South Africa

Robert Mugabe is going to face a surprise challenge in the upcoming election that he called recently (to great outcry from the opposition and observers of the country’s politics). Simba Makoni, a former finance minister whom Mugabe forced out of office in 2002, appears to have the support of many dissidents within ZANU-PF as well as from both factions within the weakened opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Makoni might provide Mugabe with his most formidable challenge yet. From to a story in South Africa’s Daily News:

Simba Makoni, plus dissidents in Zanu-PF, plus support from both factions of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change seem set to give President Robert Mugabe the challenge of his long life.

The “lucky coward”, as Mugabe is dubbed by some of his critics in Zimbabwe, is facing his Waterloo for the first time in a political career in which he has used every trick in the book, but particularly financial patronage, to ensure his survival.

Now Zimbabwe is broke and one of his own, who is respected by the urban middle classes, the international community, Africa and the opposition, wants his job.

It will not be as easy for Mugabe, 84, to use security forces to harass and beat up Simba Makoni as it was in 2002 when presidential challenger Morgan Tsvangirai was accused of being a white man’s stooge and a puppet of the West.

It will be even harder for Mugabe when other heavyweights in Zanu-PF make their support for Makoni known.

Naturally the knives have come out. Mugabe’s henchmen have already begun to try to taint the new challenger to Mugabe’s crown. ZANU-PF has expelled Makoni. The state-controlled media dismissed him as”a loud fart.” Liberation movement veterans, many of whom still blindly support Mugabe, have branded Makoni a traitor. Ominously, Joseph Chinotimba, deputy leader of the war veterans, told Zimbabwe’s Herald newspaper, “We are now going to campaign vigorously for President Mugabe. I feel sorry for Makoni, he has lost the political plot. From today to the nomination date we will have finished with them. Traitors should know that Zanu-PF has a history of dealing harshly with their kind.”

This last assertion is undoubtedly true. Mugabe, his underlings, and his seemingly blindly loyal supporters, of which there are still undoubtedly (and inexplicably) many, have shown time and again that it will take more than democratic processes, which they know are easily manipulable, to oust their man from power. Makoni may be able to win a free and fair election in Zimbabwe. But it is certain that the election he faces will not be free or fair. Nor will it be peaceful. Makoni is brave. Courage will not, I fear, be enough.

It almost certainly comes as a shock to absolutely no one that Robert Mugabe has acted in bad faith and announced unilaterally (even as he has been in the midst of negotiations with the factions of the Movement for Democratic Change) that elections will be held on March 2. Now the MDC is scrambling to figure out what to do. Their options are circumscribed: The opposition can choose to boycott the elections, guaranteeing another Mugabe victory, which the wily tyrant will depict as a mandate, or to participate in elections that are pretty certain to be a sham, in which Mugabe secures victory, thus claiming a mandate. This frustrating hobson’s choice encapsulates the frustration of politics in Robert Mugabe’s brutocracy.

Stephanie Hanson, news editor for the Council on Foreign Relations, recently interviewed Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC’s most visible leader. Tsvangirai gives thoughtful answers to questions on a host of issues, though at time the hopelessness of the opposition’s plight seems almost tangible in his words. He expressed his wish for the world’s response to the situation in Zimbabwe:  “The elections that are forthcoming in Zimbabwe must be raised to the same level like Darfur. There must be an international outcry.” But what has the west’s supposed outcry (which frankly seems rather muted and is by any measure ineffectual) accomplished in Darfur? About as much as it has in Zimbabwe.

Tyrants only know one language, and that is the universal lingua franca of power. Power does not have to mean force, though force is never far from power. Until Mugabe is forced to change, to relent, or to cede control, he will do none of those things. The same can be said for Omar al-Bashir and the thugs he empowers in Darfur. Hand wringing is not enough. It never is.

As if things aren’t tough enough for Zimbabwe’s opposition. Robert Mugabe is running roughshod over his people and determined to run for (and inevitably win) election again. And now it appears that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), up until recently the only even vaguely viable counter to Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, is, “in trouble,” according to an IRIN report. ”Already split into feuding factions, it now risks being deserted by its key allies ahead of next year’s elections. ” Labor and civic groups are worried that the party has compromised itself by negotiating with ZANU-PF. MDC supporters maintain optimism against the longest of odds.

The MDC and any other opposition faced an uphill struggle as it was in the face of Mugabe’s police state. Comrade Bob’s clear determination to remain in power and the MDC apparently crumbling from within bodes ill for Zimbabwe’s future both in the near and long range.

Does this news come as a shock to any observer of the situation in Zimbabwe?:

Just four months before scheduled elections, and with a breakthrough in talks brokered by President Thabo Mbeki in sight, Zimbabweans are watching in dismay as the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) disintegrates and Zanu-PF tweaks electoral regulations in its favour.

Zimbabweans and other observers continue to hope for the emergence of a “third way,” a new movement made up of elements from both the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and disgruntled members of Mugabe’s once unbreakable Zanu-PF, for whom Mugabe’s megalomania and authoritarianism want to break the old tyrant’s stranglehold on the state.

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.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition party to Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, has broken his rceent silence to explain why the increasingly splintered Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) acquiesced to the recent Constitutional changes that Thabo Mbeki helped broker. Speaking in Masvingo at the party’s eighth anniversary celebrations, Tsangirai argued that “The objective of talking to Zanu PF is to create a free and fair election environment in this country.” I still wonder if the MDC compromises qualify as pragmatism, optimism, or desperation and suspect that there is a convergence of the three elements involved. 

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.

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.

Here is a quick roundup of news stories this morning:

For three different perspectives on the general strike in South Africa see this story in the Mail & Guardian,  this from Green Left, and this from The Sowetan. (Hat tip to Peter Limb at H-SAfrica.)  See also this story from All Africa. And for concerns about the effect the strike will have on tourism, see here.

On the latest from Zimbabwe see this account of the ruling party’s meeting with the Movement for Democratic Change. Color me skeptical. This Michael Gerson piece in The Washington Post helps explain why. As does this.

The ANC leadership succession race is heating up. For some analysis see here.

Foreign Policy has released its annual Failed State Index, and sadly, though not unexpectedly, it is pregnant with African countries. The Mail & Guardian has more here. Not surprisingly, Sudan tops the list. And plucky little Guinea-Bissau is making its own mark by staking its claim as Africa’s cocaine capital.