It's almost that time again when the lovely port town of Dún Laoghaire welcomes the world to party by the seaside and I can't wait.
From 22-24 August 2008, Dún Laoghaire hosts its highly anticipated and spectacular global carnival weekend, which will see 800 musicians and artists, plus another 1,000 participants and volunteers descend on the seaside town to take part in 150 live gigs, performances and events throughout the town.
Over 200,000 people attended the festival last year and it is anticipated that many more will do so this year.
This is one of the several reasons why Veli and I, love living in this idyllic and picturesque seaside town.
Itayi Viriri, Zimbabwean-born Irish journalist, & Dr Aki Stavrou, international politics analyst, consider the possible outcomes after the 'run-off' election in Zimbabwe on RTE's Prime Time news and current affairs programme.
Back in May 2002, when I arrived in Limerick as an exiled journalist, I wondered with much trepidation and uncertainty what the future had in store for me. After all, here I was in a foreign country, going through a status determination process that only a less than month ago, I knew nothing about and most certainly had not expected to endure. I did not want to be in Ireland.
However, when exactly a year later, I left Limerick for Dublin to take up an exciting job offer, it was in a very poignant mood that I did. In the 12 months or so that I spent in the city I had met some great company and made good friends and my horizons were sufficiently expanded thus enabling me to move on.
During those early days, I was not permitted by law to take up paid employment, but since I could not handle ‘sitting on my hands’ and doing nothing, I set out into Limerick daily, looking for volunteering opportunities.
The wonderful folks at Doras Luimni were such a great help and were able to point me towards a few agencies that could be interested in volunteers. I ended up helping out at the Barnados shop, sorting out second hand clothes for resale. It was however, at two other organisations that I spent some of my happier moments in Limerick.
After moving on from Barnados, I went to the Red Ribbon Project (RRP), where I met the manager, Ann and the rest of the team and from day one felt I had met my kindred souls. Coming from a country (Zimbabwe) and region (Southern Africa) plagued by the Aids pandemic, I figured it would be a worthwhile thing to work with a dedicated group of people who were doing a very commendable job providing prevention, care and support services relating to HIV/AIDS and sexual health in the mid-west of Ireland. As a journalist, who once penned a series features on the AIDS pandemic in Zimbabwe, I was acutely aware how vital the work of organisations likes the RRP was and therefore I was glad to be of service.
As a journalist, I volunteered my writing skills, drafting media articles and preparing information leaflets. I also participated in some of the exciting events held by the RRP to commemorate important days like the World Aids Day and Irish Aids Day, with music concerts and the ‘Great Red Ribbon Project Ride Out’. I am grateful for the good times I spent with the RRP team as it enabled me to gather my wits and set me on the path to integrate well into local society.
Perhaps having noticed that I was chomping at the bits to get back to practising as a journalist Ann suggested that I approach the local papers and offer to write articles for them. So I did the rounds, going to the Limerick Leader, Limerick Post and the Echo several times, but was unable to literary get a toe through the door.
After dogged persistence, I finally got an audience with the editor of the Limerick Leader, Brendan Halligan, a fine gentleman, if ever there was one. After the meeting during which I brandished my by now well-worn portfolio containing select columns, feature and news articles that I had written in almost 6 years as a journalist in Zimbabwe, I was given an opportunity to prove myself as a journalist. I initially worked from home, writing features on the ethnic minority community and the new-found cultural diversity in Limerick. Soon I was allocated a computer in the newsroom and before I knew it I had been at the Leader for a year. Having come from a very restrictive regime where freedom of press was highly negotiable and routinely disregarded, it was a significantly pleasant experience to be writing about anything even remotely political and not expect the anti-riot section of the local constabulary to come crashing into the newsroom expertly swinging their truncheons and chucking teargas canisters willy-nilly.
I enjoyed my time at the Leader and I must say this was in great part thanks to the editor and the rest of the team, in particular the news editor, Eugene Phelan’s patience and kindness in guiding me through during my first days and Martin Byrnes, with whom I would sometimes spend Friday afternoons discussing a whole range of topical issues including the situation in Zimbabwe as we posted the online edition of the paper. My time at the Leader opened my eyes to the Irish working environment and I am certain that this helped immensely in preparing me for the subsequent career path in the NGO and state sector.
