KK deserves Nobel Prize - Prof Ngoma
By Misheck Wangwe in Kitwe
Sun 28 July 2013, 14:01 CAT
COPPERBELT University Vice-Chancellor professor Naison Ngoma says Dr Kenneth Kaunda deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for being a living beacon of peace and freedom in Africa.
Speaking at the 22nd Graduation Ceremony at CBU on Friday, Prof Ngoma said Zambians must begin talking proudly about the critical role Dr Kaunda played in the liberation of Africa and his noble works in conflict resolution and peace-building on the continent and other parts of the world.
Prof Ngoma said Dr Kaunda stood as a source of hope and unity for Zambia and Africa as a continent in economic and political struggles.
He said Dr Kaunda was in the category of noble men and women around the world that had been honored with the Nobel Peace Prize.
"His excellency Dr Kaunda could be said to have done a lot for Africa. His role in the search for peace, social and economic transformation in Southern Africa in particular and the world in general is so immense that his deep belief in non-violence approach to issues and to live to serve others with love has had lasting influence in the lives of many," Prof Ngoma said.
And CBU Chancellor Professor Muyunda Mwanalushi said the purpose of establishing universities in African countries was to provide high level manpower to the continent's economic, social and political institutions.
He said universities were expected to play a pioneering role through research, innovation, in addressing problems of poverty, low productivity, unemployment and social disorganisation which appear to have confounded the African continent.
"Universities should endeavour to attain national relevance and academic excellence in the environment where they operate. National relevance and academic excellence are important to the survival of a university. Universities in Zambia must recognise that they have a set of wider obligations to society," Prof Mwanalushi said.
Meanwhile, British High Commissioner to Zambia James Thornton who graced the graduation ceremony urged the new graduates to help fight corruption in the country by refusing to accept or give bribes as they take up new roles in society.
Thornton said the country needs a holistic approach towards fighting corruption if the country is to see development.
He said young men and women leaving universities must work hard for national prosperity.
Labels: KENNETH KAUNDA, NAISON NGOMA, NOBEL PRIZE
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Sirleaf: Peace prize for a 'warmonger'?
ADEKEYE ADEBAJO Oct 14 2011 16:52
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (along with Liberia's Leymah Gbowee and Yemen's Tawakul Karman) for championing women's rights, four days before a presidential election, must count as one of the most political acts in the history of the prize. It would be hard to imagine the prize being awarded to a sitting American or European leader less than a week before an election.
This prize also shows the enormous gulf between international perceptions of Liberia's "Iron Lady" and the more critical view that many Liberians and West Africans have of her six years in office and past political record. Her main opponent in the election this week, Winston Tubman, said Sirleaf did not deserve the prize, describing her as a "warmonger".
Tubman, a former United Nations (UN) technocrat, former justice minister and the nephew of a former Liberian president, is considered the strongest challenger to Sirleaf. His vice-presidential running mate is the wildly popular former football superstar, George Weah. Another candidate is Charles Brumskine, a former president of the Liberian senate and previous ally of former warlord-president Charles Taylor. The most colourful presidential candidate is Prince Johnson, a Liberian senator and former warlord, who infamously made a video of deposed autocrat Samuel Doe having his ears cut off, before Johnson killed him. Johnson is now a born-again Christian.
Sirleaf fears that unemployed youths will be recruited by warlords to restart the country's civil war, which raged for 11 years, until 2003, with 250 000 fatalities. The stakes in these elections are high for both Liberia and West Africa. An 8 000-strong UN mission in Liberia guarantees security in the country amidst its still-fledgling national security institutions and in the face of continuing ethnic and religious tensions.
Instability across the border in Côte d'Ivoire remains a serious concern following recent post-election violence there. Liberian mercenaries were involved in the Ivorian conflict, which spilled 160 000 refugees into Liberia. Guinea also remains politically unstable, even as Sierra Leone continues its fragile recovery from a decade of civil war.
