The Sunday Mail
Teddie Bepete
This year’s United Nations General Assembly convening under the theme “Focusing on People: Striving for Peace and a Decent life for all on a Sustainable Planet’’ comes about at a time when serious concern has been raised over world stability.
Almost a century to date, by the end of the barbarous First World War, former United States leader Woodrow Wilson envisaged an ideal global union of nations for the promotion of peace and justice through fairness and respect amongst nations whether big or small.
However, many even in the American Congress dismissed Wilson as an Olympian idealist.
The US Congress refused to be part of a League of Nations that was then later forged by the British and the French.
This was the beginning of a series of events showing that candid international solidarity has always been a sham.
Countries have always served where their interests deserve.
In two decades, the dismal failure of the League were seen to be instigated by the vengeful and peremptory nature of the victors who seemed to privatise the ideals of the League.
The current United Nations should have taken notes from the failures of the League of Nations.
Otherwise its story wouldn’t have ended as such an omnibus tragedy.
Though allied victory against Nazism gave room for the creation of a universal organisation prevalent for more than 50 years now, sadly, however, the whole project has been hijacked by imperial realists and a new kind of subtle fascism has emerged.
The world has certainly become a jungle where predators roam in abundance.
In this world where the law of the jungle applies, it has been a matter of survival of the fittest.
Life has been harsh for those economically and militarily disadvantaged.
Inferior nations have become the oil can for the lubrication capitalist machinery.
Despite vast wealth in terms of natural resources, the Third World just like our own country has remained poor because international trade has continued to be a mug’s game for those economically prejudiced.
Africa’s political voice has been prejudiced by her absence in bodies such as the Security Council.
According to the Zimbabwean Government, the country identifies with the Ezulwini Consensus on UN reform that advocates for the allocation of two permanent seats and three non-permanent seats to Africa in the Security Council.
The existence of the Security Council has been a nefarious one as members use the veto power to protect and promote their selfish interests.
It has been riven by perjury and powerful nations have used mendacious resolutions that are a sheer travesty of justice to drive their privy intentions.
Nothing has been seriously done to stop the poverty turmoil in the developing nations.
Otherwise the UN since its inception did nothing to resolve the age- old struggle for resources between the great and the small.
What has not been understood by the so-called world leaders is that peace can never be sustainable without the laudable economic empowerment of the weak.
Zimbabwe, under President Mugabe’s leadership, undertook to economically empower its citizens in an endeavour that led to the economic ostracising of the country by the West.
The country has embarked on the Look East policy.
As Wilson had envisaged, all nations had to be economically empowered through fairness in international trade.
The globalisation of international trade further entrenched economic disempowerment of smaller nations.
Countries that grieve for economic freedom, like ours, have been ironically slapped with economic sanctions to worsen their woes in a bid to silence the voice of self-determination.
In opening the summit, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said about the main goals of the UN: ‘’We are here to serve, to relieve the suffering of ‘’we the peoples’ and to help fulfil their dreams. We come from different corners of the world. Our cultures, religions, traditions vary widely and wonderfully. At times, there are competing interests among us. At others there is even open conflict.’’
It is common knowledge that the Secretary-General has always been nothing in terms of influencing the work of the UN, they have just been cogs in the wheel of imperialism.
Where it suits them, the West has obliviously violated these traditions, cultures and religions of other people for unwarranted acts of hegemony.
All the powers rest with the super- powers who pass contrived resolutions to suit their intentions.
The sabre-rattling jingoist President Donald Trump whose bellicose rhetoric smacking of the George Bush era and described by many critics as recipe for calamity, in his omnipotent address to the General Assembly, mordantly pronounced that the greater powers were the sergeant-at-arms of the world.
He said they would play a pivotal and supercilious role in bringing stability.
Trump then threatened North Korea for its nuclear programme.
Trump’s statements were described as dangerously above board by China as the Security Council resolutions had to come through peaceful mediation.
According to China’s People’s Daily, ‘’Trump’s political chest-thumping is unhelpful, and it will only push the DPRK to pursue even riskier policies, because the survival of the regime is at stake.’’
What was done to Tony Blair who testifies in his autobiography that he committed perjury when he lied that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction?
The USA continues to support Israel militarily despite its violation of Palestinian rights and Palestine is being deprived of their right to self- determination, and still on top of that slammed with sanctions.
During the 2009 General Assembly, in a historic speech that was regarded as eccentric by the imperialists, Colonel Gaddafi decried the contradictions between the United Nations’ Preamble and its Provisions, the root of the debacle as he said, being in its very foundations.
He said: ‘’As is known, the United Nations was founded by three or four countries against Germany after the Second World War.
“Those countries formed a body called the Security Council, made their own countries permanent members and granted them power of veto …
“Now they want us to fit into shoes originally designed against Germany. That was the real substance of the United Nations when it was founded.’’
Gaddafi questioned the existence of equality amongst nations as prescribed by the highly celestial Preamble, but an aspect which is void in the provisions in terms of decision- making.
In less than a decade after his speech, the same slanted and brazen provisions he talked about in his speech, brought perdition to his Libya, whilst nothing happened to his friend Bashir al-Assad, who killed more civilians than Gaddafi and even deployed prohibited chemical weapons.
Now Libya is ablaze as Western companies loot the country’s oil.
How many people are languishing in Myanmar and what has the Security Council done to save lives?
‘’They won’t go to Myanmar because there is little in economic terms, and Myanmar is not a military and technological threat’’, said one commentator.
If the United Nations was faithful in the emancipation of the oppressed, America wouldn’t have succeeded in unleashing its despicably hurtful fascist economic sanctions on us in a bid to reverse our revolutionary gains.
The people of Zimbabwe now know that the West only cares about economic aggrandisement.
This is the hypocrisy that has obscured the authenticity of the world body.
Given that the United Nations’ much adulated notions of justice and equality are now in the arms of Morpheus, only a fool would not believe that the fabric of world stability is a while away from an impending storm.
After all, Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong once realistically opined that, “As long as human beings exist, wars are bound to happen.”
