Zimbabwe, 2000

I wish to

congratulate Mr. Harri Holkeri of Finland on his

election to the presidency of this historic session of the

General Assembly. I also take this opportunity to

congratulate his predecessor, my dear brother and

colleague, Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab, the Foreign Minister

of Namibia, on a job well done.

Zimbabwe joins other Members of the Assembly

in welcoming the admission of Tuvalu as the one

hundred and eighty-ninth Member State of the United

Nations.

Since a Millennium Assembly can only come

once in a lifetime, it is my singular honour and

pleasure to address this Assembly. The twentieth

century was probably the most eventful in the history

and the experience of Zimbabwe. As we enter the

twenty-first century and the new millennium, the

people of Zimbabwe, in a very symbolic and yet

historic way, find themselves concluding painful

chapters of their experience, whose closure is critical to

the laying of a foundation for a better future.

Structural inequalities are a fundamental reality

of Africa's colonial past, which many countries like my

own are grappling with to this day. In my country 70

per cent of Zimbabwe's best arable land is still

controlled by less than 1 per cent of the population —

roughly 4,500 settlers or their descendants. This is in a

country of nearly 13 million people. It is a historical

fact that the colonial regime forcefully robbed us of

this land without paying us any compensation. As I

speak, the Government of Zimbabwe is in the process

of taking back 5 million of the 12 million hectares of

our prime land to settle landless peasants.

Zimbabwe's land reform programme is meant not

only to correct the wrongs wrought on our society by

colonialism, but also to restore our people's heritage

and basic means of subsistence and economic

participation. In this endeavour, we have received

neither the cooperation of those sectors of our society

to which colonialism bequeathed special privileges, nor

the acknowledgement or support of former colonizers

who willed those privileges. In pursuit of their policies,

those powerful interests have employed their financial

might, as well as their control of the media to not only

choke our economy but also to demonize us before the

world.

We cannot, in one breath, pay lip service to

human rights, equality and poverty eradication and, in

the next, defend inequality, which condemns the

majority to a life in squalor. We invite all our partners

to see through the veil of the negative and racist media

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blitz, acquaint themselves with our people's real need

for justice, restoration and agrarian reform and help us

remove the barriers that constrain poor people's ability

to benefit from their economy and to contribute to its

growth.

Our determination to undertake land reform in

Zimbabwe is one of the “crimes” cited in the so-called

Zimbabwe Democracy Act 2000, which was passed by

the United States Senate in June this year and is before

Congress as I speak. It proposes to prescribe the

outcome of our land reform exercise and seeks to

virtually usurp the authority of the Parliament of

Zimbabwe. Most ironically, the so-called Democracy

Act proposes to authorize the investment of United

States funds of around Z$ 300 million in the breeding

of opposition parties in Zimbabwe. That amount, which

is exclusively for opposition parties, is more than four

times the Z$70 million distributed by the Zimbabwean

fiscus among all political parties that have a stipulated

threshold representation in Parliament. Are we

expected to just stand idly by and watch helplessly as

our destiny is determined from outside our country?

Where, I ask, is our self-determination and our

sovereignty, for which so much blood and so many

lives were sacrificed by our people?

The measure seeks to hurt Zimbabwe's fortunes

even further by issuing United States directors at the

International Monetary Fund and the World Bank with

standing directives to vote against Zimbabwe at every

opportunity. This means that even if Zimbabwe met all

macroeconomic requirements and exercised the

requisite fiscal discipline it would still be disqualified

in its quest for assistance from the Bretton Woods

institutions, on the basis of political considerations that

are totally extraneous to the stipulated technical

criteria.

Just what are the rules of the game, and to whom

are these international financial institutions

accountable? Do we need any further justification for

the resounding call for a new international financial

architecture? For while the current international

financial architecture is subservient to the interests of

the rich and the strong, even to the satisfaction of their

last extraterritorial exploit, it remains for ever

insensitive to the survival needs of the small, the weak

and the poor.

