SW Radio Africa Hot Seat Transcript
Hot Seat interview: journalist Violet Gonda speaks
with lawyer Brian Kagoro
Broadcast: 07 November
2008 |
Violet Gonda: My
guest on the programme Hot Seat is political commentator Brian Kagoro. Hi Brian.
Brian Kagoro: Hi Violet how are you?
Gonda: I am fine thanks. Zimbabweans have become impatient
over the delay in the talks and there are mixed reactions about what people want
to see happen. There are some who say the power sharing agreement is a step
towards stabilising food security and a step towards |
|
stopping the complete destruction of the economy, but others say the deal is
becoming irrelevant and it is not possible to build trust between the rival
parties. In your view what is good for Zimbabwe now?
Kagoro: Well what would be best for Zimbabwe is for Zimbabwe
to go through an internationally mediated, supervised election to exclude
violence and Zimbabweans choose leaders of their choice. That would be the
ideal. The deal on the table does not adequately address the human rights
question. It has no clear process for addressing the economic question and in
particular the endemic poverty and impoverishment of our people; the high
unemployment rates, as well as the market distortions. It also doesn’t have any
clear agenda for dealing with long term issues such as national justice
questions, truth and justice issues.
So in a sense I am not sure that this deal in its present formulation will
achieve much more than a ceasefire. And it’s not really a ceasefire because much
of the violence was targeted at one party by the other so it will simply allow
those who have benefitted from the status quo to continue benefitting without
the fear that they might face prosecution or some other form of justice.
Gonda: You said the ideal would be to have an
internationally supervised election. Do you think Mugabe will agree to something
like this and also what can practically happen?
Kagoro: I think several global factors makes certain things
possible. The one is the global economic downturn which means even countries
like South Africa will experience some shrinkage in the economy. It means
countries like Botswana , Mozambique , Zambia and Malawi as well as the
European, American and Australian destinations where Zimbabweans have found
solace will now experience shrinkage or are already experiencing shrinkage. And
so there will be no new safe havens and the levels of tolerance and patience
that were previously shown to Mugabe and the regime in Harare will decline. I
think that countries are going to be more inward looking, more self serving
especially those that have stood as allies of Mugabe.
But also I think options for Zimbabweans who could go out of the country as
economic and political refugees are going to shrink even further, so there is
going to be a lot less patience. I don’t think we should focus more on whether
or not Mugabe will agree or not. I don’t think he has any particular choice at
the moment. I don’t think that his African colleagues within SADC and the
African Union broadly are going to be tolerating a lot his gamesmanship that we
have seen.
Gonda: What about the historic election victory of Barack
Obama as America ’s first black President. Obviously he has so many problems to
deal with in his country and the rest of the world but what sort of implication
would an Obama presidency have on a country like Zimbabwe ?
Kagoro: I think it recreates hope that has long been lost in
electoral democracy, liberal democracy. Liberal democracy of course does not
always result in economic redistribution. So in a sense I think what the Obama
victory does is the symbolism and creates the impression that you don’t
necessarily have to have war credentials to run a country, because America like
Zimbabwe had been fixated with this war veteran issue.
Secondly, Obama is fairly young and so it begins to push parameters of the
need for the youth of the continent and of Zimbabwe to enter politics and play a
critical determinant role.
And the third issue of course is that there will be a renewed focus on the
end to tyranny, despotism, dictatorship and human rights violations and many are
going to find themselves pretty lonely if they do not comply with these
increasing global expectations. And we don’t just see it as an Obama victory we
see it in its symbolic form as a history being made for the entire black race.
So one can celebrate the Obama victory – be cautious of the limitations of
structural economic change. But structural economic change has often relied and
dependent on the energising of a people and creating the impression that their
potential can be tapped towards a positive end. Presently the potential of
Zimbabweans has been dissipated and the positive energy required to recreate a
country – a country’s vision and a country’s impetus towards its self
development has been squandered by cheap politics and sometimes just bad
management, corruption and brutality
Gonda: Do you see him implementing the same policies as
President Bush where Zimbabwe is concerned - you know the sanctions or do you
see him intensifying the diplomatic effort with the African Union or SADC to
apply more pressure on the regime?
Kagoro: I think that the dilemma of America politics is
Obama only assumes real after the 20 th of January in 2009 and American policy
shifts rather slowly – I think this is the burden of their democratic system. So
there is unlikely to be a shift in the Bush policies at least in the immediate
sense. But Obama as an individual has shown a disposition towards diplomatic
engagement, subtle forms of pressure and also the ability to give due
recognition to bodies such as the African Union and other actors who could
actually bring about positive processes that might facilitate change in
Zimbabwe.
I am opposed personally to foreign intervention of the Bush type but because
of the dilemma within Zimbabwe that is why I have insisted that the African
Union must act decisively - must take both a moral and legal position on whether
or not the June election was legal. If it was an illegal election according to
their standards then they must declare that there is no duly elected government
in Zimbabwe . The premise for negotiations then becomes the election in which no
candidate got the required 51% and then the only logical, legal conclusion would
require a re-run. And the context of the June election tells us that such a
re-run must be closely monitored and internationally supervised to avoid the
will of the electorate being usurped or undermined through violence and
thuggery.
Gonda: But Brian do you realisticallythink
that SADC or the African Union can do more than what it is doing right now
because critics say these two bodies don’t have the guts to confront Robert
Mugabe and didn’t even have the guts to confront him on his appalling human
rights and democratic record?
Kagoro: I think that diplomacy by its very nature is a
limiting but also an empowering fact. The laws that govern relations between
nations have two sets; the one that insists on non intervention in the internal
affairs of a sovereign country. The second one is the agreed principle of the
responsibility to protect – that suggests that humanitarian reasons and human
rights reasons merit the limitation of sovereignty to a certain extent. The
rules under which you actually get to limit such sovereignty are cumbersome and
almost impossible to operate. So the seeming inaction of SADC is basically
accepted amongst Heads of State, that you don’t speak to each other or shout at
each other in the public sphere – that you’d rather express discontent,
disappointment, and disapproval within the appropriate forum.
So SADC’s seeming inertia in dealing with the Zimbabwean issue could be
understood both in the historical context but also I think we must pay due
credence to the fact that SADC has made some moves rather belatedly by sending
an observer team that actually said no conditions existed for the holding of
free and fair elections and also that some within the SADC leadership have
broken rank with this straight jacket of silence and begun to call for
fundamental paradigm shift and change of practise and behaviour in Zimbabwe.
So I am hopeful and I think like all Africans should be that several changes
on the continent point to the fact that if leaders do not intervene we will have
para state groups that are not always constructive intervening and this is why I
think SADC understands the precarious nature of the Zimbabwe situation.
Gonda: And Brian let’s look at the current problem. The
political parties are fighting over the allocation of cabinet posts. Now
obviously there has to be more to just agreeing to the sharing of ministries –
there is the larger question of the performance of the ministries and the
question of democratisation. In your view is there capacity and political will?
Kagoro: To perform, I think the Zimbabwean parliament has a
lot of capable people both with economic expertise, expertise in finance,
expertise in law, political science. The expertise is not an issue but…
(interrupted)
Gonda: But is there political will to implement the policies
that will reverse the economic tide?
Kagoro: I think it’s much more than implementing the
policies. Is there political will to include all shade of Zimbabwean political
and civic opinion in constructing the policies because the implementation of
policies alone will not turn things around unless there is ownership?
I don’t think political will exists. Political parties have functioned like a
secret society. The negotiations are transacted like a big secret on behalf of
the people of Zimbabwe who are kept away from the secret. So it would be a
surprise of sorts. There is also the issue of a bellicose state.
31 ministries is too much for a struggling economy and the apportionment of
those ministries seems to be done purely on the basis of patronage and political
consideration with no sensitivity whatsoever to the economic plight that
Zimbabweans are facing.
There is another factor Violet - the quibbling over Home Affairs. Everyone
understands its significance, all rigging happens through the Ministry of Home
Affairs, rigging happens through the registration of births and deaths, Ministry
of Home Affairs is also responsible for the deployment of the police,
investigating offences, undermining or facilitating the course of justice etc
etc.
Zimbabwe ’s real problem at the moment is a structural economic recovery
question. There has been very little focus on the economic ministries. First we
know that the extractive sector which is mining and other forms of extractors is
the only one in this global downturn that is likely to earn any form of descent
revenue. There has been very little discussion about making it transparent,
making sure it’s in hands that are capable to turn around and realise value for
the nation and not for individuals.
Secondly, it’s the tourism sector. There is rapid recovery that is needed in
that sector and there is no discussion at all in the tourism sector.
Thirdly there is the agricultural sector. I think agriculture will go back to
ZANU PF with undertakings in the agreement that there will be no revision both
of the appropriation and everybody accepts that land that was taken from
commercial white farmers – for purpose of redistribution – should not be
returned necessarily. But the issue of who got the land seems to me to be a
contradiction; I have been assured by some that there is a land audit somewhere
but it seems the agreement itself has a contradiction.
Therefore the construction of the ministry, where you have located the
ministry shows you what progress you will make in the short run.
So if you take away the social services sector - which is education, health
and co, these might depend on donor aid, these might get some injection of donor
aid. So these will just be looking at whether the people that are there are
competent. But the economic ministries – because Zimbabwe needs to again create
employment, again to be able to raise domestic revenue – it seems to me very
little attention is being paid to this because for the average Zimbabwean on the
streets yes they don’t want the police to beat them, they don’t want people to
abduct them and be killed but there is a genuine concern about employment, about
livelihood and I am not hearing that debate and that’s why I am worried that
this deal, this settlement might turnout to be the biggest hoax Zimbabwean
politics has ever endured.
