Mugabe, Mbeki, and Mandela's Shadow - Robert Mugabe, Thabo Mbeki, Nelson Mandela

R.W. Johnson

ZIMBABWE in the mid-1990s was a crisis waiting to happen. President Robert Mugabe had seen his ambitions of creating a one-party Marxist-Leninist state thwarted by economic reality and the need to submit to International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditions, but neither he nor his ruling party--the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF)--had assimilated the fact that their entire world-view had been found wanting. The result was a polity becalmed before a storm: a corrupt, bloated and hegemonic party presiding over a stagnant economy, and a president and a bureaucracy facing rising popular discontent but wholly unwilling to reform- let alone loosen their grip on power.

In 1997, facing hostile demonstrations from Zanu-PF's own guerrilla war veterans--the fighters who had brought him to power--Mugabe finally snapped. He tore up his commitments to the IMF, awarded large and unbudgeted pensions to the war veterans, announced the seizure of white-owned farm land, and lurched toward economic catastrophe. His complete dependence on IMF loans caused an initial backdown from his farm seizure plan, but a series of strikes, food riots and a growing movement of political opposition saw him increasingly cornered.

Things came to a head with the government's defeat in the constitutional referendum of February 2000, which caused Mugabe to turn to a form of political repression that involved complete defiance of economic rationality. The result has been a society in a furious state of self-destruction. Zimbabwe is racked by the highest AIDS rate in the world, sharp economic contraction, soaring unemployment, an unpayable and still soaring foreign debt, continuous fuel shortages, a flight of skilled workers, repeated food riots, and 70 percent inflation. The referendum defeat showed that if the process of democracy were ever allowed to prevail, the twenty-year rule of Mugabe and his Zanu-PF would soon be over.

But no liberation movement in southern Africa has ever lost power, or considers it thinkable that it should do so. Believing that their history of resistance to white rule endows them with a sort of permanent righteousness, Mugabe and his party have felt free to use whatever means they like to stay in power; after all, they say, they came to power by the sword and if necessary will stay in power that way. Hence the violent repression both against the burgeoning Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the tiny white minority. Mugabe and his party enforcers have used mass beatings, systematic torture, organized gang rapes, house burnings, death threats and every kind of police and army brutality to intimidate the opposition. Mugabe proudly boasts that he has "a degree in violence" and that the MDC "will never, never rule Zimbabwe." Thirty-four black and seven white farmers have been murdered. Over and over again the courts have found the government acting illegally in almost every sphere of life; Mugabe's res ponse has been to disregard the courts and attack the judges. In his eyes the intrinsic righteousness of being a liberation movement simply trumps all other moral or constitutional considerations.

Despite this overwhelming repression, the MDC won 57 of the 120 elected seats in the June 2000 parliamentary elections and clearly enjoys majority support: a poll in October showed the head MDC candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, leading Mugabe by almost three to one as the people's choice for president. Mugabe, now 76, is clearly determined to run again in the March 2002 presidential election, and it seems certain that the country--forecast by the IMF to suffer negative growth of 10 percent this year--will see continuous violent repression for some time to come.

It may seem tempting to dismiss Mugabe as merely another lunatic Third World tyrant, but the Zimbabwean crisis is far more important than that. When Mugabe became president, the late Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere told him to look after Zimbabwe well, for it was "the jewel of Africa." It was not only exceptionally beautiful and a tourist magnet, but it also had one of the continent's highest per capita incomes, one of its best educated populations, considerable natural wealth, and zero foreign debt. For Zimbabwe to have self-destructed so spectacularly represents a crisis not only for the fourteen other member states of the surrounding Southern African Development Community (SADC), but for Africa as a whole.

The Key Supporter

MUGABE's stature--alongside South Africa's African National Congress (ANC), Namibia's SWAPO, Mozambique's FRELIMO and Angola's MPLA--as a leader of the liberation struggle has led to an extraordinary Western myopia. Examples are legion. In one notable instance, Mugabe, aiming to head off a movement for constitutional reform, set up a wholly rigged Constitutional Commission, which--ignoring the universal popular demands for greater restraint on presidential power and for his resignation--produced a constitutional draft concentrating even greater powers in the presidency. This draft would have enabled Mugabe to serve for a further twelve years, and permitted him to expropriate property without compensation.

