Blogs > Cliopatria > Mbeki and Mugabe

Aug 13, 2004

Mbeki and Mugabe




It’s time for Thabo Mbeki to step up to the plate, to decide that for which his administration’s foreign policy is going to stand. According to this article in the Mail and Guardian, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is considering using his nation’s dwindling food supplies as a “political weapon” in the coming elections. Apparently, possessing a Zanu-PF membership card also will allow access to food supplies, whereas membership in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) could mean starvation. Never mind that the main reason for the food paucities in Zimbabwe can be traced directly to Mugabe’s erratic tyranny. Never mind that Mugabe has refused any sort of aid that could alleviate the crisis his people face. Mugabe is effectively using food as yet another means of waging terrorist war on his people. This must be stopped.

But who is going to stop it? Every time the British raise objections, it plays into Mugabe’s tiresome but crudely effective ploy of casting aside all challenges as evocative of the imperialist past. The United States should do a more effective job of, at minimum, voicing concern, but its cries will surely receive the same by now boilerplate response. This is why we should be urging Thabo Mbeki to use every bit of leverage at his disposal to twist Mugabe’s arms. Niceties about “pan-Africanism” and the “African renaissance” aside, Mugabe is clearly an evil enemy to his people. He is a destabilizing force in a region not exactly beset with stability. And from South Africa’s vantage point, a Zimbabwe increasingly thrust into chaos cannot be a good thing. It is time for Mbeki to be a statesman. It is time for him to be a leader. In the next year, there will be another chance to remove Zimbabwe’s cancerous President-for Life from office. For all of its problems, South Africa is still the most powerful nation in sub-Saharan Africa whether measured in political, military, or economic might. If Mbeki, the ANC, or the South African parliament show a willingness to take the lead against Mugabe’s murderous kleptocracy, it will not only solve one of the most seemingly intractable problems on the continent, it also may provide a roadmap for what African diplomacy can be in the future.

Horrifying as it is, Mugabe’s latest cruel gambit provides another opportunity for South Africa to grasp the mantle of leadership that it was afforded when the country threw off the shackles of apartheid. It remains to be seen whether the Rainbow Nation of God will seize the opportunity, or will continue fecklessly to embrace the old canards of African unity that fly in the face of reality on the ground, a reality in which African leaders kill, starve, and steal while the rest of the continent looks away toward an imperial past that, for all of the harm it inflicted, has little to do with the dwindling maize supplies in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and the way he may use them as another cudgel against an already beaten-down people.



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David Lion Salmanson - 8/17/2004

Chris,
Can you really call the GA semi-democratic when few of the countries voting are Democracies? And can you please not bring Israel into every discussion? We may be heading towards Petit's law... The first person to bring in the Palestinian Question to a discussion on an otherwise different topic bores the rest to tears.
Your contributions are often great but don't you ever get tired of the "Israeli atrocities" vs. "exterminate the race/murder bombers" argument that goes nowhere?


Derek Charles Catsam - 8/14/2004

Jonathan --
By the way, with regard to your solution -- part of the problem is that Mugabe would be highly unlikely just to let NGO's in to bring food and other needed supplies. And if he let them in, he'd almost surely commandeer them.
dc


Derek Charles Catsam - 8/14/2004

Chris --
Are you going to mention Israel every time I write something? The Zimbabwe situation has nothing to do with Israel. And that you want to conflate it means we have a simple solution: if you mention Israel in a comment to a post not about Israel, I am simply not going to engage you. Furthermore, in a post about Zimbabwe I am somehow illegitimate if I do not mention every other outrage in the world -- as if i have not in the past addressed the Congo or Sudan right here on Rebunk. Zimbabweans are going to starve, and all you want to do is sit back and blame the US. But I am sure Zimbabweans would be happy that you think they should stand in line behind what you perceive as other, worse, atrocities, including the immensely vapid assertion of "US Terrorism." You are a trip.
dc


E. Simon - 8/14/2004

So Chris,

Is our stance vis-a-vis the Sudan *wrong* because it might simultaneously stem from oil interests or should we not intervene to aid Darfur because they would somehow resent it?

