Video: Kader Asmal Makes a Statement at Judith Todd’s Book Launch

by Amanda on Oct 5th, 2007

ANC MP Kader Asmal came to the launch of Judith Todd’s Zimbabwe memoir, Through the Darkness, to make a statement. He made several, which had his audience alternately breathless and cheering.

For here was a rare instance of a high-ranking member of the ANC – Asmal is an ex-cabinet minister, a sitting MP, and a member of the party’s most important policy and leadership body, the National Executive Committee – denouncing, in plain language and without prevarication, the Robert Mugabe regime and its despoilation of Zimbabwe.

“It’s a very painful thing for me to be here,” said Asmal, sounding a quiet note in an otherwise typically fiery speech. He confessed that he had not spoken out against Mugabe on numerous other occasions – from the Zimbabwean president’s ascension in 1980 onward – but had finally been convinced after listening to a recent speech by Kofi Annan in honour of Nelson Mandela. “‘Leaders’,” said Asmal, quoting Annan, “‘must be held accountable to the same rules as ordinary citizens.’” And so Asmal came to a book launch to repeat those sentiments, as a message for those who had, he said, “evilly blighted” South Africa’s neighbour to the north.

Please see the video clip from Asmal’s speech, below.

The MP also came to praise Judith Todd and her memoir, calling the author “a true African freedom fighter”, both for her role in opposition to Ian Smith’s rule, and for her current stand against Mugabe. Todd has been stripped of her Zimbabwean citizenship, and currently lives in Cape Town.

When it was her turn to speak, her outrage at the situtation in her home country was enhanced, rather than belied, by her quiet dignity. She echoed a question by Desmond Tutu – “What happened to Mugabe, to make him change into what he is?” – and then answered it: he was always that way, she said, power-hungry and ever-faithful to his overriding agenda, “the stealthy hijacking of Zimbabwe”. Two video clips from Todd’s speech may also be viewed below.

Despite the grim subject of the book launch – the slow poison destroying Zimbabwe – those who had gathered to celebrate Todd’s book were in high spirits, the more so for having a personality like Asmal in their midst. Two other dignitaries addressed them: the Finnish amassador, Heikki Tuunanen, who called Through the Darkness “a precious book about what happened in one country” that holds lessons for the rest of the world, and Xavier Marchal, the EU’s ambassador, who holds out hope for a workable solution to the Zimbabwean crisis.