The generous donation of His Excellency, Robert G. Mugabe, President of the Republic of Zambia to the African Union Foundation was almost uncharitably ignored by the Press last week. What I noticed was that the papers that actually printed the story gave it one paragraph or so under one column.
The donation has a little history with it. The Assembly of the African Union held a fundraising for the African Union Foundation nearly two years ago in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event was presided over by President Mugabe and as the durable President narrated it, “In the spirit of the occasion, I pledged 300 cattle from my personal herd toward capacitating the newly established African Union Foundation.”
“You see, as an African and a farmer, a donation of cattle came naturally to me, given our continent is rich in cattle and cattle are held as a store of wealth.
“When I returned to Zimbabwe and informed my party and people of this pledge, they said to me; “Comrade President this is a very innovative idea, for a very noble cause, and we would like to be part of it.” They therefore joined hands and mobilized more cattle, over and above my personal pledge.
“They were then auctioned across the country in order to augment my contribution. The AU Foundation chief executive Mr. Dumisani Mngadi visited Zimbabwe in May 2017 and witnessed first-hand some of these cattle sales. “I was most gratified that this noble cause had resonated well with my party and the people who made it possible for my initial pledge to be more than doubled.
“Your Excellencies, I am aware that this humble gesture on our part has no universal application, but it demonstrates what is possible when we apply our minds to the most urgent task before us, of finding alternative ways of funding our Union and in particular our Agenda 2063. “As I have said before in this Assembly, unless we can fund our own programmes the Union will not be truly our own.
“The historic decision we took in Johannesburg to progressively increase our assessed contributions to the African Union so that we can, in the next five years, finance 100 percent of our operational budget, 75 percent of our programme budget and 25 percent of our peacekeeping budget, is the beginning of the restoration of our dignity and integrity as a continent.
“It is never going to be easy to wean ourselves from the donor dependence syndrome, but we need to forge ahead for our sake and that of future generations.
“This modest contribution I am making today is a symbolic step in that direction. And so today, as I honour the pledge I made almost a year and half ago, I would like to challenge all of us here present and African Union Foundation for the development of this great continent of ours.”
Mugabe’s critics, especially in the social media, descended on the old man with great ferocity. Much of their argument is that because Zimbabwe is dirt poor, President Mugabe was wrong to make the donation.
I blame the old man for staying in power for too long. But he is a Pan-Africanist.
Even at this stage he makes the point that you cannot pursue an independent foreign policy if you must go begging for basic things like the money for the operational budget of the African Union.
On this issue of his donation, he should be congratulated and emulated by other Africans in government and outside government.
South Sudan is probably the only spot in the continent where a state of war exists, thanks to African peace initiatives. Organizations that make the peace of the continent possible deserve the resources to work with, not wait for handouts from donors from abroad.

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With the loss of Mosul earlier in the week, the Islamic State of Syria and the Levante (ISIL) finally lost its largest territory in Iraq after three years of brutal occupation and destruction. One could understand the euphoria of the Iraqis over the recapture of their second largest city which has been turned into rubble. The most modest estimate to restore the most basic semblance of normal life in Mosul is a billion dollars.
With the Democratic forces laying siege on Raqqa, ISIL’s capital city and its last important territory, the Islamic State is beginning to reap what it has sown. After two years of beheadings, pogroms, atrocities, including the rape and torture of the Yazidis and other vulnerable peoples, the Islamic State is about to be buried in the rubble of Raqqa where it would be forgotten and forever considered as a despicable nightmare of humanity.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ruthless sadist who declared and appointed himself the Khalifa, has been declared dead by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. His death is considered the final nail on the coffin of the Islamic Caliphate. The United States had put a $25 million on his head, same for Al Qaeda’s Ahman Al-Zawahiri. Last month, the Russian Defence Ministry announced without being certain that it might have killed him during a raid on Islamic State commanders on the outskirts of the city of Raqqa.
Reuters reported it could not independently confirm Baghdadi’s demise but quoted “confirmed information from leaders, including one of the first rank who is Syrian, in the Islamic State in the eastern countryside of Deir al-Sor,” Rami Abdulrahman, the director of the British-based war monitoring group who spoke to Reuters.
Considerable doubts remain because the Islamic State has a tradition of announcing the demise of its leaders, unless they are afraid that now that they are under intense pressure, the announcement of Baghdadi’s death might demoralize the wretched jihadists of the ISIL.