Liberia is thus precariously located at the epicentre of a volatile Mano River basin.
Sirleaf became Africa's first elected female head of state in November 2005. Under the leadership of the 72-year-old "Ma Ellen", Liberia has made some impressive progress. The country's external debt of $5.8-billion has been largely forgiven. About $16-billion in foreign direct investment has flowed into the country. Some infrastructure has been repaired. An inherited budget of $80-million has been quadrupled. "Ghost workers" were purged from ministerial payrolls, saving $3-million a year.
Yet many of Sirleaf's domestic critics have questioned her somewhat messianic and sometimes selectively ruthless approach to leadership. In July 2009, Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommended barring Sirleaf, along with 49 other people, from holding public office for 30 years because of her support for Taylor at the start of the Liberian civil war in 1989. Though Liberia's Supreme Court subsequently declared the TRC's recommendation unconstitutional, Sirleaf's allies sought to demonise the commission, thus damaging the fragile process of reconciliation in a reckless act of spitefulness.
Determination to succeed
But in what was clearly the biggest misjudgment of her career (and one that still haunts her), Sirleaf helped raise $10 000 to support Taylor's rebel movement, which launched a war against Doe's brutal regime in December 1989. She went to visit the warlord in his bush hideout in 1990. Taylor, recently tried for alleged war crimes committed in Sierra Leone, later claimed that Sirleaf had been the international co-ordinator of his movement from 1986 to 1994.
The problems inherited by Sirleaf's administration clearly overwhelmed even her incredible determination to succeed. In Liberia's economy, historically dominated by rubber and mining, unemployment stood at 95% six years into Sirleaf's presidency, while foreign aid of $425-million exceeded the country's $370-million annual budget. Former combatants were not being provided with jobs quickly enough, leading to instability and crime.
A 2010 United States state department report criticised the government's continued failure to tackle corruption. More devastatingly, in December 2010, the Berlin-based Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer named Liberia the most corrupt country in the world.
Sirleaf had to fire her information minister as well as her internal affairs minister following reports of corruption. The fact that the latter is her brother and that her son remains a presidential adviser, replicated the nepotism she criticised in previous Liberian regimes.
With no legislative majority to work with, Sirleaf has argued that she could not afford to alienate this branch of government with an anti-corruption crusade.
Damaging reports of the government bribing legislators have thus proliferated. The president's criticism and firing of the combative auditor general, John Morlu, (who completed 40 audits and criticised the president for not taking action against corrupt officials fingered in these reports) and the smear campaign run against him by Sirleaf's associates, again revealed a ruthlessness that contradicted her rhetorical attacks on the "debilitating cancer of corruption".
Leaked email revelations in 2007 that Sirleaf's former public works minister, Willis Knuckles, had solicited kickbacks and the implication of her brother-in-law and legal adviser in this scandal caused further embarrassment. Sirleaf dragged her feet before acting against associates such as Harry Greaves, also accused of corruption.
She would later admit that she had not realised how deep rooted and pervasive corruption was in Liberian society, suggesting a naive and out-of-touch president who had perhaps spent too long in exile.
'African renaissance'
One of Africa's most accomplished technocrats, Sirleaf delivered the sixth Nelson Mandela lecture in Johannesburg in 2008, eulogising the South African Nobel Peace laureate and praising his successor Thabo Mbeki's vision of an "African renaissance". The title of her 2009 memoir, This Child Will Be Great, was taken from an old man's prophecy and modesty is certainly not one of Sirleaf's qualities.
Her father was a member of the oligarchy that ruled Liberia from 1847 until 1980. At 17 she married a man whose mother was from a prominent Americo-Liberian family and had four sons with him. She worked as a bookkeeper and, when her husband went to study in the US, enrolled at Madison Business College.
Sirleaf left her husband when he became abusive. She joined Liberia's finance ministry and enjoyed a meteoric rise after obtaining a master's degree from Harvard University.
