[R-G] Zimbabwe and the new Cowardly Colonialism

[Anthony Fenton]

Thursday 3 April 2008
Editor, Brendan O'Neill
Zimbabwe and the new Cowardly Colonialism
Western intervention against Robert Mugabe’s ‘evil regime’ put  
Zimbabwe into an economic straitjacket and disempowered its people.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4942/

‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’, said a frontpage headline in the London Evening  
Standard yesterday. Only there were no quote marks around the words  
‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’, which made it difficult to tell if the paper  
was reporting the thoughts of Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for  
Democratic Change (MDC) upon its electoral victory over Robert  
Mugabe’s Zanu-PF Party, or its own back-slapping relish at the thought  
that its journalism may have played a part in toppling Mugabe. Indeed,  
‘We’ve beaten Mugabe’ could be the slogan of political and media  
operators in Britain and elsewhere in the West, who like to fantasise  
that Mugabe is ‘Africa’s Hitler’, that his Zimbabwe was ‘more evil  
than, for example, China and Saudi Arabia’, and that it is up to the  
West to ‘put pressure on Zimbabwe to change’ (1).

The media reports about Zimbabwe’s elections present them as a clash  
between the ‘evil’ Mugabe and the ‘heroic’ Tsvangirai, an electoral  
battle for Zimbabwe’s soul. Mugabe is depicted as having brought  
Zimbabwe to its knees, causing widespread poverty and enforcing terror  
and repression, and Tsvangirai is discussed as the harbinger of a  
dignified ‘revolution’ against Mugabeism (2). This is a fantasy. It  
ignores the key role played by Western governments and financial  
institutions in using sanctions, tough diplomacy and the proxy  
interventionists of the South Africa government and the African Union  
to isolate and harry Zimbabwe over the past decade. Such self-serving  
external meddling has contributed to Zimbabwe’s economic crisis - and  
it has dangerously distorted the political dynamics inside Zimbabwe  
and elsewhere in the south of Africa.

Over the past 10 years, American and European governments cynically  
transformed Mugabe’s Zimbabwe into the West’s whipping boy in Africa,  
the state they love to hate, a country against which they can enforce  
tough sanctions to demonstrate their seriousness about standing up to  
‘evil’. The West has imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe, warned  
off foreign investors, denied Zimbabwean officials the right to travel  
freely around the world, demonised Mugabe as an ‘evil dictator’,  
discussed the idea of military action against Zimbabwe, and used moral  
and financial blackmail to cajole South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki  
to ‘deal with’ Mugabe (3).

Objectively, this singling out of Mugabe’s regime as the ‘worst  
government on Earth, the most brutal, destructive, lawless government’  
made little sense (4). No doubt Mugabe is a nasty piece of work, but  
then so are some of the government heads that the West is more than  
happy to work with. Indeed, one could argue that, over the past  
decade, there was more choice and openness in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe than  
there was in Rwanda and Uganda, both close political allies of America  
and Britain. No, Zimbabwe was labelled the demon of Africa, not in  
response to events on the ground in Zimbabwe itself, but in response  
to the needs and desires of governments in the West looking for a  
purposeful mission in international affairs.

Western meddling pushed Zimbabwe to the precipice. Yet listening to  
the discussion of the elections, you could be forgiven for thinking  
that the country had suffered from a sudden, inexplicable case of  
Spontaneous National Combustion. The economic crisis is depicted as a  
peculiar phenomenon on a continent where there has mostly been  
economic growth in recent years. Where most of Africa’s economies have  
been growing at a rate of between five and six per cent recently,  
Zimbabwe is the only African country that had a negative GDP in  
2007/2008. 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’, says one newspaper (5). Apparently there’s an  
unemployment rate of around 80 per cent, and inflation is running at  
100,586 per cent (6). Yet the only explanation given for this economic  
nosedive is Mugabe’s seizure of colonial-era, white-owned commercial  
farms eight years ago. As the UK Guardian says: ‘The economic crisis  
is largely blamed on the seizure of white-owned farms that began in  
2000, disrupting the agriculture-based economy.’ (7) It is true that  
foreign exchange earnings from these former white-owned farms have  
plummeted, causing major economic problems; but there is more to  
Zimbabwe than tobacco and the other cash crops once produced by the  
white farmers.

