South Africa

Tomorrow will mark Desmond Tutu’s 77th birthday and he continues to crusade for justice both in South Africa and globally. Tutu is no stranger to controversy, but when all is said and done he has been a vital figure in his time, the central moral voice within South Africa during the last years of Apartheid and the public face of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He would have been lauded had he settled for peaceful retirement years ago, but instead he goes on strong. Let us hope he continues as a voice of conscience and goodwill for many years to come.  

The ongoing Zimbabwe arms shipment fiasco has not seen Thabo Mbeki at his best. At The Mail & Guardian Richard Calland argues that Mbeki’s handling of the Zimbabwe crisis has further damaged a reputation that already was on a downward spiral. But he further believes that human rights problems at home undercut South Africa’s ability to function effectively abroad. It’s an interesting, if arguably overstated, argument.

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.
 

The proposed Constitutional changes to streamline (or consolidate ZANU-PF power, depending on your perspective) the political process in Zimbabwe have come to pass. Under the provisions of the legislation Zimbabwe will change its electoral boundaries, increase the number of MPs and accelerate by two years parliamentary elections.

In a gesture that makes a virtue out of necessity, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) decided not to contest the changes despite widespread opposition, because the party did not have enough votes to stop the vote from carrying in any case. MDC thus can claim that it is facilitating the negotiation process that Thabo Mbeki is overseeing for South Africa on behalf of SADC.  It is easy to detect resignation on the part of the opposition. But without any viable outlet to prevent the changes from taking place, the opposition hopes that the outcome of this Constitutional tinkering will be a more open political process. (The Foreign Policy Association has more links here.)

Acquiescence seems to be the coin of the realm north of the Limpopo these days. Despite the economic crisis (which now includes outbreaks of disease in Bulowayo), unions, for example, have been unable to gain any traction in their call for a general strike this week.

Meanwhile in South Africa retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for more outside pressure on Zim from both the western powers and especially England, but also from South Africa. 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. Let’s hope for Zimbabwe, far more than for Mbeki, that his gamble proves to be a winning one.

The Zimbabwe crisis continues apace. At this point it is not worth the time to determine whether the political crisis or the economic calamity is worse, as the two simply feed from one another. Robert Mugabe plans to live forever and rule Zimbabwe for the duration, but in case he proves to be mortal, he wants to handpick his successor, a decision to which some within the opposition seem perplexingly willing to acquiesce even as members of opposition groups assert that Zimbabwe’s crisis is the world’s worse — a bold but not absurd assertion. And in order to step down, he wants a few assurances for his protection even as he appears to be consolidating power for a long stay in Zimbabwe. Mixed signals are, after all, a hallmark of Big Man rule. (And behind it all stands Mugabe’s security forces.)

There has been progress on the political front in terms of agreement on joint presidential and parliamentary elections, but it is frankly impossible to believe that Zimbabwe’s nightmare is going to find its palliative in the form of structural changes within the context of the status quo. Cliches about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic come to mind.

There appears to be no such news of progress, dubious or not, on the economic front. Inflation continues to skyrocket at such a rate that we have no real idea within 10,000% what the rate actually stands at currently. The government is seriously threatening to take over businesses that defy controversial price controls.

The International Crisis Group has issued a report on Zimbabwe in which it asserts that Zim is moving ever closer to collapse, calls for a regional solution to the problems, and expresses its concern that most of the international approaches considered or suggested have done and are likely to do more harm than good. And yet despite ICG’s faith in SADC there are not a lot of signs that SADC wants to take on the task alone. It seems likely that this story will continue to be with us for a long time to come.

Mbuyiselo Botha, general secretary of the South African Men’s Forum, argues in The Mail & Guardian that “President Thabo Mbeki stands at the centre of the struggle for the liberation and empowerment of women in South Africa.” Without diminishing Mbeki’s administration much of the credit deserves to go to the South African Constitution which has entrenched rights and protections for women and others to a degree arguably unmatched in the world.

So what do I wake up to this morning, just a few hours after yesterday’s cynical post about Zimbabwe? A report in the Mail & Guardian that Robert Mugabe is nearing a deal that will “end a political crisis in his country.”Naturally, if an agreement, which will largely involve the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)  and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, is pending that is a good thing. And if it is true, as the M&G story indicates, that the potential truce is the result of Thabo Mbeki’s work as SADC’s chosen broker, all the better.

But let’s not get carried away. Mugabe has spoken of conciliation in the past only to continue on his chosen path whenever he felt it necessary to do so. Mugabe can afford to display largesse. By and large he has won. Giving some concessions to an opposition he has effectively broken is a far cry from Zimbabwe’s crisis being over.

