Dr. Wilmot Jame’s presentation at the Difficult Dialogues panel discussion at the University of Cape Town, 1 July 2008 …
Read the other panelists’ presentations: Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Heidi Holland, Dr Mamphela Ramphele
ON ZIMBABWE TODAY
By Wilmot James
And we thought that our country would introduce a foreign affairs consistent with the values we fought for, embodied in our Constitution, the new dawn in human freedom and democracy on a continental scale, but no, we give succour to dictators who, as Winston Churchill once put it, ‘ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers’ it seems, ladies and gentlemen, ‘are getting hungry.’ (Letter, 11 November 1937). We have to change this thing.
As for our own Government, in Churchill’s words again they ‘go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent’ (Hansard 12 November 1926, col.1107). The crisis of Zimbabwe reveals all too painfully the failing of our leaders, raises many profound and tragic questions, not least in respect of our country and what we think we are up to in the region. We have to change this thing too.
First of all, the crisis demands answers to why our country’s government does not make full and creative use of the extensive array of foreign policy instruments that are available to those who have the determination to use it. As in many other instances, we do not act on constitutional values nor carry out our own laws. We must as citizens rise above our individual selves and compel government to act in the national and not the President’s interests.
Secondly, it has exposed a lack of regional, democratic solidarity – or the apparent inability to create a regional consensus –about what to do in the face of Zimbabwe’s slide into dictatorship. Michael Holman and Greg Mills published a superb piece in the Financial Times (26 June 2008) about how ‘something is stirring in Africa. Belatedly, often reluctantly, its leaders are speaking out on Zimbabwe. The rogue president in their ranks, they are coming to realise, poses a threat with the potential to destabilise their fragile continent, already caught in a growing storm.’ We must empower them to do more than simply speak out, necessary as that is.
Thirdly, it exposes the absence of a social consensus, never invited nor cultivated, about what South Africa’s foreign policy ought to be. We have a foreign minister who is never visible and deputy foreign ministers who are little more than social secretaries to the diplomatic community. Foreign policy seems to be the private affair of the President lost in his splendid isolation. The public debate on Zimbabwe has been notably one-dimensional; there is a conspicuous absence of foreign policy think tanks or other civil society organisations equipped to fill the gap by informing the public debate.
And fourthly, looking ahead, we have now to decide how best to support Zimbabwe’s regeneration – economic, political and social – when, finally, the conditions are ripe for such a thing. It is in our self-interest to do so. It is in Africa’s self-interest to do so. By radical prompt action, as Holman and Mills put it, African leaders can ‘redeem their own tattered reputation; and above all, unless they deal with the rogue in their midst’ he (Mugabe) will ‘precipitate a storm that will engulf them.’
This is what I think. No one has seriously entertained the idea of a unilateral military intervention. And, for the most part, in the absence – again – of a public debate, there are few advocates for the ‘turn the lights’ off approach, persuaded as many of us were for a long while by Pretoria’s argument that to do so would be to harm ordinary Zimbabweans unjustifiably and inequitably.
It is interesting to recall the extent to which hard economic sanctions were used against the Smith regime. South Africa used sanction to have Ian Smith release Mugabe from jail! It had a powerful effect. Equally, though both scholars and practitioners quarrel constantly about the efficacy of economic sanctions, many would argue that economic sanctions played a very significant role in bringing the apartheid regime to the negotiating table in the late 1980s, lest we forget.
Whether symbolic or not, economic sanctions can help isolate a despotic regime. Here China and Russia must do their bit too. Still, as Holman and Mills writes: ‘Existing measures, imposed by Europe, have proved futile. Bank accounts targeted for freezing have long been moved; cutting off school fees for children of Zimbabwe cabinet ministers who are studying abroad is morally dubious and political futile. In a country where the economy has collapsed, proposing formal economic sanctions is as effective as threatening to take a comb away from a bald man.’
No, someone very senior in this world must meet with Mr Mugabe and tell him that the game is up, that he is not fit to rule. Holman and Mills put forward Mr Olusegun Obasanjo but there are others who could do this too.
If he does not step down impose unilateral travel bans.
Expel Zimbabwe from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and from the African Union (AU).
Put together a world-class judicial team to collect a dossier on what Mr Mugabe and his military cronies have done to his people ever since the post independence long nights of the Matabeleland suppression to what is today referred to as the Third Chimurenga, the brutalisation of the Zimbabwean people by ZANU-PF militias.
If there are facts that support the anecdotal evidence of widespread crimes committed against humanity, bring Mr Mugabe and his cronies to trial at the International Court in The Hague.
Send in the United Nations to protect the Zimbabwean people against further abuse, under a new international doctrine whereby the global community has a ‘Responsibility to Protect’. This doctrine was developed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001, and derived in direct response to the world’s failure to intervene in Rwanda, and the controversial interventions in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Though the US invasion of Iraq has done great harm to the idea of interventionism, at the same time, the notion that a state has a duty to protect its citizens from serious harm and that where it wittingly fails to do so, the principle of non-intervention – of national sovereignty – yields to the international responsibility to protect is one that has not been adequately ventilated in the case of Zimbabwe.
I would like to ventilate it here and now.
What else, looking ahead, should we think about and do, as Zimbabwe’s neighbour and a friend of its people? How will we play a constructive role in the regeneration of Zimbabwe, once the conditions for stability are in place? Should we be devising a ‘Marshall Plan’ for our neighbour? What of the role of South African business, civil society and government?
I asked our Treasury what the thinking is regarding South Africa’s role in the reconstruction and development of Zimbabwe. Somebody very senior there did not have the time or inclination to talk to me and instead asked a private secretary to tell me that they first need to share their ideas with the SADC before they talk to me and I suppose any other citizen of this land who would like to know.
I am, I must tell you, tired of the smug arrogance of our government. I agree with Mamphela Ramphele that we have given the initiative for progress over to government such that we are complicit in our own disappointment with its performance. So let us insist in voicing our views and meeting in settings like this, black and white, young and old, drawing inspiration from our Constitution and saying to our government that their game is up, of hugging and coddling a dictator for reasons that defy rationality and diplomatic progress. My greatest fear is that government does so because they have a perverse admiration for Mugabe.
We say stop it and stop it now.
Dr Wilmot James writes in his capacity as co-founder of the Economic Justice Initiative (EEJAYI).
July 3, 2008
Zimbabwe