Though a public servant Sirleaf openly criticised government corruption several times rather than resign before going public. Increasingly sidelined in the William Tolbert administration, she joined the World Bank in 1973, travelling to East Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, thus greatly expanding her horizons.
She showed a consistently impressive determination to succeed, to master her brief and improve herself and her capacity for hard work was beyond doubt. Sirleaf returned home to the finance ministry in 1975 and was made finance minister four years later, eight months before the Doe coup.
Inexplicably, she agreed to work for a regime -- as president of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment -- that had killed 13 senior officials (including six of her former Cabinet colleagues) as well as the president she had served. She eventually criticised the regime's excesses publicly, before returning to the World Bank.
Sirleaf then became the first African female vice-president of Citibank, travelling across Africa from her Nairobi base.
She referred in another critical speech in the US in 1984 to Doe's regime as "idiots". This predictably landed her in detention on her return to Liberia, as the insecure autocrat became increasingly paranoid. She was sentenced to ten years' hard labour. Following international pressure she was released and won a seat in the Liberian Senate in 1985, a seat she refused to take up in protest at the fraudulent American-backed election that kept Doe in power. After a failed coup in the same year, Sirleaf was jailed again and her unwavering faith and indomitable courage were evident during these trials and tribulations. She was released from jail and escaped abroad to work for Equator Bank in the US, and later the UN Development Programme.
Sirleaf has criticised historical American economic exploitation of Liberia, but as president, she has been widely perceived as being too close to Washington. After the outbreak of the Liberian civil war in 1989, she called for American intervention -- which didn't happen -- and criticised the Economic Community of West African States's Ceasefire Monitoring Group, arguing, without any evidence and contrary to all military logic, that the force could have ended the fighting in Liberia much earlier. Her portrayal of Ecomog is rather unflattering, considering the incredible sacrifices involving more than 500 fatalities during seven years of lonely peacekeeping, which saved many Liberian lives.
As African governments vociferously opposed the presence of US military command in their territory Sirleaf, as president, again displayed her fatal attraction to Uncle Sam: uniquely, she called for the command to be located in her country, opportunistically and short-sightedly demonstrating greater faith in American arms than in Liberian institutions.
Campaigning against Taylor in the 1997 presidential elections, Sirleaf was seen as elitist and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Liberians. This resulted in a crushing defeat: she won only 9.5% of the vote, with Taylor triumphant in a landslide 75% victory.
The slow pace of change in the past six years has made Liberians wary of Sirleaf's lofty rhetoric. She has already broken her promise to serve only a single term, thus spurning the example of her professed hero and fellow Nobel laureate, Nelson Mandela.
Given the timing of this award and her political track record, the ennobling of Liberia's Iron Lady can only be regarded as highly controversial.
Dr Adekeye Adebajo is executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town, and author of UN Peacekeeping in Africa: From the Suez Crisis to the Sudan Conflicts.
Labels: IMF, LIBERIA, NOBEL PRIZE, World Bank
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Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
KARL RITTER and MATT MOORE
10/ 9/09 10:52 AM |
Share Print CommentsOSLO — President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to encourage his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.
Many observers were shocked by the unexpected choice so early in the Obama presidency, which began less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline and has yet to yield concrete achievements in peacemaking.
Some around the world objected to the choice of Obama, who still oversees wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and has launched deadly counter-terror strikes in Pakistan and Somalia.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee countered that it was trying "to promote what he stands for and the positive processes that have started now." It lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama's calls for peace and cooperation, and praised his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen the U.S. role in combating climate change.
The peace prize was created partly to encourage ongoing peace efforts but Obama's efforts are at far earlier stages than past winners'. The Nobel committee acknowledged that they may not bear fruit at all.
"He got the prize because he has been able to change the international climate," Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said. "Some people say, and I understand it, isn't it premature? Too early? Well, I'd say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now that we have the opportunity to respond – all of us."
