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Zimbabwe crisis and Thabo Mbeki-s role
Tapiwa Kapurura
April 05, 2008

Lately, Zimbabwe has been placed on the spotlight. A week after elections were held on March 29th this year, the current government finds it hard to announce election results. It-s now public knowledge that the deliberate delay in announcement is because they lost the election. Now the government is plotting massive violence on its people to instill fear into the electorate and thereby coerce voters to their side. To an average Zimbabwean-s surprise and concern, Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa, takes advantage of his office platform and asks the UN Security Council and any other international watch groups to stay away.

Those who advocate that, "Africa should be left alone to solve its own problems", are ignoring the implications of dictatorial tendencies witnessed through most of the contemporary African leadership. Many refugees fleeing from evil curmudgeons in African leadership ranks are doing so after experiencing endless civil wars, genocides, poverty, inflation, deteriorating health standards and purposeful destruction of education systems. These are just but a few examples of the effects of despotism. Through the "shoot-them-before-they-grow" policy, African despots now prefer to give less education to their people to cut activism. Given the bleak future of an isolated Africa, the only way out of this mess is to consult and jointly work with major world bodies to realize corruption free, civilized and responsible governments that exist to serve the people under peaceful environments.

Africa remains heavily mired with restlessness. Bickering metastasizes in most parts and the proponents of such injustice are the ones who call for "respect on sovereignty". While such a reason is crucial, it would be only fair if the African leadership demonstrated maturity and civility in respecting the will of the electorate among many other issues that constantly arise. Greed, selfishness and corruption must be urgently stopped but then it becomes a problem when the practitioners of bad governance call for respect as they abuse "sovereignty."

In particular, today President Mbeki has demonstrated his partiality in handling the crisis in Zimbabwe. This Montana sized country has been ruled by one President for 28 years and has one of the biggest cabinets in the world. The period of rule by President Robert Mugabe has been underlined by the world-s highest inflation, record-breaking statistics on brain-drain, historical poverty and never-seen-before shortages on food and fuel and power.

Despite public out cry, futile protests and national disgruntlement, the obstinate President Mugabe has defiantly managed to hang on to power for this long because of vote rigging and instilling fear among the electorate. Every five years marking a Presidential term of office, an election has been run. The President has always emerged the "winner". In such elections, uniformed forces are each forced to vote even twice for the President ahead of the official dates. The voting takes place in the army camps where the votes are kept in safety until the arrival of the official date. The period leading to election time is mired with violence as people are tortured by recruited military youths who have to descend on the innocent public to instill fear among the electorate. In that violent atmosphere, any opposition party is denied news coverage on campaigns. Even putting on a t-shirt for the opposition party attracts grievous bodily harm, let alone murder by the night. On Election Day, the situation is often tense and in remote areas the electorate is cowed to vote for the President as norm.

On ballot counting, there is no accountability. Those who take charge of the counting process are loyal appointees or henchmen who simply call out numbers as they wish. No one can challenge that. Some ballot boxes are brought in from "God-knows-where". After the election results are announced, with the President as "winner", there will be a cleansing exercise. This involves analyzing ballot votes to check the areas where the President was proved unpopular. Once identified and listed, military youths are assigned to those areas to execute a retribution exercise. They administer torture or even kill those suspects who may not have voted for the President.

This is the normal ordinary situation in today-s most talked about African nation. After such horrible experiences, there are always African statesmen who seem to be respected by the world to give an insight about the situation on the ground. These are leaders like the Honorable President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. President Mbeki has for some time been held as a trustworthy party on African affairs by the First World. The reason is that he succeeded President Nelson Mandela, a respected African statesman and world hero. Secondly, the economic and political situation in South Africa remains favorable for the country to prosper since it operates and functions like a First World country. In the past, President Mbeki has openly told the world to mind its own business, suggesting that African leadership is wise enough to sort its own issues. On more than one occasion he has been quoted saying that "Only Zimbabweans could solve their problems better." In another instance he has been quoted blaming the United Kingdom for Zimbabwe-s problems based on historical colonial imbalances. When dealing with the crisis in Zimbabwe, Mbeki prefers to adopt what he calls, "Quiet diplomacy." This is a situation in which the peace negotiator or the expected mediator keeps the world-s attention away, promising them great and positive results, while passively acknowledging, acquiescing and condoning the status quo to go unchecked until the dominant one in a given crisis dominates full and punishes the other party to full satisfaction. Under this "quiet diplomacy", the UN security council, SADC (the sub-regional organization in Africa)and Arfica Union all bank on the supposed peace broker. On August 15, 2007, The Businessday newspaper quoted Tony Leon, a South African Democratic Alliance Foreign Affairs spokesman who said, "Quiet diplomacy is a farce. The President-s negotiations are a front for political accommodation, and South Africa-s foreign policy towards Zimbabwe is nothing more than an excuse wrapped in sympathy inside a set of undemocratic first principles."

