African Union: Mugabe only helping his people

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The African Union rallied to an African leader, saying it would not intervene in a Zimbabwean campaign of evictions and arrests that has been described as cruelly anti-poor because Robert Mugabe might be trying to help his people in the long term.

"I do not think it is proper for the AU Commission to start running the internal affairs of members states," Desmond Orjiako, spokesman for the 53-member union, said Friday.

Ah, who is my brother's keeper?

He acknowledged: "It is painful that the poor people in Zimbabwe are being displaced."

"But if it is in the interests to prevent crime, or improve sanitation or ensure the health of the people or ensure Harare does not turn into a slum, I do not see how the AU should take over the internal legislation for action the government says they have taken to improve the livelihoods of their people," Orjiako said.

But bubba, it's not merely the displacement, which in other countries is carried out SLOWLY after a court has okayed it and plans made for those displaced. As the earlier posted Christian Science Monitor editorial pointed out, they are throwing out people so they will resettle in rural areas...and that those rural areas are in the midst of a famine, but Mugabe also has refused food aid until a few weeks ago, even though I knew that there would be a bad harvest last January...so they will be in isolated villages with no food, and of course reporters won't be allowed there to report what is happening...

...... The opposition, which has its support base among the urban poor, says the campaign is aimed at punishing those who voted against Mugabe's party in recent parliamentary elections.

Zimbabwean clerics, lawyers and human rights groups have condemned Operation Murambatsvina. They have been joined by international human rights groups and Western leaders.

African leaders, though, have been largely silent about the actions of a fellow African. South Africa, the regional heavyweight to whom many are looking for leadership on Zimbabwe, has pursued what it calls a policy of "quiet diplomacy," arguing it would be counterproductive to push Mugabe too hard or cut off discussion with him....

Translation: they will send a letter saying they are wery wery angwy...