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"The Prospects for South Africa and Zimbabwe"
Tony Leon MP
October 06, 2005

http://www.policynetwork.net/main/content.php?content_id=33

This speech was addressed to the International Policy Network and the Institute of Economic Affairs
London, UK

Introduction
I am grateful for the opportunity to address this distinguished forum on a subject that is of pressing concern to South Africans, to Zimbabweans and to friends of Africa around the world.

South Africa is viewed as a symbol of our continent’s hopes and prospects at the dawn of the twenty-first century. At the same time, Zimbabwe, our neighbour to the north, has come to symbolise the bleak history of postcolonial Africa, its failures and its fears.

I hesitate to speak of South Africa and Zimbabwe in the same breath – although that is the topic which my hosts have assigned me and I will do my best to address it. The late Israeli statesman and diplomat Abba Eban (1915-2002), who was born in South Africa, often warned of "the perils of analogy".

A red apple and a red rubber ball, he used to say, seem almost identical at first. The one is red, round, shiny and good to eat. The other is red, round, and shiny, too—but that is where the similarity ends. One small distinction can make all the difference.

It is frustrating to those of us living in Africa that people around the world tend to lump African countries together, such that trouble in one reflects poorly on all.

Africa is unique in suffering this fate. Few would see North Korea as a reflection on East Asia, for example, and few would take autocratic Byelorussia as an example of politics in Eastern Europe.

Furthermore, there are important differences of scale to take into account. Zimbabwe is a small country, with a population of just under twelve million people and an economy not much larger than the South African coastal city of Durban.

South Africa’s population, by contrast, is roughly four times larger, at forty-five million people. Our economy is more than twenty times larger; by far the biggest on the continent—and unlike Zimbabwe’s economy, which is heavily reliant on agriculture, South Africa has a diverse, modern economy.

Having made these distinctions, it is important to recognise that South Africa and Zimbabwe share a border, as well as similar ethnic groups and cultural, linguistic and religious features. Prior to the present troubles, Zimbabwe was South Africa’s largest trading partner in the region.

More important, we share a history of British colonialism, of racial discrimination, of struggles for freedom, and of transitions to multiparty, nonracial, constitutional democracy. Zimbabwe, in fact, played a small but important role in helping to facilitate South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle and our move into the democratic era.

South Africa: Parallels and Differences
Zimbabwe’s freedom was achieved more than a decade earlier than South Africa’s—in 1980 as opposed to 1994—and therefore Zimbabwe has been seen, for the past twenty-five years, as an indicator of South Africa’s future political direction.

Many of the same notes of reconciliation and racial harmony that resounded throughout South Africa’s first decade of democracy were also heard at Zimbabwe’s independence from President Robert Mugabe himself.

Five years ago, at the start of Mugabe’s disastrous, murderous and politically opportunistic land reform campaign, it was considered alarmist—and even potentially racist—to suggest that South Africa would "go the same way".

Now, however, the notion seems less far-fetched, and certainly less taboo in public discourse in South Africa. The people raising the prospect of "another Zimbabwe" are not, in the main, white people but concerned black observers.

Take Trevor Ncube, for example, one of Africa’s foremost black media entrepreneurs. He built his publishing empire in Zimbabwe and now owns the highly-regarded weekly Mail & Guardian in South Africa.

Ncube said in a recent speech: "I'm concerned about the similarities that I'm reading between South Africa and Zimbabwe, and good Lord I hope I'm wrong, because if I'm not, then South Africa is headed the direction of Zimbabwe."

Increasingly, the parallels between Zimbabwe and South Africa have become more than just rhetorical.

Land reform is one example. Under strong pressure from its allies in the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the government of the African National Congress (ANC) is now pushing a more radical line on land reform. Senior members of the Cabinet are speaking about expropriation as a viable alternative to the "willing buyer, willing seller" approach.

Indeed, late last month the government moved for the first time to expropriate land from a commercial farmer in the North West Province. The case involves a dispute over the restitution of land taken away by the apartheid government, and not simply redistribution of land as such. Still, it has gained national and international attention.

