Understanding Mugabe's tirade at the UN

Like some heads of state facing sanctions from the US government, Mugabe delivers a tirade aimed at further discrediting Bush

By Madibeng Kgwete: posted on 27 September 2007

At the recent sitting of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe literally breathed fire, accusing (with unusual bravery) the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, of “rank hypocrisy”.

Mugabe further accused Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his [Blair’s] successor, Gordon Brown, for thinking that their “sense of human rights precludes our people's right to their God-given resources, which in their view must be controlled by their kith and kin.”

Mugabe’s outburst was not unexpected, though.

Merely days before his address at the UN, Brown threatened to boycott the European Union-Africa Summit if Mugabe attends, arguing that Mugabe’s presence at the summit will divert attention from important agenda items.

Like his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, a year before at the same podium in the UN General Assembly, Mugabe had Bush as his prime target – and, because his country has nothing to lose in lambasting the US, Mugabe was not going to mince his words.

Amongst other things, Mugabe told the General Assembly: “[Bush] imprisons and tortures at Guantanamo. He imprisoned and tortured at Abu Ghraib. He has secret torture chambers in Europe. Take Guantanamo for example; at that concentration camp international law does not apply. The national laws of the people there do not apply. Laws of the United States of America do not apply. Only Bush's law applies.”

Speaking at the UN General Assembly a day after Bush’s address last September, outspoken Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called Bush “the devil”, adding: “Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world.”

So sarcastic was Chavez that he even suggested to the packed General Assembly that a psychiatrist be called “to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United States”.

Chavez went on to call Bush “the spokesman of imperialism” who went to the UN “to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.”

Harsh criticism of the US through the General Assembly is not new.

In 1960, Cuban President Fidel Castro delivered a long tirade at the UN, mainly accusing the US government of forcing its will upon smaller states such as his. Castro lambasted the US and other permanent members of the UN Security Council for holding on to undemocratic seats.

Castro described then US President John F. Kennedy as “an illiterate and ignorant millionaire” who does not understand that it is impossible “to carry out a revolution supported by landowners against the peasant in the mountains, and that every time imperialism has tried to encourage counterrevolutionary groups, the peasant militia has captured them in the course of a few days.”

Kennedy, as Castro claimed, “seems to have read a novel, or seen a Hollywood film, about guerrillas, and he thinks it is possible to carry on guerrilla warfare in a country where the relations of the social forces are what they are in Cuba.”

For a long time in international politics, the UN General Assembly has served as a platform from which the leaders of countries under US sanctions could launch verbal counter-offensives. With varying degrees of success, the verbal counter-offensives serve to discredit the US and her leaders.

Sources:

1. President Robert Mugabe’s address at the UN General Assembly, 2007
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/un34.16973.html

2. President Hugo Chavez’s address at the UN General Assembly, 2006
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/9/20/123752.shtml

3. President Fidel Castro’s address at the UN General Assembly, 1960
http://www.school-for-champions.com/speeches/castro_un_1960_3.htm