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Mugabe and Mavimbela-s perspectives on sovereignty
Leon Hartwell
September 28, 2011

While President Robert Mugabe addressed the 66th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York, South Africa-s ambassador to Zimbabwe, Vusi Mavimbela, gave a speech in Harare. Both individuals presented different narratives about state sovereignty.

Mugabe said that "Zimbabwe reposes her hopes in a UN that recognises the equality of sovereign states." Throughout his speech, Mugabe called for a strict interpretation of sovereignty, where states ought to adopt a laissez faire approach to their neighbours.

According to Mugabe, non-intervention helps to prevent aggression between states, which in turn serves to uphold regional and international peace. This is in line with Westphalian sovereignty, which is associated with principles of self-determination, legal equality between states, and non-intervention. The UN Charter's Article 2(4) supports this view as it prohibits attacks on the "territorial integrity or political independence" of states, while Article 2(7) restricts (but not rule out) intervention. However, Chapter VII of the Charter mandates the Security Council to "maintain and restore international peace and security."

Mugabe views the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation-s (NATO) intervention in Libya as a violation of the country-s sovereignty and illegal. "There was a quick resort to invoking Chapter VII of the Charter with gross deliberate misinterpretation of the scope of the mandate originally given to NATO." He also argued that "the process of mediation and peaceful negotiations was never given full play." Furthermore, Mugabe lambasted the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its strong African focus as well as the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) for being misused by the international community.

The ICC came into force in 2002 with the aim of prosecuting individuals who commit grave crimes, including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The R2P became popular in the last decade and it was widely endorsed by the heads of state and government at the 2005 UN World Summit. It is a set of norms advocating that states have a duty to protect their citizens from grave crimes. If they fail to do so, their sovereignty should be temporarily suspended and the international community has a right to intervene.

Intervention could take many forms, including mediation, sanctions, or as a last resort, war. The Global Political Agreement is arguably an example of the R2P, in as much as the African Union (AU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and South Africa act as guarantors to the Zimbabwe peace process.

Back in Harare Mavimbela gave a different account of sovereignty. He kicked off his discussion by focusing on freedom in relation to the nation state. He argued, "freedom is the appreciation that there are other laws, other forces, independent of our will or design that impact on what we do as societies." This freedom, he argued, should be "sensitive" to two trends that characterise the modern state.

The first trend is that the "authority and sovereignty of the state is [inescapably] surrendered and dispersed downwards from government to civil society". If governments respond positively, this would enhance their democratisation processes. Mavimbela warned that "the nation state cannot be static over time; it must adapt, transform and change".

A second trend that Mavimbela identified is that states are increasingly surrendering part of their sovereignty to multilateral institutions (such as SADC). Consequently, states are subject to supranational governance structures and rules. Again, states can either positively respond to global governance by engaging it constructively, or "take the position of permanent hostility towards it and define it simply as the instrument of evil".

Thus, both trends entail that governments are in the process of losing certain areas of their traditional sovereignty which has hitherto been sacrosanct. Mavimbela stated that if governments challenge these inevitable processes, they could find themselves in a Tunisian, Egyptian or Libyan situation. If they engage it, states could "ride the crest of its positive elements".

Moreover, Mavimbela was unapologetic about South Africa-s support for the UN Security Council-s Resolution 1973, which authorised NATO-s military intervention in Libya. For Mugabe, NATO-s intervention was premature, "whatever political disturbances might have first occurred in Benghazi".

Although Mavimbela conceded that it is extremely difficult to judge the extent of grave crimes before they occur, he warned that non-intervention also has consequences and he said it was impossible to ignore the signs that gross human rights violations were going to transpire in Libya. Before Resolution 1973, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi labelled protestors "cockroaches" and demanded of his supporters to "cleanse Libya house by house."

Mavimbela stated, "Whether that constituted an impending massacre or not, probably we shall never know for certain. That uncertainty is perhaps the price the people of Rwanda had to pay as the world folded its arms, shocked in the uncertainties of the time, as the butchers went about their business in genocidal abandon."

To be clear, Mavimbela does not condone military intervention as the first choice of action in a conflict situation. Since 1994, South Africa-s foreign policy has advocated mediation as the preferred method of conflict resolution.

What should we make of Mavimbela-s message to Zimbabwe? In essence, he affirmed South Africa-s full support for a free and fair upcoming election. He also stressed South Africa-s commitment in its facilitator role via SADC in relation to Zimbabwe where "the higher body itself assumes the responsibility with the understanding that the internal mechanisms within the country in question have failed to secure a solution to the challenges".

Reading between the lines, Mavimbela said that Zimbabwe-s politicians have a choice; listen to the will of the people and deepen the democratisation process, or, in addition to economic instability, face a wave of internal and external pressures akin to one of the Arab Spring scenarios.

Mavimbela also alluded to changes that could facilitate a peaceful democratic transition in Zimbabwe. Drawing on the Apartheid South Africa example, Mavimbela pointed out that the security sector and business community realised they had an opportunity to contribute to the development a new democratic country. "Their analysis and estimation had the foresight to see that there was no way out for the regime except to initiate negotiations with the ANC and help establish democracy ... The truth was simple: adapt or die!"

Mavimbela concluded his speech by reiterating that economic and political stability in SADC and the AU is dependent on that of its member states. This assumption is no different from the rationale behind the New Partnership for Africa-s Development, which links a stable political environment with economic growth and prosperity.

Although Mugabe and Mavimbela-s perspectives on sovereignty have been informed by their struggles against colonial and racist regimes, the latter-s views reflect concerns raised by a new generation of African leaders who acknowledge that sovereignty comes with responsibility. In 2000, heads of state and government in Africa endorsed this principle when they adopted the Constitutive Act establishing the AU. Together they recognised that intervention is necessary in "grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity".

*Leon Hartwell is an independent political analyst based in Harare

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