Zimbabwe: What are we saying?

The Pan-African Parliament was very clear in its condemnation of the one-man show. Its statement in part reads: “Conditions should be put in place for the holding of free, fair and credible elections as soon as possible in line with the African Union Declaration on the Principles Governing Democratic Elections.”

But the question is this: Why should we expect the AU to accomplish what it cannot and has not in the past? Meles Zenawi is no more democratic than Cameroon’s Biya. The AU is in fact head-quartered in Ethiopia, which is currently occupying Somalia in alliance with the United States. The AU has been ineffective in the Sudan, and in the Congo where over 6 million people have lost their lives since 1996. Why are we then expecting the impossible?

Meanwhile, as if to underline Africa’s tragic reliance on the West, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa who is also the chair of SADC was “flown to the French capital, Paris, for specialist medical treatment after suffering a stroke in Egypt” the BBC
reports.

SADC AND MBEKI

The SADC Election Observer Mission in its June 30th statement is clear about what it thinks of the single candidate presidential. SADC is “ of the view that the prevailing environment impinged on the credibility of the electoral process. The elections did not represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe.”

But SADC as an organization finds its hands tied because the leader (who is also the chief mediator) of its most powerful member state has not taken a proactive stand against Mugabe.

MUGABE: WOLF IN REVOLUTIONARY SKIN?

It has become the norm to begin each analysis of Mugabe with the explanation that he was a revolutionary liberation fighter who has only recently gone rogue, who lost his revolutionary vision somewhere along the way.

But this premise is being reconsidered. Paul Zeleza reminds us that: “The reality is Mugabe lost his anti-imperialist and progressive nationalist credentials a long time ago. As a frequent visitor to Zimbabwe, a country where I was born and where my family lived for many years, the gap between revolutionary rhetoric and voracious acquisitiveness, national liberation and political intolerance was already evident by the mid-1990s.”

But others are going even further, to state that Mugabe has always been a die-hard capitalist who slept cozy with the IMF and the World Bank right from the beginning. To understand just how deeply entrenched western capitalism has become under Mugabe’s watch, see Trading with Mugabe an article that calls for sanctions but nevertheless is revealing.

MORGAN TSVANGIRAI: WOLF IN DEMOCRATIC SKIN?

Will the MDC be able to capitalize on its initial success in isolating Mugabe? First the MDC is hampered by its ties to Western capitalism. For example, it has not been shy to publicly declare that it will invite the World Bank and the IMF to buoy Zimbabwe’s badly damaged economy. Because of its perceived ties to the West, African people have been reluctant to give endorse the MDC, even as they seek ways to express solidarity with the Zimbabwean people.

Itayi Garande in Is it time for the MDC to take stock? writes that: “It is shocking that Tsvangirai's staunch(est) supporters are reluctant to see his political infantilism, unfitness for political decision-making and the fluidity of his political moods - qualities that are responsible for his numerous ruptures with political associates in the MDC.”

Garande goes on to say that: “Tsvangirai at the Dutch embassy was the ‘spectacle of the Century. Coming out to give a press conference and then going back into ‘safety’ was laughable.”

THE CASUALTIES

Certainly it is the Zimbabwean people who are the casualties, and as the xenophobic attacks in South Africa clearly underlined, what happens in Zimbabwe reverberates through the region.

But it is also about the democratic process. There will be governments that we do not like – which we should then vote out the next time around. If we simply abort democracy because we do not like what is in the horizon, then we become no better than the West – which has expressed itself in Africa through coups and the support of dictators.

As John Githongo and William Gumede argue, the ultimate casualty is African democracy itself. They write that the “real danger is that Africans will lose confidence in the limited democratic institutions available to them. Nigerians shrugged away the travesty of a poll there last year with alarming cynicism. True feelings will emerge later. Citizens will increasingly find refuge in tribalism, violence or religious fundamentalism. Many, too, will give up and migrate.”

They further argue that: “The AU’s charter must be changed from protecting the sovereignty of individual countries to protecting Africans themselves. A citizen from a member country must have recourse to the AU if he or she is brutalised or discriminated against on the basis of race, ethnicity, creed or gender. There will have to be a transparent procedure to impeach leaders who begin as democrats but become tyrants.”

But isn’t this a circuitous argument? Yes, the charter can be changed but who will enforce it? So we end back where we started.

FENDING OFF THE VULTURES

Zimbabwe is further complicated by the either with us or against us argument famously employed by George Bush Jr. to justify the disastrous invasion and consequent occupation of Iraq. This line goes MDC = Imperialism, Mugabe = anti-imperialism, or conversely; opposition to Mugabe = support of imperialism.

