South Africa

The dueling headlines tell of the tricky course South Africa has chosen for itself with regard to the situation in Zimbabwe. It is widely recognized that South Africa has the potential to be the biggest external power broker, whether through sticks or carrots, words or deeds. And so far, it is no secret, South Africa has chosen to act so tepidly that the country’s virtual inaction can only qualify as appeasing Robert Mugabe.

And so for readers of, say, the Cape Argus, it may have been reassuring that At Last, SA Condemns Mugabe. But for readers of The New York Times the message was quite different: A.N.C. Rejects Pressure on Zimbabwe. So which is it?

Well, as the Argus story makes clear, while South Africa did finally speak out against Mugabe, it also helped to block even stronger statements from the United Nations Security Council, which has unanimously rebuked Zimbabwe.  And in so doing, South Africa’s leaders have once again forced the world, which little understands the situation to begin with, to wonder, rightly, what on earth Thabo Mbeki could be thinking? Loyalty, even fairly blind loyalty, to the revolutionary generation is one thing. But at some point that currency was long ago spent. The idea that South Africa owes fealty to ZANU-PF at the expense of the masses of Zimbabweans desperate for change is absurd. Mbeki’s approach mystifies and infuriates much of the rest of the world. It is hard to see how either Zimbabweans or South Africans benefit from such an approach to the gravest regional crisis in years.

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog.] 

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.

For a couple of weeks it looked as if Kenyans has stepped back from the brink and that the worst was over. But such an assessment appears premature. Violence has escalated in recent days. On Tuesday a mob dragged Melitus Mugabe Were from his car and shot him dead. Were was a new member of Kenya’s parliament and many believed that he held out the promising of helping to bridge some of the country’s divides. Instead, mediation appears to have butted up against hard political and social realities, and some observers  see a country on the brink of collapse. Jendayi Frazer, the United States’ top envoy to Africa, believes that ethnic cleansing may be underway in Kenya, and worries about the consequences of the Kenya crisis for regional stability.

Meanwhile at The New Republic, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, who is not a specialist in African issues, argues that colonialism is not to blame for events in Kenya, under the apparent dual misconceptions  that anyone is positing such a reductionist monocausal explanation or that colonialism is not a factor among many in understanding Kenya’s, indeed Africa’s, contemporary straits. I’d simply refer Llosa (and everyone else) again to  Caroline Elkins’ fine recent piece on the historical antecedents to Kenya’s current crises and remind Llosa and all other observers that it is probably not all that useful to create straw persons for the sole purpose of heroically destroying them.

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.

The Europe-Africa summit has come and gone. Robert Mugabe was the most visible figure at the summit, and he made his share of noise, prattling on about most of the same things about that which he prattles whenever he has cameras on him and with his acquiescent media lapdogs at home lauding him as a hero. At least one European leader, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, condemned Mugabe for his bullying, thuggish, destructive leadership but most of the rest of the attendees could not be bothered, just as they could not be bothered to do anything significant with regard to Darfur, trade, China’s role in Africa, crises in places such as Somalia, or much of anything else. For all of the optimistic talk heading into the conference,  division and disappointment were the coin of the realm in Lisbon, where little concrete progress was made.

Thabo Mbeki is currently visiting Namibia, where he was accorded the honor of speaking before that country’s parliament and where he hoped to boost trade between the two countries and to reaffirm their special relationship. Mbeki and Namibian President Hifekepunye Pohamba oversaw the signing of three agreements, one on investment promotion and reciprocal investment protection, cooperation in the fields of home affairs and immigration, and on diplomatic consultations. In an act of some symbolic resonance, Mbeki also handed over to Pohamba the records of birth, death and marriage of Namibian nationals, which the South African government had kept up to now, to Pohamba. This embodies a further breaking of the colonial past in which Pretoria dictated Namibia’s affairs for some seventy years. 

The two presidents are due to co-chair an international investor conference in Windhoek, to be attended by 500 participants, today.

“The reality is that both our histories and our destinies are inextricably tied together. In a literal sense, we shall sink or swim together,” Mbeki said.

“My delegation and I want to thank our brothers and sisters in this country with whom we engaged in a common titanic struggle to defeat the apartheid crime against humanity, which represented itself here in Namibia also as a colonial monster.”

We have heard relatively little of late about the specifics of South Africa’s relations with its neighbors, save for the failures and shortcomings regarding “silent diplomacy” with Zimbabwe.  And yet it is clearly vital for the region to have South Africa perform as a good neighbor, and not to act as a bully.