Me and Elizabeth

Much is being made of Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday. Celebrations in honour of this man's personal sacrifices and final victory in his country's struggle against Apartheid pay homage to his personal achievements and his world view. He has long been honoured as a successor to such historical luminaries as Mahatma Gandhi, as Dr. Martin Luther King. He has the ear of heads of state and of reigning monarchs.

He is comfortable within himself and has reason to feel personal pride in his personal legacy. Africa needed a modern-day hero. It had spawned more than enough villains. Nelson Mandela fought an unceasing battle for his downtrodden and disenfranchised people. With honour and integrity. Starkly unlike monsters like Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe.

His personal history and his presence proved the healing antidote to the murderous rampages of those African rulers whose main concern was their self-aggrandizement and the acquiring of personal wealth, ignoring the needs of their people. Enslaving their people to their selfish agenda. Nelson Mandela accepted the well-earned plaudits offered him by well-wishers and admirers, world-wide.

He alone, outside members of the British royal Windsor family, speaks directly to the Queen of England, addressing her simply as "Elizabeth". The royal and the humble commoner. His status enables him this freedom, much as it gave him the freedom to directly contact the president of the United States to recommend favours he would like to see performed, and to which the president concurred.

After stepping down from his position as head of his country and abandoning politics for peace and retirement, he remained a voice of reason and compassion, speaking out on behalf of those with little voice in the public realm. Yet, confusingly, he has become strangely selective in his choice of championing human rights.

"We look back at much human progress" he said during a recent public address, in London. "...but we sadly note so much failing as well. In our time we spoke out on the situation in Palestine and Israel, and that conflict continues unabated. We warned against the invasion of Iraq, and observe the terrible suffering in that country.

"We watch with sadness the continuing tragedy in Darfur. Nearer to home, we had seen the outbreak of violence against fellow Africans in our own country and the tragic failure of leadership in our neighbouring Zimbabwe". Did he confuse the Zimbabwean Gaza with the Middle East Gaza? Just incidentally taking upon himself the prerogative of the royal "we"; an admittedly trifling conceit.

But one wonders why the lingering over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Why not dwell on the problems plaguing his own continent ... in Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Congo, Chad, for example. It's puzzling to say the least that this great, good man stood silent, not using his prodigious reputation and his undeniable clout as the Grand Old Man of Africa to early on denounce Zimbabwe's tragedy.

When refugees within South Africa were being brutalized, hounded and murdered, forcing them to flee back to their original countries of oppression, one doesn't recall hearing a word from Nelson Mandela. Perhaps his personal agony over the situation rendered him mute. But then, has he spoken of Burma, North Korea, Syria, Iran, as places of great human rights abuses, which additionally threaten the stability of the world at large?

Queen Elizabeth has done her part, annulling the honourary knighthood bestowed upon Robert Mugabe fourteen years earlier, when he was still an admired African hero. Oh, yes, and Zimbabwe will not be permitted to take part in the cricket tour, next year. This will most certainly distress a public where millions are on the verge of starvation.

Where acute shortages of food and foreign currency, an 80% unemployment rate, and the highest inflation rate in the world marks its current condition. A loaf of bread in that country now costs 6 billion Zimbabwe dollars, about 150 times more than bread cost at the time of the first round of elections, in March. Where was Nelson Mandela's voice in March, in April, in May, before conditions deteriorated so direly?

Nelson Mandela spoke mournfully, of Zimbabwe, representing a "failure of leadership". Yes, and one might almost be tempted to speak of the lost opportunities resulting from Mr. Mandela's lack of forthright condemnation of Robert Mugabe, his hesitation to exert due influence upon Thabo Mbeki to denounce Mr. Mugabe, as his own very particular and lamentable "failure of leadership".