Don’t choose blindness, criminal silence when fellow leaders commit atrocities- African Presidents told

Tanzanian President Hussan Suhulu

Prominent Zimbabwean politician and former Citizens Coalition for Change legislator Fadzai Mahere has implored African presidents not to turn blind eye when other leaders committ atrocities.

She says African leaders should always know that they hold great influence and power, therefore should not use it to protect their friends who may be on the wrong side of history.

“Don’t tell people who have the courage to rise up against what is wrong that the time is not yet right,” she says.

Dear African Presidents,

Please understand that you hold great influence and power.

Don’t abuse this to protect your friends who are on the wrong side of history.

Don’t choose fraudulent blindness and criminal silence when your fellow Presidents commit atrocities.

Don’t mollycoddle your dictator friends who murder their citizens.

Don’t congratulate electoral fraud committed by your colleagues.

Don’t silence citizens of another nation who want to speak.

Don’t lecture the people of another nation on how to prosecute their struggle.

Don’t God-wash murder, injustice and dictatorship.

Don’t tell people who have the courage to rise up against what is wrong that the time is not yet right.

Don’t launder the persecution of the masses to save your friends and money.

Don’t be loud to condemn wars in foreign lands when you declare war against your own people.

Don’t reduce our Great Continent into a graveyard of dreams.

Don’t drink champagne when the masses have no water.

Don’t walk to State House on a blood-red carpet of dead bodies.

Don’t act in a manner that suggests that all you ever wanted from decolonization was to replace white oppressors with black ones.

Don’t feast at tables that rest on the backs of starving masses.

Don’t become individually richer while our nations become collectively poorer.

Don’t fail so badly that those who never believed the Continent could manage its affairs are justified in contending that we are incapable of governing ourselves.

Don’t destroy the will of the people without whom your presidencies would not exist.

We need new leaders.