Is the international community awaiting an invitation from a credible alliance of rebellious Zimbabwe ministers and opposition leaders before it will come to the country’s rescue? Or has the ruling Zanu-PF propelled the country so far down the road to catastrophe that party officials are incapable of reason, and only military intervention will save the country from calamity?
Zimbabwe’s crisis is, of course, more complex that these stark options suggest, even though they are at the core of current thinking. The strategy to bring democracy to the country is far more subtle. Nevertheless, it is as well to consider the past when attempting to resolve problems of the present. The record of Africa’s crises suggests that when outsiders get involved, whether by invitation or intervention, it can prove a hazardous experience.
Indeed, whether it is Tanzania’s role in the overthrow of Uganda’s dictator Idi Amin, or Western donor pressure on Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi, or South Africa’s efforts to mediate in the final throes of the regime of Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, success is hard to find.
If the world needed evidence that Zimbabwe’s embattled regime would go to almost any lengths to preserve its power, the recent public assaults on the country’s opposition leaders provided it.
The international reaction has been revealing. The Commonwealth maintained its shameful silence. Europe and the United States huffed and puffed, and offered no more than tougher implementation of so-called “smart sanctions”, freezing the overseas bank accounts of leading members of the regime and the denial of visas.
Little wonder that Robert Mugabe contemptuously dismissed his critics, saying they could “Go hang”.
Equally revealing has been the reaction — or lack of it — from the Zanu-PF heavyweights now jostling for succession. Far from speaking out to save their country, they seem set on saving their skins — they have fallen victim to the “Dizzy Worm” syndrome that marks the final stage of all dictatorships.
The “Dizzy Worm” malaise was seen at its most destructive in Zaire — now the Democratic Republic of Congo — when the late president Mobutu Sese Seko carried out yet another Cabinet reshuffle. What was behind it, a Western diplomat was asked.
“What do you get when you shake up a can of worms?” the diplomat asked rhetorically. He went on to answer his own question: “Dizzy worms.”
For years, Mobutu continued to shake the can, reshuffle after reshuffle, duping well-meaning outsiders and confusing political opponents. The country he ruled sank to a level that many people previously thought impossible.
By the time post-apartheid South Africa tried to facilitate his departure, it was far too late. It took cancer of the prostrate and a hitherto unknown guerrilla movement, backed by Rwanda, to destroy the president and force him into exile.
There is surely a lesson here. For all their differences, Mobutu Sese Seko and Robert Gabriel Mugabe have one thing in common: both have presided over the corruption of their county’s political class. It is a process which has seen able men and women become members of an amoral, self-serving mafia that embraces the police and the armed forces.
They have all become dizzy worms.
Alas for Zimbabwe, the man who shakes the can gets more and more cunning. Mugabe has raised the stakes for any country considering intervening in Zimbabwe by introducing the spectre of Angola coming to his aid by sending about 3 000 paramilitary police to Harare.
This story, subsequently denied, has only to be plausible to serve its purpose. And plausible it is. With billions of dollars coming from its oil exports, a government still gripped by its revolutionary past, yearning to be noticed on the international stage, and still making public declarations of support for Mr Mugabe, the Angolan intervention is quite conceivable.
History suggests that caution is in order.
The closest example to Zimbabwe is Uganda, where Tanzania’s intervention to overthrow a dictator proved little short of disastrous. The country was in the grips of a tyrant, Idi Amin, one of whose first acts was to destroy the economy with the expulsion of the country’s Asian community. Wanton killings and systematic torture became commonplace.
Then Idi Amin went a step too far, sending a small contingent of Ugandan troops to “invade” neighbouring Tanzania. It was the pretext that President Julius Nyerere had been longing for. The Tanzanian army, backed by a band of Ugandan guerrillas, crossed into Uganda. A few weeks later, Amin was in exile.
Uganda’s suffering was not over. Rigged elections saw the former prime minister, Milton Obote, friend of Nyerere, back in office. It marked the start of a new reign of terror, and only when Yoweri Museveni overthrew the Obote regime did Uganda return to normality.
Of course there are other methods of applying force from outside. Those who suggest that economic pressure is a feasible weapon for change in Zimbabwe might recall the case of Kenya.
In the 1990s, aid donors imposed a freeze on assistance to the corrupt and autocratic government of President Daniel arap Moi, in an effort to bring about a multiparty democracy and clean government.
Moi eventually conceded, lifting a ban on opposition parties. But far from setting Kenya on the path to genuine multiparty politics, donor pressure had arguably forced him to modernise his one-party rule. Reform created safety valves for dissent, thus effectively extending his time in office.
A decade later, Kenya’s ordeal continues. Moi’s successor, President Mwai Kibaki, has turned out to be no better than his predecessors. The vast goodwill which greeted his victory in the December 2003 elections has been squandered.
These examples from the past suggest that there is no easy option for today. They provide many cautionary lessons, but no successful precedent.
Zimbabweans need hope like a drought-stricken land needs rain. So what can be done? Hope could take the form of a package of measures, ranging from providing medicines for clinics to books for schools and essential inputs for farmers.
Such a programme could be coordinated by a born-again Commonwealth. It would have irrevocable and public commitments to its funding, and would be written up as a formal pledge, to be distributed in the hundreds of thousands by airdrop if necessary. Beleaguered Zimbabweans could read it, feel it, debate it and draw encouragement from evidence that the world is ready to help.
And who knows? An assurance of that kind might just tip the balance between resentful acquiescence and a successful rebellion.
Michael Holman, brought up in then-Rhodesia, was Africa editor of the Financial Times 1984-2002. His first novel, Last Orders at Harrods, was republished by Abacus in March. The sequel, Fatboy and the Dancing Ladies, will be published in June