The selection to some extent reflects a trans-Atlantic divergence on Obama. In Europe and much of the world he is lionized for bringing the United States closer to mainstream global thinking on issues like climate change and multilateralism. At home, the picture is more complicated. As president, Obama is often criticized as he attempts to carry out his agenda – drawing fire over a host of issues from government spending to health care to the conduct of the war in Afghanistan.
U.S. Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele contended that Obama won the prize as a result of his "star power" rather than meaningful accomplishments.
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"The real question Americans are asking is, What has President Obama actually accomplished?" Steele said.
Obama's election and foreign policy moves caused a dramatic improvement in the image of the U.S. around the world. A 25-nation poll of 27,000 people released in July by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found double-digit boosts to the percentage of people viewing the U.S. favorably in countries around the world. That indicator had plunged across the world under President George W. Bush.
"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," Jagland said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has made no secret of his admiration for Obama, called the decision the embodiment of the "return of America into the hearts of the people of the world."
But Obama's work is far from done, on numerous fronts.
He said he would end the Iraq war but has been slow to bring the troops home and the real end of the U.S. military presence there won't come until at least 2012.
He's running a second war in the Muslim world, in Afghanistan – and is seriously considering ramping up the number of U.S. troops on the ground and asking for help from others, too.
"I don't think Obama deserves this. I don't know who's making all these decisions. The prize should go to someone who has done something for peace and humanity," said Ahmad Shabir, 18-year-old student in Kabul. "Since he is the president, I don't see any change in U.S. strategy in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Obama has said that battling climate change is a priority. But the U.S. seems likely to head into crucial international negotiations set for Copenhagen in December with Obama-backed legislation still stalled in Congress.
Former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the prize in 1983, questioned whether Obama deserved it now.
"So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far. He is still at an early stage. He is only beginning to act," Walesa said.
"This is probably an encouragement for him to act. Let's see if he perseveres. Let's give him time to act," Walesa said.
Last year's prize winner, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, saw the award as vindication that Obama "is ready to seriously seek a solution to the question of Israel and Palestine," he told Finnish broadcaster YLE.
"Of course, this puts pressure on Obama. The world expects that he will also achieve something," Ahtisaari said.
Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, the peace prize is given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Like the Parliament, the committee has a leftist slant, with three members elected by left-of-center parties. Jagland said the decision to honor Obama was unanimous.
The award appeared to be at least partly a slap at Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama's predecessor for his largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The Nobel committee praised Obama's creation of "a new climate in international politics" and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage.
"You have to remember that the world has been in a pretty dangerous phase," Jagland said. "And anybody who can contribute to getting the world out of this situation deserves a Nobel Peace Prize."
Until seconds before the award, speculation had focused on a wide variety of candidates besides Obama: Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator, a Chinese dissident and an Afghan woman's rights activist, among others. The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year's prize, though it was not immediately apparent who nominated Obama.
"The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it's given to someone ... who has the power to contribute to peace," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who won the prize in 1984, said Obama's award shows great things are expected from him in coming years.
"It's an award coming near the beginning of the first term of office of a relatively young president that anticipates an even greater contribution towards making our world a safer place for all," Tutu said. "It is an award that speaks to the promise of President Obama's message of hope."
Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to win the award: President Theodore Roosevelt won in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson was awarded the prize in 1919.
Wilson received the prize for his role in founding the League of Nations, the hopeful but ultimately failed precursor to the contemporary United Nations.
The Nobel committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a "kick in the leg" to the Bush administration's hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.
Five years later, the committee honored Bush's adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.
In July talks in Moscow, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed that their negotiators would work out a new limit on delivery vehicles for nuclear warheads of between 500 and 1,100. They also agreed that warhead limits would be reduced from the current range of 1,700-2,200 to as low as 1,500. The United States now has about 2,200 such warheads, compared to about 2,800 for the Russians.
But there has been no word on whether either side has started to act on the reductions.
Former Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, said Obama has already provided outstanding leadership in the effort to prevent nuclear proliferation.
