All Africans must speak out about injustices in places like Zimbabwe, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said on Saturday during a speech honoring former South African president Nelson Mandela.
Sirleaf devoted her speech, a week before Mandela’s 90th birthday, to painting an optimistic picture of Africa’s future.
But she said she could not ignore current troubles and that it was her duty to “express my solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe, as they search for solutions to the crisis in their country.”
PHOTO: AP
The remark earned applause from Mandela and a crowd gathered in a community hall in Soweto.
Sirleaf acknowledged Liberia was far from southern Africa, and did not share the region’s history of British colonial rule.
“But I am, I hope, part of the new Africa; an Africa rooted in many of the values demonstrated by you, president Mandela,” she said. “In that Africa, all Africans have a responsibility for our collective future. It is, therefore, my and our responsibility to speak out against injustice everywhere.”
She offered her own country as a cautionary example.
“In 1985, Liberia held a sham election that was endorsed by Africa and the world,” she said. “[Twenty] years of civil war and devastation followed, with thousands dead and millions displaced. It need not have happened.”
Sirleaf was among the few voices at a recent African Union summit denouncing a June 27 presidential runoff in Zimbabwe that followed months of brutal attacks on opposition supporters. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the runoff, but Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe went ahead and claimed victory.
Sirleaf is the first woman elected president on the continent.
Mandela, who addressed the crowd only briefly, joked that the annual lecture — in the past given by Nobel peace laureates Kofi Annan, Wangari Maathai and Desmond Tutu, as well as former US president Bill Clinton and South African President Thabo Mbeki — drew luminaries “principally to see what an old man looks like.”
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