Speak Out for Zimbabwe – AVAAZ campaign
December 20th, 2008
AVAAZ are running another campaign for Zimbabwe:
The people of Zimbabwe are being ravaged by a spiralling cholera epidemic, hunger, violence and the accelerating collapse of their country. Talks to form a Government of National Unity facilitated by Thabo Mbeki have failed. Tensions are rising, and spilling over to threaten the stability of Southern Africa.
Only the South African government has the power to make a difference and secure a political solution, based on the will of the Zimbabwean people, behind which Africa could unite.
If enough Africans appeal to him for action, President Motlanthe of South Africa can act to resolve the crisis. So let’s send a thunderous message from across Africa to the South African leader — click below to sign the petition and then please forward this email to your friends and family…
Please sign the petition and then use the feature on the AVAAZ website to let as many people as possible know about it.
December 22nd, 2008 04:29
Yes, the South African government has the power to make a difference, but right now it doesn’t have the will. Putting pressure on South Africa is the right way to go.
But SA will only act when their own pain increases. So…
Concerned people outside Zim should lobby their own governments to boycott the 2010 World Cup Soccer in SA unless SA shows it is acting urgently and decisively on Zimbabwe.
Zimbabweans themselves can increase the pressure on SA by continuing to flee to SA, demanding refugee status, spreading cholera into more areas of South Africa, and generally making a nuisance of themselves inside SA.
Aid agencies should limit their activities inside Zim, and should rather focus on establishing cholera clinics and safe havens for refugees just across the Zimbabwe border within neighbouring countries.
South Africans should noisily demand their government act swiftly to restore democracy, peace and prosperity in Zim so as to stem the increasing flood of ‘troublesome’ Zimbabweans crossing the border.
Remember, “if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.”
December 23rd, 2008 23:52
President Motlanthe should heed what President Abraham Lincoln said in his first Inaugural Speech of March 1861, a sentiment which is as true today as ever it was:
“A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissable;
so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.”
Must Africa continue for evermore to allow despots like Mugabe to overrule what has been accepted and fought over for centuries? Or will it at long last stand up to the human and constitutional rights of its people? If the latter, what better place to start than with desperate Zimbabwe?
January 2nd, 2009 11:37
@Graham –
I agree entirely. To put pressure on South Africa you must target the 2010 soccer World Cup. All the exile zimbabwians should start organising demostrations outside South African Embassies asking for a boycott of the World Cup.
February 5th, 2009 21:14
THursday 5th feb.2009 (after the fast)
It strikes me that, in an epoca where knowledge has never been so extensive, there are many countries around the world,including Zimbabwe, where simple ordinary people are treated like in the Middle Ages. And all this knowledge seems to translate very little into action, with the exception of the World Peace Movement. Chantal/Quebec/Canada