The draft--thunderously voted down in February 2000--emanated from a commission paid for by the Ford, Kellogg and Carnegie Foundations. The local chief of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Carlos Lopez, broke all normal diplomatic rules to speak openly in favor of it. The Goebbels of the Mugabe regime, Jonathan Moyo, who has justified its every excess and is arguably even more extreme than Mugabe, was recruited directly from the Ford Foundation, his employer for the previous five years. Moreover, Western aid continued to flow to Mugabe long after he had publicly justified the torture of journalists and made it clear that he had no regard for the rule of law. Speaking in April 2000 in the presence of the Swedish minister for development at the inauguration of a new dam paid for by the Swedes, Mugabe publicly made death threats against Tsvangirai for daring to oppose him. It was only after furious lobbying by local civil rights groups that Swedish aid was suspended.

This Western myopia has occluded another key aspect of the Zimbabwean crisis. Robert Rotberg, writing in Foreign Affairs, notes that President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa--"the continent's shining light"--has consciously refrained from criticizing Mugabe. Nevertheless, Rotberg holds up Mbeki as an example of successful African leadership and even suggests that other African leaders be given "carefully tailored courses and seminars so that they can learn from the South African model. [1] This endorsement altogether fails to notice that Mbeki has stood--and continues to stand--solidly behind Mugabe.

Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that there would be no Zimbabwean crisis without this key dimension of South African support. As former South African Prime Minister John Balthazar Vorster showed when he made Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith accept majority rule and allow Rhodesia to become Zimbabwe, a South African government has the leverage to make Zimbabwe do as it wishes. It is this phenomenon of Mbeki's and the ANC's support for Mugabe--betraying the entire human rights tradition of the South African liberation struggle--that has given the Zimbabwean crisis its truly continental and tragic significance.

On January 8, 2000, President Mbeki, taking up his favorite theme of an African Renaissance, called for an end to military regimes in Africa. "We [Africans]", he admitted, "continue to allow tyrannical regimes to impose themselves on us." This caused a certain amount of eyebrow-raising, for Mbeki-- unlike Mandela--had been quite unbothered about his dealings with the bloodstained regime of Nigeria's Sani Abacha, and maintains extremely cordial relations with Qaddafi and Castro.

Meanwhile, the South African High Commission in Harare was signaling frantically that the unthinkable was about to happen: despite the fact that government propaganda monopolized the state-owned media and the government was spending heavily against a completely out-gunned opposition, it looked as if the tyrant next door, Mugabe, was about to lose the constitutional referendum. [2] Zimbabweans were now experiencing regular electricity cuts and chronic fuel shortages; every fuel queue was in effect a recruitment agency for the opposition.

Mbeki had little reason to like Mugabe, who had sided with the ANC's rivals, the Pan Africanist Congress, during the liberation struggle and who had shown arrogance and bad temper at being upstaged by Mandela's arrival on the international stage. Nonetheless, Mbeki's instinct was, from the first, to give Mugabe--his fellow liberation movement leader--all-out support. Although Mbeki pooh-poohed the notion that Mugabe could lose, [3] he decided to leave nothing to chance. Canceling a long-standing commitment to attend the opening of the Nelson Mandela Museum, he rushed to Harare on the eve of the referendum--accompanied by a high-power team that included his ministers of finance, energy and minerals-and offered Mugabe an 800 million rand* loan with which to purchase fuel and electricity. Already the state-owned South African electricity and oil companies, Eskom and Sasol, were supplying Zimbabwe on credit--something others refused to do--and Eskom was already owed 120 million rands as a result. South Africa, i ndeed, supplies 40 percent of all of Zimbabwe's imports. In addition, Mbeki also promised Mugabe that he would attempt to mediate with the IMF to get it to release funds to Zimbabwe. [4]

There is little doubt that the Mugabe government rigged the referendum results where it could. In Matabeleland South, for example, the official results showed 51.4 percent voting for the government--while a simultaneous opinion poll showed that more than 80 percent of voters there opposed the government. [5] But it was impossible to cheat in the two biggest cities, Bulawayo and Harare, without it being entirely obvious--and the No majorities here were so big that they overwhelmed the clearly rigged Yes majorities in the countryside: even on the official figures 55.9 percent had voted No, though the opinion survey suggested that the right figure was probably about 63 percent.