It might actually turnout to be a darker moment in our history than anything
else we have ever experienced because citizens have invested hope in a lasting
peace which they will not get because of the feuding, the suspicions. Citizens
have invested hope in an economic turnaround which might not happen because
everybody will be lining their pockets, government is so shoddily structured
that it is unable to deliver. Citizens have invested hope in recreating value
for themselves and this might not happen because the economy is not opening up.
The policy space is not opening up.
Gonda : Just to add to what you are saying - do you see an
interparty government being able to avoid the pitfalls of the ZANU PF regime
where authority aggregated around the ministers themselves and not around the
policies of the ministries?
Kagoro: Yes, the biggest case is the Kenyan example. The
dynamism of the individual, the powers of the individual - individualism becomes
a critical sector because of the precarious foundations of the government.
Secondly, the question of authority is so diffuse in this new arrangement; We
have the Prime Minister, you have the President and their numerous Deputies and
Ministers of course who have to take orders from these five individuals without
any clinical sense of line management. But also with a worrying sense of
competition - not of a healthy nature, but competition around political party
silos as opposed to reaching across the divide and trying to build consensus.
That means power will become increasingly personalised unless if we put in
constitutional safe guards.
And presently the articulation of Constitutional Amendment No.19 will not
discourage the personalisation of power. And its concentration, again in a few
hands, will recreate a new dictatorship albeit decentralised dictatorship where
it has polycentric power nods - some with the Prime Ministers some with the
President. These silos of power will actually come to compete. Like they say
Violet when elephants make love the grass suffers, when elephants fight the
grass suffers, what matters is not whether they are fighting or making love but
the size of the elephant and the size of the elephant we are creating with this
new cabinet and its structure is likely to hurt the grass.
Gonda: And you know Morgan Tsvangirai’s rallies across the
country, we have seen thousands of people attending these rallies. Are they
really a report back meeting or a negotiating strategy to show strength because
some say the contestation between the political parties is now more about who
has a larger fan base? What are your thoughts on this?
Kagoro: Firstly let me commend whoever has been holding
rallies particularly my friend Mr Tsvangirai - it’s useful that there be some
semblance of reporting back to the people. But let’s demystify that. Reporting
back to the people is not the same as consulting people and hearing their views
because at a rally it’s not possible to hear the views of the people because
it’s not structured in a consultative manner. It’s structured in a manner of
sharing information. So it’s inadequate for purposes of generally hearing what
the people have to say, what they are apprehensive about, what they do not want,
what they would like to see. So what is needed is a structured process of
consulting the people in organised formations of civil society, faith based
institutions and labour and other formations.
Clearly rallies are also a negotiating strategy and there is political merit
in shoring up your numbers, showing you have the numbers behind you - after all
these are politicians. But beyond the politricks there is a need to look at the
fundamental question of genuine consultation and genuine engagement. I think
that ZANU needs to do it, MDC needs to do it. This consultation goes beyond
their structures by the way, it goes beyond their formal party structures, to
include others because the combined regime that is being proposed in the new
deal will be a regime - whether it be for 18 months, 2 years or more – that will
have oversight and leadership of all Zimbabweans and if it is to do so it must
have the consent and consensus of all Zimbabweans. You can not arrive at consent
and consensus without consultation otherwise it will be a Johannesburg import
imposed by Thabo Mbeki.
Gonda: Since the deal was signed the humanitarian crisis in
Zimbabwe has reached alarming proportions with the Zimbabwe dollar crushing
spectacularly and shops no longer accepting payment in local currency. But those
who suffer are mostly the ordinary people who have no access to the much needed
foreign currency. What about the security forces, what will happen if the army
and police demand payment in foreign currency?
Kagoro : It will dramatise the extent of crisis in the
states and of the state because the battle in the present negotiations between
the MDC and ZANU is to control the organs of state. So if the government is
unable to meet that demand it will alienate itself from those sections of the
military because what we are dealing with is the personal political economy of
each soldier. I don’t think there would be an insurrection - the Zimbabwe
military does not have a history of mutiny, not of the nature that we are
talking about.
What we are likely to see is that the conduct where soldiers could be whipped
into line to vote for particular individuals will quickly lose sway and if there
is an election anytime soon and there is level of economic discontent and
despondency is that the economy will vote against the incumbent. That you will
have a politicisation of the military - not in the partisan way that we have see
ZANU try to use power in government to politicise the military, but the military
will of itself - by military individuals/soldiers, be politicised and take an
interest in the goings on around themselves. They will begin to align with and
be one with the rest of the suffering people as they themselves will be
suffering. And there are not enough wars where you can deploy them to go and
earn forex, even the Congo one is likely to be resolved at least through this
mediation that’s going on.
And it’s not just the military Violet. It is the other arms of State such as
the justice delivery system, the judges and magistrates and others who have been
so central in the despotism that we have seen in our country. It will be the
Central Intelligence organisations and other arms of government who have stood
as allies and proxies and surrogates of oppressive forces within the Zimbabwean
political class. You will see them now beginning to turn their attention,
turning their allegiances towards pro-change politics, pro change agendas and
pro change formations. We are likely to see a split occurring within the ruling
party. There are already factions but we are likely to see a split because what
has kept the ruling party intact is not only its the ability to oil actors
within the party, but the ability to keep surveillance, supervision and some
form of fear of God within those who serve it in the public sector and those who
are members with official status in the party. But you know when you have those
actors that are able to keep surveillance and supervisions and also instill fear
of God in party faithfuls also becoming despondent and then the centre will not
be able to hold and things will begin to fall apart.
Gonda: As you mentioned at the beginning of the interview
not only do we have a political crisis but we have a financial, humanitarian and
human rights crisis but what does this mean for economic recovery will this be
resolved by a political deal?
Kagoro: No, the political deal is really not the conduit for
this. The political crisis arises out of a lack of consensus and consent of the
governed to be governed by those who are governing them. A political deal does
not address the consent and consensus issue. It imposes a form leadership upon a
people and it structures in a very narrow sense the selection process of
leadership. It takes it out of the democratic domain into a very private domain
were the leaders’ preferences determine what happens.
Secondly, a political deal itself makes you negotiate based on the lowest
common denominator as opposed to a people’s aspirations. In terms of economic
recovery for example we know that following the same economic policies and
models adopted by ZANU PF and sometimes imposed by international financial
institutions that say ‘deregulate everything, private everything’ will not
result in any fundamental change because it’s a deal of political parties. It’s
not opening the question of economic democratisation to a discussion by the
broad mass of Zimbabweans but also to a discussion by a broader array of
Zimbabwean experts. It’s based on who is invited to the table.
Thirdly a political deal does not address in any significant way how to deal
with non performing sectors of the economy of the state or of government. It
doesn’t address the ethical questions around corruption, pillaging of the state.
You know it’s a deal that you will stay together till death do you part. It’s a
deal that says ‘I know you are a thief, I know you are a murderer, I know that
you are all these other things, I know you have violated human rights, you
violated law but for the purposes of making peace we will hug you even if you
are a python.’
And of course we tend to forget Violet that hugging a python for the purposes
of making peace is foolishness. Firstly a python is a constrictor. So it may
appear non poisonous in the moment but a python does not kill by virtue of
spreading venom, it wraps itself around you, crushes you and swallows you. So a
deal designed to appease political power interests is unlikely to deal with the
fundamental questions of structural transformation in the economy, the
revolutionary transformation of the state and its role and its relationship with
the citizens and citizen groups.
A political deal often results in the privatisation of the state. It is
simply increasing the number of shareholders from ZANU PF private limited
liability company; it will now include other shareholders - minority
shareholders from the two MDCs.
So I don’t think Zimbabweans must celebrate this particular deal except for
those who want us to celebrate the symbolism that some of our friends - and
these are my very good friends - will now instead of being called stooges of the
West they will be called Prime Minster, Deputy Prime Ministers or something
else. And if those names and new titles, new houses, cars and body guards are
what we have spent all these years fighting for since the inception of the NCA
and even before when pro-democracy politics started then we have been nothing
but foolish men and women.
But I believe we have been fighting for much more, much more than for our
friends to be called big names and to appear and live big lives. We have been
fighting that there be a common standard of decency of rights for the average
person - that there be freedom in our liberated country. That every Zimbabwean
must have the confidence of knowing that their own government will not terrorise
them. That every Zimbabwean who wants to apply their entrepreneurial skills can
do so without fear that they would be discriminated against because of the
ethnic group they belong to, because of their height, their complexion or any
other discriminatory consideration. We are fighting for a truly inclusive,
democratic and accountable society and government and for me this deal doesn’t
give me this.
Gonda: Brain there are those who say Morgan Tsvangirai
should pull out of the talks as he can be swallowed up by this ‘python’ do you
agree with this?
Kagoro : Firstly I think that he has gone too far to quit
(laughs). If I had had the opportunity to give advice before, I would have said
there is nothing to lose being in or out because the people of Zimbabwe know
what you stand for and what you represent. Will he be swallowed by this? It
depends on the speed with which he is able to manoeuvre politically. I have seen
him manoeuvre several times and I think he is fairly gifted. But I think that
this time the odds and the real likelihood of him being lumped together with his
oppressors as failure, is very high. So if he really wants to survive the dirt
that comes with associating with his oppressors he will have to have his
policies clear. He will have to have his strategy and agenda of consulting the
widest possible spectrum of Zimbabwean political and civic opinion clear. He
needs to assemble a team around himself - not just friends and sycophants but a
team of some of our most gifted people in economics, finance, development and
other sectors. He has a lot of loyal friends like ourselves but he needs people
who have competencies that we have not seen coming to the fore up to this moment
within the MDC .
He needs to deal with not just the loyalty question; he also needs to deal
with the efficiency and effectiveness questions. So there are three things to
attend to: Dealing with resisting being swallowed, keeping the identity of a
liberator instead of becoming part of the oppressive machinery and keeping the
vision of a truly democratic Zimbabwe and from a mandate to govern based on a
truly democratic election in which he wins the 51%; and keeping the logic and
the reasoning that if our economy doesn’t turn around our democracy will never
revive.