But Horace Campbell argues that “We on the left, in the peace movement, we
acknowledge that [neither"> George Bush nor Brown have any moral authority to criticize Zimbabwe because of the unjust war that they're fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But having said that, we on the left and the progressives, we must take the moral leadership in having solidarity with those opposition leaders, those workers, those human rights workers in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa who are being oppressed by the Mugabe government.

By the same token, Gerald Horne in, Zimbabwe and the Question of Imperialism: A Discussion with Horace Cambell asks “why Zimbabwe gets so much focus and attention on this side of the Atlantic [the West"> when Paul Biya, the leader of Cameron a few weeks ago basically named himself President for life and it barely registers a blip.”

To which Horace Campbell responds: “that the government of Senegal, the government of Cameroon does not represent itself as a liberation government. The Zimbabwean government is very aware of the racism that exists in North America. And it is exploiting that racism and the antiracist sentiment among Africans in the west in order to legitimize its repression on the people. The government of Zimbabwe at this moment is illegitimate we must avoid war at all costs. Mugabe says only god can remove him and he will go to war. At present, he is at war with the Zimbabwe people and we must end the silence in the progressive and pan-African community against this type of manipulation and repression in the name of liberation.”

The problem is the absence of a viable progressive movement that progressives can fully support. Hence the progressive left finds it has to defend Zimbabwe against the West with one hand, and chastise Mugabe with the other, while at the same time not speaking out against the neo-liberal policies of the MDC. But, one can easily retort, the absence of a clear alternative does not absolve us of our duty to the Zimbabwean people.

GOVERNMENT OF NATIONAL UNITY OR TRANSITIONAL AUTHORITY?

The lame-duck African Union has joined the European Union and “called on Zimbabwe's political parties to initiate a dialogue aimed at setting up a government of national unity.” It is as if all imagination has left African leadership hence the call to essentially follow Kenya into a political agreement that unites the elite, and leaves the people behind.

The fact that a GNU can be condoned by the African Union – the highest Pan-African body -- points to a very dire future for African democracy, where undemocratic processes are rewarded with a power-sharing agreement. This trend has to stop.

Both ZANU-PF and MDC have so far not agreed to a GNU, but they could just be posturing since at the end of day power and not democracy is the goal. ZANU-PF has said it can enter talks, which will of course legitimize the aftermath of the one-man-election. The MDC can see through this. In a statement released June 30th the MDC states that it “remains committed to participating in a properly constituted transitional agreement that could allow the MDC to form an inclusive government to heal the Country, restore peace, economic stability and lay the foundation for a new constitution and internationally supervised elections once that constitution has been ratified by the people of Zimbabwe.”

The call for a Transitional authority to oversee new elections is also backed by The Pan-African Parliament which from the beginning found that the elections to be null and void further calls: “on the SADC leaders working together with the African Union to engage the broader political leadership in Zimbabwe into a negotiated transitional settlement.”

SANCTIONS OR MORE SANCTIONS?

Will sanctions hurt the Zimbabwean people more than they hurt Mugabe? Trans-Africa Forum in a July 2nd press conference said that while it supports the US call for a Zimbabwe arms embargo, they fear that economic sanctions will hurt Zimbabweans more than it will hurt ZANU-PF. But in addition to sanctions there it the concern over whether the West is being led by imperialist designs or by a genuine concern over African democracy. It is not difficult to figure where many, thinking of Iraq, fall on this.

So the worst possible solution is one that involves western military intervention:. Dr Neo Simutanyi in the June 30, 2008 Zambia Post warns that: “military intervention in Zimbabwe will lead to regional instability and provoke a civil war. There is no doubt that Western governments are itching for a showdown and they need not be right to intervene, they all need a - justifiable excuse. Iraq is a case in point.”

Hence everyone, except Bush and Brown, has called for Western leaders to act within the confines of SADC and the African Union – that it, it should follow their lead. A suggestion that makes sense, except when one considers that SADC bends to South Africa’s will, and the African Union has shown time and time again, it is ineffective when it really matters.

WHERE IS THE HOPE?

When you put all the pieces together, Zimbabwe’s future is bleak, unless a mechanism to involve the African people, who are in solidarity with the Zimbabwean people, is found. And we are seeing the stirrings of that.

The June 24th The Namibian reports that “Namibian political parties and NGO organisations joined international condemnation of President Robert Mugabe government, calling the leader's regime "illegitimate" and consequently pressuring the president Hifikepunye Pohamba to sever diplomatic ties with Zimbabwe.

And over 150 African Civil Societies? have banded together and condemned Mugabe while calling on the AU to act decisively.

Ultimately, African people and not African governments will have to stand for other African people.

*Mukoma Wa Ngugi is co-editor of Pambazuka News.

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/