The decision by an African head of state to exclude Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth summit in Abuja is the heaviest diplomatic setback yet suffered by President Robert Mugabe and a graphic token of his growing world isolation. It coincides with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) taking steps to expel Zimbabwe because it is failing to get to grips with its economic meltdown.
Also encouraging are signs that South Africa may be shedding its delusions about Mugabe’s openness to a negotiated constitutional settlement which would include his retirement from office. That a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) representative recently addressed the foreign affairs committee of our Parliament may be a straw in the wind. So, too, may be Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s allusion, at the Congress of South African Trade Union’s anniversary bash this week, to dictators on the African continent. Zuma notoriously embraced Mugabe after the latter’s “victory” in last year’s fraudulent presidential election.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo’s present position stands in marked contrast with his letter to Australia’s John Howard in February this year, when he claimed Zimbabwe had turned the economic corner, would soften draconian press legislation and had restored law and order to the land. Since then inflation in Zimbabwe has climbed to 560%, chronic foreign exchange shortages have deepened, unemployment has grown to 70%, a newspaper has been banned and journalists locked up. Land invasions continue, now affecting farms protected by inter-governmental accords and Anglo American sugar plantations in the Lowveld. Obasanjo can justifiably feel misled by South Africa, which sold him the dummy that reforms were under way. His decision was made easier by his recent visit to Zimbabwe, when he pleaded with Mugabe to show his commitment to dialogue by meeting MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The lifeline was flatly refused.
Inter-party dialogue was one of the Marlborough House declaration’s terms for Zimbabwe’s readmission to the Commonwealth. So, too, was engagement on electoral and land reforms. It will be remembered that Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon’s bid to engage was torpedoed when Zimbabwe refused him entry.
Mugabe’s latest ploy, apparent in this week’s State of the Nation speech, is to make common cause between Iraq and Zimbabwe by painting them both as victims of Western imperialism. By embracing the unjust invasion of Iraq, Britain and Australia asked for this piece of sly demagoguery. But there are no parallels — Zimbabwe has not been invaded, nor should it be.
The Abuja conference has a chance to reinforce the international ostracism of Zimbabwe by resisting demands from Mugabe’s allies — notably Zambia and Namibia — for his reinstatement to the councils of the Commonwealth. Hopefully, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMag) will adversely compare Zimbabwe with Pakistan, where there is some progress towards democratic rule. One would also hope Sri Lanka’s moves to deny McKinnon another term, apparently prompted by the South Africans, will fail. He may be an abrasive New Zealander, but he has done his best to keep the Commonwealth to the democratic values it claims to uphold.
But the lesson from South Africa is that international pressure can only go so far. Popular resistance to Mugabe’s tyranny and economic mismanagement has been fitful and unconvincing. Only when the Zimbabwean people take responsibility for their own liberation — as ordinary South Africans did — will real change come.
Keep an eye on the spies
The problem with spies is that you never know when they are telling the truth. The statement prepared for the Hefer Commission by Vanessa Brereton, alias Republic Spy 452, is a rather paltry document to emerge from six years of reporting to the security police.
Brereton is, of course, the dowdy and limping lawyer seduced and recruited in 1985 by the oily Lt Karl Edwards to spy on the white left and probably, though she denies it, on her black clients who looked to her for support during the dark hours of their detention. Predictably, Edwards says there was no sexual liaison. One of the two is lying, though perhaps in the spy world it doesn’t count if you’re doing it for Volk and Vaderland.
But at least Brereton has made a start at disclosure — and her statement highlights the abuses of power, both petty and serious, in which apartheid’s dirty warriors indulged themselves. Similar tales of schoolyard prankster tactics have come out in several apartheid trials and during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.
Her sorry tale of seduction and betrayal — and the circumstances of its exposure via the spy wars swirling around the Hefer Commission — should serve as a warning to us. The world of espionage crosses legal and moral boundaries — and has routine access to information that can be used to manipulate the financial and political order.
We need to watch democratic South Africa’s spooks as hard as they are watching us so, that they are not tempted to mimic the ways of their forerunners.