The great virtue of the South African system of government, as opposed to the Zimbabwean one, has been the continued independence of the judiciary. South African courts have ruled against the government on many occasions, and the government has respected these decisions, though not always with great enthusiasm. The courts also rule against opposition parties occasionally, which we have to grin and bear.

Lately, however, the ruling party has been talking of the need to "transform" the judiciary. This is not merely an attempt to make the bench more representative of the demography of the country as a whole, as the Constitution requires. Rather, "transformation" is being abused to appoint judges that are more deferential to the executive and to the ruling party.

Already, the government has proposed new legislation that would give it greater day-to-day administrative control over the courts. These proposals have prompted stern protest from senior jurists, black and white.

It is worth remembering that the Zimbabwean judiciary was also once regarded as robust and independent, until Mugabe started stacking the courts with subservient partisan appointees.

And long before the rise of Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe also had a strong political opposition in the form of Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU).

That party was destroyed, partly through a brutal campaign of state terror and murder in Matabeleland, and partly because Nkomo allowed his party to be absorbed into the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Popular Front (ZANU-PF).

There is, thankfully, no such state violence in South Africa today, nor is there likely to be any in the future. And my party, the Democratic Alliance, which is the largest opposition party, is growing rapidly—more rapidly, indeed, than the ANC.

We made an historic choice to remain an opposition force when we could, like Nkomo, have joined the ruling party. In 1996, I was flattered when President Nelson Mandela offered my party a seat in Cabinet. We held several talks on his offer, and the repeated sticking point was the issue of whether it would be possible for our party to serve in the Cabinet and still disagree with or dissent from some of its decisions.

President Mandela told me that dissent would be impossible—that we would have to face the world "like Mugabe and Nkomo". But I believed that South Africa needed a responsible, viable dissenting voice. And so the offer was declined.

Today, I think, South Africa is better off for not having a "Mugabe and Nkomo" in government, but a proper tension between the government and an opposition loyal to the Constitution.

But many other, smaller opposition parties have been swallowed by the ANC or have succumbed to ANC pressure. These include the once-mighty National Party, which governed during the apartheid era and no longer exists, as well as the Inkatha Freedom Party, which is losing the decades-old battle against its ANC rival in the Zulu heartland of KwaZulu Natal.

The ANC is also determined to extend its control over all independent public institutions and civil society organisations in the country.

Again, it is important not to overstate the case. In comparing the first decade of South Africa’s freedom to the first decade of independence in Zimbabwe, South Africa’s commitment—both political and practical—to human rights and democracy is far stronger.

One obvious example is that our first democratically-elected president, Nelson Mandela, stepped down after his first and only term in office, while Mugabe has been in power for twenty-five years.

Our current President, Thabo Mbeki, has pledged to step down at the end of his current term in 2009. He has similarly helped persuade former Mozambican President Joachim Chissano to step down, as well as former Namibian President Sam Nujoma. The question is why he has failed to do the same in Zimbabwe.

South African support for Mugabe
Despite South Africa’s commitment to constitutional democracy and freedom, our government continues to provide material, political and ideological support to the Mugabe regime, which has become the most despotic and rights-delinquent government in all of Southern Africa.

For several years, South Africa’s policy towards Zimbabwe was referred to as "quiet diplomacy", but even this bland euphemism is no longer apt. We are no longer quietly critical of Zimbabwe. We are, on the contrary, open and avid Mugabe supporters.

This past winter, Zimbabwe conducted a devastating Khmer Rouge-style campaign of forced removals which it referred to as Operation Murambatsvina—or "Drive Out the Trash". Several hundred thousand homes were destroyed and as many as 2,4-million people—roughly one-fifth of the population—was affected, according to the United Nations (UN).

This atrocity, which UN envoy Anna Tibaijuka suggested could constitute a crime against humanity, is equivalent to the forced removals carried out by the apartheid government in scale, speed and brutality.

Yet the South African government did not offer even a whimper of protest or criticism against Mugabe’s actions. Our government did not even intervene when a shipment of food aid from the South African Council of Churches (SACC) to the victims of Operation Murambatsvina was prevented from entering Zimbabwe.

Instead, our government apparently offered Zimbabwe a loan of several hundred million US dollars to help it pay off its debts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – which is threatening Zimbabwe with expulsion—and to help the Zimbabwean economy recover from its debilitating, government-induced and entirely avoidable collapse.

