A betrayal of democracy

The pamphlet had a photograph of Nelson Mandela. ‘Why have you got his photo on here?” I was asked in Harare towards the end of last year. It was a surprising question, coming as it did from a Zimbabwean human rights worker. But the meaning soon became clear. She said: ‘Because he has done nothing; he has betrayed us.”

This is unfair on Mandela. He is not the architect of the South African government’s policy towards Zimbabwe. And, in the case of Nigeria — another place where President Thabo Mbeki pursued a policy of constructive engagement, that time with the Sani Abacha regime — he went out on a limb to condemn Abacha’s brutal tactics, calling successfully for Nigeria’s expulsion from the Commonwealth.

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For that Mandela is remembered fondly by human rights activists in Nigeria. For those who know what Mandela’s deputy president’s view was then, scepticism is reserved for Mbeki.

But what the conversation about the pamphlet photo of Mandela told me was the depth of the sense of betrayal that many Zimbabweans feel about South Africa’s response to the crisis in their country.

Zimbabwean pro-democracy activists have known what South Africa’s foreign policy towards the Mugabe government is for some time now. Yet there is no substitute for hearing something important directly from a human being. That is when intellectual understanding yields to a more profound intuition.

A group of about 50 leading Zimbabwean human rights and democracy activists were given this opportunity at a conference facilitated by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa near Pretoria in the beginning of March. They heard a representative of the government speak with impeccable clarity about South Africa’s approach to its northern neighbour. What they heard was nothing new, yet it provoked a surge of anger from the Zimbabweans present.

The Chatham House rules of the conference preclude me from citing the identity of the government representative and from attributing direct quotes to the individual. Not that I think the person would mind; there was no lack of confidence in the position and no hint of apology.

On the contrary. Presumably emboldened by the words of Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma just a few days before, it was an apparently definitive statement of policy: Zimbabwe has a democratic government — note, not a mealy-mouthedness about legitimacy, no, it is a full-on democracy — and it is not for South Africa to interfere; this is the starting premise; all else flows from this; and any problems you — Zimbabweans — have, you must sort out yourselves.

The session had to end soon after, and so there was time for just one emotional rebuttal. Further outpourings would not have made any impact, I am sure of that. The South African government is well aware of what is going on. It is just that its policy response is immersed in nuance — to summon the most generous word available.

The nuance, if that is what it is, derives from a combination of two things. First of all a dogged and perhaps dogmatic determination to respond in a solely multilateral way. Mbeki is committed to multilateralism, as is the African National Congress. That is why it devotes so much attention to entities such as the Non-Aligned Movement.

Indeed, when it comes to matters such as the unilateral use of American power most of us are also dedicated multilateralists, putting the case of the United Nations as if our very lives depended upon it. Surely what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Why is it that so many people in South Africa want to stop United States President George W Bush acting unilaterally in the case of Saddam Hussein, but complain bitterly at Mbeki’s failure to do just that in the case of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe?

The second element is a belief that the most effective way to effect regime change in Zimbabwe is to cajole and persuade Mugabe. This strategy demands ‘constructive engagement” — a polite term for an unappetising policy response to a problem regime. In other words, you permit and even encourage a level of legitimisation of Mugabe in the belief that it is the only climate in which he will consider reform and retirement.

There is a third, complicating factor of unknown quantity: Pan- Africanism. To some Pan-Africanists Mugabe exhibits an admirable sense of power. To them his two-fingers to the West, his stubborn, mad-as-a-fox mavericking is positively alluring. I suspect there is a strong element of this in the approach of Dlamini-Zuma, an energetic member of the Black Consciousness movement in her youth, and perhaps also in Mbeki’s approach.

If so, it represents a serious misjudgement — as illustrated by Professor Brian Raftopolous’s brilliant analysis of the Zimbabwean crisis presented at last week’s conference. To allow Mugabe to use the superficial allure of a Pan-Africanist/Third Worldist rhetoric to mask the betrayal of his own people and their oppression by his henchmen and militias is to fall naively for the most childish of tactics. As Raftopolous put it: ‘Using an external argument to justify internal repression is the most serious thing — Some of what Mugabe says about globalisation we can agree with. But a dialogue that legitimises repression we refute.”

