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The Western response to the crisis in Zimbabwe
Margaret C. Lee
March 2003

http://www.sum.uio.no/publications/pdf_fulltekst/WP2003_03_lee.pdf

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The international response has been divided, overstated, under-implemented, and largely ineffectual . . . .divisions have widened, not just between Africa and the West, but also increasingly within the West. The issue of Zimbabwe is dividing international organizations and creating embarrassing public debates over trivial issues, such as participation in a cricket championship, that deflect attention from the serious erosion occurring within the country.1

Zimbabwe is currently facing a crisis of unimaginable proportions. An estimated 7 million people are threatened with starvation, the economy has basically collapsed with inflation reaching an estimated 400 percent in March 2003, approximately 80% of the population lives below the poverty line, and unemployment is over 70%. Once the breadbasket of Southern African, Zimbabwe has become the basket case of the region.

The current crisis is a result of the misguided policies of the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), implemented between 2000 and the present. Specifically, following the defeat of a referendum in February 2000 for a draft Constitution that would have, among other things, strengthened President Robert Mugabe-s presidential powers and allowed the government to expropriate white commercial farmland without compensation, the ZANU-PF government amended the Constitution to allow for land expropriation. In addition, it implemented a "fast-track" land resettlement program and called for the invasion of white commercial farms. The resultant government orchestrated violent upheaval resulted in the abrogation of the rule of law, interference in the judiciary, and major violations of human rights, including severe torture and death.

At the heart of the orchestrated violent upheaval was ZANU-PF-s fear that it could be defeated at the polls by a newly established political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The MDC was created in 1999 as an outgrowth of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). In power since independence in 1980, Mugabe and ZANU-PF for the first time were seriously threatened with the possibility of being unseated at the polls by an opposition party. With the fast-track land resettlement program and a strategy to kill, torture, and intimidate the opposition, the ZANU-PF government reasoned that it could win both the parliamentary elections of 2000 and the presidential election of 2002.

The killing, especially of white farmers, solicited an adverse reaction from Western governments. The most outspoken governments were the United Kingdom and the United States. Smart sanctions were eventually imposed against the Mugabe regime by the European Union, the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Both the UK and the US have indicated that the only way forward for Zimbabwe is regime change.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to critically analyze the Western response to the current crisis in Zimbabwe. This will be done by first placing in perspective the Western response to the land question in Zimbabwe from 1979 to 2001; and the atrocities committed by the Mugabe regime against black Zimbabweans from 1983 to 1999.

This historical background is needed in order to understand why the West has not been seen as a credible broker in the crisis. While the immediate crisis in Zimbabwe was spearheaded by the Mugabe regime, a crisis of great magnitude had been in the making since the British imposed Lancaster House Constitution brought the county to independence in 1980. This Constitution laid the foundation for the maintenance of white economic hegemony in post independence Zimbabwe.

Although the objective is to analyze the entire Western response to the Zimbabwe crisis, a large percentage of the analysis will focus on the response of the UK and the US since they have been the most vocal critics of the Mugabe regime and are seen as the major Western countries determined to undermine the ZANU-PF government. The Western response will be examined within the context of three issues:

• the obsession with violations against white commercial farmers;
• the question of the inevitability of regime change; and
• international sanctions and suspension from the Commonwealth.

There are four major arguments put forth in this paper. The first is that there are three primary actors responsible for the current crisis in Zimbabwe - Western governments, white commercial farmers, and the post-independence leaders of Zimbabwe. The Western governments allowed the white minority regime of Rhodesia to exist until the end of the twentieth century, insisted that white economy hegemony, including control over the most productive land in the country be maintained in the post-independence era, and then warned of dire consequences if post-independence agreements were abrogated. The white commercial farmers remained intransigent in their belief that they had no responsibility to share in the wealth of the land with the indigenous African population. And the post independence leaders of Zimbabwe amassed wealth and neglected to fulfill the promises made to the indigenous African population to enhance their social-economic status and implement a land reform program that would remedy the injustices of the past.

The second argument is that by initially appearing to be solely concerned with the human and property rights violations of the white minority, the Western countries lost an opportunity to make a credible case against the reversal of the democratic process in Africa.

The third argument is that by insisting on regime change only in Zimbabwe, and not in the Middle East, Asia, and other African countries where other despotic and anti-democratic regimes are well entrenched, the UK and the US opened themselves up for charges of double standards. Mugabe very astutely used the notion of regime change to warn his fellow African leaders that today it is regime change in Zimbabwe, tomorrow it will be regime change in your country.

Finally, it will be argued that those Western powers that insisted on regime change grossly underestimated the political astuteness of Robert Mugabe. Confident that Mugabe could not survive the crisis and win the 2002 presidential election, the projected new foreign policy of these governments was entirely based on a post-Mugabe era. With all avenues for diplomacy closed, these countries have no ability to have a moderating influencing on the Mugabe regime and therefore can only continue to threaten the regime with more punishing economic sanctions.

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