Mbeki's public display of support had clearly been intended to shore Mugabe up. When it failed to work, Mbeki began to backtrack immediately. First it was announced that no specific agreement had been signed, then that there was no loan at all but that South Africa would guarantee a rand-denominated Zimbabwean bond, and then that Mbeki would mediate for Mugabe with the World Bank. All of this quickly collapsed to nothing. It was clear that there would be dire consequences for South Africa's own credit rating if it were to guarantee Mugabe's debts--after all, the country does not even guarantee bonds issued by its own parastatals such as Eskom and Telkom. Neither the World Bank nor the IMF is willing to negotiate via intermediaries, and in any case both have attached conditions to lending to Zimbabwe, such as the withdrawal of its troops from the Congo, budget deficit reduction and so on, compliance with which Mbeki could hardly guarantee.

In the end the deal was pronounced never to have existed, though originally it had been announced to the press by Zimbabwe's finance minister in Mbeki's presence. [6] Sasol, however, announced that it had just concluded a deal--reportedly its "biggest ever export contract for fuel"--to supply fuel to Zimbabwe. [7] While the oil company insisted that the deal was made on a purely commercial basis, Zimbabwe's chronic shortage of foreign exchange made this an extremely speculative venture, to say the least. All that had really happened was that South Africa promised it would go on supplying Mugabe with enough electricity and oil to prevent a complete economic collapse--and pray that it would get paid some day.

Escalation

THIS SITUATION was transformed, however, by the occupation of white farms by "war veterans", which began on the weekend of February 26-7, 2000. The veterans were actually mostly young, unemployed Zanu-PF activists paid for their "work" by the party. The occupations were illegal, involved the mass beatings and torture of farm workers suspected of supporting the opposition, and continued throughout the year despite repeated judicial rulings that they must cease. From this point on South African aid was being given to a regime that openly refused to accept the rule of law--even the law that it had itself legislated over the previous twenty years. Mugabe followed up by ramming through parliament (in which Zanu-PF then held 147 of the 150 seats) the clause of the constitution that had been popularly rejected, allowing him to expropriate land without compensation. These two steps immediately cut off all possibility of IMF or World Bank aid and quickly led to the cancellation of aid by the United States, Sweden, Nor way and Holland. A new bill was also published--a cyberworld first--allowing the government to vet all email and punish anyone found criticizing the government.

Both domestic and international opinion waited for Mbeki to react: How could he possibly continue to preach the African Renaissance if he did not take a stand in favor of the rule of law, against the straightforward suppression of both civil and property rights, and against the open resort to mass beatings, torture and murder? Moreover, Mugabe was intent on insulting the British premier, Tony Blair. Having previously referred to the Blair government as "gay gangsters", he now followed up with attacks on Blair's "gay philosophy and gay way of life." [8] Mbeki, as chairman of the Commonwealth, might have been expected at least to distance himself from his neighbor's unprovoked attacks on Blair. Not only did Mbeki not react, however, but on March 23 it was announced that Eskom was extending further aid to Mugabe by consolidating $14.4 million of its $20 million debt into a loan and rescheduling payment for the rest. [9]

The South African business community reacted with near stupefaction. The markets were thoroughly alarmed by the principle of expropriation without compensation and the spectacle of a ruling African nationalist party making it clear that it would use all manner of violence rather than allow a democratic alternation in power. If Mbeki failed to take a strong and public stand against Mugabe, the conclusion could only be that the ANC, faced with a major electoral challenge, might behave in the same way--and that property might be seized in South Africa as well.

At the beginning of 2000, the influential Templeton investment supremo Mark Mobius had selected South Africa as his most promising emerging market, but both he and other fund managers were overwhelmed by a flood of selling as foreign investors dumped South African equities and bonds, causing the rand to plunge. Most analysts had forecast a strengthening of the rand for 2000--according to almost any measure it was chronically undervalued in purchasing power--but in fact the currency went into free fall, ending the year almost 25 percent down. Last year was, indeed, South Africa's worst year for foreign investment since the arrival of democracy in 1994, and consumer confidence fell throughout the year, finishing at a level last seen in 1993, when large-scale violence and civil disorder seemed poised to engulf the country. [10] Normally, the South African Chamber of Business is loath to criticize the government, but its CEO, Kevin Wakeford, could not contain himself. The rand's fall and the large capital outflo ws the country was suffering were, he said, directly due to Pretoria's silence on the Zimbabwe issue: "South Africa has no option but to take a position", he pleaded. [11]

