South Africa

Let the Games Begin! Actually, the machinations over the African National Congress succession have been under way for quite some time and will continue to be the source of political infighting, manipulation, and polarization well into next year. The latest volleys have come from KwaZulu-Natal, where the Thabo Mbeki wing of the party has put forward a list of candidates for the ANC’s leadership positions and national executive committee in which the name of Jacob Zuma is conspicuous in its absence.

What I fear is that this Mbeki-Zuma dynamic will not only come to dominate the succession struggle, but that it will convince Mbeki that he and only he is capable of leading the country through these difficult times, and thus will compel him to pursue a third term. Such a decision would be a disaster of epic proportions for the ANC, for South Africa, for the region, and for the continent. And it would, as is the case with all such megalomaniacal decisions among Big Men manquee, be wholly unnecessary.

Hopefully a divided ANC will guarantee that even with the ability to change the Constitution and allow Mbeki to run for a third term, the party will not be able to establish enough internal consensus to enact such a change. Between the Mbeki-Zuma split, the COSATU-SACP-ANC divisions, and the many voices of sanity that still reside within the ANC, there are thankfully lots of ways that the third-term plan will be scuttled. But the Eastern Cape, where the party has its strongest hold, supports another Mbeki term overwhelmingly. It could be one of history’s cruel ironies that a part of the country that did so much to bring about democracy may now be in the forefront of efforts to subvert it. 

No matter what takes place from here on out, Thabo Mbeki is destined to leave a contested legacy that historians will long untangle. He will put paid to any chance that legacy turns out well if he pursues another term.

At The Boston Globe Michael Gerson has a column on AIDS in the developing world, focuding on Africa. Embracing neither foolish optimism nor outsized pessimism Gerson argues that a cobination of approaches will be required to stanch a disease that is still spreading at a faster rate than it can be prevented:

Treatment and prevention, in the end, cannot be separated. And the goal of universal access to treatment seems morally unavoidable. However expensive this commitment might be, there is also a cost to letting 40 million people or more die - a cost the world should not be willing to pay. But we also need to be realistic about the nature of this commitment. Defeating AIDS will require major new efforts on prevention. And moving toward universal treatment, according to the United Nations, will require between $32 billion and $51 billion by 2010. America has done much - and still we face an ocean of need.

It’s easy to caricature calls for more money for Africa. But AIDS is one of those issues that shows how aid money really can and does make a difference. The continent needs more financial support to help it to attain very reachable goals. The discussion should never be only about giving money, but such aid should continue be in the equation in light of the West’s persistent underdevelopment of Africa.

After a crazy weekend of upsets in the Rugby World Cup in which England defeated Australia 12-10 and France, riding a wave of host’s emotion stunned the All Blacks 20-18 the Boks find themselves as tournament favorites. South Africa earned their trip to the semis by defeating a game Fiji squad 37-20, which, though the widest margin in the quarterfinals was far closer than the final tlaly indicates. At one point Fiji tied the Springboks 20-20. South Africa will play Argentina, which defeated Scotland 19-13.  The Argentines have already beaten France in the tournament’s opening match and will be looking to show the world that they belong in the conversation with the SANZAR teams when it comes to a discussion of Southern Hemisphere rugby.

It’s safe to say that no one saw this series of semifinal matchups coming when the tournament began.  England has been reeling all year and South Africa walloped the defending champions 36-0 in the pool stages to go with two even sounder thrashings earlier in the year. Most observers knew that France would be tough as the host team, but once they finished behind France it put them on a collision course with New Zealand in a match that no one anticipated turning out as it did. Not a lot of folks pegged Argentina to make it this far. Only South Africa among the semifinalists was a pre-tournament favorite to make it this far.  

It will be interesting to see how comfortably South Africa wears the favorite’s crown this weekend. But as of right now, Amabokoboko look to be on a collision course with another RWC final and a shot to take home another Webb Ellis trophy. This one will be seen as a far less politicized victory than the last, in 1995, when Madiba Magic was seen as carrying Joel Stransky’s injury-time kick into history. But that depoliticized climate (well, relatively — nothing is entirely apolitical in South Africa) is, in so many ways, exactly most would have dreamed for the country a decade-and-a-half ago.  

