Mbeki and Mugabe need to open their eyes to the new global politico-economic order.
The gravity of the Zimbabwean crisis ? and the fact that South Africa is unavoidably implicated in that crisis ? makes it imperative that a set of mutually supporting myths be exploded forthwith.
The first of these is that the crisis will correct itself ? that, beneath the violent froth of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s fulminations and the frustrations of tens of thousands of cheated voters, there resides a mysterious core of stability and good sense and that, because South Africa’s ”economic fundamentals are in place”, it has the will and capacity first to contain and then to still the tempest.
This is little more than a comforting fairy tale. While nobody ought to doubt the courageous patience and maturity the majority of Zimbabweans have shown up to now, Mugabe and his henchmen have denied them the vehicles ? in the form of due legal process and the ballot box ? to give peaceful expression to these virtues.
From now on they are more likely than not to be driven, not only by their stifled political aspirations, but, more pointedly, by the hunger pangs visited on them by their president’s disastrous attempts to initiate an outdated form of oriental agrarian socialism.
In truth, Zimbabwe is drifting, more or less inexorably, towards ”rogue state” status. And, far from acting as a counterweight to this tendency, South Africa is allowing itself to be dragged towards that condition in its northern neighbour’s wake.
In order to escape the pull of this deadly current, our President, Thabo Mbeki, ought long ago and unambiguously to have condemned Mugabe’s lawless land grabs and defiance of the most elementary articles of the rule of law, instead of trying to mimic mature statesmanship with his talk of ”quiet diplomacy”.
Another myth that badly needs debunking is the fallacy that Zimbabwe and South Africa’s troubles are chiefly due to flawed images, conveyed to a gullible world by the omnipresent news media.
Mugabe’s response to this misconception is far cruder than Mbeki’s. While the former has instituted draconian anti-press legislation, resorted to outright persecution of local journalists and even prevented sections of the overseas media from entering Zimbabwe to cover the presidential elections, the latter has so far refrained from overt aggressive action against the media.
Nonetheless, Mbeki remains obsessed with his media image. The gathering of politicians and spin artists at Kleinmond in February was only one in a series of earnest confabulations on the topic. What both leaders fail to understand is that the news industry’s first concern is with what they do or fail to do, not with how they look when they are doing it.
No cosmetic treatment can disguise Mugabe’s brutal suppression of freedom of expression during the elections, just as nothing can camouflage Mbeki’s failure to intervene on behalf of democratic principles and processes.
The two presidents’ failure to grasp this is really part of a larger failure to come to terms with the new global politico-economic order in which they are required to function and is thus connected with a third myth that should rapidly be dispelled.
This is the myth that the South African and Zimbabwean situations are radically different and are conflated by the faulty judgement of nervous foreign investors and ill-intentioned journalists.
Of course, the two countries are markedly different in many important respects ? in terms of culture, demography and economic strength. But these differences are overshadowed by the common inability of both leaders and their respective followers to shed outworn ideologies and to view the new world configuration through an appropriate conceptual prism.
Both Mbeki and Mugabe are nationalists and have achieved their positions of power through a process of ”national liberation”. Both have Marxist backgrounds. In Mugabe’s case, the Marxism is of Chinese parentage. Mbeki, on the other hand, embraced a Soviet-style version of the theory. Both are Africans first and citizens of the world second and somewhat reluctantly. For both, democracy is a means towards some higher stage of social being, rather than an end in itself.
This confection of beliefs results in a teleological conception of political processes in which the hoped for end (social justice combined with an enhanced sense of African selfhood and African community) is implicit in the historical forces harnessed to achieve it. Often ? and this certainly seems to be the case with Mbeki and Mugabe ? African leaders themselves may be thought of as embodying the movement towards national self-realisation.
Now, whatever the merits or demerits of this belief system, it certainly does not accord with the way rules of global governance are devised and power is distributed in the world we presently inhabit.
For one thing, the old-fashioned nation-state is no longer either the elementary building block of international relations or the primary focus of power. The growth of multinational corporations and the emergence of political and economic blocs, such as the European Union, have seen to that. Indeed, there no longer seems to be a fixed centre of power. Power shifts as global markets shift in confusingly irregular and ever-changing patterns.
Further, teleology ? in the form of the notion that history serves human ends, be they nationalist or socialist, has become ever more difficult to hold on to. The post-modern politician must indeed ”go with the flow” of changing power-patterns, but those patterns show no sign of conforming to some high and wise purpose or design.
There are, however, certain constants. One of these ? articulated by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their recent book, Empire ? is that the new world order survives by policing itself. Democratic institutions and compliance with the rule of law are requirements of the policing system. Failure to observe them is punishable in all manner of ways. Aid withdrawal, economic sanctions and diplomatic ostracism are some of the punishments. Others, as we have seen in the United States-led ”war on terrorism”, can take more dramatic forms.
Unless Mugabe and Mbeki can learn to see the world with new eyes ? and so far they have proved obdurately unteachable ? they will find the global police closing in on them more rapidly that they seem to imagine.
Anthony Holiday teaches philosophy at the University of the Western Cape’s School of Government
Related:
The great betrayal March 25, 2002
SA must learn from Zim mistakes – Mbeki March 23, 2002
Mbeki endorses election March 22, 2002
SA will treat Mugabe as elected leader
March 20, 2002
SA govt mulls Zim suspension March 20, 2002
Mbeki in Zim: post-poll violence flares
March 18, 2002
Zimbabwe: A crisis for Southern Africa March 15, 2002
Background:
Zimbabwe elections special report