Zimbabwe's involvement in the Democratic

Republic of the Congo to help prevent mayhem,

bloodshed and the overthrow of a legitimate

Government there is another “crime” cited in the

Zimbabwe Democracy Act 2000. At the invitation of

the Government of the Democratic Republic of the

Congo, Zimbabwe, together with other allies of the

Southern African Development Community (SADC),

sent troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to

help fend off an invasion by two of that country's

neighbours. The responsive intervention of the SADC

allies effectively contained the situation and

established the relative calm and stability prevailing in

the Democratic Republic of the Congo today. It also

paved the way for the peace process that culminated in

the signing last year of the Lusaka Ceasefire

Agreement, which, all involved agree, offers the best

hope for establishing and maintaining peace in the

region.

What does Zimbabwe get in return for its

sacrifices in upholding the principles of the United

Nations Charter? Sanctions and threats of more

sanctions are the response. For helping to create the

very conditions that enabled the United Nations to set

foot in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,

Zimbabwe is today questioned, tried and sentenced to

pariah status. Some of the proponents of the Zimbabwe

Democracy Act 2000 have demanded that Zimbabwe

withdraw its troops from the Democratic Republic of

the Congo before they can even consider withdrawing

that measure.

Are we being punished for creating conditions

that enabled the United Nations and other humanitarian

agencies to deliver assistance to Congolese

communities? Are we being vilified for enabling

thousands of Congolese children to get polio

vaccinations and other types of life-saving

immunization? After offering our partnership in the

quest for peace and human well-being, we expect the

international community to respond accordingly and

cooperate with us.

Instead of punishing those who invaded the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, instead of

censuring those who are violating the national

sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Democratic

Republic of the Congo, in blatant desecration of

cardinal principles of the Charter, instead of

questioning those who are already in contempt of

Security Council orders to withdraw immediately from

the Democratic Republic of the Congo, some members

of the international community have chosen, rather, to

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victimize Zimbabwe, whose troops are in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo at the invitation of

the Government of that country. Exactly what outcome

does the international community wish to see in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo?

I reiterate, and categorically so, that Zimbabwe is

committed to the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement and to

Security Council resolutions adopted on this question.

In this regard, Zimbabwe is ready to immediately

withdraw its troops from the Democratic Republic of

the Congo, under the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement, as

soon as the United Nations deploys peacekeepers in

that country. We therefore urge the Secretary-General

to deploy the observer mission already authorized by

the Security Council as part of phase two deployment,

so that we can move to phase three and the deployment

of actual peacekeepers in order to enable us to leave

the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Like their neighbours in the Democratic Republic

of the Congo, the peace-loving people of Angola are

victims of an imposed war that has been fomented by

greed rather than grievance. While the crisis is far from

resolved, we are mollified by the position taken by the

Security Council, through the Angola sanctions

Committee, to ensure the effective application of the

embargo against UNITA. We support the SecretaryGeneral's stance of naming and shaming the violators

of sanctions as a way of preventing the opportunism

and greed that fan conflicts. This was the position

adopted by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) at

its last summit, in Lomé, Togo.

In both the Democratic Republic of the Congo

and Angola, we challenge the United Nations, and the

Security Council in particular, to come to the aid and

defence of the innocent victims of war, to protect their

natural heritage and resources from pillage, and to

safeguard their territorial integrity and national

sovereignty.

With regard to the Lockerbie affair, we still await

the Security Council's comprehensive and final

response to Libya's full compliance with the Council's

resolutions. It was the Council's own commitment that

such a conclusive step would be taken 90 days after

Libya's full compliance. We call for transparency and

fairness in the trial itself, at The Hague, to avoid any

miscarriage of justice.

The international community must never lose

track of the long, drawn-out dialogue on the peace

process in the Middle East, particularly in Palestine.

We call for good faith and consistency in the

negotiations until the brotherly Palestinian people

attain statehood with national sovereignty and

territorial integrity.

