long dubbed Zimbabwe ‘’an unusual and extra-ordinary threat’’ to its foreign policy, a foreign policy of war-mongering, plunder and domination of smaller and weaker nations.

Despite the western machinations, Mr Charamba said, Zimbabwe remained cautiously optimistic of landing the chairmanship.

‘’ I think there is that general appreciation that the President remains not just a senior statesman but also the link between politics of liberation and post-colonial politics,’’ he said.

Turning to President Mugabe’s vision for the continent, Mr Charamba said, the President has long envisioned an Africa that recognizes its inherent advantages and which harnesses them as leverage in its interactions with the West on the global stage.

‘’You want to bear in mind that the President has for a long time been complaining about the trajectory of the AU. He thinks that for a long time we have been kowtowing to western interests, he thinks we have been trying as it were bending our policies so as to win the goodwill of the West.

‘’He thinks we have not been recognising that by virtue of commanding, maybe three-quarters of the world resources that is clout enough, that gives us tremendous leverage in our interaction with the West.

‘’What the President visualises is a leadership that recognises the strategic advantage of Africa and then translates that strategic advantage into a leadership bid on the global stage. So that is basically the change that you will see when the President takes over or if the President takes over, which we hope he will.’’

Some sections of the Zimbabwean opposition, South African and western media have been leading a spirited campaign to tarnish the President ahead of the Summit with anti-Mugabe chants by disgruntled United Party for National Development supporters in Zambia being made a headline items that were cast in geo-political terms.

“It is not a secret that some people who demonstrated against President Mugabe in Zambia recently were a campaign gimmick to discredit Zimbabwe from taking the post.

“Why is it that the demonstrations were mainly publicised in South African and Western media and not in Zambia? It was organised to discredit President Mugabe saying he is not the right candidate for the post. We won’t be moved by such western machinations,” he said.

Western news agencies yesterday carried stories that tried to cast President Mugabe’s potential chairmanship as ‘’unfortunate’’.