In what must rank as some of the most fatuous remarks made so far on South Africa’s relations with Zimbabwe, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad announced last weekend that Pretoria will not bow to pressure to ”declare war” on its crisis-torn neighbour.
”We don’t believe that their megaphone diplomacy and screaming from the rooftops has helped anyway,” he was quoted as saying. ”If it is not diplomacy we pursue in dealing with Zimbabwe, then it is war. We will not go to war with Zimbabwe.”
Pahad was replying to remarks by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw expressing disappointment with the failure of the Commonwealth troika, made up of President Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, to adopt a more robust response to President Robert Mugabe’s suppurating misrule when they met recently in Abuja, Nigeria.
Pahad seemed in particular to resent the suggestion that the two African heads of state lacked commitment in dealing with Zimbabwe.
”What are they proposing we should be doing?” Pahad asked. ”Jack Straw and others must tell us what they expect the Southern African Development Community [SADC] to do.”
Stop glossing over a brutally stolen election would be a start.
Beginning with ministerial manipulation of the South African observer mission even before the result of Zimbabwe’s presidential poll was known in early March, Pretoria has been busy underlining the legitimacy of Mugabe’s rogue regime despite the fact he changed electoral laws to favour his candidacy, unleashed state-sponsored militias against members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and prevented it from holding rallies or communicating through the public media.
Tens of thousands of voters were arbitrarily removed from the voters’ roll ahead of the election or turned away from polling stations in MDC strongholds such as Harare.
All this was okay with South Africa, ministers suggested. Worse still, Deputy President Jacob Zuma was shown on TV embracing his counterpart in Harare immediately after this brazen assault on the democratic process.
Pahad wants to know what the SADC can do. Apart from ending their collusion with a regime whose supporters murder opponents with impunity, adhering to standards regional states have set themselves would be a helpful step.
South Africa and other SADC countries have fundamental rights enshrined in their Constitutions that include a commitment to free and fair elections, independence of the judiciary and freedom of the press. The SADC is committed to specific electoral principles agreed only last year. Instead of upholding these democratic values, governments in the region have endorsed electoral hijacking in Zimbabwe and remained silent as the judiciary and press are manacled.
In last weekend’s council elections opposition candidates were in many reported cases barred from registering or intimidated into withdrawing as Mugabe’s repression grows. Lawless land seizures have led to destitution and famine.
Despite this record, regional leaders persist in the pretence that the negative press Zimbabwe receives abroad is the product of reactionary forces opposed to transformation. There has been no attempt to spell out the meaning of good governance, accountability and the rule of law that are fundamental to the success of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), which Mbeki and Obasanjo are touting as the continent’s survival kit.
African National Congress spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama, interviewed by the Mail & Guardian last week, repeated the ruling Zanu-PF party’s mantra that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai was beholden to foreign ”masters”. Change must come from within Zimbabwe, Ngonyama insisted. Whether Mugabe should go was not for the ANC to decide.
But when the ANC is part of a regional bloc determined to shield Mugabe from measures designed to prevent him sabotaging his country’s democratic institutions and pauperising its people, then officials like Ngonyama and Pahad who duck the issues by talking about megaphone diplomacy and foreign masters need to be reminded that their apparent lack of principled resolve in confronting tyranny presages a future South Africans have every reason to worry about.
Iden Wetherell is editor of the Zimbabwe Independent