Would you reject someone's attempt to save your life if they did it for reasons that differ from reasons that you would prefer? If self-interest is wrong then what makes your work worthwhile? You do believe that humanitarian work, at its core, serves someone else's self-interest, does it not? If doing something good for someone else advances their own self-interest, why don't you renounce such action?


chris l pettit - 8/14/2004

An op ed in the Guardian today that has to do with the Sudan situation and that illustrates the blatant hypocrisy of the Security Council, the veto power, and the reasons why power to sanction and legally bind should be put in the hands of the at least semi-democratic General Assembly rather than in the hands of the human rights and international law violating P5 and their blatant self interest that precludes any actual international concern.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1282930,00.html

CP
www.wicper.org


chris l pettit - 8/14/2004

I have been in Zim twice in the past two years and will soon be travelling both there and to Dafur with Global Exchange and WICPER. SO take heart that there are some of us who are actually doing something while most others are looking after their own self interests.

As correct as DC is for pointing out the atrocious situation in Zimbabwe, the question can be asked why we arent doing more all over the place. The Middle East is in flames due to Israeli and US atrocities, the DRC is in the midst of the same type of crisis that is enflaming Zim (just hasn't gotten the press), Sudan is looking at many times the number of killed and threatened by starvation (and one of the only reasons we hear anything is because of the oil possibilities in Sudan...and we never hear about the US support of Chadian paramilitaries and Sudanese tribal groups that are as complicit in atrocities as the Sudanese government and janjaweed militias), the Russians are committing crimes against humanity against Chechnya, Indonesians guilty of US supported atrocities against the East Timorese are walking free (making yet another mockery of the international system), the "drug war" in Colombia is still costing thousands of innocent lives due to the ignorance of the US supported government and the inhumanity of FARC, the US is frantically trying to stop Chavez from coming out on top on Sunday in the referendum so that the oil barons can return to starving the population of Venezuela...and on and on.

So gentlemen...where is the outrage? I see a lot of lamenting when there seems to be a self interest, but nothing in terms of an actual legal or ethical stance. I would rank Israeli terror, Russian terror, American terror, Sudanese atrocities, the DRC situation, and maybe a couple of others ahead of Zimbabwe. Does anyone see the similarity in what is happening in Zimbabwe and US supported policies in Haiti? Hell, we even turn away refugees from Haiti because they are only being "economically persecuted," the same tactic being used in this instance by Mugabe.

Is it wrong and dastardly? Yes. Should it be stopped? Yes. Should DC show a little consistency and acknowledge all atrocities instead of those he does not support? Yes. It is hard not to seem hypocritical (as the US and UK do when criticising Mugabe's actions) when their own actions are as bad if not worse.

On a side note...Mbeki needs to do a heck of a lot more than finally stand up to despots like Mugabe. Implementing the economic, social and cultural rights decisions of the Constitutional Court would be a good start, ending the continued exploitation of the entire population in order to create a small black elite to stand beside the white elite while leaving the middle and lower classes struggling would be another step, depositing Manto in the nearest lake and providing government subsidized AIDS anti-retrovirals instead of bringing in quacks from the US to try and argue disproven theories is another thing. South Africa has a lot of potential and has come a long way since apartheid, but there is a lot of work still to be done here.

I guess I just ask you to call a spade a spade and absolutely support Dr. Dresner's call for NGO's and political pressure, not just on despots like Mugabe and the Sudanese regime, but also against the other terrorist and oppressive regimes in the world, including our own.

Somehow, I am a bit skeptical that this will occur and think that self interest will be the order of the day...

CP
www.wicper.org


Jonathan Dresner - 8/13/2004

What we need is not political pressure: as you point out, Mugabe is clearly immune to Western entreaties, and not terribly interested in anyone else's opinion. Using food as a political tool is indeed horrific, and should qualify him as a war criminal.

What we need is to take the weapon away: find NGOs that can flood the country with food aid, so much so that it doesn't even matter whether he tries to control the flow or not.

I know, it won't happen, and it might not even work. But what's the harm in trying? Anyone?