After all, also in this morning’s papers came news that Mugabe’s government is threatening to arrest white farmers resisting evictions from new land targeted for black farmers. Land reform in the former settler colonies of Africa is a vexatious issue. Africans have every right to look for reform policies that will allow blacks, and especially farmers, to secure land on which to work and live. But those policies need to be coherent and, as much as possible, fair and without the threat of violence and coercion. Mugabe’s land reform policies were so long a chimera that only appeared periodically as a threat against white farmers whenever Mugabe felt the need to mobilize his base that when he finally began to enact slapdash policies, they proved to be capricious and chaotic. Whatever the necessity of land reform in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s policies have proven disastrous and have fueled the economic collapse that has characterized most of the last decade.

Furthermore, whatever the good news coming from Thabo Mbeki’s political mediation, most Zimbabweans are little concerned with politics-qua-politics right now. And so while the M&G  carried that good news forward, it also reminds us that fundamentally, Zimbabwe is an authoritarian state. A new report from the Human Rights Forum argues that torture, assault, unlawful detention and other violations of human rights are increasing apace. 

The HRF report indicates that much of the source for this human rights crisis stems from the political instability, and so perhaps the deal that Mbeki hath wrought will help to stabilize the political situation and in so doing alleviate the human suffering across the country.  Any positive progress is a cause for at least tempered optimism. And if Mbeki’s work really is bearing fruit, it will once again prove the essential role that South Africa must play in the region. But success in Zimbabwe is more than likely going to come in small, incremental, and sometimes barely discernible steps. And even as the country takes those steps, there will be steps backward as well. Indeed, as long as Mugabe is in charge, the question as to whether the shifts in momentum take the country forward or in reverse might be impossible to differentiate.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has signed into law the Interception of Communication Act, which formalizes the government’s ability to eavesdrop on phone conversations, to read people’s email and faxes, and generally to facilitate Zimbabwe’s full descent into a totalitarian state. The law even requires internet providers to install the equipment to allow the government to intercept emails, thus passing the costs of this nefarious government encroachment onto business.

The government claims that the law is intended to help in the fight against international terrorism and internal espionage, but there is little doubt that the reality is that the access the government wants will almost assuredly be used further to crush the opposition, whether in the form of the already-fractured Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) or other opposition parties that might emerge and pose a challenge to Mugabe’s despotic reign.

Privation connected to poverty and vulnerability to climate change is wreaking havoc throughout the continent. Lesotho continues to suffer from drought-fueled food shortages. The droughts have also affected Swaziland and South Africa. The economic crisis in Swaziland has led to increased sex trafficking among children as well as women. Informal settlements in Namibia are embody hell on earth. Climate change is leading to an increase in malaria cases in Kenya.

 The news of the increased UN-African Union peacekeeping presence has raised hopes of humanitarian relief for the people of Darfur. Sudan claims that it will support the troop presence. We;ll see how long Khartoum’s conciliatory attitude lasts. Some Sudanese, meanwhile, are looking to South Africa for a blueprint for peace.

At Foreign Policy Stephan Faris worries that the boomlet that parts of Africa appear to be enjoying might be chimerical, with oil fueling another manifestation of the resource curse. The Council for Foreign Relations explores the process of ”hunting for elusive peace.” Despite these real concerns, there also is real progress on parts of the continent, as Kofi Annan argues in the Mail & Guardian.

At The New Republic Eliza Griswold analyzes the Somalia crisis as “the other failed invasion,” which is problematic inasmuch as viewing Africa through the prism of Iraq manages to be both too Western-centric while at the same time allowing Iraq to disproportionately warp our views of other issues.

In order to address the mindboggling inflation rate in Zimbabwe (is it really possible that it could reach 100,000% by the end of the year?) the government has issued  a Z$200,000 note worth $1 US. Meanwhile, add water shortages to the daily sufferings of the people of Zim.  

On Sunday former United Nations Secretary general Kofi Annan gave the fifth annual Nelson Mandela lecture at Madiba’s foundation. In his talk Annan entreated African leaders to promote democracy and good governance and to disavow tyranny.

It turns out that throughout much of the continent, Africans are already heeding the call for democracy and away from kleptocracy and dictatorship. In the newest issue of The Journal of Democracy Daniel N. Posner and Daniel J. Young have an article posing the argument that peaceful transitions of power may well already be underway, with force having given way to a general trend toward the rule of law.  In sum, that Africans are benefiting from the “institutionalization of political power.”