President Mbeki greatly dislikes being lectured by white businessmen. Government spokesmen were immediately instructed to deny that the rand's fall had anything to do with Mbeki's silence on Zimbabwe. In fact, the finance minister averred, it was caused by the general weakness of emerging market currencies, the strength of the dollar, and the fall of the euro. This convinced no one, but it now became almost a point of honor for the government to deny the significance of the Zimbabwe factor. Thus on April 9, 2000, Mbeki, as he left for the Group of 77 meeting in Havana, was asked whether he would have any message for Mugabe when he saw him there. "Why should we?", he replied. "We are regularly in touch with Zimbabwe about all sorts of things. If the Zimbabwean government thought they needed to brief us on anything in Zimbabwe, they would do so." [12]

Futile Diplomacy

PARALLEL WITH its insistence that Mbeki's silence on Zimbabwe was not the cause of the rand's collapse, Pretoria now strove to convince business that this silence masked an energetic "quiet diplomacy" and "constructive engagement" with the Zimbabwe problem. Privately it was suggested that Mbeki was only too conscious of how disastrous a leader Mugabe was, but he could have more impact on the situation if he could use an attitude of sympathy and friendship to nudge Mugabe in the right direction.

This campaign quickly had some impact. South African businessmen are a timorous lot, as keen to be on board with the ANC government as with the apartheid governments of the past, and many were so scared by the implications of the Zimbabwean crisis that they wanted to find something more comfortable to believe in. Symptomatic of this new mood was the Business Day editorial of April 17, which strongly supported Mbeki's refusal] to comment on Zimbabwe and pleaded for a more sympathetic understanding of his position. Tony O'Reilly's Independent Group newspapers, always ready to respond to government pressure, quickly followed suit. The pressure on business to side with government ultimately culminated in the placement of advertisements in the press by a major business organization expressing support for Mbeki's stance on Zimbabwe--although finding any businessman who actually believed this remained virtually impossible.

If constructive engagement was to deserve support, it had to show results. Moreover, the draft protocol of the SADC organ on politics, defense and security has, since 1996, committed the organization to intervene in member states where instability had arisen as a result of a breakdown in law and order. Thus far the smaller SADO countries had all followed Mbeki's lead and refused to comment on the Zimbabwean crisis.

This was the background to the Victoria Falls Summit of April 21, 2000, attended by Mbeki, Mugabe and the presidents of Namibia (Sam Nujoma) and Mozambique (Joaquim Chissano). According to Mbeki's spokesmen, he and the other presidents got Mugabe to agree to stop the violence and facilitate the ultimate withdrawal of the war veterans from white farms, while Mbeki also asked Mugabe to cease public attacks on Blair and Britain. In return it was agreed that the other presidents should give Mugabe their public support, and that Mbeki would try to get Britain to make aid available for land reform in Zimbabwe and continue his efforts to mediate with the IMF. Mbeki apparently felt sanguine enough about things to phone Blair to tell him that a new chapter had been opened on the land reform question and that there would now be speedy progress in settling all the other outstanding issues. [13] Britain cautiously welcomed the summit's outcome, again declaring its readiness to finance land reform that respected the rule of law and whose beneficiaries were poor Zimbabweans, and not (as in the past) fat cats and Mugabe's cronies.

Britain's caution was not misplaced. Mugabe's absolute refusal to stop the violence or respect the rule of law dashed Zimbabwe's hopes of getting British or IMF money. Meanwhile, all Mbeki got were empty promises, while Mugabe got dramatic, immediate and public support. It must be remembered that the summit came after a week in which another three MDC activists and two white farmers had been murdered by Zanu-PF thugs, and in which the mass beatings of farm workers and torching of houses of both blacks and whites had taken on a routine character. There was no doubt that these atrocities occurred because Mugabe willed them--yet all three presidents came out publicly in full support of him. Chissano, acting as their spokesman, claimed that Mugabe was a "master" and a "champion" of the rule of law. When reminded that foreign funding for land reform was dependent on a transparent process, Chissano replied that such thinking was very dangerous to the region. "What you are telling us is very grave. It is creating i ll feelings in our hearts. You are saying it is a sin to be a freedom fighter. It is grave if the British government thinks like that." [14] Mbeki sat by and nodded his agreement with these remarkable sentiments.