In Western Sahara, the international community

owes it to the Sahrawi people to ensure the early

holding of a free and fair referendum to allow them the

priceless opportunity to determine their destiny.

On the global economic front, the last decade of

the twentieth century witnessed tremendous progress in

some parts of the world, but it also saw stagnation and

setbacks, even in some countries that had previously

experienced fast economic growth. Periods of

economic and financial crisis lead to retrenchment,

wherein concern for people gives way to concern for

balancing budgets and payments. Those crises have

underscored the importance of understanding and

strengthening the social underpinnings of development

to ensure that peoples, their cultures and their societies

are taken into account in the process of development.

Poverty amid plenty is an affront to our common

humanity. At a time when the world has the

wherewithal to attack poverty vigorously, spectacular

affluence and abject poverty are found side by side. In

contrast to its potential as the ultimate provider of new

opportunities for growth and development worldwide,

globalization has been accompanied by widening

income disparities among, as well as within, countries

and regions. Its ill effects have disproportionately

victimized the most vulnerable and marginalized

nations and sections of society. Globalization is

redefining the nature and role of States and the

governance of international bodies, thereby

subordinating democratic political processes to

unaccountable economic and financial actors and

institutions. Globalization is thus undermining the

ability of Governments to serve as guarantors of the

social, economic, political and cultural health of our

communities.

At the expense of our common goals and

objectives for international economic cooperation, we

have surrendered to blind market forces in the faint

hope that somehow things will, as if by magic, turn out

right. The consequences of that impoverishing process

are clearly visible in a number of alarming trends, such

as the takeover of national assets by transnational

corporations in the name of public enterprise

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privatization and commercialization. As a result, Africa

enters the new century hanging on the vagaries of

global markets, accounting for only 1 per cent of global

gross domestic product and about 2 per cent of world

trade.

Geographically, Africa is probably the world's

most fragmented region. The continent is demarcated

by about 165 borders dividing it into 53 countries, 22

of them with less than 5 million people and 11 with

less than 1 million. That fragmentation imposes real

constraints on development, and, without economic

integration, Africa will fall farther behind. We

therefore call upon the international community to

support our efforts at regional integration as we

promote regional public assets and initiatives,

including regional infrastructure such as roads,

railways, ports and power-pooling systems, infectious

disease control, centres of excellence for training,

regional markets and trade, and agricultural research

and early warning systems for drought.

Despite talk of the global village, it is apparent

that Africa's lonely days are not yet over. For we still

have cause and occasion to feel marginalized in so

many respects. We know what it is like to give passage

to emergency aircraft and sea vessels that criss-cross

our airspace and waterways to attend to emerging

crises in distant places while our own crises simmer on

and explode in our faces. Our ceasefire agreements and

truces are tested beyond limit, while the United

Nations stands aloof and unimpressed; yet urgent

interventions are deployed to flashpoints in other

regions, even without ceasefire guarantees.

Hesitant and half-spirited interventions by the

Security Council in several African conflicts have

neither done the job nor enhanced the credibility of the

United Nations. As the United Nations organ uniquely

mandated to maintain international peace and security,

the Security Council should make itself equally

attentive to the needs of the world's family of nations,

including through cooperation with regional

arrangements everywhere, as provided for in Chapter

VIII of the United Nations Charter. Or is it true that so

long as the Security Council remains unreformed, it

will always fail to respond adequately to the interests

of all the Members of the United Nations?

As we review the progress of nations and design

the role of the United Nations in the twenty-first

century, we need to remind ourselves that “we the

peoples” of the world constitute the real wealth of the

brotherhood of nations. The thrust of the United

Nations agenda — and, indeed, of development — is

therefore to create an enabling environment for people

to enjoy long, healthy, peaceful and creative lives.

I wish to put it to this Millennium Assembly that

the role of the United Nations in the twenty-first

century is to champion the agenda of the world's weak,

those marginalized and impoverished by globalization,

those currently circumscribed to the margins of policy

and decision-making in the international economic and

socio-political system. In brief, it is to protect the weak

and manage the strong.