The Economist (Print Edition)
IT IS hard to believe that the horrors inflicted by Zimbabwe’s ruler on his own people could get worse. But even in the past week they have. The burning to death of a six-year-old boy because his father is an opposition politician, and the butchering of the young wife of the capital’s new opposition mayor, are part of a growing wave of violence that has persuaded Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, to withdraw from the presidential run-off that was due on June 27th. He rightly felt that, by standing in the election, he was risking the lives of too many thousands of his supporters.
Yet Robert Mugabe’s crimes are finally coming home to roost. He will claim to be re-elected president, by default. But he has lost one of the big things that have kept him in power to date: the grudging support of Africa. His brutality and fraudulence have become so plain for all to see that neighbours who once defended him are changing their tune. Just as he is poised to declare himself the winner, almost the entire continent—not to mention the rest of the world—has come to believe that he cannot be allowed to stay in office (see article).
He is, as a result, weaker; but he and his thugs are determined to hang on. He has the tyrant’s delusion that “only God”, as he puts it, can displace him. So Western and African countries, especially Zimbabwe’s neighbours, must act in concert to get rid of the ogre that has shamed an entire continent.
How to finish him off
The first and easiest act is to refuse to recognise any administration led by Mr Mugabe. The European Union, the United States and much of the rich world will ostracise him. Now is the time for Africa, especially the influential regional club of 14 countries known as the Southern African Development Community (SADC), to follow suit. A swelling chorus of other African leaders has condemned the election as unfair. Even South Africa, whose spineless president, Thabo Mbeki, is still refusing to criticise Mr Mugabe outright, has begun to turn against him. Its likely next president, Jacob Zuma, is increasingly exasperated. Its trade unions have called for a blockade of Zimbabwe, symbolic at first but perhaps a harbinger of pressure to come. Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s beacon of decency, in London this week to celebrate his 90th birthday, spoke out against the “tragic failure of leadership in our neighbouring Zimbabwe”.
South Africa remains the key. Its leaders have long had the power to bring Mr Mugabe to his knees, just as their white predecessors squeezed the life out of Rhodesia’s white-supremacist leader, Ian Smith, three decades ago, letting Mr Mugabe take over when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. Mr Mbeki will argue that economic strangulation would hurt the hapless Zimbabwean masses more than the pampered elite around Mr Mugabe. In the short run, he is right. Humanitarian aid must continue to flow into Zimbabwe, though Mr Mugabe has made it hard—often impossible—for charitable outfits to ensure that their largesse goes directly to the right poor people. But South Africa, along with other countries in the SADC, should certainly join in imposing the targeted sanctions already enforced by the EU, the Americans and other governments against Mr Mugabe and 130-odd of his closest comrades, who are banned from visiting the penalising countries and have had their assets there frozen. Depriving Mr Mugabe’s cronies of trips to a decent country that works could have a salutary effect.
The African Union (AU), which embraces all 53 of Africa’s countries, should also be far more robustly involved. Unlike the SADC, which is often paralysed by its search for consensus, the AU’s rules provide for decisions, specifically including the imposition of sanctions on errant members, to be taken by a two-thirds majority. The union is holding its annual summit next week, in Egypt. It should call on its members not to recognise Mr Mugabe as president or his party as the government.
The United Nations, too, must be ready to help. South Africa has been disgracefully blocking discussion of Zimbabwe in the 15-strong Security Council, of which it is a current member (see article). But this week it was shamed into signing a unanimous statement deploring the Zimbabwean government’s violence. There have been calls for the UN to send peacekeepers and to oversee fresh elections: a nice idea that will not come to pass any time soon. At present, no such resolution in the Security Council would get the necessary support, especially from Russia and China (not to mention South Africa). Moreover, while the loss of life in such blighted places as Sudan’s Darfur province and Somalia is still many times higher than in Zimbabwe, the UN has proved unable to send anything like an adequate force to those places; getting the Security Council, and in particular China, to take action over Darfur was like pulling teeth. Yet there is every reason to start campaigning for the UN to take up the cause of Zimbabwe too. It should certainly help to manage a fresh election.