A key driver of Zimbabwe’s economic crisis has been the West’s  
attempts to bring down Mugabe by turning the financial levers.  
Relentlessly, the American and British governments, and the European  
Union, economically punished Mugabe’s Zimbabwe for what they  
considered to be its political disobedience. In November 1998, the  
International Monetary Fund (IMF) implemented undeclared sanctions  
against Zimbabwe, by warning off potential investors, freezing loans  
and refusing to negotiate with Zimbabwean officials on the issue of  
debt. In September 1999, the IMF suspended its support for economic  
adjustment and reform in Zimbabwe. In October 1999, the International  
Development Association, a multilateral development bank, suspended  
all structural adjustment loans and credits to Zimbabwe; in May 2000  
it suspended all other forms of new lending (8).

In December 2001, the US passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic  
Recovery Act, which decreed that Mugabe could restore relations with  
international financial institutions only if he agreed to conditions  
on Zimbabwe’s rule of law, the presence of its troops in the Congo,  
and the conduct of its internal elections. The American law also  
instructed all US members of international financial institutions to  
oppose and vote against any extension of loans, credits or guarantees  
to Zimbabwe. In 2002, then British foreign secretary Jack Straw  
declared that Britain would ‘oppose any access by Zimbabwe to  
international financial institutions’. Also in 2002, British officials  
threatened to withdraw financial assistance to other countries in  
southern Africa unless they, too, imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe.  
This led Benjamin Mkapa, then president of Tanzania, to complain that  
African members of the British Commonwealth were enduring ‘a  
bombardment for an alliance against Mugabe’ (9). The European Union  
imposed ‘smart’ sanctions against Zimbabwe, refusing to allocate visas  
for travel in EU countries to Mugabe and his officials and freezing  
all of their economic assets in Europe (10). In the early and  
mid-2000s, both the World Bank and the IMF tried to dissuade states  
and institutions from extending financial credit to Zimbabwe. A  
Zimbabwean official claimed that: ‘Our contacts in various countries  
have indicated that these institutions are using all sorts of tactics  
to cow all those who are keen to assist Zimbabwe.’ (11)

The economic punishment of ‘evil Mugabe’ by powerful Western forces  
had a massive impact on Zimbabwe. According to one critical observer,  
Gregory Elich, author of Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and  
the Pursuit of Profit, ‘Western financial restrictions made it nearly  
impossible for Zimbabwe to engage in normal international trade’. And  
‘for a nation that had to import 100 per cent of its oil, 40 per cent  
of its electricity and most of its spare parts, Zimbabwe was highly  
vulnerable to being cut off from access to foreign exchange’. Elich  
argues that the impact of Western restrictions on trading and  
crediting with Zimbabwe was ‘immediate and dire’: ‘The supply of oil  
fell sharply, and periodically ran out entirely. It became  
increasingly difficult to muster the foreign currency to maintain an  
adequate level of imported electricity, and the nation was frequently  
beset by blackouts. The shortage of oil and electricity in turn  
severely hobbled industrial production, as did the inability to import  
raw materials and spare parts. Business after business closed down and  
the unemployment rate soared...’ (12)

Alongside turning the screws on Zimbabwe’s economy, the West  
interfered politically in an attempt to undermine Mugabe’s government.  
America’s Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001  
authorised President George W Bush to fund ‘opposition media’ as well  
as ‘democracy and governance programmes’ inside Zimbabwe. In April  
last year, the US State Department confirmed for the first time that  
the US had sponsored ‘events’ in Zimbabwe aimed at ‘discrediting’  
Mugabe (13). It is reported that the opposition party MDC also  
received financial backing and political direction from Britain,  
Germany, Holland, Denmark and the US.

