×
NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

Echoes: The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya is gone for good

Columnists
From the outset, it must be made clear that Libyan ambassador Taher Elmagrahi has been expelled by Zanu PF, not the government as a collective unit. Announcing the expulsion this week, Foreign Affairs minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi said, by virtue of defection: “Specifically, the ambassador has expressed, both in writing and verbally, that he and his […]

From the outset, it must be made clear that Libyan ambassador Taher Elmagrahi has been expelled by Zanu PF, not the government as a collective unit.

Announcing the expulsion this week, Foreign Affairs minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi said, by virtue of defection: “Specifically, the ambassador has expressed, both in writing and verbally, that he and his staff no longer represent the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, but the Transitional National Council (TNC) and hoisted the flag of the TNC. Both these statements and activities are unacceptable to the Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe which has diplomatic relations with the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.”

This approach has made the coalition government dysfunctional as it not been as inclusive as intended after the signing of the Global Political Agreement in September 2008 and its swearing-in in February 2009.

Instead of striving for consensus, the ruling class of the past 31 years imposes its will on the nation. Like the deposed Muammar Gaddafi, they don’t know the language of compromise until they are forced to by dire circumstances.

There has been a tendency to confuse issues as to possibly why the Zanu PF arm of government expelled Elmagrahi and his staff. Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara’s observation this week was that if they had been a constitutional change of government in Libya, it would be have been easy to deal with the matter because “there is continuity and the ambassador will continue to represent the new regime in the country.

The tough one is when there is unconstitutional change of government”.

But it must be pointed out that the so-called Jamahiriya (“state of the masses”) was not built on constitutionalism, so what unconstitutional change is Mutambara talking about? It’s a contradiction in terms.

Mutambara misses the essence of dictatorship altogether; dictatorship by itself is mostly unconstitutional rule and therefore there would be no constitutional or orderly change to talk about as in most cases dictators are eventually or inevitably pushed out forcibly through peaceful but unstoppable mass uprisings or violently overthrown if confrontation escalates.

Maybe this accommodating approach coming from Mutambara can be understood in the context that he has got legitimacy issues of his own, first, having lost in the last parliamentary elections in 2008; and, second, having been thrown out by the party he still purports to lead.

So, in whose interests was this decision made to eject the Libyan ambassador?

For years, the world was subjected to the comic sight of an old man with long permed hair overflowing from his military cap and obviously having applied heavy make-up to mask his ageing features or in Arab robes pitching a tent in the heart of New York, surrounded by female bodyguards — all to melodramatic effect, or tearing up his written speech in the United Nations General Assembly leaving the floor somewhat littered – there was Gaddafi for you.

His rantings on TV after the protests erupted early this year left many shaking their heads, including even those who, like me, didn’t understand a single word of the Arabic language he was uttering. What could have been his state of mind? There was a real caricature of a leader.

But there was a darker side. A distinction must be made that while Gaddafi supported independence struggles in African countries in material and financial ways, he did not extend that generous spirit to his own people back home as he oppressed them for four decades – a contradiction of contradictions.

Gaddafi and those still on his side fail to see this paradox that while he was a hero abroad, he was a villain at home.

Dictators bury their heads in the sand. Being dictators, they never acknowledge the error of their ways.

They often make startling claims of achievement against overwhelming evidence of failure. They will completely deny that there is deep crisis against overwhelming compelling evidence on the ground.

This is seen in Gaddafi’s statements earlier this year, when he seemed secure in power, that “drunks and drug addicts” were behind the mass protests against him before the confrontation escalated into civil war proportions after he unleashed his military might on the largely peaceful demonstrators.

He raised the stakes by doing that and this would end by one side capitulating.

He kept on changing tack, at one time blaming Al-Qaeda for the uprising to exploit the West’s phobia of extremism associated with Islamism while buying time.

As this failed, he declared war on his own people calling them “rats”. So he was not only eccentric as there was a psychotic air around him. Those whom the gods would destroy make mad first.

After that, Libya became a clear case for outside intervention. Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere dealt decisively with the regional bully and butcher Idi Amin driving him out of Uganda in 1979 without waiting for a resolution from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the dithering African Union’s predecessor, which would have been a long time a-coming and highly ineffectual as Amin’s bloody outrages mounted.

This is the same OAU which installed Amin as its chairman at the height of his atrocities against his own people — a celebration of bloodthirstiness, if ever there was.

At the end, Gaddafi behaved as one driven by the spite of a cruel stepmother, vowing to “fight until the end”.

And, as it has turned out, it’s Gaddafi himself who has capitulated. This denial of reality has left Gaddafi on the run with his family divided and scattered.

Dictators don’t have a sense of proportion in their response to situations of crisis.

They worsen their otherwise recoverable position until they are driven out in disgrace into exile, jailed or executed.

As far as dictatorship goes, there is rarely constitutional change of government because they would not be a constitution in the first place or it would have been long suspended.

So the Zanu PF arm of government must stop hiding behind the brittle and shrivelled fig leaf of legality and admit that Zimbabwe’s interests are being sacrificed for an individual who has many African leaders in his pocket.

But what’s done is done. Need the ruling class be reminded that the so-called Jamahiriya (“state of the masses”) is no more with the fall of Gaddafi as Rhodesia disappeared with Ian Smith in 1980?

They had better wake up fast to the fact that the Jamahiriya, like Rhodesia, is gone, and gone for good.

[email protected]