For his own part, Mbeki was wholly unwilling to criticize Mugabe's continuing human rights atrocities or even to say whose fault the violence was. Instead, he tried hard to blame Britain. The core of the problem, he insisted, was one of poor, landless blacks whose condition was the result of racism and colonialism. The main responsibility for the current crisis--and even the violence--lay in Britain's failure to fund land reform. He was openly critical of Britain for making the rule of law and a transparent transfer to the poor a sine qua non for funding: "I don't think it is correct for anybody to walk away from this", he declared. [15] What this amounted to was a complete and public excusing of Mugabe's human rights atrocities, a declaration that he should be free to carry out whatever sort of "land reform" he wanted, and an assertion that the greater wrong, dwarfing all others, was the original sin of white colonialism.

Mbeki's insistence that the crisis was really all about a land issue, caused essentially by the whites, was certainly not accepted by ordinary Zimbabweans. A survey conducted by the Helen Suzman Foundation had shown that only 9 percent of Zimbabweans thought land the most important issue, equal with those who thought poverty the key issue, but far behind those who mentioned the fall in the Zimbabwean dollar (14 percent), unemployment (25 percent) or rising prices (28 percent). Only 2 percent thought whites were most to blame for Zimbabwe's problems, while 28 percent blamed Mugabe and another 41 percent his government. Overwhelmingly the electorate said it had no confidence in Mugabe; 66 percent said they were dissatisfied by the way he had dealt with the land issue (against 26 percent who were satisfied); and only 36 percent wanted Zanu-PF to continue in power. [16]

A subsequent Suzman survey of October 2000 showed that the MDC view of the matter--that Mugabe was using the farm occupations simply as a means of trying to crush the opposition and hang onto power at all costs--was shared by a large majority. Almost 70 percent either wanted the white farmers to stay as they were or even wanted to invite back white farmers who had left Zimbabwe. Sixty-four percent said the farm invasions had nothing to do with land reform, and 70 percent said the war veterans who invaded farms were simply criminals who should be put on trial. [17] By this stage 74 percent wanted Mugabe to step down as president, against only 19 percent who did not; 56 percent wanted him impeached and 51 percent said that even if Mugabe resigned he should be put on trial for his crimes. [18]

Playing the Race Card

MBEKI's insistence--against all the evidence--that the Zimbabwean crisis revolved around a land issue caused by white colonialism was of central significance. Once the problem was defined in that way, any self-respecting African nationalist would have to side with Mugabe, whatever his faults. Moreover, the projection of this definition of the problem was quickly picked up by many black South Africans who could relate this version of reality to one they knew at home. Thus the oddity that a write-in survey of black opinion in the Johannesburg townships soon found 54 percent siding with Mugabe on the land issue, while the large majority in Zimbabwe did the opposite. [19]

Black nationalists in South Africa avidly transposed the "lessons" of Zimbabwe onto South Africa. Thoko Didiza, the minister of land and agriculture, was one of several ANC politicians who began to castigate white farmers for the slow pace of land reform, insisting that the state might need to acquire their land at submarket value if they did not lower the price. Sue Lund, her deputy director-general, helpfully pointed out that South Africa still had an Expropriation Act on the books--while Didiza herself went off on a fact-finding tour of Zimbabwe to see what lessons could be learned from its style of "land reform." The state-owned broadcasting station ran several television documentaries about the brutality of white farmers and how they evicted aged tenants--though spoke no word about the fact that South Africa's farmers, facing land invasions and farm attacks that have left over 800 of them dead since 1994, have put no less than 34 percent of the country's farm land up for sale. President Mbeki announced that the government would not tolerate land invasions in South Africa, but went on to attack white farmers for evicting tenants. He made no mention of the ten white farmers killed in farm attacks in the preceding month. [20]

Both the small, radical nationalist parties to the ANC's Left, the Azanian People's Organization and the Pan Africanist Congress, announced that on the Zimbabwean land issue they were supporting the ANC for the first time, reflecting how Mbeki's manner of handling the crisis had created an eager black constituency on the issue within South Africa. This was a self-invented constraint: it was now clear that if Mbeki were to take a hard line against Mugabe, he could well face domestic criticism that he was selling out poor blacks to white colonial interests. Needless to say, this perception was based on a complete and populist misreading of the situation. The real spokesman for poor blacks in Zimbabwe, Philip Munyanyi, the general secretary of the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe, denounced Mbeki. His people were, he said, being burned, beaten and tortured, and Mbeki uttered no word of protest. [21] No one in South Africa paid much attention to him.

