Zimbabwe, 2007

Allow me to congratulate

Mr. Kerim on his election to preside over this

Assembly. We are confident that through his

stewardship, issues on the agenda of the sixty-second

session will be dealt with in a balanced manner and to

the satisfaction of all. Allow me also to pay tribute to

his predecessor, Ms. Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa, who

steered the work of the sixty-first session in a very

competent and impartial manner. Her ability to identify

the crucial issues facing the world today will be

remembered as the hallmark of her presidency.

We extend our hearty welcome to the new

Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, who has taken

up this challenging job requiring dynamism in

confronting the global challenges of the twenty-first

century. Balancing global interests and steering the

United Nations in a direction that gives hope to the

multitudes of the poor, the sick, the hungry and the

marginalized is indeed a mammoth task. We would like

to assure him that Zimbabwe will continue to support

an open, transparent and all-inclusive multilateral

approach in dealing with those global challenges.

Climate change is one of the most pressing global

issues of our time. Its negative impact is greatest in

developing countries, particularly those on the African

continent. We believe that, if the international

community is going to seriously address the challenges

of climate change, then we need to get our priorities

right. In Zimbabwe, the effects of climate change have

become more evident in the past decade as we have

witnessed, alongside our neighbours, increased and

recurrent droughts, as well as occasional floods,

leading to enormous humanitarian challenges.

We are for a United Nations that recognizes the

equality of sovereign nations and peoples, whether big

or small. We are averse to a body in which the

economically and militarily powerful behave like

bullies, trampling on the rights of weak and smaller

States, as sadly happened in Iraq. In the light of those

inauspicious developments, this Organization must

surely examine the essence of its authority and the

extent of its power when challenged in this manner.

Such challenges to the authority of the United

Nations and its Charter underpin our repeated call for

the revitalization of the General Assembly, itself the

most representative organ of the United Nations. The

General Assembly should be more active in all areas,

including those of peace and security. The

encroachment of some United Nations organs upon the

work of the General Assembly is of great concern to

us. Thus, any process of revitalizing or strengthening

the General Assembly should necessarily avoid eroding

the principle of the accountability of all principal and

subsidiary organs to the General Assembly.

Once again, we reiterate our position that the

Security Council as presently constituted is not

democratic. In its present configuration, the Council

has shown that it is not in a position to protect the

weaker States, who find themselves at loggerheads

with a marauding super-Power. Most importantly,

justice demands that any Security Council reform

should redress the fact that Africa is the only continent

without a permanent seat and veto power in the

Security Council. Africa's demands are known and

enunciated in the Ezulwini Consensus.

We further call for the United Nations system to

refrain from interfering in matters that are clearly the

domain of Member States and are not a threat to

international peace and security. Development at

country level should continue to be country-led and not

be subject to the whims and caprices of powerful donor

States.

Zimbabwe won its independence on 18 April

1980 after a protracted war against British colonial

imperialism that denied its people human rights and

democracy. That colonial system which suppressed and

oppressed us enjoyed the support of many countries of

the West who were signatories to the United Nations

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Even after

1945, it would appear that the Berlin Conference of

1884, through which Africa was parcelled out to

colonial European powers, has remained stronger than

the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is,

therefore, clear that for the West, vested economic

interests and racial and ethnocentric considerations

have proved stronger than Western adherence to

principles of the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights.

The West still negates our sovereignties by

controlling our resources, in the process making us

mere chattels in our own lands, mere minders of the

West’s transnational interests. In my own country and

other sister States in southern Africa, the most visible

form of this colonial control has been control over land

despoiled from us at the onset of British colonialism.

That control largely persists, although it stands firmly

challenged in Zimbabwe, thereby triggering the current

stand-off between us and Britain, which is supported

by her cousin States, most notably the United States

and Australia. Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and now

Mr. Brown's sense of human rights precludes our

people's right to their God-given resources, which

must, in our view, be controlled by our people. I am

termed dictator - and yesterday the General Assembly

heard Mr. Bush in this Hall calling my Government a

demagogic regime — because I have rejected this

supremacist view and frustrated the neo-colonialists in

their endeavours to keep us as slaves in our own

country.

