[R-G] Using Mugabe as a stick to beat Africa

[Anthony Fenton]

Tuesday 22 April 2008
Christopher Bickerton
Using Mugabe as a stick to beat Africa

Western observers are using Robert Mugabe’s refusal to stand down as  
an excuse to lambast the disobedient, failing nations of southern  
Africa.

The blame game around Robert Mugabe’s staying power has reached absurd  
proportions. Virtually everyone outside of Zimbabwe has been blamed  
for inaction, yet silence reigns over the role of the Zimbabwean  
people themselves. This reflects an inability to conceive of  
Zimbabweans as authors of their own fate, and it belies an ignorance  
concerning the necessity of domestic foundations for meaningful and  
long-lasting political change.

The blame game began early on, with calls for the United States and  
Britain to pressurise Mugabe into publishing the results of the 29  
March poll and to stand down if he lost the vote. Some have since  
claimed that Britain’s responsibility stems from its inaction over Ian  
Smith’s regime in Rhodesia. Harold Wilson said at the time that  
Britain could not act ‘against kith and kin’ (1).

This was quickly extended to a call for the United Nations to act  
collectively. Among the first to do so was the Zimbabwean opposition -  
the Movement for Democratic Change, who claimed to have won the  
election - who warned that international intervention was necessary in  
order to stabilise a potentially violent transition to a post-Mugabe  
Zimbabwe (2). David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, argued  
that any electoral run-off should be supervised by an international  
presence.

In recent days, as Mugabe has continued to hold on to power and as his  
party, the Zanu-PF, has prevented the electoral commission from  
publishing all the results, the blame has shifted. One prime target  
has been China and its shipment of small arms which arrived in a South  
African port a few days ago, destined for Zimbabwe (3). Analysts have  
suggested that the timing was coincidental: the shipment would have  
been ordered before the close poll result that indicated Mugabe’s time  
was potentially up (4). China has defended itself by saying that it  
doesn’t interfere in the affairs of other countries. Nevertheless,  
this incident was cited by Western observers as further proof that  
China seeks to undermine the basic tenets of international order,  
fuelling conflict in Africa, undermining international alliances, and  
generally pursuing its interest regardless of the consequences. South  
African dockworkers were fêted as heroes for refusing to unload the  
arms shipment and promising to fight any scab labour smuggled in by  
the port authorities.

Alongside China-bashing, which has become a favoured pastime in the  
West in recent weeks (5), we now have Africa-bashing. South African  
president Thabo Mbeki’s recent comment that there is no crisis in  
Zimbabwe was merely taken as further proof of his political autism.  
Zimbabwean opposition leader, Morgan Tvsangirai, called for Mbeki to  
be ‘relieved from his duty’ (6). Mbeki has never been forgiven for  
daring to challenge the West’s moral authority regarding the AIDS  
pandemic in Africa. The Economist commented that if Mbeki believes  
there is no crisis in Zimbabwe, then there must be a moral crisis at  
the heart of the South African government (7). His successor as leader  
of the African National Congress party, and possibly as leader of  
South Africa, Jacob Zuma, has seemed more willing to pressurise  
Mugabe. This has earned him favourable commentary in the West.

The Economist goes further and blames African leaders in general for  
their complicity in Mugabe’s electoral trickery. It asks rhetorically,  
‘why should Africa as a whole be taken seriously when its leaders…  
refuse to cooperate to remove such a cancer from their midst?’ (8) It  
concludes that African governments are morally corrupt and cannot  
gather the political will to confront Mugabe, and so it is no wonder  
the continent is in a bad state. It seems that the Mugabe affair is  
only a metaphor for the ills and malaise of Africa. The Economist  
damns all of black Africa: ‘It is not surprising that Western  
taxpayers should feel loath to be generous when African leaders en  
masse refuse to boot out one of their more wicked colleagues.’ (9)

 From those who think Britain should do more for its former colony to  
those who think responsibility lies at the door of South Africa, the  
blame game around Mugabe has not stopped since the results of the  
election began to trickle in. Yet the truth is that it is only the  
Zimbabwean people who should be responsible for who governs them,  
whether this turns out to be Mugabe or not.

The difficulty has been that the opposition party, the Movement for  
Democratic Change (MDC), has been as complicit in this blame game as  
anyone else. The MDC has blamed everyone but itself for Mugabe’s  
staying power. MDC party members were among the first to call for  
international intervention. They have consistently refused to take the  
matter into their own hands, preferring to operate through legal  
channels. Ultimately, their strategy seems to be to rely on the court  
of international public opinion. Listening to their spokesmen and  
supporters is frustrating: they seem to be waiting for someone else –  
whether it’s the South African Development Community (SADC), the UN or  
a coalition of Western states - to push Mugabe out of power. Yet only  
the Zimbabwean population, in the form of the MDC or in some other  
form, can depose Mugabe. The MDC’s biggest weakness appears to be that  
it doesn’t trust itself or its own supporters to take power.

There are countless examples to draw on of what happens when a leader  
is deposed with the helping hand of outside actors. Jean-Bertrand  
Aristide was elected to office in Haiti in 1990 after securing massive  
support across the country’s impoverished population. His party was  
called Lavalas, the flood, and was a popular bottom-up political  
movement (10). Yet soon after, Aristide was ousted in a coup d’état by  
the country’s military and forced into exile. Instead of relying on  
the force of his own people to return to power, Aristide turned to the  
United Nations and to the United States. He returned to power in 1994  
with the help of Bill Clinton and US troops. Though he remained  
incredibly popular, his power now passed through the goodwill of his  
international patrons. When the United States turned against him,  
Aristide’s days in office were numbered. In 2006 he was removed from  
office in a UN-authorised American-French campaign. Haiti now has  
7,000 foreign troops on its soil, along with 1,000 foreign police  
officers, and Aristide languishes in exile.

When asked to reflect upon his role in Haiti’s recent past, Aristide’s  
justification for his reliance upon the US in 1994 is telling. He  
defended himself by saying that ‘the Haitian people are not armed…  
You’re kidding yourself if you think that the people can wage an armed  
struggle… the people have no weapons and they will never have as many  
weapons as their enemies. It’s pointless to wage a struggle on your  
enemies’ terrain, or to play by their rules. You will lose.’ (11) Yet  
people have armed themselves and fought their masters and their  
governments in the past. Aristide’s defeatism is particularly out of  
sync with his own national history: Haitian slaves armed themselves  
against their French masters and overthrew them.

International assistance doesn’t bring democracy; it only erects weak  
political institutions that are not grounded in popular will.  
Ukraine’s much-fêted ‘orange revolution’ in 2004 was a media-fuelled  
affair bankrolled by Western backers. They included George Soros’ Open  
Society foundation and the US National Endowment for Democracy, whose  
director used to head the CIA (12). The country’s ongoing political  
crises since the ‘revolution’ suggest how limited and fragile  
political change can be when it passes through outside-orchestrated  
acts of ‘People Power’.

The current crisis in Zimbabwe is overwhelmingly understood as the  
responsibility of everyone apart from the Zimbabwean people  
themselves. But only if they depose Mugabe can a properly democratic  
transition take place. Anything else will only put Zimbabweans in the  
hands of outside forces whose concerns are far removed from their own.

Christopher Bickerton is a doctoral student at the University of  
Oxford. He is co-editor of Politics without Sovereignty: A Critique of  
Contemporary International Relations (UCL Press: 2007). (Buy this book  
from Amazon(UK).)