responding to zimbabwe

The Nation published an interesting piece yesterday on a resolution Obama propelled through the Senate just over a year ago condemning violence on the part of Zimbabwe’s government, citing said resolution as evidence of Obama’s foreign policy savvy. I certainly agree with them that Obama’s actions were more inspiring than Bush’s or McCain’s at the same time, but I find their praise somewhat excessive. They hail Obama as a leader who sees what others don’t about world affairs and does something about it, as if it took a carefully trained eye to tell that Zimbabwe was in (excuse my French) deep shit. Thing is, it didn’t. I remember reading as a sixteen-year-old about Tsvangirai’s trials at the hands of Mugabe’s government and thinking that someone ought to do something about it. And the Congressional resolution, while certainly praiseworthy in intent, doesn’t seem to have gotten much done.

I’ve heard people saying that there are two people out there who could really make a difference in the Zimbabwean situation: Mandela and Obama. That’s all well and good, but what, exactly, is the difference they could make? Convince Mugabe to hand over power? Not happening. Get the African Union to take a harder line against him, perhaps, but what would that do? Mugabe is firmly entrenched in his position, and he’s not going to depart from it unless forced. Personally (and bear in mind that I have hardly the expertise of a cockroach in this manner), I feel that there are two plausible steps that might improve affairs in Zimbabwe: some kind of a power-sharing deal, which might be brokered with firm support from within Africa, and international pressure on Zimbabwe to open up to foreign aid. Democracy is pretty difficult to manage when the majority of your population is focused on surviving from day to day, and a greater aid presence could help stabilize the lives of Zimbabwe’s people enough for an effective regime change to eventually come to pass. In either case, though, the primary pressure on Zimbabwe canot come from Western nations, as Mugabe plays anti-imperialism as his trump card in nearly every dispute; African leaders must unite to get Mugabe into line. That, I think, is the reason Obama and Mandela both have such potential as players in this crisis. They both have the African credibility and international respect required to get the leaders of a continent rallied around one cause.

[previous zimbabwe posts here]

zimbabwe update

Yesterday, Robert Mugabe declared that, should he lose the June 27 runoff election for Zimbabwe’s presidency, he would go to war rather than peacefully handing over his position.

The more I learn about Mugabe, the more he reminds me of Macbeth: perhaps relatively innocuous at first, but driven by snowballing egomania combined with ineptitude to become a brutal tyrant. I think it’s a common trajectory for people of mediocre capabilities placed in unstable positions of power.

[previous zimbabwe post here]

zimbabwe’s bleak outlook

To say that Zimbabwe has issues is a gigantic understatement. Set aside for a moment the blatant political violence and state suppression of human rights, and to say that Zimbabwe has issues is still a gigantic understatement. Zimbabwe doesn’t have issues, Zimbabwe has issues. Unemployment is at 80%, inflation — wait for it — at over 165,000%, and all the while the government’s wandering around banning aid agencies from giving food to starving rural communities?

I had it in my head this morning to do a post on Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, maybe to dig a little deeper than the headlines: what does he stand for, other than a regime change? Then I did a little research and figured out that in Zimbabwe, regime change is a full-fledged agenda in and of itself. Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), seeks first and foremost to get an incredibly terrible political leader out of office.

Robert Mugabe took power in 1980 as a national hero following Zimbabwe’s independence and subsequent civil war, and he has remained in power ever since, vilifying all who criticize or oppose him as “born again colonialists”. However, there’s no real way to characterize Mugabe’s administration as anything but absolutely appalling. He’s violated more human rights than you probably knew existed, and he’s stifled all opposition through election rigging, unjustified detentions, and violence (just last year, Tsvangirai was arrested and tortured, and the cameraman who smuggled out footage of his injuries was later abducted and killed). As for his economic policies, the aforementioned statistics might give you a hint as to their success rate. As recently as 2000, he’s disrupted agriculture by throwing the majority of white farmers off their land and failing to see to that farmland’s upkeep, and he’s dragged his country into a costly participation in the Second Congo War (1998-2003) — both of which, of course, have plenty of objectionable qualities outside of their economic ramifications. And don’t even get me started on Mugabe’s views on homosexuality, which according to him is “sub-animal” and merits immediate arrest.

So really, getting rid of Mugabe is cause enough for Tsvangirai’s party, at least for the moment. The question must remain, though, of whether he has the ability to fix things once in office. The MDC’s website has a series of pages outlining its agenda but offers few concrete plans to effect it, and many of the promises therein read like empty pipe dreams in light of the present reality: “No one will ever be hungry in Zimbabwe again,” one slogan declares. I’m hardly saying I would cast my vote for Mugabe, but I have to wonder whether Tsvangirai will still look as good without a devil there for contrast. I can hardly imagine his administration floating in amongst clouds of butterflies and promptly setting everything to rights.

According to the Human Rights Watch, though, the question is unlikely to be an imminent one. Although Tsvangirai recently beat Mugabe by a few scanty percentage points in the March general election, he did not achieve a majority of the votes, and the upcoming runoff election is, in light of the government’s “campaign of violence and intimidation”, unlikely to swing his way.