ROBERT Mugabe has made a career out of calling the bluff of Africa’s leaders. Today he is likely to do it again.
Mugabe has said he will turn up at the annual summit of the African Union in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Freshly “re-elected”, and probably by then hastily sworn in for another five-year term, he will challenge the 53-member body to prevent him from taking his rightful place.
Several leaders have broken their silence and attacked him for his brutal assault on democracy in Zimbabwe.
South Africa’s African National Congress denounced at the weekend what it called “outright terror” in the country. Even President Thabo Mbeki is said to have had enough after receiving “compelling evidence” of intimidation.
“With such statements it is difficult to see how the AU can officially recognise the result,” said a Zambian political analyst, Buchizya Mseteka.
But the AU has a big problem: few of its members can claim the moral high ground.
The elections in Nigeria in April last year were farcical, with widespread vote-rigging. In Kenya, dozens were killed when violence followed the dubious re-election of the ruling party. And Britain was forced to suspend aid to Ethiopia when paramilitary police shot dead students protesting against the result of the 2005 poll.
Sudan is condemned as one of the worst abusers of human rights. Once-enlightened Eritrea has descended into a nasty dictatorship, with hundreds of critics held without trial.
North Africa is in bad shape, including Egypt, the host of the AU summit. Tunisia and Algeria are constantly cited for human rights violations.
Mugabe knows Africa is hardly in a position to preach to him. He told a rally in Zimbabwe last week: “I am going to go to that AU summit … I want to see whose finger there is clean.”