I have to say though that despite my positive experiences in Limerick and later on in Dublin, I have come to realise in many instances the much held notion that integration is supposed to be a two way process is really not what it is cut out to be. In reality, it has been my experience that it is the immigrant that in most cases has to take the initiative and foist themselves on society. You could say it’s a matter of ‘you came to us and so prove yourself first and then we maybe, just maybe we may want to know you and perhaps even welcome you into our circle’. Which is a pity because so many immigrants are eager to know their Irish neighbours, colleagues and not merely looking for the cursory hello, but for friendship based on mutual respect and trust.
No-one should really be surprised when 20 years from now, we have first and second generation citizens from immigrant stock in Ireland stuck in ghettos, who have no affinity all to the country they call home and do not identify with the country.Events in the UK and in Paris, in recent years, show us that such a situation could have tragic consequences.
I never thought this day would come. Me? Gladly embracing what is perceived by the far right and racist buffoons to be 'clever' terms of abuse and insult? No way! It has taken a few years as a naturalised ethnic minority working in the media and human rights sector in a foreign land to get to this point. The ongoing furore over a column in a national newspaper whose heading read 'Africa has given the world nothing but Aids' has unleashed a storm of recrimininations on either side of the political, moral, ethical and social divide. The result is that those on of us on the 'left' have been called lefty liberal lovemongering do gooders? You can call me that anytime!
Much of how Zimbabwe degenerated from being widely regarded as one of Africa’s prosperous nations and regional bread basket to total basket case has been widely covered in the world’s media, though the genesis of this decline has simplistically put down to Mugabe’s seizure of commercial farmers. The MDC’s journey to this stunning result has been a long, arduous and at times deadly journey. Some, with a large dose of hyperbole, would even go as far as likening Tsvangirai’s journey to that of Odysseus’ voyage from Troy.
So how did Zimbabwe end up in such a sorry state? Well, up until 1999, there had been no viable parliamentary opposition to Mugabe and his Zanu PF party such that Zimbabwe was one of those curious countries where supposedly democratic elections were held timeously, but were always foregone conclusions with Mugabe always achieving Saddam-esque electoral returns.
This complete lack of opposition came about when Zanu PF literally swallowed up the late Joshua Nkomo’s PF ZAPU party in a dubious 1987 unity accord which officially ended the Gukurahundi atrocities in the southern province of Matabeleland. That was when Mugabe fiddled with the constitution and became executive president with wide ranging and sweeping powers. Alarm bells should have started tolling then, but they did not. In effect, this rendered the then 150-seat parliament a Zanu PF chat room where there was no dissent to the Executive Presidency of Robert Mugabe.
Then along came the trade union-based MDC in September 1999 and at last Zimbabwe had what looked like a viable opposition. Mugabe had at last met his match. The first jolt Zanu PF got from the MDC was in the landmark February 2000 referendum for a new Zanu PF-sponsored draft constitution. Zanu PF went into this plebiscite in very confident and bullish mood, but got a nasty jolt as voters resoundingly voted for the MDC’s adamant opposition to the draft constitution, which they felt would further enhance Mugabe’s grip on power. Having never tasted electoral defeat of any kind since independence in 1980, Mugabe was shocked into action. A few days after the referendum loss, the first commercial farm was invaded by Mugabe’s foot soldiers, the once well regarded but now widely reviled liberation war veterans.
It should be noted that prior to the farm invasions, there had been muted calls since independence in 1980, for equitable land redistribution to which Mugabe had seemingly not paid much heed and it must be noted the British government which had promised to fund the process during the Lancaster House negotiating did initially provide the funding but not much came of the resettlement programme. In any case as he did not need a trump card up his sleeve to stay in power, the land question had not been such a burning issue up until then. Now that he had resoundingly suffered his first ever electoral defeat, he had to come up with a new campaign strategy, especially as another significant electoral test was a few months away - the June 2000 parliamentary elections.