Gonda: Brian Kagoro thank you very much.
Kagoro: You are welcome Violet.
Feedback can be emailed to violet@swradioafrica.com
COMESA
summit postponed again
http://www.swradioafrica.com
By Alex Bell 13 November 2008
Less than two
months after the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) awarded
Zimbabwe a second chance to hold the regional bloc's 13th summit - the
government this week announced the event has been postponed until next
year.
The summit had originally been set to take place in May, but was
called off after state-sponsored violence swept through the country in the
wake of Robert Mugabe's election loss to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the
March polls. In postponing the summit at the peak of the political violence,
COMESA said it was doing so to give Zimbabwe time to 'conclude its electoral
processes'.
Last month, in what appeared to be a hasty show of
confidence in the country as a result of the signing of the now redundant
power sharing deal, COMESA announced the summit was going ahead in November.
But on Wednesday the Minister of Industry and International Trade, Obert
Mpofu, said in the statement that the event has again been postponed - this
time until the New Year.
The announcement has fueled speculation that
the country, in the midst of a devastating humanitarian and economic crisis,
cannot afford to host the event. But Minister Mpofu has insisted the
postponement has nothing to do with finances but is rather to allow for
progress on the planned merger of COMESA with two other regional groupings,
the five-member East African Community (EAC) and the 15-member Southern
African Development Community (SADC).
"Of immediate priority is the
harmonisation of the common external tariffs of COMESA and the EAC," Mpofu
said in a statement this week.
The summit, where Zimbabwe is due to take
over the rotating chairmanship of the body from Kenya is now expected to be
held in the first six months of 2009. But with the complete collapse of the
country's economy, as well as no end in sight to the political crisis, it
would appear more likely that the event will be moved to a different host
country.
Soldiers
assault state radio DJ for wearing camouflage
http://www.swradioafrica.com
By Lance Guma 13 November
2008
Tafadzwa Sikwila, a DJ employed by ZBC's Power FM Radio, sustained
serious head injuries after being brutally assaulted by four Zimbabwe
National Army soldiers in Gweru on 25th October. According to reports which
only surfaced this week the soldiers accused him of wearing replica military
camouflage trousers, without permission (under Zimbabwe's obscure defence
Act, civilians are prohibited from wearing camouflage). After assaulting
Sikwila they threw him into an army truck that drove towards Zvishavane. The
popular disc jockey, known as DJ Squila, sustained the head injuries after
the soldiers then threw him off the moving vehicle.
A good samaritan
passing by picked up Sikwila and rushed him to Gweru Central Hospital. He
was treated for internal head bleeding and other injuries. Police have
confirmed the incident. In a stinging attack the Media Institute for
Southern Africa (MISA) criticized the law and the abduction of Sikwila.
'Where such prohibitions are existent, as is the case in Zimbabwe, they do
not stipulate that a citizen found in violation of these must be tortured or
abducted.'.
Meanwhile the failure of the SADC summit to bridge the divide
between the MDC and ZANU PF is fuelling tensions across the country.
Opposition activists accuse ZANU PF of turning to its 'default language of
violence' and say they are now being attacked randomly. With the Mugabe
regime already trying to draw comparisons between Tsvangirai and the late
Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, signs are ominous that a fully fledged
crackdown is being planned against the opposition. Worrying for the MDC is
the fact that 12 activists arrested in Banket at the end of October are
still missing, 2 weeks later. Police have ignored a High Court order issued
Tuesday demanding that the abducted people be brought to court. The MDC
issued a statement saying, 'the continued violence against MDC members is
testimony that the leopard has not changed its spots. The regime has begun a
systematic crackdown on the largest party in the country as it tries in vain
to solidify trumped-up charges of banditry and terrorism against MDC
supporters.' This week also saw police brutally putting down countrywide NCA
protests and the arrest of over 100 activists. On Thursday the NCA reported
that one of the female activists detained and, 'who was three months
pregnant, miscarried after a particularly brutal attack by officers at
Mutare Central Police Station. Many NCA members remain in police custody,
while others have been released on bail or after being forced to pay fines.'
The crackdown coincided with a Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights report
saying state sponsored violence is on the increase. The rights body said
more than 1,300 cases of political violence were recorded in September
alone, an increase of 39 percent from August.
Not enough cash for ARVs or food
Photo:
IRIN |
Zimbabweans queue to access their
accounts | HARARE, 13 November 2008 (PlusNews) - George
Mumba, 24, an accountant in Harare, capital of Zimbabwe, is among the thousands
of people whose situation has been drastically affected by hyperinflation,
because customers cannot withdraw enough cash from the bank to buy what they
need.
Almost every day, Mumba, who is HIV-positive, and has been placed
on indefinite sick leave by his employer, makes the roughly six-kilometre trip
from the middle-income suburb of Hatfield to the city centre, where he joins
hundreds other people jostling to withdraw the maximum Z$500,000 — worth less
than US$2 — from his bank. Last week the maximum amount an individual could
withdraw was only Z$50,000 or US20 cents. A month's supply of ARVs can cost up
to Z$20 million (US $50).
"When the maximum withdrawal limit was $50,000
I stopped coming to the bank because that was the amount that I needed to travel
into the city centre," he told IRIN/PlusNews.
"I am on a cocktail of
antiretroviral [ARV] drugs that should be taken after eating. However, I am
sometimes forced to take my medication on an empty stomach because I would have
failed to withdraw enough money for food. The little that I sometimes manage to
keep spare is spent on food items that are hardly nutritional, and I guess that
is the reason why my condition keeps on deteriorating."
The Reserve Bank
of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has introduced a system that allows patients to apply to their
banks for bigger amounts of cash to buy medication. Some patients have benefited
from the scheme, but Mumba complains that the application takes long to be
processed and, when approved, the banks give them the money in small amounts.
He has "enough money in the bank to buy medication for six months, but
it is painful that I am slowly degenerating simply because I cannot take out as
much of it as I need".
Tonderai Chiduku, advocacy coordinator for the
Zimbabwe National Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS, pointed out that
"Nutrition is central to the longevity of the life of a person living with HIV
and AIDS and even if one might have all the drugs needed, it would be difficult
to keep in good shape."
Taking drugs on an empty stomach because one
could not afford food caused side effects that might lead to patients defaulting
on ARV treatment, he warned.
Chiduku, who is HIV positive, said cash
shortages were forcing patients to buy drugs on an "ad hoc" basis, mostly in
small quantities, "but that creates further problems because the quantities
might not be the prescribed ones, and our members ... tend to develop virulent
strains of HIV".
The inflation rate, officially estimated at 231 million
percent, made the situation worse for people living with the virus because
"Prices are changing on a daily basis, and that further reduces the ability to
buy drugs and food."
Although antiretrovirals are available
free of charge on the government's treatment programme, medication for
opportunistic infections is harder to come by.
Tabeth Maruziva, 36, who
is also HIV positive, has had cotrimoxazole, an antibiotic drug that helps keep
opportunistic infections at bay, prescribed for her by a doctor. But she finds
it difficult to buy the medication as well as food because most of the suppliers
are charging for the drug in foreign currency.
When the antibiotic is
available in local currency, she has to visit the bank for two days to get
enough money to buy it, but the amount she can withdraw leaves her with nothing
for transport, food or anything else after she has bought the medicine.
To buy foreign currency on the black market, she first has to get enough
local currency. "That means a double burden. I hardly have the energy to stand
in a bank queue and even when I get the cash, it is not enough to buy the
foreign currency, for which I am forced to hunt at the risk of being arrested by
the police," she said.
A single mother with three children to care for,
Maruziva suspects she contracted HIV when she was a sex worker. She is now often
bedridden and cannot work.
It is the second month since cotrimoxazole
was prescribed to her that she has been unable to buy it; in desperation she has
resorted to untested traditional herbs that she has been told will have
antiretroviral effects.
Martha Tholanah, the Zimbabwe AIDS Network's
humanitarian programme officer for people living with HIV, said patients in the
countryside were in a worse situation than those living in towns and cities.
"People living with HIV in rural areas find it extremely difficult to
raise the transport fare to travel to the nearest bank to withdraw cash," she
told IRIN/PlusNews. "The transport itself is unreliable and at times
non-existent, meaning that patients are forced to forego
treatment."
[ENDS] |
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations] |
Zimbabwe's Bank Queues a Way of Life
VOA
By Peta
Thornycroft
13 November 2008
Across Zimbabwe, day
and night, ordinary people are queuing at banks to get
their money. Peta
Thornycroft reports people are limited to draw the
equivalent of the cost of
one small loaf of bread a day.
A group of about 30 people were beaten
Wednesday by riot police outside the
central post office in Harare. One of
the victims, a former long-serving
soldier now working as a street vendor,
said the police angrily told people
not to stand in groups in the
city.
He said his former colleagues with 10 years service in the Zimbabwe
National
Army do not earn enough to even buy a small tube of toothpaste a
month. He
said senior members of the army, from the rank of brigadier and
above, are
now paid in foreign currency and do not have to queue each day to
withdraw
their salaries.
There have been several incidents of
violence in long queues outside
commercial banks around the country in
recent weeks.
Most employed people spend at least part of each day in a
queue to withdraw
their salaries, bit by bit, as central bank governor
Gideon Gono limits how
much people and companies can take from their
accounts each day.
A hungry pregnant woman in a bank queue in Harare's
fourth street says she
goes to the queue early, without breakfast, and is
there all day. She is
never sure how much money will be in her
bank.
"Since I am a civil servant, now we are not even aware of actual
salaries,
because they are putting it in halves. Ah! I think Gono has
mismanaged the
financial sector and I would think it would be better if they
would put
someone else," she said.
