The National Interest
Spring 2001

Mugabe, Mbeki, and Mandela's Shadow

by R.W. Johnson

 

. . . No liberation movement in southern Africa has ever lost power, or considers it thinkable that it should do so. Believing that their history of resistance to white rule endows them with a sort of permanent righteousness, Mugabe and his party have felt free to use whatever means they like to stay in power; after all, they say, they came to power by the sword and if necessary will stay in power that way. Hence the violent repression both against the burgeoning Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the tiny white minority. Mugabe and his party enforcers have used mass beatings, systematic torture, organized gang rapes, house burnings, death threats and every kind of police and army brutality to intimidate the opposition. Mugabe proudly boasts that he has "a degree in violence" and that the MDC "will never, never rule Zimbabwe." Thirty-four black and seven white farmers have been murdered. Over and over again the courts have found the government acting illegally in almost every sphere of life; Mugabe's response has been to disregard the courts and attack the judges. In his eyes the intrinsic righteousness of being a liberation movement simply trumps all other moral or constitutional considerations.

Despite this overwhelming repression, the MDC won 57 of the 120 elected seats in the June 2000 parliamentary elections and clearly enjoys majority support: a poll in October showed the head MDC candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, leading Mugabe by almost three to one as the people's choice for president. Mugabe, now 76, is clearly determined to run again in the March 2002 presidential election, and it seems certain that the country—forecast by the imf to suffer negative growth of 10 percent this year—will see continuous violent repression for some time to come.

It may seem tempting to dismiss Mugabe as merely another lunatic Third World tyrant, but the Zimbabwean crisis is far more important than that. When Mugabe became president, the late Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere told him to look after Zimbabwe well, for it was "the jewel of Africa." It was not only exceptionally beautiful and a tourist magnet, but it also had one of the continent's highest per capita incomes, one of its best educated populations, considerable natural wealth, and zero foreign debt. For Zimbabwe to have self-destructed so spectacularly represents a crisis not only for the fourteen other member states of the surrounding Southern African Development Community (SADC), but for Africa as a whole. . . .

This Western myopia has occluded another key aspect of the Zimbabwean crisis. Robert Rotberg, writing in Foreign Affairs, notes that President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa—"the continent's shining light"—has consciously refrained from criticizing Mugabe. Nevertheless, Rotberg holds up Mbeki as an example of successful African leadership and even suggests that other African leaders be given "carefully tailored courses and seminars" so that they can learn from the South African model. This endorsement altogether fails to notice that Mbeki has stood—and continues to stand—solidly behind Mugabe.

Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that there would be no Zimbabwean crisis without this key dimension of South African support. As former South African Prime Minister John Balthazar Vorster showed when he made Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith accept majority rule and allow Rhodesia to become Zimbabwe, a South African government has the leverage to make Zimbabwe do as it wishes. It is this phenomenon of Mbeki's and the anc's support for Mugabe—betraying the entire human rights tradition of the South African liberation struggle—that has given the Zimbabwean crisis its truly continental and tragic significance. . . .

The problem is not just that Mbeki has sacrificed the whole human rights tradition of the anti-apartheid struggle to support Mugabe, but that Mugabe must eventually fail. He is 76, is leading his country to negative 10 percent growth, he harbors as a friend the Ethiopian Pol Pot, Mengistu Haile Mariam, he is bankrupt, he is execrated by world opinion, and he knows there is no way back. Betting on him is betting on a certain loser.

Mbeki has been able to get away with this folly only because Western states want to stay on his side at all costs. Some are so desperate to do so that they are even willing to find reasons to excuse Mbeki's policy on aids. Thus, Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace writes that Mbeki's stance on aids is "not an act of personal madness or deep ignorance" but "an act of frustration, a response to an international community that demands too much, offers too little and does not spare the criticism."44 In practice, Mbeki's refusal to allow HIV-positive pregnant mothers or rape victims access to anti-retroviral drugs (which the manufacturers have offered for free) is killing over 50,000 African babies a year. Those who actually care about those babies or about human rights or about Zimbabwe will, in the end, come up with a different answer.