Life in Zimbabwe may not get much better under Morgan Tsvangirai, but it will surely not improve as long as Robert Mugabe remains in power.
For all the shortcomings of American democracy there are two things of which we can be certain.
First, Americans will elect a new President on Tuesday, November 4, 2008.
Second, the winner of the aforementioned election will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States at noon on January 20, 2009.
The same thing cannot be said for democracy in Zimbabwe. On March 29, 2008, both parliamentary and presidential elections took place in the southern African nation. For the first time since achieving black majority rule 28 years ago, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) lost its majority in the Zimbabwean Parliament. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai made gains throughout the country rife with hyperinflation, food shortages and an average life expectancy of 35 years. If Americans are hungry for change, Zimbabweans are starving for it.
One of the vital signs for any viable democracy is its ability to transfer power from one political party to another. In other words, those in power must be prepared to lose it. Whatever qualities Robert Mugabe might possess, losing gracefully isn’t one of them.
If no presidential candidate won 50% of the vote, a runoff was to be held no later than April 19, 2008. As of this writing, the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission has not announced the results of the March 29th vote. Whatever the results, they cannot be good for Mugabe.
How else to explain the arrest of election officials?
How else to explain the detention of foreign journalists?
How else to explain the ransacking of MDC offices?
How else to explain the seizure of the remaining white-owned commercial farms?
How else to explain the rounding up and beating of opposition activists?
How else to explain the recount in districts won by the MDC?
These are the sure signs of a tyrannical regime using any measure at its disposal to cling to power. Those who believe that America is undemocratic cannot begin to imagine life in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe’s neighbors haven’t been much help either. As far as South African President Thabo Mbeki is concerned, there is no crisis in Zimbabwe. He’s perfectly happy to ship Chinese arms to Zimbabwe. And why does Zimbabwe need China’s military hardware? So it can more effectively beat its people into submission? At least South African port workers and truck drivers have the decency to take a stand and refuse to move these weapons. They possess a courage their government sorely lacks.
With perhaps the honorable exception of Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, no other African head of state has publicly criticized Mugabe. Many African leaders still look up to Mugabe as a symbol against colonialism. Well, if life after colonialism means 80% unemployment, going from being a net exporter to a net importer of food, and a life expectancy cut from 60 to 35, then Zimbabweans might welcome back colonialism with open arms.
Of course Zimbabweans, like Americans or any people in every other democratic nation, want to determine their own destiny. The Zimbabwean Electoral Commission should not deny the people their vote and should release the election results forthwith. What have they got to hide? What are they so afraid of? That Zimbabweans have started to think for themselves.
With that said, I have no illusions about life in Zimbabwe with Morgan Tsvangirai as its President. Even if Tsvanigirai is the open hand to Mugabe’s clenched fist, Zimbabwe will not be instantly rewarded with jobs, increased food exports and longer life expectancy. It took nearly three decades to fall into a black hole. It will take at least three decades to climb half-way out of it.
Of course, many Zimbabweans only know life under Mugabe. The temptation towards corruption and graft will be too much for many otherwise decent people to resist. There will be an even greater temptation for retribution and revenge against Mugabe and his cronies. Whatever euphoria Zimbabweans experience once they know Mugabe is out of power will inevitably be followed by an appetite for violence that might never be satiated and ought not to be. Throw in long-standing tribal differences between the Shona and the Matabele and you have the ingredients for a state that is not easily governable. Morgan Tsvangirai might be in a less envious position as Zimbabwe’s President than he ever was as its main opposition leader. Keep in mind that Tsvangirai has survived three assassination attempts and has been tried for treason.
Life in Zimbabwe might not get that much better under Tsvangirai. But we also know that life cannot get better in Zimbabwe so long as Mugabe remains in power. In fact, it is very likely to get to worse. Americans who do not like George W. Bush can take comfort. He will leave office in less than 300 days. Zimbabweans can take no such comfort.
aargold24@hotmail.com
http://www.poetsforthewar.org
Read more articles by Aaron Goldstein
Dear Mr Goldstein,
I was hoping that somewhere in your article I would find reference to the more than 60 white farmers who have had their land, and thus livelihoods, confiscated since this fiasco of an election began -and the thousands before them.
Before ‘independence’, Rhodesia was effectively run by a white minority of some 200,000. The country was subject to sanctions from the rest of the world. It received only minimal aid from South Africa. It was fighting a cruel war. White farmers and their families were massacred in their homes while they ate dinner, or slept in their beds. White women and children were raped and mutilated by the likes of Mugabe’s ‘liberators’. Most white males from 16 to 60 served in the military for a considerable part of the year.
Yet, Rhodesia was still the bread basket for most of southern Africa, with the exception of South Africa (not yet ‘independent’).
Since ‘independence’, Zimbabwe has been the recipient of large amounts of aid. The people now survive of international aid. Every white farmer evicted from his land can be measured in the additional food-aid the country will require.
But yet, we hear nothing of those things we call ‘rights’ when it comes to white farmers – or indeed any whites in that God-forsaken country.
And the reason that Britain initiated its post-colonial interference in Zimbabwe had nothing to do with the mess their previous hero Mugabe was doing to the country, or even his blatant persecution of whites. Mugabe fell out of favor because he dared to call Tony Blair’s cabinet a bunch of homosexuals and lesbians – which was partly true.
Now, I believe that people should be free to decide how to govern themselves, and a case can certainly be made that white Rhodesians had a sort of mortgage on black labor which should be repaid. But freedom includes the freedom to screw-up – and black Zimbabweans have done that in spades by electing first Mugabe, and now possibly his nemesis.
Neither will do a thing for the country, or its people! And all the while the world will remain silent as whites are persecuted. I warned many of my compatriots that they would face precisely such persecution if they did not leave while they could. But most had nowhere to go. Most were of British origin, but new immigration laws in Britain effectively abandoned them to their fate.
But Zimbabwe is not the exception in Africa – it is the rule.
The people of Africa wanted independence, and that is what they got.
So far as I am concerned it is now over to them. If they mess it up, as they have, that is their problem.
I am frankly sick of all those pop-stars, politicians and charitable organizations that keep telling us that we have some moral or even legal obligation to sort out the mess. We don’t – not for AIDS; not for food; not for their pathetic pretence at democracy. The only obligation rests on Britain, and it is an obligation to those white British people it induced to go to that rat-hole in the first place. Britain has an obligation to protect them, and to bring their descendents home.
But Britain is so preoccupied with giving sanctuary to terrorists and ‘refugees’ that it has no concern for a bunch of white Rhodesians who served that pathetic little Empire. So far as the British government is concerned, those ‘whites racists’ deserve whatever they get.
Joseph BH McMillan http://www.freedomvrights.com
Comment by Joseph BH McMillan | April 21, 2008