A father of two employed in the
private sector says his family is hungry
every day and he often remains in
the queue throughout the night because,
rather than walk home in the dark
carrying money.
"I used to sleep here because it is dangerous for
myself," he said. "If you
can withdraw 50 million per month, it would be
better for us to survive. It
is difficult, very difficult. If our government
could solve this problem of
money it will be better."
Harare
economist John Robertson says the ruling ZANU-PF elite have discarded
the
Zimbabwe dollar.
"The elite, I believe, have already found the Zimbabwe
dollar inadequate and
have already moved to foreign currency. So the
government gives the
privilege to the senior people in the form of foreign
currency, but they are
not admitting it, because they are not the ones
standing in bank queues.
They have found another means around the problem,"
said Robertson.
Robertson says the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe obtains
foreign currency it
needs by raiding exporter's bank accounts.
"So,
it would seem the government is tapping into all the foreign currency
exporter industries, mainly the mining sector, and agriculture is still
exporting cotton and tobacco, but much smaller quantities than previously,"
he said.
Gono said Wednesday he would substantially increase the
Z$10,000 companies
may withdraw daily and believed the bank queues would end
soon.
Teachers Not Paid For Invigilating Grade Seven Papers
http://www.radiovop.com
HARARE, November
13 2008 - Teachers are accusing the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe (RBZ) of
reneging on its promise to pay them public examinations
invigilating
allowances for overseeing the writing of Grade Seven
examinations.
The teachers had been promised a cash
incentive of Zd1, 5 million for
each examination paper invigilated after
they threatened to boycott the
examinations.
But RadioVOP
has since established that the teachers were yet to be
paid almost a week
after the examinations were written.
Angry teachers said they
regretted accepting the Central Bank's offer,
with the Education ministry
indicating that it was yet to receive the
allowances from the central
bank.
A Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) official
from
Bulawayo, Themba Sithole, said teachers had been hoodwinked into
overseeing
the writing of the examinations by the RBZ. No comment could be
obtained
from the Central Bank on the matter.
However
Sithole said the RBZ move would result in teachers boycotting
the marking
exercise, a situation that is set to affect Grade Seven
students, as they
need the results to proceed to secondary School in 2009.
Oxfam
humanitarian co-ordinator warns of Zimbabwean crisis
http://www.themuse.ca/
By Ian MacDonald
Last
Friday, Mia Vukojevic, humanitarian co-ordinator for Oxfam, held a
discussion at Memorial to talk about her work in the Republic of Zimbabwe
and around the globe.
Over finger foods and apple juice, students
joined in on a discussion of the
position of non-government organizations
and the role they play in the
world.
Unlike development, which is
based on creating sustainable solutions to
long-term problems, humanitarian
work focuses on immediate life and death
situations that require fast
solutions.
As Oxfam's humanitarian co-ordinator since 2004, Vukojevic's
job has brought
her all over the world. In her talk at Memorial, she focused
on her work in
Zimbabwe and the current issues the country faces.
She
says that with such a large population - about 13-million - the country's
infrastructure problems and human rights issues have the potential for
crisis.
"It has an inflation of 1-million percentile points," she
said.
"A loaf of bread was $3-trillion and that has doubled, tripled,
every week."
She says that half the population lives off of food aid,
blaming the
shortage partly on weather and partly on poor government
management.
Vukojevic also points to infrastructure management as a
result of water
shortages throughout the country. Water gathering is left to
women who have
to walk 10 to 12 hours a day to meet their needs.
"The
effect on people's lives is unbelievable, it means they have no time to
do
anything else."
"A person shouldn't have to walk more than 500 metres for
water."
Pumps were put in place 20 years ago, but their lack of upkeep
means they
have gone into disrepair. Working with Zimbabweans, Oxfam has
been repairing
the pumps to try and bring accessible H2O to the
citizens.
She also cites a lack of skilled workers as a problem in
keeping
infrastructure at working levels.
Trained professionals leave
the country to earn higher wages elsewhere, many
times sending the money
back to their families.
"People with skills are leaving the country so
they can survive," she said.
One of the greatest challenges of her
position, she says, is bringing
attention to global issues. She calls on
everyone to keep their eyes open to
could-be crisis situations, and to do
all they can to help.
"It is important to pay attention to disasters not
in the media. People
still suffer if it doesn't make the news."
MPs
go hungry and High Court shuts downs because of water crisis
http://www.swradioafrica.com
By Tichaona
Sibanda
13 November 2008
The country's dire economic crisis has hit
two main centres of power this
week, as Parliament and the High Court were
forced to suspend business
because of water shortages.
In another
glaring display of just how bad things are, hungry MPs based
outside Harare
had to be fed by a donor agency in the capital on Tuesday
afternoon because
Parliament is broke and cannot pay for their meals.
MDC MP for Bulawayo
South Eddie Cross could not help but laugh when he
detailed how they ended
up having lunch donated by an aid agency.
MPs usually eat at the hotels they
are booked into, but hotels have been
refusing to accommodate them because
of huge, unpaid, parliamentary bills.
Sam Sipepa Nkomo, the MDC MP for
Lobengula, confirmed party MPs from outside
Harare ended up having lunch
provided by 'a good Samaritan.'
'Yes it's true, I had the lunch myself
and this tells you all about the
state of the country where MPs end up
sourcing for food from strangers,'
Nkomo said.
The MPs ended up in
this dilemma after they had exhausted all their cash in
paying for their own
hotel accommodation and being unable to withdraw enough
cash from
banks.
And across the street from Parliament, the High Court was deserted
after the
building was shut down on Tuesday due to lack of water. It's
suspected that
water supplies to the building may have been cut due to
unpaid bills. A
report published by a news website said several lawyers
intending to file
court papers were surprised to find the gates
locked.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) castigated the
authorities for
their approach to the situation at the High Court.
In
a statement the ZLHR said the fact that such a court, a vehicle for
protecting human rights, is closed due to lack of water seriously undermines
equal protection to litigants, detainees, and even convicted prisoners whose
matters are on appeal from lower courts.
'ZLHR calls upon the
Ministry of Justice Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and
relevant authorities
to ensure that the High Court of Zimbabwe, and indeed
all courts in
Zimbabwe, are given all the necessary tools and essentials to
enable them to
function properly, timeously and effectively in exercising
their judicial
authority,' the statement added.
The water situation in Harare had also
forced the adjournment of Parliament
on Tuesday, until the 16th
December.
Parliamentary business came to a halt just a few hours after the
legislators
resumed sitting.
Reserve
bank reinstates electronic transfers
http://www.swradioafrica.com
By Violet Gonda
13 November
2008
Every day Zimbabweans are waking up to more confusion, as the
economy goes
into complete meltdown. But businesses and customers were given
some sort of
relief when the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe announced it was
reinstating
electronic transfers on Thursday.
The central bank said
it has restored the facility conditionally, and it was
dependent on the
behaviour of the banks. The RBZ said it had removed the
electronic transfer
system because of allegedly criminal behaviour amongst
the banks and
customers.
However economist John Robertson said it's believed that this
was not the
main reason the facility was removed by the RBZ, but that it was
caused by
something that the central bank is not admitting to 'which might
have been a
software licensing agreement that they had failed to pay
for.'
Although he said the re-instatement of the system will make
transactions for
banks, businesses and customers easier, he says it was a
big mistake to
remove the use of the RTGS in the first
place.
Robertson said: "The situation itself was very damaged and in
easing the
situation they have actually fixed nothing. The country still
remains very,
very severely under pressure from the massive scarcity of not
only foreign
currency, but also local currency."
The highly respected
Cato institute has said that as of 7th November,
Zimbabwe's annual inflation
rate was 516 Quintillion percent.
MDC-M
to Shun Unity Government
http://www.radiovop.com
HARARE, November 13 2008 - The Mutambara led
Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) formation has said it will not be part
of a unity government
formed under the current
agreement.
In an interview with RadioVOP, the deputy
spokesperson in the
Mutambara led MDC faction, Renson Gasela, said his
formation had not yet
received any invitation to submit names of potential
cabinet ministers.
"But even if we do receive any such
invitation we will not submit
names because the global agreement does not
provide for an inclusive
government... if any party among the three is not
for the idea - then it is
not an inclusive government and therefore we can
not participate in that
government unless all three parties are involved,"
he said.
Gasela said his faction was not the one gunning for
the Home Affairs
ministry and it was therefore not up to the faction to make
a decision on
behalf of another party.
"What we had
recommended to SADC was that the Home Affairs ministry be
given to
Tsvangirai and they ruled otherwise and we are disappointed that
they ruled
otherwise. But because we went to SADC for arbitration we now
have to abide
by its decision even though that decision is not in conformity
with what we
had recommended. We are not agreeing with Zanu PF ...we are
conforming to
the decision of SADC.
"Unfortunately what it means is that the
people of Zimbabwe are going
to continue suffering because the situation
will deteriorate further and
further - which is something we hoped would be
resolved. We also hope that
sense will prevail among the three parties and
some accomodation will be
arrived at in spite of this impasse," said
Gasela.
Fired
Journos Seek Court Protection
http://www.radiovop.com
HARARE, November 13 2008 - Lawyers
representing seven Zimbabwean
journalists fired by the government owned
Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings
(ZBH) in June this year for allegely failing
to ensure the victory of
President Robert Mugabe and the ruling Zanu (PF)
party in the March
Harmonised elections have filed an urgent application in
the High Court
seeking to have their continued victimisation permanently
stopped.
The ZBH, the country's sole radio and television
station kicked out
the seven, including its long serving news editor,
Patrice Makova, four
senior reporters and two executive producers accusing
them of having been
sympathetic to or giving media space to opposition
leader, Morgan Tsvangirai
and his Movement for Democratic
Change.
