Denying hospitality to the elders was un-African

If there is one thing that is common among Africans, wherever you go and wherever they are, it is their hospitability and welcoming attitude. Even in the most difficult of circumstances, Africans are renowned for opening their arms wide to any visitor even and especially strangers. Many years ago when I was a young man, I remember visiting one of my relatives in a far off place. Somehow the bus I travelled on was delayed and I arrived at my disembarkation point well at night when people had gone to sleep. As I didn’t know where I was going, I knocked at some door in a village which I stumbled upon in the dark night to ask for directions.

The residents of the village woke up to receive me and after I explained where I was going they told me that it was too far and too dangerous for me to travel at night. So they offered me a place to sleep for the night. In the morning, they offered me some breakfast and sent me on my way. I am sure there are many stories like this which testify to the African tradition of hospitality and accommodation. It is therefore most sad, disgraceful and bizarre that the Zimbabwean authorities have barred three eminent personalities from travelling to the country to offer support in addressing the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding in that once beautiful country.

Former US President, Jimmy Carter, who is now a world renowned philanthropist together with Mr Kofi Anan, the former secretary general of the United Nations and Mrs Graca Machel, the wife of Nelson Mandela and herself a leading humanitarian were due to have travelled to Harare, the Zimbabwe capital city, this weekend to confer with government and other stakeholders about the humanitarian situation in the country and the means to ameliorate the suffering. However the Zimbabwean authorities advised that the trio were not welcome and refused to grant them visas to enter the country.

The reasons? The government officials are too busy preparing for the agricultural season and negotiating the government of national unity to meet with these eminent persons. It is very well for government to be busy preparing for the farming season, especially in present dire circumstances of food shortage and it is also important for the authorities to apply themselves to the onerous task of establishing a legitimate government that will resolve the current political impasse. These are tasks that should not be delayed or approached half- heartedly and, therefore, in that respect I fully sympathise with the government on the challenges that it is facing.

But to say that all other matters of government must necessarily be relegated to the sidelines is incredulous, disingenuous and highly irresponsible. You may recall that at the height of the recently concluded election campaign in the US, one of the candidates, Senator John McCain, offered to suspend his campaign in order to deal with the unfolding financial crisis in the country and invited his opponent to do likewise. The opponent, Senator (now president-elect) Barack Obama retorted that a president must be able to deal with more than one crisis at a time. The same should be said of any government worth its salt – it should be able to deal with more than one priority at any given time.

In the case of Zimbabwe, the real priorities are to provide food to the starving population, to provide clean and safe drinking water to urban centres, electricity to power the nation and medicines to treat the spreading cholera epidemic and the runaway HIV/aids pandemic. Other important priorities are to provide people with easy access to their money in banks and resuscitate the comatose education and health sectors, amongst other social and economic sectors. These are the challenges which the trio from the Group of Elders were planning to review and assess and offer their wisdom on an appropriate way forward. Surely the government and people of Zimbabwe should have spread their hands even wider to welcome them.

The three are members of a group of highly influential people – former heads of state and government and chief bureaucrats. Jimmy Carter is a former president of the US, the world’s only superpower, Kofi Anan served as the secretary general of the UN, the world’s most foremost bureaucrat, while Machel is the widow of the late president of Mozambique, Samora Machel, who was a gracious host to Zimbabweans during their war of independence. She is now the wife of the world’s top political icon, Mandela. If anyone has an interest in helping the suffering people of Zimbabwe and if anyone has the means to do so, then this Group of Elders is it.

These are the people with the power and influence to click their fingers and unlock desperately needed aid to relieve the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe. So why have they been denied the opportunity to lend their hand? The answer is very simple indeed. It is that there is no longer any government in Zimbabwe, never mind the legitimacy or otherwise of such a government. Indeed, there are people who claim that they are still ruling the country but these are the very people who were rejected by the electorate in the March 29 elections and have been trying their hardest to circumvent that humiliating loss of power. They have raped, tortured and murdered in an attempt to regain their losses but all to no avail. They cannot function as a government because they have lost their authority to govern. The only tools left in their power arsenal are denial, posturing and dreams of the past.

The collapse of just about every social, economic and political system and institution in the country is bare testimony that there is no longer any government in place. If indeed there was a government, would schools and hospitals be closing at such an alarming and accelerated rate? Would people be starving because there is no more food in the country and, the little that is still available, is well beyond the means of many citizens? Would any government which is democratically elected (or pretends to be so) allow unemployment levels of over 90% and inflation measured in billions percent? Would it allow its national currency to become worthless?

The answer to all the questions is a resounding no. Yet we have a group of people who have presided over such an unimaginable debacle but yet believe that they remain popular and are entitled to rule ad infinitum. No sir, this is no government at all! It is not even a dictatorship because sometimes even dictatorships have a heart and know when to hold back and to empathise with their suffering subjects. After the March elections, during the long hiatus of waiting for the election results, I recall one analyst who explained to a cable network reporter that the ruling cabal in Harare was no longer a political party in the true sense of the term.

He stated that these people were criminals who had been involved in such heinous and hideous crimes that they realised that they would be arrested immediately they lose power. He explained that it was for this reason that they were unlikely to leave power voluntarily. I think this is the most plausible explanation which I have heard yet about the real cause of the political deadlock in Zimbabwe. Which begs the question, why should anyone want to form a unity government with such devious miscreants? That is an issue for another debate.

What is blindingly obvious at this stage is that the actions of the authorities in Harare of denying Mrs Machel and Messrs Anan and Carter entry into Zimbabwe breaks the well known African tradition of warm welcome and hospitality. It is very un-African and unbecoming of anyone who purports to be an African. But I doubt very much that the authorities in Harare care anymore. They are cornered and plain dangerous. In that respect, it is probably wise to stay as far away from them as possible. More than three million of their own citizens have already done that.