South Africa

Apparently media criticism, fair and unfair, comes from without as well as from within. The BBC has been taking the attack to both South Africa and Jacob Zuma, and while I’ve been a critic of Jacob Zuma in particular in the past, at least some of the Beeb’s coverage appears to couch sensationalism in the guise of its traditionally staid mien.

A controversial recent documentary on South Africa breathes deeply the fumes of Afropessimism without bothering to look beyond the surface and past some of the admittedly controversial stories of late. It seems remarkably one-sided and not especially nuanced, and naturally South African defenders have lashed back.  An example of the more sensationalistic elements of the show come with an interview with Zuma in which the interviewer goes for shock tactics rather than earnest engagement.

Part of the problem, for me, is that the jaundiced view not only from the BBC but from so many of South Africa’s critics is cartoonish. But more than that, it also smacks of condescension. And perhaps the Brits in particular ought to be wary of being patronizing toward the South Africans, all things considered.

On the whole I’ve been pretty supportive of condemnation of Robert Mugabe coming from London and especially from Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It is thus disquieting to discover that perhaps Brown’s words represent bluster and palaver. When the rubber meets the road, Zimbabweans looking to England to escape Mugabe’s noxious kleptocracy are having a tough go of it.  According to a report from IRIN:

The British government’s loud condemnation of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe led many Zimbabweans to assume they could find easy refuge in the United Kingdom: the reality for asylum seekers has been far less straightforward.

According to Home Office figures, around 20,000 Zimbabweans sought asylum in Britain between 2000 and 2007; of those, 4,807 applications were successful - 944 of that total making it on appeal.

In 2000 - a year of state-sponsored election violence and land seizures in Zimbabwe - 95 percent of 1,010 asylum applications were refused. In 2002, after European governments condemned the conduct of presidential elections held in March, 62 percent of 7,655 applications were rejected. 

The number of asylum applications by Zimbabweans fell sharply from 2002, but in 2006 began to rise, reaching 1,650 requests; the trend continued in 2007, according to the Home Office. Successful applications, in terms of initial asylum decisions made before appeals are heard, were stuck at just 8 percent between 2004 and 2006, but rose to 19 percent in the last quarter of 2007.

A Home Office spokesperson, speaking to IRIN on condition of anonymity, denied that the immigration department was setting the bar unfairly high for Zimbabweans. “We know that the human rights situation is bad in Zimbabwe, but not everyone is at risk,” she said. “Every case is treated on its own merits and those who need protection will get it; the remainder would be encouraged to go back voluntarily, failing which they will be removed forcibly.”

It’s awfully easy to condemn, to tsk tsk from afar, or even to refuse to attend meetings with African nations if someone like Mugabe is going to be present. Those are acts of shallow statesmanship. Symbolically powerful, perhaps, and more than what the leaders of other nations have bothered to do, but still fairly low-hanging fruit. But the hard part is to take the action that will improve the lives of those suffering under the regime you have castgayed, rightly, as abhorrent. If Mugabe has turned his country into a hellishly brutal realm, London of all places owes the Zimbabwean people some form of succor. Granting asylum is only one means of providing redress, but it is also one easily available to Brown, Parliament, and the Home Office. Talk is cheap, Mr. Prime Minister.

The EU-Africa summit kicks off tonight in grand style. The central figure in the drama that plays out will still be Robert Mugabe whose very inclusion in the meeting has been the source of much debate in the past few months. Still a hero to a few but a pariah to most, the wily despot, who recently announced that only “friendly nations” will be allowed to observe next year’s elections, will almost assuredly be the center of attention for much of the meeting.

Gordon Brown has every right to boycott the summit, and quite a lot of justification, but an even better approach might be for those leaders who do attend the summit to confront Mugabe frontally. This would give Mugabe the platform that many will dread him having, and will inevitably give him a chance to denounce his critics as imperialists and puppets, but he’s likely to do that anyway. What would be most reassuring would be if some African heads of state, even those who believed Mugabe has every right to attend the meeting, broke their silence to condemn Mugabe’s brutal regime.

Yesterday I asserted the following:

As long as there is progress, however tentative and cosmetic, an outside world that has been loath even to think about intervening in Zimbabwe is going to continue to stand pat. This is Thabo Mbeki’s roll of the dice. If these reforms prove effective, he will deserve a large proportion of the credit. But if they fail, and it is easy to succumb to pessimism and argue that they will, it all lands in Mbeki’s lap.

Well, not surprisingly, South Africa appears quite pleased with the progress in Zimbabwe. Even a man whistling past a graveyard sounds happy with himself. But perhaps South Africa really is helping to clear the logjam to its north. As the most powerful nation in the region, South Africa ought to have tremendous influence.

But what is more surprising is that I appear to have been wrong, at least to some extent, about the effect that recent developments might have on the western powers, and especially the US and UK. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has vowed to boycott December’s summit of African and European leaders if Robert Mugabe is invited. Even more significantly, he requested his fellow heads of state to follow suit. Now Brown’s threats and blandishments largely represent commitments of omission — promises not to do things — as opposed to commitments of commission, which would require actual action, but they strike me as at minimum symbolically significant, and might lead to more tangible accomplishment.

And of course we can already anticipate president Mugabe’s apoplectic response: The accusations of neocolonialism! The colorful insults! The stubborn refusal to yield an inch! And did I mention the accusations and the name calling? But hopefully Mugabe’s act will begin wearing thin not only among western leaders, but more crucially among African leaders who are far better able to dismiss Mugabe’s vitriolic fulminations and whose absence from the upcoming meeting would speak volumes. If only a few African heads of state take the lead, a deluge might just follow.

Over at The New Republic James Kirchick (whose work, frankly, I have little use for most of the time) wonders, based on idle comments from Bulawayo’s Archbishop Pius Ncube, whether Great Britain should invade Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe. While Kirchick makes some fundamentally (if somewhat obvious) decent points, I’m not certain that an invasion of Zimbabwe, initiated from a former colonial metropole, is viable, practical, sensible, or desirable. But Kirchick’s article does point out the frustration that at least a few outside observers have over Mugabe’s ability to run roughshod in Zimbabwe, eliciting little more than finger waving, if that.

While a Great Britain-initiated invasion seems like a bad idea, what about a South Africa-initiated and led invasion to which western powers provid some overt support? Mugabe is old, but depending on old despots to die away too often results in significant and unfortunate outliers from actuarial tables while in the meantime those subject to the despot’s rule tend to suffer, never mind what could result in the succession crisis.

The current world climate has created an environment of knee-jerk opposition to the use of force, and that response may even be understandable. But current circumstances should not blind us to the fact that force is sometimes necessary to counter force, and Mugabe is nothing if not forceful. Maybe military action should not be the option of first resort, but we are sort of beyond talk about “first resorts” now anyway, are we not?