"In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself," ElBaradei said. "He has shown an unshakable commitment to diplomacy, mutual respect and dialogue as the best means of resolving conflicts."
Obama also has attempted to restart stalled talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, but just a day after Obama hosted the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York, Israeli officials boasted that they had fended off U.S. pressure to halt settlement construction. Moderate Palestinians said they felt undermined by Obama's failure to back up his demand for a freeze.
Obama was to meet with his top advisers on the Afghan war on Friday to consider a request by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to send as many as 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan as the U.S war there enters its ninth year.
Obama ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan earlier this year and has continued the use of unmanned drones for attacks on militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a strategy devised by the Bush administration. The attacks often kill or injure civilians living in the area.
Nominators for the prize include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.
In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."
The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel's guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee decided not to inform Obama before the announcement because it didn't want to wake him up, committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said.
"Waking up a president in the middle of the night, this isn't really something you do," Jagland said.
___
Associated Press writers Ian MacDougall in Oslo, Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Celean Jacobson in Johannesburg, George Jahn in Vienna, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, Matti Huuhtanen in Helsinki and Jennifer Loven in Washington contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
http://www.nobelpeaceprize.org
Labels: BARACK OBAMA, NOBEL PRIZE
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Tsvangirai in line for Nobel Peace Prize
by Wojciech Moskwa
08/10/2009 00:00:00
WANTED - a peace maker or rights activist engaged in a current conflict whose influence would benefit greatly from winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
That is who Norway's Nobel Committee will choose for 2009 Peace Prize laureate if, as experts expect, it returns closer to Alfred Nobel's notion of peace. Past prizes went to climate campaigners, life-long diplomats and grass-roots economists.
Top contenders for the $1.4 million prize include Colombian peace broker Piedad Cordoba, Afghan rights activist Sima Samar and Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
French-Colombian activist and ex-hostage Ingrid Betancourt, Jordanian interfaith dialogue advocate Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad and U.S. and French presidents Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy are also in the running, although the field remains wide open.
Maltese-based bookmaker Betsafe lists Betancourt at 5-to-1, and Tsvangirai at 6-to-1. Austrialian Centrebet has Cordoba and Samar at 6-to-1 and both Obama and Tsvangirai at 7-to-1.
The secretive five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee does not disclose the nominees. The winner will be announced on October 9.
"It's quite likely this committee will reward somebody who is engaged in current processes," said Kristian Berg Harpviken, head of the International Peace Institute in Oslo (PRIO).
"They want the prize to have an impact on things that are about to happen and want to affect events," he told Reuters.
Last year, Finn Martti Ahtisaari won for three decades of work to resolve numerous international conflicts. The prize was seen as a well-earned lifetime achievement award and did not appear have much impact on ongoing conflicts, critics say.
Earlier this decade the Nobel committee said it widened the definition of peace to include environmental activism, with Al Gore and the United Nations' climate panel winning in 2007 and Kenyan conservationist Wangari Maathai in 2004.
Some say this strays too far from Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel's 1895 will, in which he says the accolade will go to those who do most for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for peace congresses.
"Giving the prize to someone in the middle of a security conflict, and with a chance of boosting his or her influence, is a wise way to use the power of the Nobel," said Professor Janne Haaland Matlary from Oslo University.
Other leading candidates include Chinese and Russian dissidents, such as Hu Jia and Lidia Yusupova, but some experts say the Nobel Committee will not risk challenging a major power this year, just after two politicians joined the panel.
"A controversial prize that raises severe protests by powerful states or other powerful interests would draw attention to ... the independence of the committee," said Harpviken. - Reuters
Labels: MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NOBEL PRIZE
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By denying Tsvangirai peace prize, Nobel Foundation preserved its integrity
By Obert Madondo
Last updated: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:13:53 GMT
SO, ZIMBABWE’S Prime Minister-designate, Morgan Tsvangirai, lost the coveted 2008 Nobel Peace Prize to former Finnish president Artti Ahtisaari? What rank nonsense! Tsvangirai may never have been on the coveted 2008 shortlist to begin with.
