Comment
Greg Mills and Tim Hughes
Pretoria has responded predictably to the imposition of European Union sanctions on Zimbabwe, describing them as “regrettable and unfortunate”. President Robert Mugabe has called the act “disgraceful” and “illegal”. Both might well have added “inevitable” given the nature of unfolding events.
After all, the past 18 months have seen a radical deterioration in political and economic conditions in Zimbabwe at the behest of a president and party desperate to hang on to power. Now even the most sycophantic and autistic of government officials have to consider what further steps might be necessary to reinstate the rule of law in Zimbabwe, before or after the March election.
Mugabe claims defiantly that Zimbabwe is a victim of a new form of colonialism. Rather, it is an example of globalisation and of the increasingly uniform expectations of standards of decency, democracy and the rule of law. If things continue to unravel, could South Africa also follow the EU sanctions route?
Indeed, the use of sanctions has become more likely as other means of encouragement and limited diplomatic coercion have failed to convince Harare to stay on an acceptable course and stick to previous agreements.
Sanctions are both an important signal and a tool for ensuring compliance with international norms. They would arguably be most effective if their application was compulsorily mandated by multilateral bodies such as the United Nations, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union along with the EU but this is unlikely to happen until after the March presidential election, and only if that election was to be recognised and declared as unfree and unfair.
The importance of building a coalition for sanctions has also to be stressed. Here Pretoria has both the moral authority and the self-interest to lead. A government-led public sanctions debate could be an important step in this regard, and would be a hard-to-miss signal and a means of leverage with Harare.
There are a number of difficulties in applying sanctions:
There is a need to limit the damage to the Zimbabwean people and only target the Zimbabwean regime.
To a great extent, Mugabe has already imposed financial and travel restrictions on himself and his country, and is evidently unmoved by damage to the economy.
Most inter-governmental initiatives, with the exception of a physical blockade, would take time to bite.
Any immediate-term effect of sanctions would be offset by the flow of humanitarian aid that is likely to be controlled by Zanu-PF and used to its political advantage.
The uneven application of measures by different states would undermine their efficacy.
Sanctions would have to be carefully sequenced.
The effect of sanctions on the regime will thus have to be distinguished from that on the population. A list of individuals and organisations associated with the regime should be identified, and sanctions targeted against them. Civil society forces in Zimbabwe will have to be supported as a counter-balance to the negative effects. Finally, short-term measures should be separated from longer-term ones, and pre-election from post-election measures.
A critical first step must be clear statements that elections will not be regarded as “free and fair” unless certain conditions are met. These relate to international observation and monitoring of the election process, voter registration and education and conduct of the campaign in accordance with internationally recognised norms. Should these conditions not be met, South Africa is in a position to apply the following measures:
“Smart” sanctions against individuals associated with the regime.
Curtailing credit from South African parastatals such as Sasol, Eskom, Telkom and Transnet on their sales to Zimbabwe of oil, electricity, telecommunication and transport services. Zimbabwe is currently dependent on South Africa for the transit of a high percentage of its monthly fuel supplies and provision of 20% of its electricity.
Further measures could be imposed only after the election, but their threatened imposition could be used prior to it. These could take the form of multilaterally mandated sanctions, and could include a border blockade on imports and exports, and the suspension or removal of Zimbabwe from leadership and representative functions in international bodies.
Such measures have to be wielded with one hand; on the other there has to be an exit strategy for Mugabe, including a leadership amnesty.
In reality, the imposition of sanctions by South Africa, or any other SADC member, is largely hypothetical. It is highly improbable that Pretoria would follow Brussels’s lead.
To do so would at the very least undermine the notion of African solutions to African problems, the philosophical core of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad). Paradoxically, not doing so casts Nepad and Pretoria’s leadership in a poor light and relegates African governance standards and democratic expectations to an inferior league.
Mugabe has been South Africa’s profound foreign and regional policy challenge since 1994, and South Africa has failed the test. It failed to foresee the problem and to act in a timely manner. It failed in its intelligence. It failed to develop an effective response, to show leadership within SADC and to provide international leadership. It failed the people of Zimbabwe. It failed in its state-craft. It failed its international friends. It failed the programme of democratisation in Africa and it has undermined notions of “African renaissance” and self-reliance.
It is unclear how South Africa can look at its northern neighbours after the elections and say in all honesty “we are your good neighbours”. If there is a dilemma for South Africa, it is largely of its own making.
Dr Greg Mills, national director of the South African Institute of International Affairs, is currently a visiting fellow at the Fundacin Carolina in Madrid. Tim Hughes is the institute’s parliamentary research fellow