Why not send in the troops?
Some romantic spirits ask why Mr Mugabe cannot be ousted by force—by Western powers, if not the UN. It would be glorious if he were removed by any method at all. But it remains unthinkable for such an action to be taken without the co-operation—logistical, among other things—of the region’s leaders. Persuading them to collaborate in isolating Mr Mugabe is hard enough. Deploying an international force should not be ruled out in the future, especially if the violence spreads. But other methods, with Africans to the fore, must be tried first.
In any event, the rich world should spell out a generous and co-ordinated recovery plan to be acted on as soon as Mr Mugabe has gone and proper elections held that would presumably bring Mr Tsvangirai to power. Zimbabwe needs at least $10 billion to put it on the path to recovery. Yet it is a resource-rich country with a core of well-educated people, millions of whom have fled abroad and must be wooed back home. Mr Mugabe may cling to power for a while, but his grip is weaker. Zimbabwe needs help from the West. But most of all it needs its African neighbours to tell the tyrant unambiguously to go—and to snuff him out if he refuses. It can be done.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
How to get rid of Robert Mugabe
Friday, June 20, 2008
Time to End Mu-Garbage tyranny in Zimbabwe
By James Bone, Francis Elliott and Jonathan Clayton
Times online
With just a week to go before Zimbabwe’s run-off elections – and with the body count growing – President Mugabe has been warned that he could be hauled before the International Criminal Court in The Hague over the atrocities inflicted on his opponents.
A key Western diplomat, speaking yesterday on condition of anonymity, said: “He needs to know he is moments away from an ICC indictment.”
Twelve bodies of activists, most of them showing signs of torture, were found across Zimbabwe yesterday.
In New York, Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, convened a crisis meeting at the United Nations. She said: “By its actions, the Mugabe regime has given up any pretence that the June 27 elections will be allowed to proceed in a free and fair manner. We have reached the point where stronger international action is needed.”
Also yesterday, Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, was denied a passport, and his deputy, Tendai Biti, was charged with subversion and election rigging – offences that carry the death penalty.
African leaders began to desert Mr Mugabe. A day after President Mbeki of South Africa failed to make any headway in face-to-face talks with President Mugabe, neighbouring states delivered their strongest condemnation yet.
Bernard Membe, the Tanzanian Foreign Minister, said: “There is every sign that these elections will never be free or fair.” He said that he and the foreign ministers of Swaziland and Angola – the peace and security troika from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) – would write to their presidents to “do something urgently” to save Zimbabwe.
A senior SADC diplomatic source said: “The last allies he has in the world – SADC – are now saying they have had enough and this disgrace cannot go on. His obduracy has united them against him. They are trying to make him realise that a poll victory is no victory.”
South Africa, which has advocated “quiet diplomacy”, snubbed Dr Rice’s efforts. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, the Foreign Minister, skipped the UN meeting on Zimbabwe but attended a separate meeting with Dr Rice on sexual violence. They met briefly. Dr Rice said that she and Ms Zuma wanted the same thing for Zimbabwe.
Any attempt to bring Mr Mugabe before the court in The Hague faces formidable obstacles. The ICC has charged 11 Africans – two from Sudan, four from Uganda, one from the Central African Republic and four from the Democratic Republic of the Congo – but it does not have jurisdiction over Zimbabwe. It would have to be referred to the court by the 15-nation UN Security Council.
The Security Council is so split that the US, holding the presidency this month, is having trouble even holding a briefing on the violence. US diplomats may have to force a procedural vote to get Zimbabwe on to the agenda because of resistance from council members such as South Africa, Russia, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Libya.