In the end, Mugabe came up with 120 million US dollars on his own, reportedly by raiding his country’s foreign exchange reserves. This bought a temporary reprieve from the IMF, but it pushed the informal exchange rate to 100 000 Zimbabwean dollars to 1 US dollar, a completely unsustainable level.

Thus far our government is remaining silent about the whole affair, but according to Zimbabwean Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono, talks with South Africa about a loan are still active.

The political cost of propping up Mugabe
In stark contrast to its lack of results in Zimbabwe, our government has accomplished a great deal in the field of conflict resolution elsewhere in Africa. South Africa has helped broker peace agreements in Congo, Burundi and the Ivory Coast. Our government has also taken up the Palestinian cause and attempted to mediate between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

But in all this frenetic worldwide activity, our government seems to have little time to encourage the Zimbabwean government to speak to its opposition.

The political damage of South Africa’s relationship with the Mugabe regime is also damaging many of the bold and hopeful initiatives towards African stability and development that our government and our President in particular have undertaken.

Firstly, Mugabe has revived the tragicomic image of the African dictator, just as the world thought it had consigned the Mobutus, Idi Amins and Sani Abachas to the dustbin of history.

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development, or Nepad, has also lost ground, if not credibility. The lofty goals of democracy, transparency and economic growth and development contained in Nepad’s founding documents are being torn up one by one in Zimbabwe. And South Africa, which played the leading role in building Nepad and selling it to the G-8 nations, is failing to intervene, calling the viability of the whole project into question.

The African Union has also suffered. It set out, at its inception in 2002, to shed the image of its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity, as a club of dictators. And the AU has, to its credit, sent peacekeeping missions to Sudan and tabled a report criticising human rights violations in Zimbabwe. But its leaders have nonetheless refused to condemn Mugabe’s actions directly.

Even more disappointing has been the behaviour of Zimbabwe’s neighbours in SADC. Far from criticising him, many SADC leaders have endorsed Mugabe’s land reform programme on several occasions.

That is not to say that African nations are united behind Zimbabwe. On the contrary, many African nations refused to join South African’s lead in defending Zimbabwe at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Abuja, Nigeria in December 2003. But since then they have rarely translated their disapproval into open criticism or censure.

It is remarkable that modernising African leaders are willing to pay the price of condoning Mugabe’s behaviour, overtly and covertly, given the high cost in terms of continental aspirations and the perceptions of the international community.

This week’s issue of the Economist reports that growth in inward foreign investment in Africa in 2004 was only 0,6 percent, as against 71,8 percent in Asia and 43,9 percent in Latin America. There are many causes of our continent’s economic stagnation, but clearly support for Mugabe is sending the wrong signals to investors.

South African potential, and problems
Our country is on the cusp of great achievements, of seizing the opportunities that the global economy provides us and using them to grow and develop not only our own economy, but also the economies of our trading partners throughout the African continent.

South Africa’s economic growth has broken through four percent. While this is not as high as the government’s target of six percent, it is a sign of real progress and extends the gains we have made in the last ten years, which have seen the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth in our nation’s history.

South Africa’s economic success also fuels prosperity in the rest of Africa. Over the past decade our country has become the single largest source of foreign direct investment on the continent.

In addition, a recent study carried out by researchers at the International Monetary Fund concluded that "[a] 1 percentage point increase in South Africa’s per capita GDP growth, sustained over five years, is correlated with a 0,4 – 0,7 percentage point increase in growth in the rest of Africa".

Furthermore, millions of South Africans who previously lacked access to services such as electricity, telephones, water and sanitation are now connected to them, thanks to ambitious efforts by the national and local governments, in both ANC- and opposition-controlled areas of the country.

There are, however, several warning signs.

South Africa has tumbled downwards on the world’s objective measure of the quality of life, the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index. We have fallen more than thirty places in a single decade, and we now rank below even the troubled Palestinian territories.

The chief reason for our decline is the calamitous drop in average life expectancy, from roughly seventy to fifty years, due to the rapid spread of the HIV/Aids pandemic. There are now well over five million South Africans living with the disease; more than a million are thought to have died already; and more than a third of young people in their late twenties are infected.