Clearly, the history of the struggle for our own

national and people's rights is unknown to the

President of the United States of America. He thinks

the Declaration of Human Rights started with his terms

in office. He thinks he can introduce to us, who bore

the brunt of the struggle for the freedoms of our

peoples, the virtues of the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights. What rank hypocrisy! I spent

11 precious years of my life in the jail of a white

Englishman whose freedom and well being I assured

and protected from the first day of Zimbabwe's

independence, and that was Ian Smith. I lost a further

15 years fighting white injustice in my country. Ian

Smith was responsible for the deaths of well over

50,000 of my people. I bear scars of his tyranny, which

Britain and America condoned. I meet his victims

every day. Yet, he walks freely today. He farms freely;

he has a farm of over 500 hectares. He talks freely,

associates freely under our black Government. We

taught him democracy. We gave him back his

humanity. He would have faced a different fate here

and in Europe, if the 50,000 he killed had been

Europeans. Africa has not called for a Nuremberg trial

against the white world, which committed heinous

crimes against humanity. It has not hunted perpetrators

of this genocide, many of whom live to this day; nor

has it received reparations from those who have

offended against it. Instead, it is Africa that is in the

dock. It is Mugabe, and not the British Prime Minister,

who is in the dock, facing trial from the same world

that persecuted us for centuries.

Let Mr. Bush read history correctly. Let him

realize that, both personally and in his representative

capacity as the current President of the United States,

he stands for this "civilization" that occupied,

colonized, incarcerated and killed. He has much to

atone for and very little to lecture us about on the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His hands drip

with the innocent blood of many nationalities, and,

today, with the blood of the Iraqis. But he still kills. He

kills in Iraq. He kills in Afghanistan. And he is

supposed to be our teacher in human rights?

He imprisons. He imprisons and tortures at

Guantanamo. He imprisoned and tortured at Abu

Ghraib. He has secret torture chambers in Europe. Yes,

he imprisons even here in the United States, with his

jails today carrying more blacks than his universities

can ever enrol. He even suspends the provisions of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Take

Guántanamo 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. Can the international community accept being

lectured by this man on the provisions of the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights? Definitely not.

The President returned to the Chair.

We are alarmed that under his leadership basic

rights of his own people and those of the rest of the

world have summarily been rolled back. America is

primarily responsible for rewriting core tenets of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We all seem

guilty for 9/11. Mr. Bush thinks he stands above all

structures of governance, whether national or

international. At home, he apparently does not need the

Congress. He defies it. Abroad, he does not need the

United Nations; he does not need international law and

opinion. “I will go to Iraq,” he said, “with or without

the United Nations” — that is, with or without

international law, in defiance of it.

This forum did not sanction Blair’s and Bush’s

misadventures in Iraq. Did we say yes to it? Did we

say yes to the attack on Iraq? The two rode roughshod

over the United Nations and international opinion.

Almighty Bush: perhaps some might regard him as

their god. No, he is not my god. I have but one God.

He is in heaven — pater noster, qui es in caelis.

Indeed, he wants us to pray to him. We say no to him

and encourage him to get out of Iraq. Indeed, he should

mend his ways before he clambers up the pulpit to

deliver pieties of democracy. Is he qualified to speak of

democracy? Is he qualified to speak of human rights

when he is shedding blood every day?

The British and the Americans have gone on a

relentless campaign of destabilizing and vilifying my

country. They have sponsored surrogate forces to

challenge lawful authority in my country. They seek

regime change. It is they who seek regime change, not

my people. But they think they are entitled to change

governments, placing themselves in the role of the

Zimbabwean people in whose collective will

democracy places the right to define and change

regimes. And they want to talk of democracy when

they are behaving that way.

Let those sinister Governments be told here and

now that Zimbabwe will not allow a regime change

authored by outsiders. We do not interfere with their

systems in America and Britain, where they steal

elections, as he did during his first election. We do not

interfere. Mr. Bush and Mr. Brown have no role to play

in our national affairs. They are outsiders - and

mischievous outsiders - and should therefore keep

out. The colonial sun set a long time ago in Africa -

in 1980 in the case of Zimbabwe. And hence,

Zimbabwe will never be a colony again - never, ever.

We do not deserve sanctions. We are

Zimbabweans and we know how to deal with our own

problems. We have done so in the past, well before

Bush and Brown were known politically. We have our

own regional and continental organizations and

communities. In that vein, I wish to express my

country’s gratitude to President Thabo Mbeki of South

Africa who, on behalf of the Southern African

Development Community (SADC), successfully

facilitated the dialogue between my ruling party and

the opposition parties, which yielded the agreement

that has now resulted in the constitutional provisions

being finally adopted the amendments to the

constitution, which both parties agreed to and which

paved the way to the elections for which various

parties are now campaigning. Consequently, we will be

holding multiple democratic elections in March 2008.

Indeed, we have always had timeous general and

presidential elections since our independence.

We want to be left alone. We will interact with

those in our region and those in organizations to which

we belong.

In conclusion, let me stress once more that the

strength of the United Nations lies in its universality

and its impartiality as it implements its mandate to

promote peace and security, economic and social

development, human rights and international law, as

outlined in the Charter. Zimbabwe stands ready to play

its part in all efforts and programmes aimed at

achieving those noble goals. The Charter of the United

Nations is our Charter also in Africa and we uphold it.

Wrath unto him who defies the Charter.