The ZBH head of human resources, Bernania Shumba sent
the journalists
on forced leave accusing them of having "acted in a manner
inconsistent with
your contract". Their lawyers, Matsikidze and Partenrs,
however,
successfully contested the suspension in the labour court which
ordered
their immediate reinstatement.
Although ZBH
complied, the State broadcaster barred the journalists
entry into Pockets
Hill but continued paying their salaries until October
this year after
informing them that management had decided to retrench them.
The State broadcaster offered the workers retrenchment packages
averaging Zd
300 000 or less than USD1 (one dollar), which they have turned
down and are
seeking their reinstatement as ordered by the labour court.
The
journalists told RadioVOP they had done nothing wrong during the
elections
as all they did was to comply with instructions and orders issued
by the
then ZBC Chief Executive, Henry Muradzikwa, to abide by the Southern
African
Development Community (SADC) guidelines on reporting elections.
The SADC guidelines require journalists covering elections to give
equal,
unbiased and fair coverage to all contesting political parties.
Muradzikwa, a former State newspaper and news agency Editor in Chief
and
University of Zimbabwe media studies lecturer, was himself the first to
get
the chop after President Mugabe and Zanu (PF) lost the March election,
despite his well known implecable connections to the big wigs in the ruling
party.
The descent on and apparent clean up of the State
media is said to be
the instruction of President Mugabe's trusted spokesman
and government's
chief spin doctor, George Charamba, who himself is said to
be venting his
anger at the State media after he received a bashing from
Zanu (PF) bigwigs
who accuse him of having not done enough to ensure the
party's victory in
the March elections.
Let Zanu go it alone
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Thursday, 13 November 2008 13:11
Without
pre-empting the MDC Council meeting decisions on Friday, it
just strikes me
that either something is very wrong with the reports from
the Cabinet
composition negotiations or the nation has been taken for a ride
by SADC in
order to achieve a predicted end result that is destined to be
either a
Government of National Unity (GNU) or not and whether the people of
Zimbabwe
like it or not.
We are made to believe that the MDC strongly
believed that the SADC
Sandton Meeting had presented them with an
opportunity for a full review of
previous discussions and negotiations by
the 15 SADC leaders, but as it has
now been reported, the full SADC only
went on to adopt the SADC Troika on
Politics, Defence and Security
Co-operation's Harare report despite the
presentations made by the three
Political parties. This is where one smells
a rat especially when the SADC
"directives" are specific in that
implementation of the GNU must be made
immediately. To this end, we need to
review the current stage of the GNU
negotiations against the African Union
Resolutions of 1 July 2008. However,
before getting to the review of the
actual Summit Resolutions, the following
reproduced three "quotes" from
various publications seek to enlighten on the
views of various parties
regarding a GNU at the time this option was
adopted.
1. Tsvangirai's MDC dismissed a South African press
report that
regional mediator President Thabo Mbeki was close to
brokering a deal
for Mugabe and Tsvangirai to negotiate a unity government.
"It is all
speculation, there is nothing like that. There's no imminent
deal, no
negotiations. There cannot be a deal to which we are not party,"
said MDC
spokesman Nelson Chamisa.
2. Mugabe's spokesman
told reporters in the Egyptian city of Sharm
el-Sheik that Zimbabwe
would not adopt the "Kenyan way" of negotiating
a power-sharing agreement.
"Kenya is Kenya. Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe," said
George Charamba, Mugabe's
spokesman. As for Western critics, Mr. Charamba
said,
they could
"go hang a thousand times.
3. "A Government of National Unity at
this stage is a nonstarter,"
says
Maroleng. Unless there is a
complete restructuring of the
Constitution, a change in the executive powers
of the presidency, any
power-sharing deal at this point would tilt the
advantage, permanently, in
the favour of Mugabe.
"It's placing
icing over a rotten core. It would look nice, but
underneath, it would still
be rotten," says Chris Maroleng, a Security
Analyst at the Institute for
Security Studies in Tshwane, South Africa.
Since these were the
views pertaining at the time the African Unity
Summit
(AU)
resolutions were made, one wonders why a transitional government
arrangement
was not considered instead.
Zimbabwe: what's to be done?
http://www.newzimbabwe.com
DR
ALEX T. MAGAISA
Last updated:
11/14/2008 17:30:55
THE reaction of most Zimbabweans in the aftermath of the
SADC Summit held in
Sandton, South Africa last Sunday, is that of great
disappointment.
The reaction carries an apoplectic tone, targeted at the
SADC Heads of
State, whom they consider to have, once again, handled their
old comrade,
President Mugabe with velvet gloves whilst giving Morgan
Tsvangirai the
sledgehammer treatment.
Echoes from the
Past
The quandary of Zimbabweans can be summed up in one question:
'What's to be
done?' It carries an uncanny echo to a question in similar
terms made famous
by Russian revolutionary leader Vladmir Lenin. A paper he
wrote in the first
couple of years of the last century carried the title,
'What is to be done?'
Faced with the challenges of the time, Lenin
advocated the creation of a
revolutionary vanguard party for the purpose of
directing the activities and
efforts of the working class, whom he regarded
as the key to change. But he
was not satisfied that the working class could
do more to secure the
revolutionary change that was needed without some
direction.
Thus he wanted a revolutionary party to direct what he called
a "scientific"
socialist revolution. That was how Lenin saw things at the
time and in 1917,
during the famous October Revolution, the party he led,
the Bolsheviks,
seized power, and with that, Russian society and much of the
world around it
would be transformed for generations.
Zimbabwe stands
at the precipice. No-one can predict what the future holds
after the recent
failure of the SADC Summit. It is not surprising that
Zimbabweans are asking
a similar question: What's to be done?
But Zimbabwe does not seem to have
a Lenin to give strategic direction in
response. Not that it needs a
'socialist revolution' - only that it yearns
for some strategic direction on
escaping the harsh circumstances engulfing
it.
Moans and
Groans
Instead the routine is familiar. Moan and complain about SADC's
apparent
impotence. Plead for the African Union to intervene, even when they
know in
the deepest parts of their hearts that nothing will be yielded from
that
ostentatious body.
When that fails, plead to the United Nations
for intervention. And what if
that fails too? Ordinary people do not have
answers; their leaders do not
seem to have answers too. There appears to be
a deficit in strategic
planning.
But the easiest thing is for us
Zimbabweans to vent our collective fury at
SADC. But that's because we made
the initial error of believing that SADC
could actually walk on water, this,
notwithstanding the litany of failures
on Zimbabwe.
Consider this: If
after a contentious election, in the midst of obscene acts
of violence,
during a suspiciously extended period of announcing election
results, when
its own code on conducting elections was subjected to willful
violation,
SADC failed to act, what surely is to be expected from this body?
We have
characterised before in these pages, the behaviour of SADC leaders
as being
akin to the Mafia. Mugabe, the Godfather, simply went to his
colleagues and
told them that he has a stone in his shoe.
His brothers have told him
that they cannot remove the stone but they will
try their best to place it
in a position where it does not hurt him most.
Morgan Tsvangirai is that
stone.
So last Sunday, they came up with a recommendation which would
have ensured
that the stone would be accommodated in Mugabe's shoe, without
hurting him
most.
Noises on the Wrong Platform
A few
countries, such as Botswana, have made commendable noises of
disapproval.
But even here, the tendency is often to exaggerate the effect
of the words
emanating from Gaborone, whilst overlooking its deeds which
differ little
from its SADC counterparts.
It is one thing to make noises in the media
but quite a different matter to
speak and act decisively in the available
forum such as the SADC platform.
President Khama, Zanu PF's most vocal
critic in the region, chose to stay
away from Sandton. Surely, Tsvangirai
must wonder, where are friends when
you need them most?
President
Khama probably had good reason for not attending or he simply didn't
want to
be part of the charade. But, surely, in that case, why even bother
to send a
representative and not only that, but a representative does not
even
register dissent and appends his name to the Communique?
The trouble is
no matter how loud they are, and regardless of the popular a
reception they
get, such noises will in time become little more than
posturing. We have
seen it all before and it has done nothing to help the
cause of change in
Zimbabwe.
The AU Cul-de-sac
It seems logical, having exhausted the
SADC route, to go to the AU. But
there is little hope there, too. It is
unlikely they will take a position
that contradicts SADC's stance. The
continent is awash with conflicts in
places like Somalia, Sudan, the DRC and
our good AU has little to show for
its efforts. It will be yet more trips,
yet more disputes over passports,
more per diems for traveling parties and
lots more communiqués but nothing
of real substance.
Admittedly, I
have advocated in these pages for the MDC to learn the
language of African
politics. It was more in hope than expectation that
there would be some sane
heads out there that could share positive words and
cajole their old comrade
into accepting change. But if there is any lesson
that has been learned from
this experience, it is that the language is one
of oppression and
manipulation. It is a language that requires major changes
of its own and
the MDC ought to be part of that change.
But I cannot see the AU
convening a Summit to decide the allocation of
cabinet portfolios, let alone
effectively resolve Zimbabwe's problems.
Perhaps in asking for mediation on
the allocation of cabinet portfolios, our
politicians are showing a level of
immaturity unbefitting persons who should
be entrusted with power? Perhaps
they are asking too much?
Keeping Them in the Dark
The one
disconcerting thing about the whole scenario is that politicians on
all
sides have conspired to keep ordinary people in the dark. For my part, I
suspect very strongly that there is more to the dispute than we are being
told by our politicians. The Home Affairs ministry and, indeed, the whole
cabinet portfolio issue is a front for a much bigger dispute.
It does
seem to me that, to apply an old proverb, MDC yakayeuka bako
yaniwa - that
is, they discovered, in the aftermath of signing the Global
Political
Agreement that they should not have agreed in the first place. But
it was
late in the day. If this is the case, the MDC must say so and let the
public
know why they cannot enter the GNU on the basis of this agreement.