South Africa’s policy of “silent diplomacy” with regard to Zim has been endlessly frustrating for many of us who feel that Thabo Mbeki needs to be more assertive publicly with regard to Robert Mugabe. It would be one thing if Mbeki adhered to the old Teddy Roosevelt approach of speaking softly but carrying a big stick, but quite clearly Mbeki has wielded virtually no stick. Even those of us who believe that South Africa’s most strident critics have yet to answer the question of what concretely South Africa could do to force change in Zimbabwe wish that Mbeki would at least speak more forcefully on behalf of the Zimbabwean people squeezed in Mugabe’s iron grip.

Perhaps we are seeing the first fissure in the dam of reticence.  respected human rights lawyer, senior member of the African National Congress executive, MP, and former cabinet Minister Kader Asmal has issued a blistering condemnation of Mugabe and his regime.  Speaking at the launch of exiled Zimbabwean activist Judith Todd’s book “Through the Darkness” Asmal:

said to a packed launch, attended by Zimbabwean exiles, among others: “Why do I speak now? I should have done so in the 1980s, when thousands of people were murdered by the infamous Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland. I did not do so. Neither did I do so during Operation Murambatsvina, when those who want to retain power refer to their hapless fellow citizens as ’shits who have to be removed’. The so-called clean-up campaign, which involved the Pol-Potian destruction of houses, clinics, and businesses, left hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean’s homeless, destitute and starving, Asmal said, referring to the murderous Cambodian regime of Pol Pot.

Asmal went on to say that “Pol Pot’s main henchmen are now being tried for crimes against humanity,” a remark that was widely interpreted by members of the audience as implying that President Robert Mugabe and his lieutenants should similarly be tried. But Asmal denied this was what he meant when asked about it afterwards, saying he had only made the remark to illustrate his general point that under international law today governments could be held accountable for what they did internally. Asmal said he also had taken to heart former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan’s appeal during this year’s Nelson Mandela lecture. “Speaking in a country which asked for and received solidarity from most parts of the world, Kofi Annan reminded us that Africans must guard against a pernicious, self-destructive racism that unites citizens to rise up and expel tyrannical rules who are white, but to excuse tyrannical rulers who are black.”

Asmal said that South Africans were “constantly reminded by our betters” that only Zimbabweans could decide their future. But you can only be conscious actors for change if there is a level political field, not only for the holding of elections but also in the run-up. There is no normality in Zimbabwe. Instead we have the ‘destruction of the rule of law, the judiciary, the press and economy and the brutalisation of the population’, with a quarter of the country’s population now living in the diaspora and with the army and the civil service, both instruments and controllers of the ruling party.” Todd’s book reminded that silence could give rise to complicity. “I am here to add my voice to Judy Todd’s appeal to assist the people of Zimbabwe. But there is also a selfish reason: the majority of our neighbours are now starving, or sick, or brutalised and without hope. Many were now fleeing to South Africa and to neighbouring countries. Therefore remember: Zimbabwe, for various reasons, has now become our crisis also.”

One wonders if this will be enough to get other South African leaders to speak out against Mugabe and what he has done to Zimbabwe. And if enough speak out, could that advance the ball a little further down the pitch in terms of prompting Mbeki at least to take a sterner approach to his dalliances with the mediation process? While it is still unclear precisely what power South Africa has over Mugabe, a policy of sickly conciliation is not enough.
 

It looks like British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has failed in his campaign to prevent Robert Mugabe from being invited to December’s summit of European and African leaders in Portugal. Further, Brown is meeting with resistance to his proposal that the European union send an envoy to deal with the Zimbabwe crisis. Those African leaders who continue to stand by Zimbabwe at least can hide behind the (very) thin reed of Pan-Africanism and loyalty to someone they still accord status as a former liberation hero. But what excuse do the Europeans have?

Although Brown effectively put the organizers of the summit in a him-or-me situation that some might see as blackmail, the reality remains that given a choice between having the legitimate Prime Minister of England and the ferocious dictator of Zimbabwe attend the summit, many, including the European leadership, pathetically went with Mugabe. Let us at least hope that this decision proves to be the catalyst for other leaders turning their back on the summit. A Europe-Africa meeting is vital. Mugabe’s presence at such a gathering is anything but.

