Guardian editorial: Zimbabwe’s brutal clearances of thousands of slum dwellers from the country’s capital, Harare, might not top the league of human-rights abuses in Africa (as defendants of Robert Mugabe’s corrupt regime are quick to point out). But the almost casual cruelty of the ‘Drive Out the Rubbish’ campaign, whose victims now include two children crushed to death by bulldozers, marks an alarming increase in that nonchalant violence we associate with tyrants.
And they add, too, to a growing list of abuses that include one of the highest torture rates in the world, deliberate killings, physical assaults and torture of political opponents which together put in serious question Zimbabwe’s claim to be a democracy.
Motivated by bitterness about the colonial past and extreme self-interest, Mugabe has undermined a once independent judiciary; destroyed the country’s agricultural infrastructure, the best in Africa; closed down its free press; expelled the critical foreign press; persecuted the minority Ndebele-speaking people from Matabeleland; and driven the general population into poverty and starvation.
Despite these atrocities, Robert Mugabe enjoys an unwarranted tolerance from fellow African leaders who appear to believe that the only fault line in this rapidly deteriorating economy is white farmer resistance to land redistribution. The leading apologist remains Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, whose refusal to condemn his old friend is now seriously failing the people of Zimbabwe. Just as South Africa’s friends around the world once found ways to put pressure on the apartheid regime of South Africa, now Zimbabwe’s nearest neighbour must recognise its responsibilities.
But critics of Mugabe in the UK must recognise their responsibilities, too. International obligations require the British government to ensure that returning asylum seekers to their countries of origin does not put their lives in danger. This is impossible in a country as closed to outsiders as Zimbabwe. We cannot call on African leaders to condemn Mugabe’s brutality and yet return asylum seekers into the hands of his thugs.
Jack Straw cannot as British Foreign Secretary lecture fellow G8 ministers about the deteriorating situation in the country, while his Cabinet colleague, Charles Clarke, authorises the return of people who have fled from there.
This British Home Office obduracy makes an uncomfortable counterpart to Robert Mugabe’s ”Drive Out the Rubbish” campaign, which forces shantytown dwellers back to inhospitable and often dangerous areas. By ignoring the parallels, we lose all credibility in our justified condemnation of Mugabe’s increasing tyranny. – Guardian Unlimited Â