A small number of political observers in the West have questioned the  
wisdom of Western interference in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs. When  
America passed its Zimbabwe Act, US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney  
asked during a debate in the House of Representatives why US officials  
were enforcing politically-motivated sanctions against a mostly  
democratic country: ‘Zimbabwe is Africa’s second-longest stable  
democracy. It is multi-party. It had elections last year [in 2001]  
where the opposition [the MDC] won over 50 seats in parliament. It has  
an opposition press which vigorously criticises the government and  
governing party. It has an independent judiciary which issues  
decisions contrary to the wishes of the governing party.’ (14) Indeed,  
one of the ostensible reasons why America passed the Act was to  
protest against the presence of Zimbabwean troops in the Congo. Yet,  
in 2001, both Uganda and Rwanda also had troops in the Congo; and  
neither Uganda nor Rwanda allowed opposition political parties or a  
free press. Yet both were allies of America, and received considerable  
economic backing from the US.

Mugabe was no doubt a rotten ruler; his party certainly used pressure  
and even force in order to secure victory in general elections in the  
late 1990s and the 2000s. Yet that is not why he was singled out as a  
‘tyrant’ and an ‘African Hitler’. It was political considerations in  
the West that elevated Mugabe to that position and transformed  
Zimbabwe into a pariah state. Western governments despised what they  
considered to be Mugabe’s cheek, in particular his temerity in daring  
to seize white farms, to interfere in the Congo without a green light  
from the US, and his frequent denunciations of Western colonialism.  
Indeed, since the defeat of the white rulers of Rhodesia in 1980,  
Mugabe lived off his reputation as a brave warrior against Western  
arrogance in Africa. It was colonialism and imperialist intervention  
that gave him his base of support, which has always been a substantial  
one, despite, or perhaps because of, international hostility against  
Zimbabwe. As the African commentator Barrie Collins has argued: ‘Since  
the end of the Cold War, the USA and the UK have got used to a high  
degree of compliance on the part of African governments - and they are  
no longer prepared to tolerate those, like Zimbabwe, that insist on  
doing things their own way.’ (15)

Bashing Zimbabwe played a dual role for Western officials and  
commentators. It allowed those of a conservative stripe to defend the  
historic reputation of colonialism by comparing it favourably with the  
rule of individuals like Mugabe. Eton-educated British observers  
loathed Mugabe because they considered him a symbol of African  
cockiness, who had humiliated Ian Smith (the white minority ruler of a  
self-declared ‘independent’ Rhodesia from 1965 to 1979) before the  
eyes of the world. Attacking Mugabe’s rule became a way of  
rehabilitating the image of old-fashioned, British-tinged colonialism.  
At the same time, one-time anti-colonialist radicals - including most  
notably the gay rights activist Peter Tatchell in the UK - focused  
their political energies on opposing Mugabe, describing him as  
intolerant and not sufficiently respectful of minority rights. At a  
time when political radicalism is on the wane in the West, some  
activists sought to recover their old campaigning spirit by taking  
potshots at the easy target of a beleaguered African state. Indeed,  
radicals often led the charge for tougher economic and political  
punishment of Zimbabwe - and frequently, they got what they asked for.

 From the late 1990s to today, Zimbabwe became the West’s favoured  
punchbag in the ‘Dark Continent’. Yet Western governments have chosen  
striking forms of intervention. Instead of militarily and directly  
intervening in Zimbabwean affairs - despite loud demands from the  
colonialist/radical alliance that they should do so - governments in  
the West pursued a more hands-off form of meddling in Mugabe’s regime.  
They used sanctions and economic blackmail; they funded opposition  
parties and ‘events’; and most revealingly they put pressure on South  
Africa, Tanzania and other nearby states to use their muscle to try to  
push Mugabe from power. This was effectively ‘blacked-up imperialism’,  
an attempt by Western powers nervous about being seen smashing their  
way into Africa to use local proxies to do their dirty work for them.  
To their credit, many African officials refused to play the game. The  
African Union turned down Western suggestions to send forces to  
Zimbabwe in 2005, arguing that ‘it is not proper for the AU commission  
to start running the internal affairs of members’ states’. Though  
South Africa’s Mbeki has become involved in Zimbabwean politics, he  
has also, to the irritation of Western observers, insisted that the  
future of Zimbabwe ‘has never been a South African responsibility’ (16).

