Charles Taylor – the Message that should be learned

The conviction of Charles Taylor for crimes against humanity, and the imposition of a fifty year prison sentence by the International Criminal Court is a welcome development.  It has now been made clear that some top politicians at least may be held responsible for their actions.  In the case of Taylor, those actions were particularly reprehensible, but the principle is a good one.  Too many dictators have been able to buy themselves a comfortable retirement in a friendly country, using the funds they have stolen and defrauded from their citizens.  One of the many outstanding examples was Idi Amin, who retired to Saudi Arabia after years of brutality, in many cases even bestiality, as ruler of Uganda.  The results of his reign of incompetence and terror are still to be seen in that country, which he took from a position of hope to a state of destitution.

A worrying development in this regard is that the view is now being propagated that the International Criminal Court is an instrument used by the ‘West” against Africa.  There is some credibility in this view, in that the processes that bring the top criminals to the Court are controlled by those nations with a veto in the United Nations Security Council.  It appears highly unlikely that George W Bush and Tony Blair would be convicted of crimes against humanity, as the spokespersons of this view demand, but it would certainly be a beneficial development if the possibility of such a charge were to be possible.  It would certainly act as an inducement to honesty and decency in government if the top people knew that they will be held responsible, by a body with real teeth, for their actions, while they are in power, and after their retirement from that position.

The example now needs to be converted into law.  Every one of the leaders in Africa and the rest of the world claims that they are acting ‘for the people’, that their actions, in the best interests of their citizens, are being misinterpreted by ‘the Western Press’ to discredit their noble works.  Witness Robert Mugabe, the man who singlehandedly brought Zimbabwe, a previously prosperous country, to its knees, using Nazi tactics, brutality, theft and corruption to sustain his rule while the Zimbabwe nation suffered.  Witness Hendrick Verwoerd, the ‘architect of Apartheid, who initiated a rule of laws that ensured that South Africa created a vast population of deprived people, a population that even now, eighteen years after that system was brought to an end, continues to suffer and to grow.  The Truth and Reconciliation process that was intended to bring the nation together failed to achieve that objective.  It left the vast majority of the population, Black as well as White, dissatisfied, uncomfortable that serious crimes against all the people of the nation remained unpunished.  A man who bombs a church, a man who throws a prisoner from a helicopter to his death, has no place in a civilized society.

If the politicians are so sure that their actions are good and pure, that they enjoy the support of the people, let them put their money where their mouths are.  Let them pass a law committing themselves to the judgement of an impartial International Criminal Court, at the instance of an International Commission for the Dispensation of Justice.  In this way, the politicians will be held responsible for what they do to their people.  The people will have the hope that their rights under their Constitutions will be upheld, that the rulers will not be able to use the money they stole from the people to buy protection from the people.  Let us at last remove the hypocrisy that the ‘rulers’ of the nation are elevated above the laws that govern the common herd.  Let there be equality under law.  If the ‘rulers’ fail to do this, let the populace understand at last that the politicians are protecting themselves against the consequences that their acts would otherwise bring.