Robert Mugabe
Speech At The Non- Alignment Movement
Gil Noble Interviews Robert Mugabe The Tsvangirai Conspiracy
Zimbabwe Election Results Non-Alignment Speech 2003
Date:25 February 2003
Greetings....
...In the same spirit may I also pay tribute to our outgoing chairman,
President Thabo Mbeki, for so ably steering our organisation for the
past
four 'years, which period was quite eventful as President Mbeki rose
to the
challenges of world affairs thereby giving the Non Aligned Movement
(NAM) a
special place in the search for solutions towards a just international order.
Zimbabwe joins others in welcoming Timor Leste and St. Vincent and the
Grenadines as new members of the Non-Aligned Movement. As we grow in numbers
so should we grow in our strength.
The Non Aligned Movement came into being as an instinctual and pragmatic
response to an era of dangerous rivalry in global affairs. The United States
and the Soviet Union were locked in a deadly race in which the safety of our
world from nuclear holocaust was said to be guaranteed by the deterrent
value of Mutually Assured Destruction, known more aptly as MAD. The
overarching doctrine was that those who were not superpowers or associates of
the superpowers were not entitled to real choices. The bipolarity yielded the
impulsion that you had to belong either to the United States or to the Soviet
Union camp. Our Founding Fathers however resisted that impulsion and refused
to join either of the camps opting for neutrality as they established the Non
Aligned Movement which they based on the sound permanent values and moral
norms that should govern international relations.
Today, however, we find ourselves in a new era of unipolarity
constituting
a portentous juncture in the history of our Movement characterised
by
unilateralism -cum-hegemonism, supported by an interventionist military
doctrine that bids the more powerful to impose their will on those who, like
many of us, are weak. Colonialism now assumes a varied form, and seeks to
garner all of us of the Third World as we get globally villagised under false
economic pretences. We are cheated to believe that we shall all be equals
in
that village, but are denied to assume military strength of the same
magnitude as that of the western and more highly developed States. We dare
not develop nuclear arms for this is a prerogative of only the big ones.
Trade between rich and poor must be free and uninhibited, and no
preferences
or derogations will be tolerated in this global village governed by WTO
norms. Politically our sovereignty will not have the same weight as that of
big brother, and big brother has the right to determine the justice
of our
systems and not we his. As he likes, he can blatantly use his prejudice to
determine and upset the validity of any of our elections and declare a
validly elected President of a country illegitimate.
But we must remain silent about the Presidential election fiasco of the
United
States whose votes failed to produce a winner until the USA Supreme Court,
dominated by Republican judges, imposed Mr George Bush (Jr) as winner. And
is it not ironical that Mr. Bush who was not elected should deny my
legitimacy established by many observer groups from Africa and the
Third
World? Who should the world impose sanctions on, Robert Mugabe or
George
Bush? The fact of power has also become, to those who hold it the
determinant of justice, morality
and even legality. In other words the governing norms of our World have
been
greatly eroded.
The United States awakened to the implications of being the sole
Superpower, joined by Britain, as a born again Colonialist, and other
Western countries have turned themselves into ferocious hunting bull
dogs
raring to go, as they sniff for more blood, Third World blood. We, their
hunted game, are for slaughter. The Charter of the United Nations and its
sacrosanct tenets of international peace, the sovereignty of nations and
non
interference in domestic affairs of States,are being desecrated by the day.
Listen to the Voice of America, I mean the voice of President as captured by
television media, and you will no doubt conclude that he is no longer willing
to subject the actions of his Administration to international law,
rationality or the force of morality.Iraq might have developed or desired to
develop arms of mass destruction. But the United States has massive
arms of
that magnitude. Why can't the United
States demonstrate what Iraq should by destroying their own massive heaps
first?
They should surely teach by example, and yet they have refused even to sign
the treaty on nuclear disarmament. To support the U.S. Administration's
zest
for aggression on Iraq is to support a proposed inhuman campaign
which is
sure to
see many many lives lost.
Bush and Blair have, apparently developed similar warlike dispositions
deriving from similar ideologies of new imperialism. Opinion makers
like
former Security Advisor to President Carter, Mr Brzezinski have spoken and
written freely about a new imperial power. I quote Brzezinski directly to
bring out the point:
"Unlike earlier empires, this vast complex global system is not a
hierarchical pyramid rather America stands at the center of an interlocking
universe, one in which power is exercised through continuous bargaining,
dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus, even though that power
originates from a single source, namely, Washington, D.C. and that is where
the power game has to be played, and played according to America's domestic
rules."
Brzezinski states further:
"In addition, one must consider as part of the American system the
global
web of
specialized organisations, especially the "international"
financial
institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank can be
said to represent "global" interests, and their constituency may be
construed as the world. In reality, however, they are heavily American
dominated and their origins are traceable to American initiative..."
When we think about it, the philosophy that Brzezinski elaborates in his
book titled The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic
Imperatives, should not unduly surprise us. Now Brzezinski also
talks
openly about American domination in the military, economic, technological and
cultural spheres, and exposes a strategy that has been pursued methodically
and relentlessly for
some time now.
Emboldened by the conviction that the North Atlantic Grouping gained a
geopolitical advantage at the end of the Cold War, Blair's close policy
adviser, Mr. Robert Cooper, argues for what he terms a "New liberal
imperialism" which asserts that,
"The most logical way to deal with chaos, and the most often
employed in
the past, is colonization. But colonization is unacceptable to post modern
states (and, as it happens, to some modern states too). It is precisely
because
of the death of imperialism that we are seeing the emergence of the
pre-modern
world."
Robert Cooper goes on:
"What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to
a
world of
human Rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its outline:
an
imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order and
organisation."
Again he continues,
"The challenge of postmodern world is to get used to the idea of
double
standards. Among ourselves (i.e. the West) we operate on the basis of
laws
and often cooperative security. But when dealing with more old fashioned
kinds
of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to
the rougher methods of an earlier era, force, preemptive attack, deception,
whatever is necessary..."
Who after reading this Blair philosophy would be surprised by his
irrational actions on Zimbabwe? He desires and is determined to undermine the
sovereignty of my country and introduce neo colonialist rule. That we shall
never allow him to achieve, and I want to take this opportunity to thank you
for your consistent support and solidarity with Zimbabwe.
But against these enormous challenges, which confront us we should not
hesitate to take bold and far reaching measures, which seek to
revitalise
our movement, tinkering on the margin will just not do. We need a
permanent
secretariat for institutional memory, implementation of our
decisions and
for constant and timeous articulation between Summits. If we are serious
about our movement and if we want also to be taken seriously, we cannot
continue to manage our affairs on an ad hoc or part time basis. It is time we
put our money where our mouth is.
I thank you.