Some states confront economic calamities. Some confront political tyranny. And in some cases the latter fuels the former. Such is the case in Zimbabwe where Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship quite clearly has exacerbated the country’s dire economic straits. The country’s citizens are facing acute hunger that stems from the country virtually running out of bread because grain shortages have led to the closing of bakeries. Indicative of the precarious state of public health, Bulawayo has only two dialysis machines, and those have broken down. Zimbabwe’s parliament has panicked (and possibly allowed Mugabe’s anti-foreign rhetoric to fuel its policies) by enacting the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill, which mandates that Zimbabweans must own a majority of foreign-run firms. This is likely only to fuel further withdrawals from capital on the part of companies and countries whose status in Zim was precarious to begin with. And, naturally, Mugabe continues to threaten further nationalization of the economy. In spite of all of these awful tidings, it is remarkable that some Zimbabweans still hold out hope, possibly because hope is all that remains.

Whatever progress Thabo Mbeki’s moderation might have made, it clearly is not enough and is likely to have little practical effect. Perhaps this is why Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade on Monday announced that he plans to travel to Zimbabwe this month to meet with Mugabe to recommend multilateral mediation by African heads of state. Does Wade’s plan represent more window dressing? The creation of a new echo chamber? An empty and ultimately futile gesture? Possibly. But at this point gestures are better than silence and acquiescence. Wade’s actions may represent an attempt to tweak his occasional rival Mbeki, but if it takes a clash of egos to push action on behalf of Zimbabwe’s people, so be it.

Africom is now up and running. I still am ambivalent about the US African Command in theory and especially in practice. The idea seems ok — it gives America a presence on a continent it has so long overlooked, ignored, or mismanaged. And maybe there is the chance that the US presence will augment AU troops on the ground in cases where augmentation is needed. But I tend to wonder whether the United States will be capable of looking beyond its own interests and will be willing to subvert those interests to the desires and needs of Africans. I do not, for example, trust the current administration to conceptualize or implement such a commend, and I suspect that Africom could quickly devolve into a mechanism for administering US foreign policy at the barrel of a gun. Still, now that Africom is a reality it is important both for Americans with a role in the foreign policy and security apparatus and a legitimate interest in Africa to work with African leadership to try to counter the almost inevitable attempts to misuse Africom forces.

Two articles in The Mail & Guardian reveal a common trait among nation states and other political entities: A fundamental aversion to outside interference. During the American Civil Rights Movement white Southerners oftentimes claimed that their states were beset with outside agitators, alien forces who were there to cause trouble and then would leave without having to deal with the fallout. This was a nonsense justification, of course, but it did speak to a powerful sense of autonomy and sovereignty.

We see a similar tendency among African states today, though African concerns about outside encroachment are in many ways more valid than those of unreconstructed white southerners. Imperialism, the political machinations that characterized the Cold War,  and neocolonialism are all very real historical and contemporary phenomena. Nonetheless, a zeal not to be told what to do, not to be imposed upon, sometimes leads to overreaction — witness the ways that too many African leaders have rallied to Robert Mugabe’s defense, despite the fact that Mugabe’s victims are overwhelmingly Africans.

 That is why the M&G articles both caught my eye, even though thematically they cover different terrain. The first reveals African concerns about the United States’ new Africa Command (Africom) which, however well-intentioned, still is going to invoke myriad images of American self-interest trumping African interests. America did not serve Africa well during the Cold War, has practically disregarded the continent since except when natural resources have been involved, and has shown little followup on even those African initiatives that might have done good in recent years. This, coupled with the United States recent foreign policy misadventures and general hamhandedness in international relations causes many to view Africom with a jaundiced eye.

The second article reveals the insistence of those on all sides of the political debate in Zimbabwe on downplaying the role that Thabo Mbeki has played in recent reform efforts north of the Limpopo. “This is not just an Mbeki initiative, but a Southern African Development Community initiative,” the Movement for Democratic Change’s Morgan Tsvangirai insists. Again, this makes sense. While South Africa briefly became the world’s darlings, many in the region worry about the country’s disproportionate political, economic, culural and military power. Whether true or not, the claims that Mbeki’s role has been exaggerated allow Zimbabweans to believe that they have had some control over their fate even in the midst of chaos.

Observers and critics of African policy need to be aware of this understandable wariness that many Africans feel about having policies imposed upon them from the outside. Only in doing so will outsiders be able to develop sensitive policies geared toward the true development of primarily African solutions to African policies.