The US does not itself recognise the ICC, although it allowed the council to refer the Darfur crisis to the court. An official told The Times that the Bush Administration would be reluctant to accept another “carve-out” to the ICC by referring Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwean authorities are outraged by any suggestion that Mr Mugabe might face an international court. Florence Ziyambi, the prosecutor, cited the threat of international prosecution as one of the grounds for charging Mr Biti. “They are alleging that the President is a criminal since they want to take him to The Hague,” she told the court. Whatever happens on the 27th, Mu-Garbage must be stopped.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Is Thabo Mbeki the source of South Africa Xenophobia?
The seemingly well orchestrated xenophobic attacks (pitting locals against hapless “black foreigners” in the township of Alexandra, north of Johannesburg) has left many injured, dead or displaced after they were forcefully evicted and their houses destroyed. The violence has shown no signs of abating and has been spreading fast to the city center and across the Gauteng region. Reports indicate an increase of violence against women and children who have been left to bear the brunt of this insensitive fervor. According to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) which has treated many victims of live bullets, beatings and rape, it is a classic refugee situation that will eventually overwhelm the authorities. South African police were stretched so thin that the military had to be deployed to help quell the situation. Why the violence?
It is particularly shameful for the "Rainbow Nation" considering its past record on human rights abuses and democracy. South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki knows that what is happening in today is a replay of the situation in Zimbabwe some 10 years ago when Comrade Robert Mugabe began a controversial land redistribution program that saw many commercial farms seized from white farmers and turned over to blacks sending its economy into a spin. Zimbabwe has never recovered. The only difference comes in who is executing the anti “rest of Africa” policy in which poor South Africans are being used by hidden forces out to gain with the exit of black immigrants. It is therefore not strange that such violence can occur at a time when the country is preparing to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup and Mbeki ousted from the ANC leadership. Many hoped that the World Cup would bring new opportunities for the entire continent. But it seems South Africa is not ready to share such glory with the “rest of Africa”. It took days of violence for authorities to notice its magnitude. The statement from President Mbeki that “Citizens from other countries on the African continent and beyond are as human as we are and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity", was just that, a statement…a mere rhetoric.
“It has to do with two things. First of all there is resentment against the same person being at the helm, which is good for democracy. And also Mr. Mbeki had a distance between himself and the general population, and Mr. Zuma on the other hand is a very populist kind of a speaker and has closed relations with people on the ground. I think the two balance each other. It’s not necessarily a rejection of Mr. Mbeki’s policies. It is a rejection of Mr. Mbeki’s personality,” he said.
Pakerndorf described Mbeki as a foreign educated South African while Zuma educated himself while serving jail time for the ANC.(Continues below)
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Top posts in May 2008:
1. South Africa Violence: Why is Brother Fighting Brother?
2. Africa Day is not Socialism Day!
3. Keen on business, China is yet to flex its formidable military muscle in Africa
4. Top secrets: Gaddafi plotted to bomb Kenya
5. Democracy, reforms can end fear of instability
6. Kenya tea loses its flavor in Pakistan
NOTE:
Are the Xenophobic attacks in South Africa Justified?
(Give you view on the violence in South Africa in the poll at the top of this page)
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“If you go back in history, Mr. Mbeki left the country when he was still a teenager and spent most of his time in Europe and latter part in Lusaka, Zambia and hasn’t had a real connection with people on the ground or ordinary South Africans” Pakerndorf said.
He said the fact that Mbeki turned South Africa’s economy around matters little to ordinary South Africans.
“What is interesting and important is that people on the ground actually expect that their lives should be better and could be better. They see their fellow black South Africans moving ahead, some of them becoming millionaires, moving into brick houses. And I think that’s part of what you see happening here. People on the ground are simply saying no more of the same. We want to be part of the economy,” Pakerndorf said.
Since the apartheid era, many locals have slipped into abject poverty despite the newly expanded freedom that has done little to improve the quality of life of many in the rainbow nation. However, all blame should be targeted towards the South African government and not the immigrants many of whom are playing a positive role in the country’s development. The South African Xenophobia began with the end of apartheid, NOT yesterday like we are being made to believe. Granted, there are many South Africans who live in “the rest of Africa” but it would be despicable if they too were to undergo the same wrath.
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