Africa

Here is a quick tour of stories on Zimbabwe making the news, offered with little commentary:

SADC has launched an aid program to deal with Zimbabwe’s humanitarian crisis. Specific details are scarce, and one wonders if the aid will come with any element of pressure whatsoever.

The United States claims that it will not work with a unity government involving Robert Mugabe, which seems prematurely bold — if Tsvangirai manages to emerge with an agreement is the United States going to reject Tsvangirai’s wishes and allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good? With less than a month to go before a transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration, these sorts of pronouncements are not worth a whole lot. In any case, the power-sharing negotiations continue to go nowhere, so the point may be moot.

In the UK it appears that Mugabe’s supporters are free to operate pretty much unfettered. In so doing they prop up Mugabe’s regime by providing financial support for him and his henchmen. In a similarly deleterious vein, Mugabe’s thugs continue to have access to weapons and ammunition, and much of that materiel comes via the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the source of so much regional destabilization.

Yet another indicator of just how bad things are, as if one is needed, is the fact that Doctors Without Borders has placed Zimbabwe on its lists of both the world’s ten worst humanitarian crises and its ten most under-reported stories. The real shock would have been if Zimbabwe had not made both lists.

Through it all Mugabe continues his defiant stance. He of course refuses to step down. So look for more of the same as 2008 transitions to 2009.

Few things in life are certain. The sun will rise, the sun will set, and journalists will look at an African crisis and almost inevitably chalk it up primarily to tribal rivalries — and usually they depict those rivalries as “ancient” (and thus somehow immutable). This lazy shorthand almost always obscures more than it elucidates and helps to keep Africa shrouded in myths and cliches.

Tim Butcher’s article on the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Prospect Magazine is thus especially welcome. Butcher argues that the problems in the Congo are attributable far more to historical circumstances surrounding the exploitation of mineral resources than to largely incidental ethnic conflicts.  While this argument may carry with it its own reductionist dangers, it far surpasses the hoary tribal explanation in sophistication and nuance.

Some states confront economic calamities. Some confront political tyranny. And in some cases the latter fuels the former. Such is the case in Zimbabwe where Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship quite clearly has exacerbated the country’s dire economic straits. The country’s citizens are facing acute hunger that stems from the country virtually running out of bread because grain shortages have led to the closing of bakeries. Indicative of the precarious state of public health, Bulawayo has only two dialysis machines, and those have broken down. Zimbabwe’s parliament has panicked (and possibly allowed Mugabe’s anti-foreign rhetoric to fuel its policies) by enacting the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill, which mandates that Zimbabweans must own a majority of foreign-run firms. This is likely only to fuel further withdrawals from capital on the part of companies and countries whose status in Zim was precarious to begin with. And, naturally, Mugabe continues to threaten further nationalization of the economy. In spite of all of these awful tidings, it is remarkable that some Zimbabweans still hold out hope, possibly because hope is all that remains.

Whatever progress Thabo Mbeki’s moderation might have made, it clearly is not enough and is likely to have little practical effect. Perhaps this is why Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade on Monday announced that he plans to travel to Zimbabwe this month to meet with Mugabe to recommend multilateral mediation by African heads of state. Does Wade’s plan represent more window dressing? The creation of a new echo chamber? An empty and ultimately futile gesture? Possibly. But at this point gestures are better than silence and acquiescence. Wade’s actions may represent an attempt to tweak his occasional rival Mbeki, but if it takes a clash of egos to push action on behalf of Zimbabwe’s people, so be it.

According to the Mail & Guardian, SADC’s plan for Zimbabwe’s economic recovery is a non-starter because, well, SADC and its member nations do not have the necessary funds and the prospect of such support coming from the west in sufficient qualities is highly improbable.:

The economic rescue package for Zimbabwe, touted at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Lusaka last week, is a non-starter, economists and political commentators argued this week.

They said that at least $15-billion would be needed to restore Zimbabwe’s collapsing infrastructure and revive commercial agriculture, the mainstay of the formal economy. The region could not foot this bill and Western “development partners” would not come to the party unless Zimbabwe democratised and introduced rational economic policies.

