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Ear to The Ground
By Charles Onyango-Obbo |
Mugabe’s poison is Mbeki’s meat
Dec 10, 2003
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From the “very concerned” feelings Commonwealth leaders are expressing over Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe’s decision to quit the Club after it voted at the just-ended Abuja summit to continue his country’s suspension, you would think Harare would really be missed. However, it should be remembered that Mugabe has slowly been making his country irrelevant internationally. When a government brings down its country to a position where it has no moral and political authority at home or in its region, and bankrupts the economy, it becomes inconsequential in world politics. Mugabe has made Zimbabwe largely irrelevant, and it will not really be missed in the Commonwealth. It is like when dictator Idi Amin got Uganda suspended from the Commonwealth. Despite the regular international headline-grabbing antics he would put on, threatening to attend the Commonwealth though he was not invited, the Club seemed to be much better off without him. Zimbabwe reached the no-turning point when Mugabe plunged headlong into the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. All the countries that dug in too deep in the DRC conflict, and were unable to pull out early, like Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Rwanda, have paid a big political price. The fact that their foreign intervention descended into what the UN and other international organisations allege is an orgy of looting and plunder, and also became a humanitarian catastrophe in which up to three million people have died, damaged the international prestige of these countries. Small wonder then that Uganda’s application to hold next year’s Commonwealth Summit, was wrecked by the difficulty that the Museveni government rules as a quasi-one-party regime and wants to amend the constitution to allow a president to rule for life. In an unusual step, the Club said Uganda can have it in 2007. It lost out to late entrant Malta. Uganda deserved to host the Commonwealth summit, if only as a gift for our resilience. Hopefully, if by 2007 the government has washed its political hands clean, it will happen. If the Harare government has been haemorrhaging internationally for many years, why then were respected leaders like South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki, fighting against the exclusion of Mugabe, one might ask. The conventional wisdom is that because South Africa has the same land problem as Zimbabwe, by engaging Mugabe, Mbeki hopes to push Harare to resolve the land question before it inflames the blacks in South Africa to rise in similar fashion against their white farmers. That, however, is a simplistic view. Quite a few people in Africa who believe that the land situation in Zimbabwe was unacceptable, going by what one reads in newspapers and from the Internet, are nevertheless horrified at the violence and corruption with which the campaign has been marked. But most of all, the near economic collapse that has happened in Zimbabwe partly as a result. So, far from exciting the landless in South Africa to rise against white farmers, the Zimbabwe land crisis has probably instead weakened the case for a similar beat-and-seize “solution” in South Africa. In that way, Mbeki has benefited from Mugabe’s mess, and probably bought himself more time to work on a more creative land distribution plan in South Africa. Secondly, the Mugabe government was the only one in the South African Development Community (SADC) that used to confront South Africa strongly on its appalling failure to reciprocate the access other countries give it to their markets by opening its own. While it is by far Africa’s leading economy, South Africa also has some of the continent’s highest protectionist barriers. Now with Zimbabwe deliquent, and largely dependent on South Africa to limp along, Mugabe can least afford to confront Pretoria on its anti-free market ways. More importantly, Zimbabwe used to be the one economy in the region that was more efficient than South Africa in agriculture, for example, and had an independent industrial base. The others in the region, with the exception of Angola in the oil sector, largely thrive on South African capital and industrial supplies to run their economies. Zimbabwe’s descent into a derelict agricultural and industrial economy, only helps South Africa to seal its dominance in the sub-region. Mbeki’s posture mostly enables him to escape criticism that he has turned traitor and stabbed a country that supported the anti-apartheid struggle in the back. It also helps Mbeki maintain credibility – and thus be able to influence – the sections of South African society who would like some “serious action” taken to solve their own land problems. The pro-Mugabe position of most southern African countries therefore does not help Zimbabwe. It only profits its neighbours. And Mugabe’s withdrawal of his country from the Commonweath has handed his successor a quick future diplomatic victory – using the readmission of post-Mugabe Zimbabwe into the Club as a stamp of international approval. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
© 2003 The Monitor Publications
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