Tutu tells Mugabe: 'end this tragedy'
Updated on 27 June 2008
Talking to Channel 4 News, Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for President Mugabe to step down saying: "For goodness sake Mr Mugabe, you can end this tragedy, step down".
In an exclusive interview today Tutu also told Channel 4 News that the "international community has the right now to override the sovereignty argument of the country" adding "a government has the obligation to protect its citizens. If it will not protect them then or it is unable to do so then the international community knows now that it has an instrument to intervene to ensure that a situation does not deteriorate further".
Asked if Tutu's message was that Mugabe should go and go now, he replied: "Yes, please."
Adding: "I am hoping that if Mugabe insists in being the head of state he will have been told quite unambiguously that he is illegitimate and that he has to step down".
Referring to the African leaders, including President Mbeki, Tutu said that "first, all African leaders, including our own president, should declare Mr Mugabe illegitimate if he claims that he is the newly elected president of Zimbabwe... and that we will not recognise you... and if that does not get Mr Mugabe to say well 'I will step down since I am not recognised', then they should begin scaling up the pressure".
Going on to talk about blockades as a means of pressure, Tutu said: "We should be supporting the blockade... it is a land locked country, and it is not likely that they can survive very long without access to the sea".
Continuing: "One of quickest ways is to stop Air Zimbabwe from flying over any of its neighbours so that it will be properly grounded... Mr Mugabe and his sidekicks would not be able to, as they do now, escape the rigours of their own policies".
Defending President Mbeki, Tutu said: "I am prepared to say that our president did have the right, and I think almost the obligation to try the softly-softly approach, the approach of dangling a carrot before Mr Mugabe to say 'for your own sake you have to find a different way of doing things' and I would support that approach. (But) that approach is clearly one that is premised on the view that if it doesn't t work then you have to look for an alternative way... By now our president should have admitted that this sofly-softly approach, this quiet diplomacy, has not delivered the goods and that everybody would support him if he now turned the screws on his colleague Mr Mugabe".
Asked if the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, had said enough about the situation in Zimbabwe, and if he should have also levelled his criticism at Mbeki's lack of intervention, Tutu expressed his surprise that Mandela had made any comment at all saying:
"I don't know that you can spend too much time saying what he should have said. He has been quite, quite scrupulous to not put his successor (Mbeki) on the spot... I am surprised that he has gone as far as he has gone and we know that he could have got up and been ruthless in his condemnation but he has tried to be as diplomatic as possible, people like yourselves, draw your own conclusions".