There are two (possibly three) questions that SADC ought to be asking: Were the funds available, would the economic recovery plan be either desirable or viable? This is a crucial question because any Zimbabwe economic recovery plan that does not incorporate regime change seems to be placing a misshapen stopper in a spilling bottle. Doing so will be, at best, a temporary solution. The second question then takes two paths: If such a plan is viable or desirable, is accessing the funding truly an impossible task? If not, then what plan must SADC develop in its place?

But of late it seems that SADC is uninterested in asking what ought to be baseline questions for fear of not finding their preferred answers. Until the member nations of SADC take the questions seriously, there is little reason why we should seriously consider their answers.

Hopes were high for the two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit held last week in Lusaka. The crisis in Zimbabwe would be high on the agenda. Thabo Mbeki would present his progress report on his mediation between Robert Mugabe and his opponents. Some how, some way, the region’s leaders would broker a solution, or at least break the logjam.

Admittedly this was an optimistic outlook and few of us who observe African affairs believed that any actual solution would be forthcoming. But we did hope that stern words and perhaps hints of action to come might emerge from Lusaka. In short, we hoped for at least symbolic action.

Instead Mugabe received a hero’s welcome, which shocked and dismayed diplomats and other outside observers. So perhaps the welcome was merely an acknowledgment of Mugabe’s status as a liberation hero and one-time brother-in-arms. Perhaps it represented a last hurrah for the grizzled Zimbabwean strongman.

Not quite. Mbeki’s report was feckless and tepid, asserting that the various parties were in discussions with progress being made. To make matters worse, SADC leaders declared that the accusations aimed at Zimbabwe have been “exaggerated,” and that the country will solve its economic problems. Of course no one was able to explain how Zimbabwe would suddenly end the slow slide into chaos and economic failure that has characterized the bulk of the last decade and that has only accelerated in recent months.

I’m not certain if I have ever agreed with South Africa’s Democratic Alliance on much, but the party position, as presented by the DA’s former leader and current spokesman on foreign affairs, Tony Leon, seem an apt summation:

“The Zimbabwean President was treated to a hero’s welcome in Zambia, and the SADC executive secretary Tomaz Salamao blamed much of the economic woes in Zimbabwe on sanctions,” he said in a statement.

The “cosy attitude” displayed by SADC heads of state towards Mugabe, Leon said, was a further indication that the South African government’s approach to the Zimbabwean crisis was unhelpful and inappropriate.

“Zanu-PF’s attitude and tactics will not be changed by quiet diplomacy or a weak stance by our government,” he said.

Leon said statements made by Zimbabwe’s Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa at the opening of the summit were evidence of the contempt Zanu-PF had for mediation talks spearheaded by Mbeki.

“How many more futile attempts to coax Zanu-PF to behave in a responsible manner will it take before President Mbeki agrees to take a stronger more critical stance on the matter?” asked Leon.

What is perhaps most disappointing is that SADC, in not recognizing Zim’s problems, have made it nearly impossible to pave the way for a post-Mugabe dispensation. It is understandable, after years of ruthless European imperialism followed by an almost equally deleterious era of Cold War clientelism, for African leaders to circle the wagons and to resist being told what to do by the outside world. but to fall back on those canards in the face of the current monstrosity that is Mugabe’s regime is to abandon millions of Africans to the capricious whims of a despot. It is one thing to applaud Mugabe if behind the scenes you are working to find a way out of the mess he has created and to ensure that there will be some prospects for success after Mugabe’s fall or death. That is how high-level diplomacy works. But it is quite another to applaud Mugabe’s face and pat his back. That is how acquiescence to authoritarianism works.

Here is a quick roundup of news stories this morning:

For three different perspectives on the general strike in South Africa see this story in the Mail & Guardian,  this from Green Left, and this from The Sowetan. (Hat tip to Peter Limb at H-SAfrica.)  See also this story from All Africa. And for concerns about the effect the strike will have on tourism, see here.

On the latest from Zimbabwe see this account of the ruling party’s meeting with the Movement for Democratic Change. Color me skeptical. This Michael Gerson piece in The Washington Post helps explain why. As does this.

The ANC leadership succession race is heating up. For some analysis see here.

Foreign Policy has released its annual Failed State Index, and sadly, though not unexpectedly, it is pregnant with African countries. The Mail & Guardian has more here. Not surprisingly, Sudan tops the list. And plucky little Guinea-Bissau is making its own mark by staking its claim as Africa’s cocaine capital.