Needless to say, despite the state sanctioned terror unleashed on opposition politicians and supporters, Mugabe still got a nasty shock as his Zanu PF lost 57 seats to the MDC. Next up was the 2002 presidential poll and this time Mugabe would not take any chances. He would ‘win’ votes by giving his people land and of course, by any other means necessary. His campaign strategy? Well, he would blame the white Zimbabweans for all the ills bedevilling the country and they would be accused of controlling the MDC on behalf of past colonial masters, Britain. He would play to his rural gallery, his main supporters, by forcibly taking productive commercial farms and redistributing parcels of land to the landless.
Just as he had in the early 1980s when his North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade troops killed thousands of people from the Ndebele tribe in the southern part of the country, under the pretext of quelling a rebellion, Mugabe had now found a new internal enemy which he would persecute to extend his grip on power. This time around they just happened to be white Zimbabwean farmers and to A large extent, their workers. In fact, when the world’s media focused its attention on the plight of the farmers, less focus was on the thousands of farm workers who were tortured, maimed and killed by Mugabe’s thugs for standing up for their employers and their livelihoods.
Mugabe had begun his tenure as leader of a free Zimbabwe who invited his former arch-foes, the whites to co-exist with their black compatriots. This, so soon after leading a bitter and bloody liberation struggle against Ian Smith’s Rhodesia. Unbelievable, it seemed!
This unexpected reconciliation with his erstwhile foes brought Mugabe much international acclaim and plaudits. He was hailed as a new type of African leader, the kind that was needed to take the continent forward. Some may recall how Mugabe would shuttle from country to country, including Ireland, garnering all sorts of accolades, being conferred with honorary degrees and even an honorary knighthood from Britain. He was the darling of the developed world then, not that this is necessarily a badge of honour, judging by the West’s one time ill-advised patronage of the likes of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Fast forward then to 2003 when the same Mugabe had the temerity to proclaim that he could be a ‘black Hitler’ in crushing his opponents. Mugabe, who sports a Hitlerite moustache, was widely reported in the Zimbabwean and international media to have said: “…I was the Hitler of that time. I am still a Hitler of their time. If Hitler fought for the justice of mankind, many nations would not have fought against him. Hitler in Zimbabwe has one objective - sovereignty for his people, recognition of their independence and their rights to freedom. If they say I am Hitler, let me be Hitler ten-fold and that's what we stand for."
Mugabe made these globally reported remarks when he addressed mourners at the burial of one of his cabinet ministers, just as his state security agents including the police, perpetrated unprecedented torture, arrests and assaults on civilians countrywide. Now recognised as one of his trademarks, Mugabe is prone to hijack funerals of his lieutenants to launch hate-filled tirades against his opponents, real and imaginary.
Another worrying and significant aspect to consider is the fact that, much to the chagrin of the majority of long suffering Zimbabweans, Mugabe is still hailed as an African hero and dare I say statesman. When they see or hear him on the world stage verbally assaulting George W. Bush and Tony Blair, they see in him an African stalwart standing up to what they perceive to be the imperialist, neo-colonialist and racist West. Many a time have I come across fellow Africans when they hear me rail against Mugabe’s regime, they profess their admiration for the Zimbabwean dictator and hail him as an African hero particularly because he took away arable land from white Zimbabwean farmers and gave them to their landless black compatriots.
Except that, that perception is absolutely nonsense. What actually transpired in Zimbabwe was that most of the seized land ended up in the clutches of Mugabe’s greedy acolytes who have benefitted from his largesse. Even those few ‘lucky’ landless poor who were given parcels of land were largely left to their own devices and the result has been that the once bountiful land has become unproductive and Zimbabwe has within a short period of time come to depend on food imports when it used to be a major exporter. So it is usually with much consternation that majority of Zimbabweans find these pronouncements of support for Mugabe from people who have not bore the burnt of his tyranny and dictatorship.
It now appears that with March’s parliamentary electoral defeat and his second place in the presidential poll still rankling, Mugabe is taking no chances this time and therefore has unleashed further untold suffering on his own people, the people who have clearly sent him the message that he should go now. Recent events, whereby opposition supporters have been killed, maimed and terrorised, opposition leaders have been detained for hours and even normally untouchable western diplomats have been attacked and threatened with dire consequences leaves no doubt in the minds of any external or internal observers that Mugabe has embarked on brutal campaign to cling on to power.
Without international observers on the ground and not just the pliant regional monitors as Mugabe insists, there will be no free and fair elections in Zimbabwe come June 27.