Unemployment is also an enormous problem. Despite economic growth, more and more South Africans are out of work. The official unemployment rate hovers at about thirty percent; it rises to forty percent if we consider those people who have given up seeking work. Income inequality has decreased between whites and blacks, but it has grown rapidly among black South Africans.

This year, with local government elections looming in the next several months, the spotlight has fallen on municipal governments, half of which are officially considered dysfunctional enough to warrant intervention from the central government.

The burden on South Africa’s government and society will become even heavier if Zimbabwe continues to fail and our country is flooded with refugees. Already, there are thought to be perhaps as many as two to three million Zimbabweans living in South Africa, both legally and illegally. Thousands more arrive every day.

One of the justifications for the government’s "quiet diplomacy" has been that South Africa can ill afford to allow Zimbabwe to collapse and to have millions of refugees on our doorstep. Yet that is precisely what is happening. It is not political change that is causing Zimbabwe to become unstable, but political stagnation.

And political stagnation in South Africa is also a possibility, especially if we cannot break out of racial stereotyping and racial patterns of voting.

Last year, I was interviewed by Tim Sebastian of the BBC on his Hard Talk programme. He asked me whether it was really possible for a white person to become President of South Africa, or if I was simply "delusional". He would never have asked Michael Howard, before the recent British election, whether a Jew could become Prime Minister.

I told him: "I am not interested or obsessed with people’s racial identity. The previous South Africa failed because of that."

The good news is that South African minorities have remained involved in the political process, which was not the case in Zimbabwe.

The Lancaster House agreement of 1979 guaranteed white Zimbabweans 20 percent of the seats in Parliament, whereupon most whites, satisfied that they would be represented, withdrew from politics.

Racial minorities in South Africa, by contrast, have chosen to remain involved—and all political parties, including the ANC, court their votes. This bodes well for the future—not just in terms of minority rights, but also for racial reconciliation and constitutional democracy as a whole.

The enduring strength of South Africa’s democracy is our nation’s greatest asset, and one that we should put to good use in helping to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis.

The road map to democracy in Zimbabwe
In 2003, the Democratic Alliance proposed a new policy for South Africa to adopt towards Zimbabwe, called the "Road Map to Democracy in Zimbabwe".

Loosely based on the international "road map" to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, our road map provides clear goals, clear timetables, clear rewards for progress and clear punishments for failure.

The Zimbabwe road map incorporates plans for public, multiparty negotiations; the departure of Mugabe from office; the establishment of an interim government; the drafting of a new constitution and the holding of new elections. As Zimbabwe reached each stage, it would be rewarded with greater international aid and assistance.

We presented the Zimbabwe road map to then-Deputy President Jacob Zuma and updated it ahead of the Commonwealth’s Abuja meeting. We proposed that the African Union guide, direct and oversee the entire process, determining the exact schedule and the specific incentives and punishments involved.

The idea seemed to find considerable traction in policy circles, and a similar approach was proposed at the Commonwealth meeting, which suggested that Zimbabwe remain suspended from the organisation until it had achieved certain interim reforms. This stepwise approach, however, was not supported by the South African government, which wanted Zimbabwe to be re-admitted immediately.

Instead, Zimbabwe left the Commonwealth entirely after the Abuja meeting.

In contrast to the opposition perspective, the South African government persists in seeing Zimbabwe (akin to its approach to HIV/AIDS) as being essentially a problem of poverty and underdevelopment and, of course, colonialism.

This was illustrated with vivid clarity when President Mbeki appeared before Parliament to answer questions recently. DA Chairman Joe Seremane—himself a former victim of the apartheid government and a prisoner on Robben Island for six years—asked the President about the effects of Zimbabwe on Africa’s efforts to promote its own growth and development.

"[W]hy should the South African government continue backing the ZANU-PF government at the expense of the rest of the Zimbabwean citizens?" Seremane asked.

President Mbeki’s response was tellingly evasive:

…I notice that the honourable member hasn’t mentioned other very large challenges on our continent and I am not quite sure why. Whether it is the Congo, Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire or Mauritania and so on, these are matters on which, as I am saying, we are trying to contribute the best we can, to try and find solutions thereto. Yes, indeed, you need this base that he referred to in order for each one of our countries to be able to address this very serious challenge of poverty and underdevelopment.