I have no doubt that there are many in the ANC who, though they are well aware of the brutal expediency of his policy direction, admire what they see as a Mugabe’s boldness. If only, they think quietly, we could deal so decisively with white privilege in our country. There might be an element of empathy with this, were it not for the fact that all Zimbabweans are suffering from the crisis of governance, black and white, rich and poor. There is a humanitarian crisis: 7,2-million or 60% of the population needs food aid.

When some South African policy-makers see this for themselves, they might be forgiven for thinking that it is not substantially different from the plight of the millions of most poverty-stricken here.

Again, even if there is any empathy to be drawn to such a response, the idea that Zanu-PF is now a ‘progressive party”, as Dlamini-Zuma keeps maintaining, must be exposed for the utter nonsense that it is. I don’t know how she defines ‘progressive”, but I wonder whether she has read Zimbabwe’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, or its Public Order and Security Act, or its Broadcasting Authority Act, all of which exist solely to suppress free thought and activity. All would be struck down under South African constitutional law. What is progressive about a government that passes such laws?

Finally, back to the policy of ‘constructive engagement”. In the 1980s the ANC condemned Western constructive engagement with Pretoria. Consider these words, written by pro-liberation writers Peter Vale and Sanford Unger in their chapter ‘Why Constructive Engagement Failed” in the Penguin-published book Apartheid in Crisis: ‘American policy has actually exacerbated the situation inside South Africa by encouraging and indulging the white regime’s divide-and-rule tactics — leading that regime, its internal and external victims and much of the international community to believe that, whatever the rhetoric emanating from Washington, American prestige is on the side of the Pretoria government.”

Two weeks ago Dlamini-Zuma said that ‘the trouble with you [the media] is that you are waiting for one word — condemnation. You will never hear that. Not so long as this government is in power.” These are words she may come to regret. Not because Mbeki will necessarily shift policy, but because if his government’s policy fails its credibility throughout the world will be undermined. Just as Blair risks his whole reputation on his policy to Iraq, so Mbeki’s reputation in relation to good governance and projects such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development is threatened.

It is one thing to exercise quiet diplomacy but quite another to explicitly offer support to Mugabe in public statements such as Zuma’s. Mbeki has been far more cautious; does he support his foreign minister?

Zimbabwean anger is a natural and justified response to this. Yet Zimbabwean opposition needs more than anger to succeed. Civil society activists must get their campaign together and build a concerted, united movement for a transition with just the same sort of strategic wit as the ANC was able to muster in the early 1990s.

Indeed, underlying the government representative’s crisp statement of policy last week lay another more subtle line directed at the Zimbabwean opposition: stop whingeing and tell us precisely what you want us to do.

Provided it does not breach Mbeki’s doctrinal multilateralism, there is more possibility to this than may meet the eye. As chair of the African Union, the South African commitment to notions of good governance and peer review must be put to proof. A first Peer Review by a Group of Eminent Persons has to happen sometime, otherwise the credibility of the idea will wither rapidly.

The South African government could, and should, isolate Mugabe instead of legitimising him. Political pressure through the multilateral institutions of the Southern African Development Community and the African Union could apply real pressure on him, and South Africa has the leverage to do so.

As Vale and Unger argued about South Africa: ‘A policy must be crafted that not only recognises and works with the current grim realities there, but also tries to ease the transition to an altogether different, albeit unknown, future in which blacks will take part in the government of their country. There is no longer any question that this change will occur in South Africa; the question is how, according to whose timetable and with what sort of outside involvement.”

There is no question that the same logic applies to Zimbabwe now. Change will inexorably come, by one method or another, because the people of Zimbabwe will demand it as intensely as they deserve it.

In the meantime, Dlamini-Zuma’s diplomatic hyperbole shames her own party’s tradition of human rights and democracy. Perhaps that is where the betrayal lies.