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.

The international community has perked itself up over Zimbabwe again. As the country’s post-election chaos swirled the West shook its head and waved its fingers, then the stalemate settled in and by and large Zimbabwe disappeared from the consciousness of most of the world. This is how the world deals with Africa. Today it’s Zimbabwe, when the next pirate attack occurs it will be Somalia, when a tight election leads to violence the cameras will go there. It appears that the cholera epidemic has led to renewed interest and concern over Zimbabwe. The consensus is that Robert Mugabe is the source of Zimbabwe’s troubles and must go, a reductionist but largely true summation that has been obvious to all but the obtuse for quite a while now.
Now, this characterization is probably unfair. But it is hard not to be a little bit cynical about the piecemeal, scattershot way that the world approaches Africa. Scorn and pity are not the greatest foundation for a foreign policy.

Mugabe, meanwhile, refuses to yield to outside pressure, which should surprise absolutely no one. What may be stunning is that Jacob Zuma appears to be preventing strong action against Mugabe, instead counseling continued mediation. This comes as something of a shock because one of the few explicitly articulated differences on policy matters between Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki was that Zuma supposedly believed in taking a stronger stance against Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Meet the new boss, apparently the same as the old boss.

Well, well, well — just when I posit that we have seen relatively few differences between COPE and the ANC here comes a potential whopper. Philip Dexter, a “senior member” (whatever that can possibly mean for a party that has not fully launched yet) of COPE has put forward a position on Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe that departs significantly from that of the ANC in recent years. “From my point of view the only way to solve the Zimbabwe problem at this point is to put enough pressure on Mugabe for him to go. And he should either go voluntarily, or he should go by being forcibly removed. And I think we have to support the Zimbabwean people to achieve that objective.”

Dexter later clarified his position to say that it was his own and not COPE’s, and that use of the passive voice, “should go by being forcibly removed” does not necessarily commit COPE to South African-driven action. Still, it is hard not to see this as a potentially vast departure from the ANC’s policies toward Mugabe. 

Most South Africans, and indeed observers the world over, have been left scratching their heads over the recent events that with dizzying speed led to Thabo Mbeki’s looming resignation and the biggest political crisis in South Africa since the period prior to 1994. Not all are thrilled with the decision and others are worried about the ramifications. Whatever one’s views of South African politics and the nasty personal rivalries involved, this is not an ideal outcome and these are not good days for South Africa or the African National Congress.

Now comes the hard part: What’s next? The ANC is going to have to deal with the transition, ease the worries not only of the Mbeki wing of the party but of the Cabinet, the opposition parties, the international community, and of course the country’s masses. For the time being Trevor Manuel will remain as Finance Minister, a vital step to placate both the domestic and international community as to the continued viability of South Africa’s economy. While Jacob Zuma will presumably win election to the country’s presidency after elections in 2009, for the time being Baleka Mbete, the Speaker of the National Assembly, will likely serve as a placeholder bridge in the Presidency between Mbeki and Zuma, assuming that deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka follows through on her promise to resign if Mbeki was forced out, though there are some questions as to the exact Constitutional implications of Mbeki’s and Mlambo-Ngcuka’s resignations. 

It is perhaps no coincidence that legal experts believe that Zuma’s corruption trial will likely not proceed until 2010. By that point he will be safely ensconced in office and it will be all the harder to convict him without sending the country into another Constitutional crisis. Thus the recent events very much seem like a consolidation of power that while unnecessary and destabilizing also leave no doubt as to Zuma’s status not only as the ANC’s leader but as the country’s de facto head. Things might work out well. But it is hard to feel better about South Africa’s political prospects now than a week ago, at least in the short term.

If the optimists are right and the sides in the Zimbabwe negotiations really are close to an agreement, even Thabo Mbeki’s harshest critics will be forced to give the man credit for his role in keeping the sides at the bargaining table and thus facilitating an agreement. Certainly Mbeki will still be vulnerable to accusations that he took too long, dragged his feet too much, and favored Robert Mugabe too obviously. But those critics should also recognize that short of the use of force that one has a hard time envisioning ever having been able to happen, Mbeki’s actual options were more circumscribed than many might want to acknowledge.

If the talks really do lead to an agreement (and you can consider me still dubious as to whether this will happen) it will go down as a high water mark of Thabo Mbeki’s presidency and of South African diplomacy. An agreement will almost certainly not be sufficient to help rehabilitate Mbaki’s image — that might be an impossibility — but it will give Mbeki a crowning moment of glory in his last few months as South Africa’s president.

