Zimbabwe

Allow me to congratulate Mr. Kerim on his election to preside over this Assembly. We are confident that through his stewardship, issues on the agenda of the sixty-second session will be dealt with in a balanced manner and to the satisfaction of all. Allow me also to pay tribute to his predecessor, Ms. Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa, who steered the work of the sixty-first session in a very competent and impartial manner. Her ability to identify the crucial issues facing the world today will be remembered as the hallmark of her presidency. We extend our hearty welcome to the new Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, who has taken up this challenging job requiring dynamism in confronting the global challenges of the twenty-first century. Balancing global interests and steering the United Nations in a direction that gives hope to the multitudes of the poor, the sick, the hungry and the marginalized is indeed a mammoth task. We would like to assure him that Zimbabwe will continue to support an open, transparent and all-inclusive multilateral approach in dealing with those global challenges. Climate change is one of the most pressing global issues of our time. Its negative impact is greatest in developing countries, particularly those on the African continent. We believe that, if the international community is going to seriously address the challenges of climate change, then we need to get our priorities right. In Zimbabwe, the effects of climate change have become more evident in the past decade as we have witnessed, alongside our neighbours, increased and recurrent droughts, as well as occasional floods, leading to enormous humanitarian challenges. We are for a United Nations that recognizes the equality of sovereign nations and peoples, whether big or small. We are averse to a body in which the economically and militarily powerful behave like bullies, trampling on the rights of weak and smaller States, as sadly happened in Iraq. In the light of those inauspicious developments, this Organization must surely examine the essence of its authority and the extent of its power when challenged in this manner. Such challenges to the authority of the United Nations and its Charter underpin our repeated call for the revitalization of the General Assembly, itself the most representative organ of the United Nations. The General Assembly should be more active in all areas, including those of peace and security. The encroachment of some United Nations organs upon the work of the General Assembly is of great concern to us. Thus, any process of revitalizing or strengthening the General Assembly should necessarily avoid eroding the principle of the accountability of all principal and subsidiary organs to the General Assembly. Once again, we reiterate our position that the Security Council as presently constituted is not democratic. In its present configuration, the Council has shown that it is not in a position to protect the weaker States, who find themselves at loggerheads with a marauding super-Power. Most importantly, justice demands that any Security Council reform should redress the fact that Africa is the only continent without a permanent seat and veto power in the Security Council. Africa's demands are known and enunciated in the Ezulwini Consensus. We further call for the United Nations system to refrain from interfering in matters that are clearly the domain of Member States and are not a threat to international peace and security. Development at country level should continue to be country-led and not be subject to the whims and caprices of powerful donor States. Zimbabwe won its independence on 18 April 1980 after a protracted war against British colonial imperialism that denied its people human rights and democracy. That colonial system which suppressed and oppressed us enjoyed the support of many countries of the West who were signatories to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Even after 1945, it would appear that the Berlin Conference of 1884, through which Africa was parcelled out to colonial European powers, has remained stronger than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is, therefore, clear that for the West, vested economic interests and racial and ethnocentric considerations have proved stronger than Western adherence to principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The West still negates our sovereignties by controlling our resources, in the process making us mere chattels in our own lands, mere minders of the West’s transnational interests. In my own country and other sister States in southern Africa, the most visible form of this colonial control has been control over land despoiled from us at the onset of British colonialism. That control largely persists, although it stands firmly challenged in Zimbabwe, thereby triggering the current stand-off between us and Britain, which is supported by her cousin States, most notably the United States and Australia. Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and now Mr. Brown's sense of human rights precludes our people's right to their God-given resources, which must, in our view, be controlled by our people. I am termed dictator - and yesterday the General Assembly heard Mr. Bush in this Hall calling my Government a demagogic regime — because I have rejected this supremacist view and frustrated the neo-colonialists in their endeavours to keep us as slaves in our own country. Clearly, the history of the struggle for our own national and people's rights is unknown to the President of the United States of America. He thinks the Declaration of Human Rights started with his terms in office. He thinks he can introduce to us, who bore the brunt of the struggle for the freedoms of our peoples, the virtues of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What rank hypocrisy! I spent 11 precious years of my life in the jail of a white Englishman whose freedom and well being I assured and protected from the first day of Zimbabwe's independence, and that was Ian Smith. I lost a further 15 years fighting white injustice in my country. Ian Smith was