While Mbeki-s office receives reports from Zimbabwe citizens about violence, torture, intimidation and loss of lives, the message from that office to the world remains that, "All will be in control." The passiveness of President Mbeki on Zimbabwe-s crisis has lately aroused a lot of suspicions among the people of Zimbabwe. Many take his silence as inciting abuse of human rights and bad governance. This many fear, may provide a blue print for future bad practices and build a misguided precedent.

In 2005, President Mbeki wrongly misled the American Press, choosing to align the causes of Zimbabwe problems to drought in the country. Real issues were never discussed. Speaking to the AFP this week, President Mbeki expressed hope that the situation in Zimbabwe was manageable.

It is now beyond cavil, that President Mbeki openly supports the regime in Zimbabwe. While the world may be misled about the situation, President Mbeki emerges as the wolf in a sheep skin since he is giving wrong and dangerous signals about Zimbabwe updates to the world. It is unfortunate in that the honorable President is letting down those who have entrusted him with the capacity to help resolve issues. He remains vacillating and interested in the issues. While he seems to champion the cause of civility and sensible government, he still remains a Mugabe loyalist who is up to protect the unpopular policies by any diplomatic avenues available. As demonstrated by various incidents of passiveness, no other better evidence can satisfy this proposition.

Research shows that President Mbeki and Mugabe have a few aspects in common. Both attended Moscow military schools and came out polished students of Marxist Leninist doctrines. Both seem to believe in the anti-West doctrines when handling African affairs. As such the common African belief that "the head of household is never at fault" still reigns supreme on their agenda. Thabo Mbeki-s ANC party once received military help from Zimbabwe during the apartheid era. That helped cultivate future unflappable support for Mugabe from Mbeki. As such Mbeki is duty-bound not to backtrack on that loyalty.

The unfortunate aspect of this whole issue is that the world still trusts President Mbeki to give direction and wise counsel about the way to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis. As an interested party President Mbeki exploits this trust, choosing to pursue an ulterior motive at the expense of the ordinary Zimbabwean citizen who is living under fear in his own land. Mbeki will tell the world, the UN Security Council, the Africa Union and the European Union to, "Stay away and let Zimbabwe solve its own problems." Literally, this means, "Please let Mugabe rule forever, abuse electorate as he wishes, torture, kill and maim people, rig elections, and do what he wants. Zimbabwe will never be colonized again." Many keep wondering how many people have to be killed before serious attention and resolution is drawn onto the crisis. Many too are wondering why the UN Security Council is failing to send its own independent observers into Zimbabwe instead of relying on hearsay from another African President.

For the supporters of Mugabe-s policies, the golden questions are, "If they have incredible faith in his government, then why is there a record shortage of food and medicines? Why is inflation the highest in the world? Where is fuel and power? Why are teachers and lawyers being persecuted? Why should the education system be destroyed?" Surely if the people of Zimbabwe were happy and comfortable, would there be any vote rigging? Every citizen would freely vote for a good and honest leader. President Mbeki should be honest and sincere enough to faithfully represent the voices of the ordinary person rather than mislead the world regarding the crisis in Zimbabwe. The time for the UN Security Council to make a move is now. The silence of good men is more harmful than the evil works of bad men.

*Tapiwa Kapurura is a Zimbabwean attorney based in Dallas Texas. He is the author of a book titled "Touching the American Rainbow" (available on www.amazon.com), a narrative of the implications of bad governance and the consequent painful immigrant experiences. He can be contacted at: tapiwa2002@yahoo.com.

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