A
Sense of Realism
But in trying to answer the question of 'what's to be
done' in the
circumstances, it probably makes sense to have a sense of
realism. No-one
seriously doubts that Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC got the
public vote of
confidence ahead of Mugabe and Zanu PF in the March
elections.
Likewise, no-one seriously contests the view that the election
did not
deliver change and that the MDC failed to take over the reins of
power. In
the circumstances, the MDC had at least two viable options: either
to lead a
popular revolt in order to assert their position and prevent Zanu
PF from
holding on to power or to negotiate with Zanu PF in order to share
power.
Of these two, only one - the popular revolt was likely to deliver
total
change if it was successful. The other, and let it be very clear -
negotiation - was never going to deliver total change. It was always going
to be a compromise. It was never going to produce a revolutionary
outcome.
The point, therefore, is the need for a sober assessment of what
is a
realistic outcome as opposed to the ideal one because the latter was
never
and will never be achieved through negotiation.
Consult the
Public
The important thing is to keep the eye on the ball, that is, the
people that
politicians purport to serve. Perhaps they ought to ask the
question: If the
deal were presented to the public, together with
alternatives, if any are
available, what would they say?
If there are
alternatives, in answering the question, 'what's to be done'
why not present
them to the people so that they can make informed decisions.
They are
desperate to know that if this present deal is unacceptable, how
else can
the acceptable be achieved?
For my part, there is no escaping the
question, because this is the
conundrum uppermost in ordinary people's
minds, 'What's to be done?' The
leadership, as did Lenin during his time,
have a responsibility to provide
some strategic direction. It is in times
such as these that bold and
decisive leadership is needed most.
Alex
Magaisa is based at Kent Law School, The University of Kent. He can be
contacted at wamagaisa@yahoo.co.uk
Tsvangirai must never give
up
http://www.businessday.co.za
13
November 2008
Robert
Mugabe must be smiling . First he loses an election but refuses to
release
the results. The victor is then prevailed upon to compromise and
enters into
a power-sharing deal which affords an executive position to
himself and the
right to appoint the majority of cabinet ministers.
True to form, Mugabe
reneges on the deal, seeks to appoint the majority of
ministers and insists
that the key ministries are allocated to his
appointees.
The victor
is then prevailed on to compromise further and share a key
ministry. Knowing
this will render him ineffectual he refuses and is
promptly accused by all
concerned of being a spoiler who is pursuing his
personal interests ahead of
the people of his country.
What a turnaround - it is as though every
concession is regarded as a new
starting point for further negotiation and
compromise!
In truth, does Morgan Tsvangirai have much of a
choice?
The Zimbabwean tax base has been destroyed along with the
economy. Zimbabwe
has hyperinflation because the only way for the government
to pay its bills
is to print money. Restoring the economy will take time so
the only way out
is for some external agency (the World Bank, donor
countries, etc) to fund
the government of Zimbabwe until it can restore its
tax base.
Clearly, the chance of accessing meaningful financial support
is precisely
zero while Mugabe is in control so Tsvangirai makes himself
party to certain
failure by compromising.
The practical reality is
that Tsvangirai cannot really afford to accept any
arrangement which
involves any impediment to international support.
Given the state of the
global economy right now, even the token involvement
of Mugabe would be
latched on to as an excuse to remain uninvolved.
If Tsvangirai knows
what's good for him (and, incidentally, the people of
Zimbabwe) he will not
compromise.
Dale Lippstreu
Hout Bay
Africa Fails Zimbabwe: Another Burden for Obama
http://www.huntingtonnews.net
COMMENTARY:
By Sir Ronald
Sanders
A former Caribbean Head of Government, who should know, told me a
few months
ago that the only way Robert Mugabe is leaving Zimbabwe is "feet
first". In
other words, Mugabe will die before relinquishing power in
Zimbabwe.
As conditions in Zimbabwe rapidly deteriorate, I have been
reminded of that
former Caribbean leader's words. Zimbabwe is already a
fully failed state;
life itself has become a daily lottery for the majority
of its people who
are being starved or brutalised. It is obvious to all that
Mugabe should
hand over power to Morgan Tsvangirai who, by all objective
accounts, won the
March 29th elections. Yet, Mugabe, with the help of the
leaders of his
military, holds on to power with a vise-like
grip.
Mugabe's regime has used the vilest tactics to punish people,
particularly
women, who have supported Tsvangari's Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC).
AIDS-Free World, an advocacy group founded by Canada's former
United Nations
Ambassador, Stephen Lewis, has collected testimony from women
who survived
organised gang rapes by members of Mugabe's ZANU-PF party after
he lost the
March elections. The women give horrific accounts of multiple
rapes and
brutal beating by gangs who openly identified themselves with the
ZANU-PF.
The group reports that "many of the women still have unhealed
wounds five
months later, since Zimbabwe's medical system has entirely
ceased to
function, and all need HIV tests."
It has to be recalled
that Zimbabwe was once a flourishing country that not
only fed itself but
exported food to many neighbouring African states and
other commodities to
the world. Today, 5 million of the 9 million people who
remain there are
dependent on food aid. Almost four million Zimbabweans have
fled into
neighbouring states, particularly South Africa where they eke out
a living
and where there have been incidents of beatings by South Africans
who regard
them as a threat to jobs.
Inflation in Zimbabwe is currently running at
230 million percent. It is a
figure that defies comprehension. A good
indicator of what that means is
that, if inflation in any Caribbean country
rises over 10 percent, everyone
would be mortified about the cost of
living.
In the year running up to the March elections and since then, the
former
President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, has tried unsuccessfully to
broker a
power-sharing deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. His attempts have
been a
miserable failure.
Tsvangirai's MDC party understood that a
power-sharing deal, heralded in
September with much fanfare, meant "striking
a fair balance of power of all
ministries in the unity government and
sharing diplomatic appointments and
assigning key government posts". But,
Mugabe kept control over both the
military forces and the police, and when a
meeting of key leaders in
Southern Africa was called in October to try to
resolve the issues,
Tsvangirai could not attend because the Mugabe regime
refused to issue him a
passport.
As conditions worsened in Zimbabwe,
the leaders of the Southern African
Development Committee (SADC) held an
emergency meeting on November 9th to
address the issue. Again, it was a
spectacular failure. Only 5 of the 15
Presidents turned-up. They listened to
presentations by Mugabe, Tsvangirai
and Arthur Mutambara, the leader of an
MDC splinter group, and then asked
them to recuse themselves from the
meeting. Tsvangirai and Mutambara left,
but Mugabe flatly refused to leave
the room. He, therefore, participated in
a decision that materially affected
him.
The decision, when it came, was a complete nonsense. It insisted
that a
power-sharing government should start to function immediately and
that the
Ministry of Home Affairs should have two ministers, one appointed
by Mugabe
and the other by Tsvangirai.
So it seems the SADC mountain
went forth and produced a mouse, and it wasn't
even a mouse that pretended
to roar. No riot act was read to Mugabe, no
threats of sanctions were made,
no declaration was uttered that his regime
would be isolated by SADC if he
did not comply with a supervised
power-sharing arrangement. All that SADC
succeeded in doing is continuing
Mugabe's misrule and the further worsening
of life for all Zimbabweans.
Naturally, Tsvangirai has rejected the decision
altogether.
So with an abdication of its responsibility to the people of
Zimbabwe, SADC
has left Zimbabwe to its own fate. It is a fate that can only
bring more
starvation, more refugees, a worsening of the economy and, sadly,
more
brutality against the Zimbabwean people and more bloodshed.
Thus
far, the developed nations of the world have left intervention in
Zimbabwe
to the Southern African countries and particularly South Africa for
fear
that Mugabe would accuse them of racism. Mugabe has ranted and raved at
the
British government in particular, and at other governments including the
United States accusing them of punishing him over seizure of lands owned by
white farmers. But, of course, Mugabe's reign of terror is now directed at
the black Zimbabwean people. What is happening there is naked abuse of power
and the most awful brutalisation of native people.
SADC - and all of
Africa - can not assail the world's developed nations if
their governments
decide that intervention in Zimbabwe is now essential to
stop a humanitarian
crisis of major proportions. SADC leaders had a great
chance to show that
Africa could manage its own crises firmly and
successfully. They blew
it.
Fortunately, once Barack Obama assumes the Presidency of the United
States
of America, if the US government decides to join with others, through
the UN
Security Council, to free Zimbabweans of Mugabe's dictatorship, the
accusation of racism would be a hollow cry.
The Caribbean should hope
that Obama will give Zimbabwe early attention. For
not only will his
attention bring relief to millions of Africans, it will
also help to ensure
that a major portion of aid money, which the Caribbean
would welcome, does
not have to be diverted to rebuilding Zimbabwe after
Mugabe's spree of
destruction.
* * *
The writer is a business consultant and former
Caribbean diplomat.
The Zimbabwean Tragedy
http://www.trinicenter.com
Trinidad
and Tobago
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November
12, 2008
The continuing suffering of the Zimbabwean people must bring
tears to the
eyes of any humanitarian. For those of us who prayed and
propagandize for
the overthrow of Ian Smith of Southern Rhodesia, the
ascendency of Robert
Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo was god send. It was a
beautiful sight. But, alas,
our dreams were crushed to the ground and the
resultant pain and suffering
that we see in Zimbabwe does not do our hearts
well. As we look at Zimbabwe
today, we see a man who has lost his conscience
and every sense of decency
and hence the continuing impasse in his
country.
A few says ago Zimbabwe's neighbors failed to break that impasse
which
prompted opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to appeal to the African
Union
to be more vigorous in his assistance of his country. After 12 hours
of
meetings, the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC)
failed
to prod President Robert Mugabe into a compromise with
Tsvangirai.
