South Africa

This is not the run-up to glory that Robert Mugabe anticipated when he surprised everyone by announcing that Zimbabwe would hold elections at the end of March. Mugabe expected a coronation. He expected that the short timetable for the polling and the fact that he had cowed or crushed most all viable opposition would surely mean that he would cruise to another victory, and since there is no such thing as a tainted election win in the political world of Robert Mugabe, he would be able to claim that the people had spoken, their will enforced. This victory would allow him the pretense to crush his opposition under the pretense that they were subversive agents of the imperialists. It must have made the old tyrant smile to think of how cleverly he had gamed the system.

But perhaps Mugabe was too clever by half. He did not anticipate the challenge posed by the rise of Simba Makoni. He probably did not anticipate that Bulawayo would run out of money or that numerous civic organizations in South Africa would engage in nearly daily protests at the Zimbabwean Consulate in Johannesburg.

This is not to say that Mugabe is especially worried. And why would he be? He still controls the armed forces and the police. And in controlling the men with guns he can control not only large numbers of votes, but also can terrorize the dissenting factions in his country. After all, the state media announced that Zimbabwe’s police forces are ready to use force to crush any disruptions that might occur through election day. It does not take a lot of foresight to imagine that the police will not be especially nonpartisan when they mete out their particular brand of justice.

Nonetheless, Mugabe has experienced a February that he never could have imagined. He will almost certainly win the election, or at least “win” the election, because that is is will, and the fruits of his will tend to come to pass in the state he so controls. But he had to think that it would all be so much less difficult. It is not always easy being a dictator in a state that puts on the pretenses of being a democracy.

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in South Africa today for a two-day visit, his first to a non-Francophone African nation. Energy will be high on the list of priorities when Thabo Mbeki and Sarkozy sit down to talk, but so too will be agreements in technology, tourism, African relations, and other areas. Mbeki’s relationship with Sarkozy’s predecessor, Chirac, was lukewarm, so it will be interesting to see if Mbeki and Sarkozy, who has shown occasional tone-deafness when it comes to African issues, hit it off.

Well, this cannot be good for Jacob Zuma. Schabir Shaik has admitted that he bribed the ANC president “with the intention to corrupt him.” Shaik, who has been convicted of corruption charges, is hardly an unimpeachable witness. And his testimony is not sufficient to put Zuma in a jackpot. But it hardly helps. And Zuma’s prospects cannot be enhanced when officers of the court such as Advocate Wim Trengove asserting, “In the end, Mr Shaik bribed Mr Zuma for his protection, and intervention and political influence.”

Malusi Gigaba, a member of the ANC’s National Executive Council and the country’s Deputy Minister of Home Affairs has an article in the Mail & Guardian calling for South Africans, and especially the ANC rank and file, to give Jacob Zuma a chance to be a successful party leader and presidential successor.:

[Zuma’s] election represents change — it is the first experience of the ANC since democracy was attained in 1994 that a sitting president of the ANC and the country is unseated as party president while he will remain the country’s president for a period of more than a year. Zuma represents a new experience in leadership. He must introduce freshness in leading the ANC, the tripartite alliance and South Africa. He must do things anew, while not departing from how his predecessors have led the ANC and held its banner aloft.

This is all well and good. Perfectly reasonable, even. But South African skittishness is the result of the inherently unstable position that Zuma holds as both the party’s anointed leader and as a potential prison inmate. It would be strange indeed for ANC members not to be making some alternative plans on the off chance that Zuma ends up looking less viable as the country’s next president than his supporters might hope.  I’ve said it often, but it bears repeating: The decisions made at Polokwane in December almost inevitably represents just the beginning of heated political machinations in South Africa, not their culmination.

Robert Mugabe turned 84 on Saturday, and the wily old tyrant was in a typically feisty mood, announcing in the face of his increasingly emboldened opposition that “There will never be regime change here … Never.”

Simba Makoni, Mugabe’s challenger in the March 31 election, is unbowed by Mugabe’s intransigence and continues to forge ahead with a candidacy that at times seems Quixotic, at other times mad, and always brave. He continues to be optimistic about his chances of unseating Mugabe, speaking of “renewal” and healing the wounds that Mugabe has opened.

One wild card in this election might be the support Makoni is beginning to draw from members of the military, police, and security forces, a development that I have for some time argued might change the political calculus in Zimbabwe. Mugabe owes his status to the loyalty that he still inspires from the men with guns who surround them. If those people suddenly refuse blindly to follow him, if they choose to pursue democratic change, or simply opt for a new dispensation, democratic or not, Mugabe will find that “never” is not as long a time as he imagines. Security forces can easily wreak chaos. Perhaps they also can help bring about peaceful change in Zimbabwe. Now that would be a change that most of thought would happen, well, Never.

The Mail & Guardian has a feature on Kader Asmal, who is leaving politics to take on a post at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville. Asmal’s peripatetic career in opposition to the Apartheid state and in support of democracy took him to Bellville in 1994, where he lectured at UWC after he returned from exile. Asmal’s career has blended academic and activism and politics in vital ways and one wishes for him a long career at UWC.

