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Standing up to Mugabe
Robert I. Rotberg, Boston Globe
December 22, 2007

http://boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/12/22/standing_up_to_mugabe/

Good for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain. Brown (and six other heads of government in Europe) refused to attend this month's European Union-Africa Summit in Lisbon because President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was scheduled to be there. Merkel (along with the leaders of Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands) condemned the extent to which Mugabe had despoiled his country and preyed upon its people. What he had done, Merkel told Mugabe, was "completely unacceptable."

At last - after at least a decade of mayhem and impoverishment - Mugabe's tyranny is being criticized openly and the tyrant himself is being shunned by key Europeans. Recently the United States added relatives, children, and grandchildren of Mugabe and his key associates to a tightened visa and travel ban. Britain and the United States have added controls over money transfers by the same group of corrupt Zimbabweans. Alas, none of this welcome shaming and sanctioning of Mugabe is bringing his 27-year destruction of Zimbabwe to a close.

Mugabe will be 84 in February, but increasing age seems unlikely to moderate his unquestioned hold on total power or his contempt for democracy. Nor is it probable that next year's presidential and parliamentary elections, now scheduled for March but possibly for June, will be free or fair. This month a Zimbabwean election commission led by generals appointed by Mugabe began delimiting constituencies without (as previously promised) consulting the country's beleaguered opposition parties. Registering of voters has also begun, with no promise of an accurate voters' roll.

Mugabe lords it over his countrymen, and Africans more generally, as he tried to do in Lisbon. But Rome is burning all the while. Inflation roars along at least at 8,000 percent per annum. About 80 percent of all Zimbabweans are unemployed and destitute. National incomes have fallen to 1953 levels. Not only are stores short of staples like corn meal, wheat flour, sugar, and cooking oil, but almost all shelves are bare, gasoline is unavailable, and few crops are being grown in the fields. The World Food Program estimates that at least a third of all Zimbabweans are hungry, with many seriously malnourished. There are no bandages or medicines in the hospitals and no textbooks and few teachers in the schools.

But the security forces of the country continue strong. There are daily reports of opposition figures and university students being assaulted, sometimes fatally. There are innumerable political prisoners, and an absence of a free daily press and free broadcast media. The farming sector is in shambles, and Mugabe and his cronies have recently begun taking over small and large corporations, even in the mining sector. About 3 million Zimbabweans, a full fourth of the population, have fled their homeland for South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia, and destinations overseas.

Only Africans, especially President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, can bring Mugabe to account. Merkel said as much, but the African representatives in Lisbon both articulated their continuing support of Mugabe and asserted that Mbeki was dealing with the problem effectively.

With electoral preparations being made by the government, regulations enacted, and constituencies delimited - all actions that were supposed to be agreed to by the parties to the South African talks - the MDC is crying foul. But no one, least of all Mbeki, is paying attention.

Mugabe clearly intends to remain in power through the next election, however cosmetic that poll. Mbeki may wish Mugabe to remove himself and to spend his ill-gotten gains somewhere outside of Zimbabwe, but he refuses publicly to criticize Mugabe or to ease him out through jawboning, effective diplomacy, or the exercise of persuasive force.

African leaders aside from Presidents Festus Mogae of Botswana and John Kufuor of Ghana have been unwilling to criticize Mbeki or Mugabe, closing ranks as they did so loudly in Lisbon. Although Merkel tossed the problem back to Africa, Mbeki and his colleagues have denied that there is a serious problem. Mbeki also refuses to prevent Mugabe and his ilk from laundering their corrupt gains in South Africa or from traveling through South Africa.

Zimbabwe's long, dark night of despair will not soon end unless Washington, London, and Brussels join forces to put massive private pressure on Mbeki. He and Jacob Zuma, his likely successor as South African president, hold the future of the remaining hungry, dispossessed, and afflicted of Zimbabwe in their so far temporizing hands.

* Robert I. Rotberg is director of Harvard's Kennedy School Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution and World Peace Foundation president.

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