The bone of contention is the Ministry of Home Affairs
ministry. SADC had
proposed that there be two ministers of home affairs: one
from Tsvangirai's
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and another from
Mugabe's ZANU. The
SADC recommended that Tsvangirai and Mugabe should
appoint their own
separate police ministers to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
President Kgalema
Motlanthe, president of South Africa called it "an
historic power-sharing
agreement as the only way to extricate Zimbabwe from
her socio-economic
challenges" but Tsvangiria was unrelenting in his
opposition to such a
formula. He saw such a compromise as unworkable. He
pointed out: "This issue
of co-sharing does not work. We have said so
ourselves, we have rejected it,
and that's the position."
Sean Jacobs
of the London Guardian puts the issue well. He says, "One of the
morals I
draw from Zimbabwe is how long it took for Zimbabweans to demand
accountability from their leadership. For almost 20 years Zimbabweans were
held captive by a nationalist project that became more and more bankrupt and
incompatible with democracy." He says further, quoting Jonathan Faull, a
researcher at the Institute for Democracy in Cape Town (he is now at Harvard
University) that "the impulse for accountability, disdain for unaccountable
leadership.and the demands for participatory government, accessible
institutions, and an emphatic political leadership are some of the core
components of this tradition."
Zimbabwe is facing severe food
shortages and rampant inflation. According to
the United Nations, one third
of Zimbabweans are now hungry and in need of
food aid, a million children
have lost one or both parents. About 140,000
persons died of AIDS last year.
According to the World Health Organization
there are 2.7 million cases of
malaria among Zimbabwe's 12 million people.
More than 80 per cent of the
population is living on less than 1 pound or
1.50 (US) dollars a day and
nearly half is chronically malnourished.
Zimbabweans are experiencing "a
widespread shortage of meat, milk and other
basic commodities as a result of
the collapse of the agricultural sector.
The country is dependent on food
handouts and malnutrition is on the rise"
(Zimbabwe Standard, Nov. 5). The
employment rate is 80 per cent.
Meanwhile, HIV/AIDS activists accused
Gideon Gono, governor of the Central
Bank of Zimbabwe, of diverting US$7,29
million dollars meant for disease
control in the country. It is reported
that Gono gave the countries' judges
new vehicles, satellite dishes and
televisions and allocated 79 vehicles for
the Information Ministry. He
announced 3,000 tractors, 105 combine
harvesters, and 100,000 plows for the
country's farm mechanization program.
Much of that money might have come
from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria. The
information minister said that the reserve
Bank had been getting foreign
currency for imports of food and medicine.
The annual inflation rate is
230 million percent, something I cannot
imagine. Professor Steve Hanke, a
senior fellow at the Cato Institute in the
US, said that Zimbabwe's annual
inflation rate "had soared to 2.79
quintillion percent, a World record in
many respects. A quintillion is a
figure with 18 zeroes and is a rug above a
quadrillion" (Zimbabwe Standard,
November 8, 2008). Roeland Monasch,
Unicef's acting representative in
Zimbabwe says that the number of
Zimbabwean dollars required to buy a single
American dollar rose from 3
million on October 23 to 1 billion the next day,
and then to 40 billion on
Wednesday and 1.1. trillion on Saturday according
to the New York Times
(November 3).
Things are deteriorating rapidly, that is, if they could
really get worse.
The longer the leaders take to agree on a power-sharing
arrangement the more
Zimbabweans continue to suffer. Things are even worse
at the level of
medical treatment. Meanwhile Botswana's President Ian Khama
suggested that
the only way out of the current deadlock was internationally
supervised
elections. President Mugabe called such a suggestion "extreme
provocation"
and said that Khama had "no right under international law as an
individual
or as a country to interfere in our domestic affairs." On
Saturday last
(November 8), the Zimbabwe Standard noted: "The government has
a
well-documented history of being devious. It has no intention of setting
up
an all-inclusive government and its conduct so far suggests it would
rather
set up a Zanu-PF government, totally disregarding the wishes of the
people
as expressed in the March 29 parliamentary and presidential
elections."
No one really knows how things will turn out except to say
the longer these
conditions last, the worse it would be for Zimbabweans.
Last week MDC said
that Mr. Mugabe's party had unleashed "a new orgy of
brutality and assaults
across the whole country." In his turn, President
Mugabe accused Botswana of
interfering in its affairs (Zimbabwe Standard).
As it stands somebody has to
intervene either through moral suasion or
force. One would hope that the
former prevails. The latter only perpetuates
the violence that has come to
characterize the country. I really hope that
President Mugabe acts in a
patriotic manner and offers Tsvangirai and the
MDC an honorably way out of
this quagmire of death and
destruction.
Professor Cudjoe's email address is Selwyn.cudjoe@gmail.com
No
more kid gloves for Mugabe
http://www.nationnews.com/
Barbados
Published on: 11/13/08.
THE SITUATION
in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate to the extent that about
one-half of
the population is now on food relief in order to survive. Unless
international help is given quickly, starvation looms.
On
September 15, Mugabe and his rival Morgan Tsvangirai, who is Prime
Minister-designate and leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
signed the unity government deal to avert civil war.
It was a
humiliating moment for Mugabe to make such a deal in the presence
of other
eminent African leaders. As it turned out, it seems that he was
probably
bluffing even as he groped for a safety valve that would help ease
the
pressure on himself.
The agreement that would have seen Tsvangirai as the
prime minister hit the
brick wall when Mugabe opted to give key cabinet
positions to members of his
Zanu-PF party. The MDC leader accused Mugabe of
unwillingness to compromise
and live up to his end of the
bargain.
Leaders of 15 African States recently met under the aegis of
Southern
African Development Community in Johannesburg to try to unlock the
power-sharing impasse in Zimbabwe.
This meeting came just hours after
the leader of South Africa's African
National Congress, Jacob Zuma, who is
expected to become president after
elections next year, proposed "the use of
force to disentangle the
stand-off".
This is a strong statement with
which we wholeheartedly agree as it is time
a spade is called a spade,
however undiplomatically. It also indicated that
Zuma would take a much more
aggressive stance against President Robert
Mugabe than his predecessor Thabo
Mbeki.
It is no secret that South Africa has borne the brunt of the three
million
refugees fleeing Zimbabwe, while Mugabe presides over the world's
worst case
of hyperinflation and accuses anyone who comments on his economic
carnage of
interfering in his country's internal affairs.
It is a sad
moment for Africa as Mugabe plays a hopeless game of ping-pong
over who will
take which seats, and in Rwanda and Sudan, it is another
sordid exodus of
hapless human beings as ragtag militias kill innocent
civilians with
relative impunity.
It is a most agonising moment for a country that has
not had a full and
functional government since the sham elections in March
which from all
reports was won by the MDC and Tsvangirai, who boycotted the
rerun.
It is clear that Mugabe has no intention of compromising and
reluctantly we
have to agree with Zuma that the time for talking has come to
an end and
some means have to be found to remove Mugabe, who has outlived
his
usefulness.
It is time African leaders stop handling him with kid
gloves in the pretext
of non-interference in the internal affairs of another
state. Pressure must
be intensified, otherwise they will be seen as
accomplices in the
catastrophe.
Mugabe's
great betrayal
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
By Paul Hopkins
Thursday, 13 November 2008
On the
day after he came to power in April 1980, Robert Mugabe summoned his
old
adversary Ian Smith, the former minority white ruler of the breakaway
colony
of Rhodesia, to his office.
'Good old Smithy', as he was
affectionately called by his privileged white
supporters, was greeted with a
warm handshake and a broad smile. The
cordiality uneased him somewhat: after
all, Mugabe had promised his
liberated people he would publicly hang Smith
in Harare's Union Square.
Instead Mugabe told Smith that he was conscious
of what he had inherited
from his old adversaries - a jewel of a country,
with superb infrastructure,
and an efficient modern economy.
And he
promised to keep it that way. If Ian Smith had ever doubted the
wisdom of
unilaterally breaking away from Britain, almost 20 years earlier,
it was
that day. He told his wife Janet over dinner that evening, that
perhaps he
had been wrong all along about a black government being incapable
of running
his beloved Rhodesia. That maybe, just maybe, the Jesuit-educated
Robert
Gabriel Mugabe was capable of 'responsible government'.
As he wrote, in
his autobiography: 'Here was this chap and he was speaking
like a
sophisticated, balanced, sensible man. And I thought: if he practises
what
he preaches, then it will be fine. And it was fine ? for five or six
|months
... '
But, as we now know, Mugabe was not, is not, the sophisticated,
balanced,
sensible chap Ian Smith had briefly hoped for.
During the
first majority election in 1980, Mugabe's lieutenants were out in
the rural
areas beating just about anybody who campaigned in what he
regarded as his
territory.
Even as he was seeing Ian Smith out of government buildings
that day in
April 1980, Mugabe was plotting the destruction of another group
of
political enemies - the Matabele people in southern Zimbabwe, those who
held
allegiance to his former Patriotic Front comrade-in-arms Joshua
Nkomo.
Up to 20,000 people were annihilated by Mugabe's Korean-trained
special
forces, in a campaign of torture and murder - bodies tossed down
disused
mine shafts and hacked to pieces in dip-tanks - that has yet to be
fully
exposed.
And it has been excruciatingly downhill ever since.
Mugabe has shown himself
to be the type of African leader that 'good old
Smithy' had long campaigned
against throughout the years of Unilateral
Declaration of Independence.
Yet Robert Mugabe was wined and dined by
Western leaders and honoured and
conferred with numerous doctorates. The UN
awarded him for the country's
food production while New African, the
UK-based magazine, voted him Best
African in 1990.
The fact is that
Mugabe then was more useful to the West clean than exposed
as a tyrant.
