History Matters

Imraan Baccus

- The Mugabe regime did not, as some will argue, start off well and slowly descend into authoritarianism. It was always ruthlessly and violently intolerant of opposition ….

Imraan Buccus

Mugabe belongs in court, not State House

The Mugabe regime did not, as some will argue, start off well and slowly descend into authoritarianism. It was always ruthlessly and violently intolerant of opposition.

There are at least four crimes against humanity for which Robert Mugabe and his junta in Harare should be brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The first is the massacre of 20 000 Ndebele people in Operation Gukurahundi between 1984 and 1987.

The second is the Zimbabwean involvement in the second Congo war in support of the tyrant Laurent Kabila. The Harare junta entered the war with its eyes on the same wealth in natural resources that had attracted the colonialists; and Kabila duly rewarded Mugabe, his family and his allies in the junta with contracts in mining and logging worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But the financial cost of the war was borne by ordinary Zimbabweans and it was the war that destroyed the Zimbabwean economy. Of course the human cost was borne by ordinary Congolese people who, between the Belgians, Mobutu Sese Seko and Mugabe, had suffered unimaginable horror for more than a century.

The third was Operation Murambatsvina in 2005. The violent project to eradicate shack settlements and informal traders from the cities affected more than two million people.

The fourth crime against humanity is, of course, the mass campaign of state-led violence, including rape, torture and murder, as part of the project by Zanu-PF to steal a third election.

Each of these crimes against humanity would, on its own, justify vigorous prosecution through the International Criminal Court.

But, taken together, the imperative to act with the utmost urgency is clear.

Here in South Africa there is, at last, a general consensus about the nature of the Harare junta.

Cosatu has for years been speaking out against the regime and in support of the MDC which, of course, grew out of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions. There have also been strong statements of condemnation from the SACP and some churches.

More recently poor people’s movements have also taken strong stands against the junta. But for years President Thabo Mbeki was silent. Thankfully Jacob Zuma is now beginning to speak out clearly on this issue.

But it is a sad and sobering fact that Mbeki was directly complicit in Mugabe’s theft of the first two elections against the Movement for Democratic Change and has failed to take a sufficiently vigorous stand against Mugabe’s attempt to steal a third election. The fact that this has all been justified in the name of Pan-Africanism is particularly odious.

After all, it was that great figure of Pan-Africanism, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, who took such a clear position against the Idi Amin dictatorship in Uganda. Mbeki has proven that he is no Nyerere.

In fact, Mbeki’s failures with regard to Zimbabwe have, together with the Aids debacle, his repression of poor people’s movements and the catastrophic xenophobic violence in May, smashed his vision of an African Renaissance.

If that vision has any prospect of continuing to gather support after Mbeki’s failures it is because of the way in which it has been taken forward by civil society.

One thinks, of course, of all the magnificent work done by poor people’s movements to stop the xenophobic attacks and the incredible work undertaken by the Treatment Action Campaign in Cape Town to shelter and care for people displaced in those attacks. It is here, in the trenches of civil society, that real Pan-African solidarity has been built.

And, once again, civil society is showing the way forward while elites vacillate and speak about a government of national unity of Zimbabwe or a plan for the junta grassroots activists.

Meanwhile, taking their lead from exiled Zimbabweans, many are increasingly making the obvious but important point that Morgan Tsvangirai is the elected president of Zimbabwe and referring to him as such. Some people are suspicious of him because of his working class origins.

Others worry that he has taken too much money from northern donors.

But whether or not people think that he will be a good president, the fact is that democracy is about accepting the will of the people even when you would have chosen differently.

The fact is that Tsvangarai has three times been voted in as president and three times the people’s choice has been denied by the Harare junta.

Whatever resolution for Zimbabwe that is decided on, it must start from the indisputable facts that we have to deal with president Tsvangarai and a usurper who belongs in the International Criminal Court in The Hague and not in State House.

· Imraan Buccus is a political researcher and PhD fellow. He writes in his personal capacity.