I do not believe that I need to say anything more about Zimbabwe. We have addressed this matter many, many times, and our position hasn’t changed on this issue…

In one respect the President was right: our position hasn’t changed. But the situation in Zimbabwe has become far, far worse.

In an article in the current issue of the Spectator, Andrew Gilmour writes approvingly of the UN’s recent reforms. He notes:

… in one of the most radical restatements of international law of the past century, the entire UN membership went along with a declaration accepting the right of the world community to take military action in the case of governments failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing. Prime Minister Tony Blair was right when he said, ‘For the first time at this summit we are agreed that states do not have the right to do what they will within their own borders’. No longer will governments who carry out mass butchery be able to hide behind the mantra of national sovereignty to prevent the UN interfering in their crimes.

There are still limits to what the UN can do to intervene, certainly in the aftermath of the Iraq war and its difficulties. Military intervention, even if the UN were to agree on such a course of action, would create many more problems than it would solve, as would broad economic sanctions.

When the UN Security Council considered Tibaijuka’s report on Operation Murambatsvina, it chose to do little more than recommend an urgent increase in humanitarian aid.

However, the principle was upheld: member states may not do whatever they like to the rights and lives of their own citizens.

Conclusion: the need for leadership
There is a strong case for further UN action on Zimbabwe but what is needed most is political leadership among Zimbabwe’s neighbours—leadership that is willing to abandon its fond attachment to antique nationalism and the doctrine of absolute national sovereignty, and to embrace the cause of human rights.

We need leadership that is prepared to break the old bonds of "struggle solidarity" between ZANU-PF and its sister liberation parties. We need leadership that is prepared to accept that even the parties of liberation can lose elections and fall from power from time to time.

In many ways, Zimbabwe is repeating the history of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia in the narrow days after his Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Mugabe is alone, isolated and resentful, with only the support of South Africa to count on, along with the shared racial and ideological allegiances of its ruling party.

The parallels are striking, save in one respect.

When I was a young boy growing up in Durban, I remember that virtually the entire white population was pro-Rhodesia and regarded British Prime Minister Harold Wilson as a sell-out and Ian Smith as a saviour. Anyone who expressed sympathy for the cause of black Zimbabweans provoked titters of disapproval.

Today, despite Mugabe’s attempts to portray himself as the hero of the African masses, and regardless of the support he receives from radicals living in the comfort of Johannesburg or London, few Africans care for him at all.

A recent survey by a market research firm in South Africa found that only fourteen percent of black South Africans approved of Mugabe’s rule.

In the 1970s, despite his own utter commitment to apartheid and the near-complete uniformity of white opinion in South Africa, Prime Minister John Vorster turned his back on Rhodesia in what Ian Smith was later to describe, in his autobiography of the same name, as "The Great Betrayal".

The question is why President Thabo Mbeki cannot bring himself to do the same—despite widespread disapproval for Mugabe among black South Africans, despite the enormous economic and political costs of supporting Mugabe, and despite the great gains for Africa that an end to the Zimbabwe crisis would bring.

What Britain and South Africa’s friends abroad must tell President Mbeki at every opportunity is that there is no way the Zimbabwe crisis is going to be resolved, and no way that Africa will succeed, unless he takes a stand.

Until he does, the world will be simply waiting for Mugabe to disappear—to take the "Abacha option", we might call it. But that may merely prolong the suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans for many more years. It is clear that a properly-managed process of political change, while not without its costs, is the only way forward for Zimbabwe. To leave Mugabe in office would be a disaster.

South Africa can play a leading role in guiding the process of change. We simply cannot allow Mugabe to continue in power in Zimbabwe any longer, nor can we permit the devastation of his country to continue. It is hurting South Africa; it is hurting Zimbabwe; it is hurting Africa as a whole.

The world is waiting to assist us in building a new Zimbabwe. All we have to do is make the right choice—to say "no" to Mugabe and "yes" to the Zimbabwean people.

I thank you.

*Tony Leon MP is the leader of the Democratic Alliance

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