There was the Cold War, which had to be won at all cost, and,
with the
Soviets and the Chinese looking increasingly to Africa, it made
sense to
keep the Zimbabwean leader onside - and ignore that he had dirtied
his
book.
Today, the Cold War over, the world still stands largely idly by as
Mugabe
shows himself to be the embodiment of corrupt, violent, amoral
African
dictatorship, just like Idi Amin who scorched Uganda or Mobutu Sese
Seko
whose regime in Zaire was brutal and dysfunctional. Whatever the wrongs
of
minority rule - and its immoral consequences - the former
Zimbabwe/Rhodesia
was a hugely successful emerging African country despite
economic sanctions
imposed against it, because it dared to go it alone. And,
although the
minority whites were its main beneficiaries, there was
increasing prosperity
among the black population under Smith's
rule.
Blacks had better access to housing, health and education. And they
seldom,
if ever, went hungry - unlike today where the UN food agency
announced
yesterday that emergency food for four million Zimbabweans on the
brink of
starvation could run out entirely by January. Today also, civil
liberties
and political freedom, as assessed by the Freedom House
organisation, have
gone well below those recorded in the 1970s under white
minority rule.
When I went there in 1977 as a young journalist to cover
the last three
years of the 'Bush War', that eventually ended with Robert
Mugabe rolling
down Salisbury's main street in his armoured tank, I fell in
love with what
was a paradise of sorts. Geographically, it is one of the
most beautiful
countries on earth. And it is sad to think it could still be
the
'breadbasket' of southern Africa, were it not for the twisted thinking
of
Robert Mugabe.
Renewed talks aimed a brokering a deal between
Mugabe and the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) this week are
faltering. Zimbabwe is a
failed state with a non-functioning economy, a
once-flourishing agricultural
sector in tatters and a people on the verge of
starvation, on a scale that
some aid observers claim this week could match
the harrowing experiences of
Ethiopia or the Sudan. Life expectancy,
according to the UN development
programme index, is now one of the lowest in
the world.
At independence, 6,000 white commercial farmers owned 39% of
the land. By
1990 only 8% of this commercial land was owned by blacks, most
of them
Mugabe's political cronies. Today, little has changed. The land lies
idle,
untoiled. The supermarket shelves are empty, the people are hungry.
The
£20bn made available by Britain to compensate white farmers has
mysteriously
vanished - probably into one of Mugabe's foreign bank
accounts.
So much for liberation.
The first 20 years of Mugabe's
reign saw a slow decline, so slow the rest of
the world, keen to keep this
'chappie' onside, hardly noticed what was
happening - and those who did
chose, as they still do, to ignore it. The
calamitous collapse of what was
once the jewel of southern Africa has been
achieved, sadly, in little under
a decade. A remarkable feat for Robert
Mugabe and his 'war vets',
considering it took more than a century for Ian
Smith's forefathers to carve
a modern, functioning society out of the raw
African bushveld.
In his
autobiography, Smith, who died a year ago this month aged 88, talked
about
the loneliness of having to go it alone, to break from the former
colonial
power because he, unlike Britain, did not believe the majority
blacks were
yet ready to be the architects of their own destiny. Not ready
to be blown
along, unaided and alone, by Harold Macmillan's Wind of Change.
He
believed, to his last breath, that 'fair-minded' whites had been betrayed
by
just about everybody he could think of - the Tories, Labour, the
Afrikaaners, the Organisation of African Unity, the UN.
No surprise
then, that he called his biography The Great Betrayal.
Any potential
peace deal this week centres on the key sticking point of
control of the
home affairs ministry, which is responsible for the police.
"We are
expecting the equitable distribution of key ministries," MDC
spokesman
Nelson Chamisa said. "The people are suffering and we should start
acting to
make sure we alleviate the problems facing the people."
Some would argue
that the situation is beyond repair, as long as Mugabe is
intent on hanging
on to power at all costs
The see-no-evil foreign policy
Nov 13th 2008 | JOHANNESBURG
From The Economist print
edition
Why post-apartheid South Africa, once a shining beacon of human rights, is
cosying up to nasty regimes around the world
Panos
ANOTHER African summit, another disappointment. Any hope that the change of
leadership in South Africa might bring change across the border in Zimbabwe has
proved in vain. The new president, Kgalema Motlanthe, may sound tougher than his
ever-appeasing predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. But he seems no more willing to turn
the screws on his errant northern neighbour, Robert Mugabe.
Regional leaders meeting on November 9th all but kowtowed to Mr Mugabe over
the terms of September’s power-sharing deal with the opposition. This was
intended to arrest the country’s political and economic collapse but has
foundered, particularly over who should run the interior ministry, and by
extension the police. Morgan Tsvangirai, who won more votes than Mr Mugabe in
the presidential poll in March, says his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
should be in charge, given that the ruling ZANU-PF controls the army and
intelligence organs.
Mr Tsvangirai has good reason to be wary. Human-rights groups report that Mr
Mugabe’s henchmen are still persecuting MDC supporters (pictured above); and
riot policemen have been back on the streets to break up anti-government
protests. Yet leaders of the Southern African Development Community (see map)
say the interior ministry should be shared—an unworkable proposal rejected by Mr
Tsvangirai. Mr Mugabe seems ready to appoint a cabinet regardless.
The MDC, long critical of Mr Mbeki’s mediation, has been calling for others
to step in. It is not alone. South Africa’s handling of the Zimbabwean crisis
has drawn sharp criticism from many corners. Indeed, among the international
human-rights fraternity, post-apartheid South Africa—the democratic,
multicultural “rainbow nation” forged by Nelson Mandela—is once again regarded
as something of a pariah. Its gentle treatment of Mr Mugabe, once justified by
fear of instability on South Africa’s borders, has become part of a wider
pattern of alignment with some of the world’s least savoury regimes.
In the UN Security Council, South Africa has voted against imposing sanctions
not only on Zimbabwe but also on Myanmar’s military junta (after last year’s
crackdown on peaceful protesters) and Iran (for violating nuclear safeguards).
It is now leading efforts to suspend the International Criminal Court’s
prosecution of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, for alleged genocide in
Darfur.
Its record in the UN Human Rights Council is no better. It has voted to stop
monitoring human rights in Uzbekistan, despite widespread torture there, and in
Iran, where executions, including those of juvenile offenders, have soared.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I believe South Africa would play such a
negative role,” says Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch, an international
monitoring group.
Shortly before taking over as South Africa’s first democratically elected
president in 1994, Mr Mandela vowed that “human rights will be the light that
guides our foreign affairs.” After decades of isolation under an apartheid
government, Africa’s richest country would return to the world stage as a
“beacon of hope” for the oppressed. And it all seemed to begin so well. At home,
the new government brought in one of the most progressive constitutions in the
world, prohibiting every kind of discrimination and guaranteeing not only the
classic civil liberties but also a right to adequate housing, reproductive
health care and even to “have the environment protected”. The death penalty was
abolished; the abandonment of nuclear weapons confirmed.
Abroad, South Africa launched itself as one of the region’s leading
peacemakers, mediating in conflicts across Africa and sending troops into
Darfur, Burundi, the Central African Republic and Congo. It was also the leading
light behind the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, with an African
peer-review system to promote democracy and good governance. Along with Brazil,
China, India and Mexico, South Africa is now one of five emerging countries
regularly invited to meetings of the G8, the group of the world’s richest
states. And whenever reform of the UN Security Council comes up, its name is
always among those mooted for a possible new permanent seat.
But in recent years, Mr Mandela’s promised beacon has begun to look decidedly
dim. Since 2006, when South Africa secured a (non-permanent) seat on the
Security Council for the first time, it has been chumming up with China, Russia
and other authoritarian regimes to water down or block virtually every
resolution touching on human rights. It argues that the Security Council
(dominated by the five veto-wielding permanent members) should not concern
itself with such issues, leaving them to the Human Rights Council (on which
developing countries have a controlling majority). But that body has proved as
ineffectual as its predecessor, stifling—with South Africa’s help—criticism of
the world’s worst tyrants.
Why has democratic South Africa done so much to squander its once acclaimed
moral leadership? In truth, the ruling African National Congress has always been
cosy with some dictators, such as Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and Cuba’s Fidel
Castro, even under Mr Mandela—largely out of gratitude for past help during the
struggle against white rule.
Another reason for its actions can be found in Mr Mandela’s experience in
1995, when he found little support in Africa for action against Nigeria’s former
military junta. A bigger reason lies in South Africa’s ambivalent sense of
identity, with one foot in the rich world, where its main economic interests
continue to lie, and the other in the poor one, with which many of its people
identify. Even after the end of white rule, some of South Africa’s neighbours
regard it as something of a Trojan horse for the West. Hence its desire
constantly to affirm its African credentials while playing down any hegemonic
ambitions.
South Africa has never sought to define itself as a great force for good in
the world, says Aziz Pahad, deputy foreign minister until his resignation in
September. Like almost every other country, its foreign policy is based not on
morality but primarily on its own national interest. And that, says Mr Pahad,
lies in creating a new and more equitable world order.
Thus South Africa’s earlier talk about setting Africa’s house in order has
given way to pushing for more representation of poorer countries in multilateral
institutions such as the UN Security Council, the IMF and the World Bank. South
Africa’s ambition to gain a greater voice means making common cause not just
with its African neighbours but also with the rest of the poor world, democratic
or not.
Many South Africans say that rich countries’ strictures on democracy and
human rights will carry little moral force until poorer countries have a bigger
say in running the affairs of the world. Not all agree. Turning a blind eye to
oppression abroad is “a betrayal of our own noble past”, argues Desmond Tutu, a
Nobel peace-prize winner and a hero of the struggle against white rule. “If
others had used the arguments we are using today when we asked them for their
support against apartheid we might still have been unfree,” he
says.