In a recent article in The Mail & Guardian Michael Georgy makes the case that the deadlock in Zimbabwe represents yet another failure for Thabo Mbeki, another sign of his waning credibility and fading influence at home and abroad.

The case seems pretty strong. Yet something about this argument does not strike me as being quite right or quite fair. Certainly Mbeki deserves plenty of blame for letting the Zimbabwe sore fester for as long as it has without taking stronger action, without pushing for a resolution sooner, without taking more seriously his mandate to broker peace on the behalf of SADC, without ever, to this day, truly condemning Robert Mugabe or at minimum what mugabe allowed to happen to his country. And as a consequence things have gotten to where they are, for which Thabo Mbeki is one of many actors who deserves his share of the blame.

But at the same time, Mbeki is in no position to force an agreement right now. Cliches about horses and water and forcing them to drink come to mind. I  suppose that were a deal to come that the world could celebrate Mbeki would bask in the credit, and as a consequence he has to deal with the backlash. But there are situations where credit might be due success even if equal blame is not due failure. Many of us knew that these negotiations would only go as far as Robert Mugabe would allow them to go. And so they have. For this, at least, it is hard for me to blame Thabo Mbeki.

To my readers in the United States: Happy 4th of July!

To my readers in South Africa and anywhere else on the globe: Happy Friday!

In the last dozen years I believe I have spent more American Independence Day holidays outside of the United States than within it, with most of those spent here in South Africa. Being abroad usually provides an interesting perspective on one’s own country. I consider myself to be patriotic in the most important and perhaps least jingoistic sense in that I love my country but I see its flaws. I honestly have no idea what people mean when they say that the United States is the “best country in the world.” I guess I do not dispute the assertion at its essence, but I have no idea what “best” means, and why those who make the assertion do as much with such totality. The best at what? The best by what measurement? Is patriotism simply the willingness to rank arbitrarily one’s country by some sort of flow chart or Olympic medal chart? I will grant that the United States is the most powerful nation on earth militarily, politically, economically, and culturally. And as a result I think it can be argued, and I would, that the United States is the most important nation on earth. But nation-states not being reducable to one’s favorite sports team or top-five pop bands, I see neither utility nor meaning in the “best country in the world” mania that strikes my most jingoistic countrymen and women.

At the same time, it is always telling to see what others think of one’s own country. I have found the supposed anti-Americanism that is supposedly pervading the world to be vastky overstated. I am certain there are places where that sentiment is strong, such as in much of the Middle East and in certain quarters in Europe, say. But on the whole what I find, especially once I convince the listener that I am not an agent of my state and that I do not represent American policy (even if I may defend elements of it or the larger framework within which that policy operates) I will have engaging, if occasionally lively, conversations.

The fiasco in Iraq has not done the US any favors abroad, nor has the arrogance our current administration has put forth in presenting the American face to the world. But at the same time most people in South Africa and elsewhere understand that our administrations are temporal where the American state is not. And so what I hear most often are questions about the current campaign for the presidency, and whether Obama can win, and if McCain is a Bush clone.

It is my experience that the rest of the world is very much interested in the United States and its role in world affairs and looks at America with a combination of awe and fear and respect and admiration and concern and envy. This may be impossible to quantify, but it is a lot more interesting, and telling, than simple assertions that America is “hated” or loved.

[Crossposted at the FPA Africa Blog and at dcat.]

Michael Gerson has a blistering column in today’s Washington Post about the crisis in Zimbabwe and what he sees as South Africa’s enabling of Robert Mugabe’s despotism. There is little new in Gerson’s column for those who have been following the crisis for a while, but perhaps voices like his will lead to more pressure from the American government on Thabo Mbeki, whose last year in office has been characterized by myriad failures real and perceived.

At the Council on Foreign Relations Andrew Meldrum, a Nieman fellow at Harvard University and former Zimbabwe correspondent for the Guardian, discusses (via podcast) the Zimbabwe crisis and South Africa’s role in it.

A number of civil society groups concerned with Zimbabwe’s welfare and operating under the banner of the Institute for a Democratic Alternative in Zimbabwe have slammed the Southern African Development Community and Thabo Mbeki for their lack of resolve on the Zimbabwe question. In a damning quotation Wellington Chibebe of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions asserts, ”For the SADC to have mandated President Mbeki to continue with the (facilitation) exercise, that is the joke of the year.”