We have a potential Zimbabwe Nobelgate scandal here. Tsvangirai’s supporters may have exploited the biggest weakness inherent in the Nobel Prize institution – secrecy – to elevate him to the rank of Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and other great global peace icons.
Each year, the respective Nobel Committees distribute nomination forms to an undisclosed number of recipients who pick nominees. These nominees include past winners, prominent institutions, academics and respected members of the field.
Nobel Foundation statutes forbid the disclosure of information about nominees. Only winners in each category – physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace and economics - are announced.
The 2008 Peace Prize list reportedly had 197 nominees, comprised of 33 organisations and 167 individuals. Candidates reportedly included Irish singer, songwriter and political activist, Bob Geldof and Chinese dissident, Hu Jia.
The secrecy presents a quandary for Tsvangirai’s supporters. The nominator can only step forward with the evidence that Tsvangirai was on the list at the risk of betraying the Nobel Foundation’s trust.
By implication, Tsvangirai’s critics can posit a compelling argument that his nomination may have been manufactured.
For argument’s sake, I’m willing to consider that someone in the West may have successfully nominated Tsvangirai. Acceptable nominators include “members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague and of the International Court of Justice at The Hague” and “university professors of history, political science, law, etc, and university presidents and directors of peace research institutes and institutes of international affairs”.
There’s a personal vested interest here. The Hague hungers for Mugabe. Over the last ten years, the intellectuals in the second category have created an irretrievable, larger-than-life evil persona of Mugabe through books, university lectures and media analyses.
It is possible that someone nominated Tsvangirai in retaliation for the spectacular failure of the West’s regime-change project. Maybe the nominator hoped to land a cheap political punch at Mugabe? In 1989, the peace prize was awarded the Dalai Lama, a decision lauded as a “slap at China”.
Or maybe someone genuinely believed Tsvangirai deserved the most prestigious prize in the world? They are wrong. Tsvangirai might have shown extra-ordinary courage in confronting Mugabe’s dictatorship, but he is no Nobel Prize material.
His popularity in the West derives more from being regularly roughed up by Mugabe rather than for bringing substance to the democratic process.
Let’s take a quick analysis of the history of the Nobel Peace Prize and the man’s political career.
Time Magazine suggests that the prize has “peace and security roots” and often favours individuals in the “international peace and security industry”. Time further notes that “it's not unusual for the Nobel Committee to honour individuals from that industry in order to draw attention to the importance of the work of the institutions they represent.”
The magazine suggests that the 2005 prize went to Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei to highlight the importance of the International Atomic Energy Agency's work in monitoring nuclear proliferation “two years after the Bush Administration blundered into Iraq, pooh-poohing the IAEA's finding that Iraq had no nuclear weapons”.
Kofi Annan, then United Nations Secretary General, was awarded the prize in 2001 “to affirm the importance of international law and consensus following the shock of 9/11.”
The Nobel Peace Prize has also sought to impact global civil society. In 1990, it was awarded to Russian President, Mikhail Gorbachev, who engineered the collapse of the Soviet Union and helped change the course of history.
Local efforts with global implications were evidently in the spotlight when the South African pair of Nelson Mandela and F.W. De Klerk, and Kenya’s Wangari Maathai, won the prize in 1993 and 2004, respectively.
The prize has also drawn attention to courageous individuals who have shown courage, inspiration and leadership in the face of violent repression. Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, is one example.
All these examples have “inspiring leadership” and “global implication” as qualifying pre-requisites.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, there are three types of great leaders: leaders who are born with greatness; leaders who achieve greatness and leaders who have greatness thrust upon them.
There’s nothing in Tsvangirai’s humble upbringing to suggest that he was born with greatness. He is yet to achieve greatness.