Not everyone shares the general belief that president Bush deserves some credit for his Africa policies. Josh Kurlantznick is decidedly unimpressed with the President’s approach toward Africa, as he shows in this piece at The New Republic. Here is a sample:

Rather than supporting democratic institutions and criticizing a new generation of African authoritarians, the Bush administration has backed whatever African leader claims to be battling militant Islam. For example, the White House has developed a close relationship with Ethiopia’s thuggish leader Meles Zenawi, supposedly an ally in the war on terror and a partner in battling militancy in neighboring Somalia. The administration has provided military aid to Ethiopia with virtually no conditions on the assistance. It has also offered advisers to support Ethiopia’s invasion of neighboring Somalia, an invasion which only led to more chaos in that benighted nation. Meanwhile, in recent years Zenawi’s government has overseen a massive crackdown on opposition activists and a brutal offensive in the country’s Ogaden region; in 2005, after disputed elections, the Ethiopian government arrested over 30,000 of its own people.

 

As in Ethiopia, so too across the continent. In building a string of counterterrorism allies, the White House has strengthened its links with some of Africa’s most brutal regimes, from Algeria to Chad.

For me, again, the case for Bush’s Africa policy is a relative one. From an absolute standpoint, this administration’s policies toward Africa have been fairly marginal. But from a historical perspective, Bush’s engagement still warrants some praise. I would like to see a foreign policy toward Africa that takes into consideration African needs and interests and in which Africans are partners, in the truest sense of the term, rather than appendages. But relative both to other administrations and to president Bush’s policies elsewhere, his approach to Africa warrants, if not praise, at least some recognition.

My apologies for the light posting this week. I’ve been down and out with a nasty case of the flu for the last few days. Things will pick back up as I recover from my current zombie status.

In the meantime, you should read this piece on President Bush’s trip to Africa by the Foreign Policy Association’s Robert Nolan. His views in some ways dovetail with mine, though his assessments are perhaps ultimately more charitable than are mine, as I contend that the bar has been set so low with regard to American foreign policy toward Africa that Bush’s mixed record seems perhaps better than it is. Still, it is nice to know that I am not the only person giving the President some respect on this issue, however tepid and begrudging (in my case, at least).

The Council on Foreign Relations has a useful primer on American policies toward the five countries President Bush is visiting this week.

I am going to make a controversial assertion: Although President Bush has, by just about any measure, been a pretty bad president, he ranks among the upper echelons in terms of policy toward Africa. Now this is not much of an accomplishment, to be sure. American policy toward Africa has ranged from the loathsome to the negligent to the indifferent. And I’m not certain that the United States has ever had an administration with an even passably good foreign policy toward the continent. So Bush is among the best of a bad bunch, despite essentially countenancing genocide in Darfur, the lack of delivery on some grand promises, and some questions about intent with regard to AFRICOM. Still, both President Cinton and President Bush at least had Africa within the periphery of their vision, which is a far cry from the noxious “Constructive Engagement” that preceded them.

All this tells me is that Americans must demand more when it comes to United States policy toward Africa. If Bush is among the best we’ve had, we have a pretty shameful record.

Periodically you’ll hear the whispering: FIFA is displeased with South Africa’s progress in preparing to host the World Cup in 2010. Every sign of “political instability” (which is a patronizing way of referring to political division, which every vibrant democracy has) or possible internal conflicts in the organizing effort sends the FIFA overlords and Afro-pessimists scurrying to consider other options. Danny Jordaan, the chief executive of South Africa’s World Cup Local Organising Committee (LOC), rejects reports that the body is beset by infighting. President Thabo Mbeki and Sports Minister Makhenkesi Stofile insist that the World Cup will go on and along with many optimists that they will be a rousing success, with some going so far as to argue that the World Cup will do for Cape Town what the Olympics did for Bercelona, w3hich hosted the Summer Games in 1992.

To be sure there are legitimate concerns about the World Cup. The recent power outages must be disquieting for even the most cockeyed of optimists and while crime is an easy bugaboo for the country’s detractors, it is also a very real issue. But as with so much in South African life, internal dissent seems to break down largely along racial lines, with whites being the most pessimistic about the country’s chances to pull off what will be an impressive (and at times seemingly Herculean) task. South Africa will accomplish a successful and historic World Cup.

Will there be glitches both in the lead-up and over the course of the event itself? Surely. Just as there are glitches in the planning and lead-up to every Olympics, World Cup, and other vital global sporting event. Surely it is more daunting to host an Olympics in London in 2012 than a World Cup in South Africa in 2010, and there will be similar infighting, political and infrastructural impediments and unanticipated issues that will emerge, and yet no one will question the innate ability of Londoners or of the English to handle such an immense undertaking. There were lots of questions about Athens’ ability and preparedness to handle the 2004 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee has found itself embroiled in scandal, particularly when it came to the awarding of the Salt Lake City bid. None of these aroused the sorts of reductionist concerns that haunt the 2010 preparations. Hopefully all of the doubters will be effusive in their praise — and their apologies — after what may prove to be the most lively of all World Cups.