responsible for the deaths of well over 50,000 of my people. I bear scars of his tyranny, which Britain and America condoned. I meet his victims every day. Yet, he walks freely today. He farms freely; he has a farm of over 500 hectares. He talks freely, associates freely under our black Government. We taught him democracy. We gave him back his humanity. He would have faced a different fate here and in Europe, if the 50,000 he killed had been Europeans. Africa has not called for a Nuremberg trial against the white world, which committed heinous crimes against humanity. It has not hunted perpetrators of this genocide, many of whom live to this day; nor has it received reparations from those who have offended against it. Instead, it is Africa that is in the dock. It is Mugabe, and not the British Prime Minister, who is in the dock, facing trial from the same world that persecuted us for centuries. Let Mr. Bush read history correctly. Let him realize that, both personally and in his representative capacity as the current President of the United States, he stands for this "civilization" that occupied, colonized, incarcerated and killed. He has much to atone for and very little to lecture us about on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His hands drip with the innocent blood of many nationalities, and, today, with the blood of the Iraqis. But he still kills. He kills in Iraq. He kills in Afghanistan. And he is supposed to be our teacher in human rights? He imprisons. He imprisons and tortures at Guantanamo. He imprisoned and tortured at Abu Ghraib. He has secret torture chambers in Europe. Yes, he imprisons even here in the United States, with his jails today carrying more blacks than his universities can ever enrol. He even suspends the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Take Guántanamo for example. At that concentration camp, international law does not apply. The national laws of the people there do not apply. Laws of the United States of America do not apply. Only Bush's law applies. Can the international community accept being lectured by this man on the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Definitely not. The President returned to the Chair. We are alarmed that under his leadership basic rights of his own people and those of the rest of the world have summarily been rolled back. America is primarily responsible for rewriting core tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We all seem guilty for 9/11. Mr. Bush thinks he stands above all structures of governance, whether national or international. At home, he apparently does not need the Congress. He defies it. Abroad, he does not need the United Nations; he does not need international law and opinion. “I will go to Iraq,” he said, “with or without the United Nations” — that is, with or without international law, in defiance of it. This forum did not sanction Blair’s and Bush’s misadventures in Iraq. Did we say yes to it? Did we say yes to the attack on Iraq? The two rode roughshod over the United Nations and international opinion. Almighty Bush: perhaps some might regard him as their god. No, he is not my god. I have but one God. He is in heaven — pater noster, qui es in caelis. Indeed, he wants us to pray to him. We say no to him and encourage him to get out of Iraq. Indeed, he should mend his ways before he clambers up the pulpit to deliver pieties of democracy. Is he qualified to speak of democracy? Is he qualified to speak of human rights when he is shedding blood every day? The British and the Americans have gone on a relentless campaign of destabilizing and vilifying my country. They have sponsored surrogate forces to challenge lawful authority in my country. They seek regime change. It is they who seek regime change, not my people. But they think they are entitled to change governments, placing themselves in the role of the Zimbabwean people in whose collective will democracy places the right to define and change regimes. And they want to talk of democracy when they are behaving that way. Let those sinister Governments be told here and now that Zimbabwe will not allow a regime change authored by outsiders. We do not interfere with their systems in America and Britain, where they steal elections, as he did during his first election. We do not interfere. Mr. Bush and Mr. Brown have no role to play in our national affairs. They are outsiders - and mischievous outsiders - and should therefore keep out. The colonial sun set a long time ago in Africa - in 1980 in the case of Zimbabwe. And hence, Zimbabwe will never be a colony again - never, ever. We do not deserve sanctions. We are Zimbabweans and we know how to deal with our own problems. We have done so in the past, well before Bush and Brown were known politically. We have our own regional and continental organizations and communities. In that vein, I wish to express my country’s gratitude to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa who, on behalf of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), successfully facilitated the dialogue between my ruling party and the opposition parties, which yielded the agreement that has now resulted in the constitutional provisions being finally adopted the amendments to the constitution, which both parties agreed to and which paved the way to the elections for which various parties are now campaigning. Consequently, we will be holding multiple democratic elections in March 2008. Indeed, we have always had timeous general and presidential elections since our independence. We want to be left alone. We will interact with those in our region and those in organizations to which we belong. In conclusion, let me stress once more that the strength of the United Nations lies in its universality and its impartiality as it implements its mandate to promote peace and security, economic and social development, human rights and international law, as outlined in the Charter. Zimbabwe stands ready to play its part in all efforts and programmes aimed at achieving those noble goals. The Charter of the United Nations is our Charter also in Africa and we uphold it. Wrath unto him who defies the Charter.