Zimbabwe captures both the West’s sense of caution in international  
affairs and also its inexorable drive to interfere wherever and  
however it can. As the former British foreign secretary Margaret  
Beckett argued, Britain cannot be seen explicitly interfering in  
Zimbabwe because we are ‘the old colonial power’ - yet at the same  
time Britain apparently has a ‘responsibility’ to spread democracy  
around the world (17). The end result of this schizophrenic approach  
to African affairs and international affairs more broadly - a  
political defensiveness combined with a desire to do something  
seemingly purposeful and proper - is an unpredictable, ravenous,  
behind-the-scenes form of meddling in other countries’ affairs, a kind  
of ‘cowardly colonialism’. And it can have dire consequences for  
people in the third world.

On the basis of little more than the fact that they needed a focus for  
their international pretensions, Western governments have put Zimbabwe  
into an economic straitjacket and warped its internal political  
process. If the sanctions, blackmail and withdrawal of trade have  
helped to push Zimbabwe’s economy into freefall, then the relentless  
backdoor political interventions have disempowered the people of  
Zimbabwe. The dynamic of Western intervention caused Mugabe to become  
more entrenched and paranoid about outsiders - and it encouraged the  
MDC to look to Western officials and radicals for their favour and  
flattery rather than to build a meaningful grassroots movement inside  
Zimbabwe. Indeed, for all the talk of a ‘revolution’ in Zimbabwe, both  
during minor street protests last year and during the elections this  
week, many people actually seem quite resigned about Zimbabwe’s fate.  
As one report recently said: ‘[T]he opposition hasn’t been able to  
mobilise tens of thousands of people…’ (18) Lots of the current news  
coverage continually shows Zimbabweans queuing up for hours to buy a  
newspaper for a few thousand dollars so that they can read about the  
elections. This footage is supposed to show how bad inflation has  
become in Zimbabwe, but it also reveals something else: that the  
West’s attempted strangulation of Mugabe’s regime reduced the people  
of Zimbabwe to observers rather than masters of their fate, who look  
to the front pages of newspapers to find out what might happen next in  
their country.

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

Previously on spiked

Brendan O’Neill said that Darfur has become pornography for chattering  
classes. Philip Cunliffe looked at what it means for Darfur to have  
been colonised by ‘peacekeepers’. He argued that Bernard-Henri Lévy’s  
report from Darfur shows that liberal lust for Western intervention  
survived Iraq, and that African Union troops are being enlisted in  
Darfur to give a respectable face to Western intervention. Or read  
more at spiked issue Africa.

(1) End of days for ‘Africa’s Hitler’, National Post, 1 April 2008

(2) Heroic return for Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Independent.ie, 28  
March 2008

(3) Mugabe hoping to side-step Mbeki and Annan , ioL, 24 July 2005

(4) Abroad at Home; A Regime Of Thugs, New York Times, 5 May 2001

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

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

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

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

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

(10) ‘This time, Bob, it’s personal’, by Barrie Collins, 22 February  
2002

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

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

(13) US reveals its efforts to topple Mugabe regime, Guardian, 6 April  
2007

(14) Sanctions, which sanctions?, New African, May 2007

(15) ‘This time, Bob, it’s personal’, by Barrie Collins, 22 February  
2002

(16) Trashing Mugabe, by Josie Appleton, 25 July 2005

(17) See Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett Condemns Mugabe Goverment

(18) Zimbabwe: talking up a revolution, by David Chandler, 22 April  
2007