[R-G] Disenfranchising the people of Zimbabwe

[Anthony Fenton]

Monday 23 June 2008
Brendan O’Neill
Disenfranchising the people of Zimbabwe
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5374/

Morgan Tsvangirai’s withdrawal from the presidential run-off is  
understandable – but it exposes the undemocratic dynamic to Western  
interference.

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Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to pull out of the second round of  
Zimbabwe’s presidential election is entirely understandable. Having  
been arrested five times over the past three months – and having  
watched as supporters of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were  
roughed up, thrown in jail, and prevented from speaking freely or  
gathering openly – Tsvangirai clearly feels that the election will be  
unfair, illegitimate and, for him at least, unwinnable. Robert Mugabe  
and his henchmen, who have attacked and even murdered MDC campaigners,  
have made it near impossible for a free and fair election to take place.

And yet the effective cancellation of the election, followed by  
Tsvangirai’s calls for the United Nations, the African Union and South  
Africa to intervene in order to prevent a ‘genocide’, also shows up  
the dangers of internationalising local conflicts. The events of the  
past 24 hours demonstrate that Western governments’ relentless  
exploitation of the Zimbabwe crisis has helped to disenfranchise the  
Zimbabwean people. Literally. The logic of Western pressure has made  
the MDC reliant on the favour and flattery of external forces, rather  
than on the grit and the votes of its own mass support base.

Commentators argue that external governments have ‘ignored’ Zimbabwe  
for too long. The problem is precisely the opposite: there has been  
too much interference. Over the past decade, American and European  
leaders cynically transformed Mugabe’s Zimbabwe into the West’s  
whipping boy in Africa, a ‘pariah state’ against which they could  
pontificate in order to demonstrate their seriousness about combating  
‘evil’ in global affairs. Governments and institutions imposed  
economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, froze international loans, warned off  
foreign investors, denied Zimbabwean officials the right to travel  
freely around the world, and seriously discussed taking military action.

The impact of this singling out of Zimbabwe for economic and political  
punishment has been dire. Firstly, Western meddling has contributed  
enormously to Zimbabwe’s current economic crisis. It is reported that  
the Zimbabwean economy has shrunk by more than a third since 1999, a  
‘decline worse than in major African civil wars’ (1). According to one  
critical author – Gregory Elich, author of Strange Liberators:  
Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit – this economic collapse  
was in no small part caused by ‘Western financial restrictions,  
[which] made it nearly impossible for Zimbabwe to engage in normal  
international trade’ (2).

Secondly, Western interference has warped the political dynamic in  
Zimbabwe, and weakened the mass of the population. The transformation  
of Zimbabwe’s local clashes into an international morality play has  
made Mugabe more belligerent and intractable. Massively isolated by  
world opinion, and transformed into ‘the Hitler of Africa’, Mugabe has  
little to lose by way of international reputation in violently  
usurping the free and fair electoral process. Indeed, if anything, the  
borderline colonialist actions of Western governments have helped  
Mugabe – an old anti-colonial warrior – to shore up his support base  
in Zimbabwe. At the same time, Western intervention has led his  
opponents in the MDC to make an inexorable turn towards the  
international sphere over their own grassroots supporters. The West’s  
incessant and loud declarations about ‘saving Zimbabwe’ means the MDC  
is more likely to appeal to powerful institutions over here rather  
than harness the power of its millions of supporters over there.

Following the first presidential election at the end of March – which  
the MDC won, but not outright – Tsvangirai immediately left Zimbabwe  
and spent six weeks touring the world. He presented regional leaders  
in southern Africa with evidence that ‘Mugabe planned attacks on the  
opposition’, and then ‘embarked on an international tour to rally  
support for democracy in his country’ (3). Last year, the US State  
Department confirmed for the first time that it had sponsored ‘events’  
in Zimbabwe aimed at ‘discrediting’ Mugabe, and it is reported that  
the MDC also receives financial backing and political direction from  
Britain, Germany, Holland and Denmark (4).

The logic of contemporary ‘humanitarian intervention’, which presents  
the international community as the saviour of beleaguered populations,  
is that opposition movements in the South often spend more time  
cultivating big backers in the West than leading, convincing or  
strengthening their own support base. The withdrawal of the MDC from  
the election – in order that, as one commentator says, the UN and  
others might ‘intervene to rescue Zimbabwe’s people’ (5) – is the  
logical conclusion to this process: people in Zimbabwe can no longer  
vote for ‘democratic change’, but rather must wait to be saved by  
outsiders.

Tsvangirai’s withdrawal from the presidential run-off does not only  
show that Mugabe’s Zanu-PF is jealously guarding its power by  
denigrating democracy. It also is a powerful metaphor for the impact  
of ‘humanitarian’ meddling in other state’s affairs, where millions of  
people have effectively been robbed of their vote, and have been  
turned overnight from active subjects who might vote or fight against  
their opponents into pathetic objects who must be ‘rescued’ by brave  
external observers. Zimbabwe shows that Western intervention always  
makes things worse: it has contributed to a dire economic crisis,  
entrenched political divisions, and helped to disenfranchise the  
Zimbabwean people. Mugabe might beat people up for ‘voting the wrong  
way’; now they won’t even have the choice to ‘vote the wrong way’.

Voting for the MDC under Mugabe may have been a very risky endeavour,  
but millions were prepared to take that risk. Now, instead, they have  
effectively been turned into the charges of powerful external actors.  
Between being harassed by Mugabe and rescued by the West – these must  
not be the only choices for the people of Zimbabwe.

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his website here.

Previously on spiked

Brendan O’Neill said American and European governments have  
transformed Mugabe’s Zimbabwe into the West’s whipping boy in Africa.  
Chris Bickerton argued that Mugabe’s refusal to stand down was being  
used as a stick to beat Africa. In 2007, Western journalists spoke of  
a revolution in Zimbabwe, but David Chandler said the picture on the  
ground was more one of disillusionment and resignation. Philip  
Cunliffe looked at what it means for Darfur to have been colonised by  
‘peacekeepers’. Or read more at spiked issue Africa.

(1) Britain prepares £1bn-a-year package to aid Zimbabwe, Guardian, 3  
April 2008

(2) The Battle over Zimbabwe’s Future, Global Research, 13 April 2007

(3) Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai returns to Zimbabwe, says he  
feels safe, International Herald Tribune, 24 May 2008

(4) See Zimbabwe and the new Cowardly Colonialism, by Brendan O’Neill

(5) From Terror to Hunger, Washington Post, 5 June 2008