Stephen Chan, author of “Citizen of Africa: Conversations with Morgan Tsvangirai”, describes the PM-designate as “a hit-and-miss politician… prone to periods of wayward and ineffectual leadership”.
Chan only partially sums up the stagnated democratic struggles of the last nine years. Tsvangirai’s is an impressive history of failures.
Remember his famous call for the violent overthrow of Mugabe before the 2002 presidential poll? The election came and Mugabe stole it. In 2002, Tsvangirai pledged to unseat Mugabe “within a year”. The crippling mass protests and boycotts subsequently promised never materialised.
Tsvangirai’s dictatorial leadership and violent crackdown of dissent facilitated the 2005 split of the MDC. His failure to heal the rift and galvanise democratic forces around him cost Zimbabweans outright victory against Mugabe in the March 29 Presidential election. He won the first round but lost every contest.
After the election Tsvangirai went on self-imposed exile, putting his personal safety above the welfare of his supporters. Returning from exile, he promised a “rude shock for Mugabe” that never materialised.
Need I say more?
Tsvangirai’s jinxed politics have now contaminated the current inclusive government, condemning it to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). With an inflation rate of present (231 million per cent), the Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, is burning, her spine broken.
Tsvangirai belongs with the group of leaders who have greatness thrust upon them.
The Nobel Peace Prize has often been linked to the anniversary of some significant event. The 2008 Prizes coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the signing of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Could Tsvangirai’s nomination have been designed to associate him with the noble struggle for human rights? Tsvangirai is no human rights champion. By signing the power-sharing agreement, Tsvangirai invited Zimbabweans to worship the same devil he condemned yesterday. After signing the agreement, he declared that Mugabe will not be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
Those who may accept this undeserved immunity for Mugabe for the sake of national unity and progress had another rude awakening. For the MDC, prosecuting other alleged human rights abusers in Mugabe’s Zanu PF, including the military chiefs, is tantamount to sabotaging its future.
What a way to rubbish Gukurahundi, Murambatsvina and all the innocent lives the Mugabe dictatorship consumed over the last 28 years? Maybe Tsvangirai is just admitting that he is just an accidental by-product of Mugabe’s dictatorship, without the political substance of his own? Without Mugabe, there would be no Tsvangirai.
Over the last nine years, Mugabe has been demonised and associated with everything and everyone evil. A parallel campaign has sought to prop up Tsvangirai’s image by portraying him as Mugabe’s exact opposite. While Mugabe was busy destroying Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai was the “man who embodies Zimbabwe’s hope for change”, a democrat.
The West imposed sanctions on Mugabe while simultaneously sponsoring ‘events’ in Zimbabwe aimed at ‘discrediting’ Mugabe. Last week US Ambassador, James McGee inadvertently confirmed that he was among Tsvangirai’s top advisors when he admitted to playing golf with the PM-designate.
Then there were attempts to associate Tsvangirai with world-renowned movement and institutions. On October 10, The Telegraph told us the “Nobel Peace Prize shortlist includes Morgan Tsvangirai and Chinese dissidents”.
In one instance of absurdity, one Zimbabwean website proclaimed: “Tsvangirai loses Nobel prize to scientists who discovered AIDS virus”.
After Tsvangirai had “won” the March 29 presidential election, both the USAToday and International Herald Tribune newspapers carried biographies of the Presidential candidates. Tsvangirai: “graduated from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2001 with a diploma in Executive Leaders In Development Program”.
In the real world, even a 2-week Harvard University “executive leadership training” crush course does not make a leader, let alone a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Surely, if Tsvangirai had a single drop of Nobel Prize blood in him, this spirited, expensive campaign to spruce up his image would be unnecessary.
Again, I’m willing to consider that Tsvangirai may have been nominated for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. By denying him the honour, the Nobel Foundation preserved its integrity and saved the West from sinking to yet another lower level patronage and desperation.
Obert Madondo is a Zimbabwean national and writes from Toronto,
Labels: HYPOCRISY, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NOBEL PRIZE
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