Within days of the Victoria Falls Summit it was clear that it had failed completely: the deputation to London of three Zimbabwean ministers was told that aid depended on an end to violence and land invasions and a return to the rule of law, conditions they found unacceptable. Perhaps Mugabe had lied to Mbeki at the summit or Mbeki had chosen to hear only what he wanted; either way, Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy" lay in ruins, producing a further upsurge of criticism of his refusal to take a hard line with Mugabe. Mbeki doubted "whether condemning President Mugabe would solve that country's land redistribution problem. It is a problem caused by colonialism." And those who wanted Mugabe condemned were simply people who thought all black governments were alike: "Part of the reason for this demand is that there are people in society who say: If this black government in Zimbabwe can behave in such a way, what guarantee do we have that the black government in South Africa won't behave in the same way?" [22]

Three days later Mbeki went on national television to defend his "quiet diplomacy" in even more strident terms. Attacks on this policy were, he said, "racist attempts to create an atmosphere of fear in South Africa." Such critics were trying to create "a psychosis of fear in our own country based on racist prejudices, assumptions and objectives."23 This merely confirmed the bleakest worries of both domestic and foreign investors, and the rand continued to fall.

The next day Mbeki visited Bulawayo and, standing hand in hand with Mugabe, praised him for his wisdom, asserting that land dispossession was "one of the most iniquitous results of colonization", that South Africa suffered from the same problem, and that both countries needed to work against "this colonial legacy." [24] Meanwhile, Mbeki's office, though unwilling to utter a word of reproach about Mugabe, was perfectly happy to throw blame on the British. When Britain halted export licenses for arms to Zimbabwe and stopped a shipment of 450 Landrovers, this was described as "inflammatory" and "aggressive." Mbeki was annoyed, his spokesman suggested, that Britain was not supporting his approach to the problem. [25]

Up to this point the only leading black figure to criticize Mugabe had been Archbishop Desmond Tutu. "He's almost a caricature of all the things people think black African leaders do", said Tutu. "He seems to be wanting to make a cartoon of himself." Mbeki's behavior was now even too much for ex-president Nelson Mandela. For months he had been chivvied in private gatherings and asked why on earth Mbeki was behaving the way he was. He had striven loyally to support his successor, but had in the end confessed that he disagreed with him on Zimbabwe, as he did on Mbeki's repeated denials of the link between HIV and AIDS. The day after Mbeki publicly embraced Mugabe, Mandela burst forth. He denounced liberation leaders who "despise the people who put them in power and want to stay in power forever. They want to die in power because they have committed crimes." Asked whether he was describing Mugabe, he retorted, "Everyone knows very well who I am talking about. If you don't know who I am talking about there is no point in telling you." Asked whether he supported Mbeki's policy toward Mugabe, he averred loyally that he did, "but the masses don't have to follow that route. The public must bring down these tyrants themselves." [26]

Not Free, Not Fair

BY THIS STAGE the June 2000 parliamentary election campaign in Zimbabwe was in full swing, with a tremendous increase in war veteran and Zanu-PF violence. Not infrequently, MDC candidates were attacked and subjected to such gross intimidation that they were unable to enter their constituencies at all, let alone campaign. The Electoral Supervisory Commission saw its functions usurped by government, international monitors were systematically blocked and hindered, the state-owned media denied the opposition air time, and right up until the eve of the election the opposition was denied knowledge of where polling booths would be placed. Even after the election the opposition and the public were denied access to the voters' roll. Whites were often barred from voting.

It is difficult to know what effect many of these barriers to democratic expression had, but there is no doubt that the violence and intimidation worked. An exit poll conducted by the Helen Suzman Foundation found that 32 percent of voters thought that some, most or ali voters in their constituencies had been intimidated into voting against the party they really preferred, and 12 percent admitted that this had been true of their own vote. These figures were confirmed by the major national survey carried out by the Helen Suzman Foundation in September-October 2000: 31 percent and 13 percent, respectively, gave the same answers to the same questions. Moreover, this survey showed that large numbers of opposition voters said that they had not voted either because they had been too scared to do so or because their identification cards had been confiscated by Zanu-PF thugs. Since it was humiliating or dangerous to make such admissions, these figures should be regarded as very conservative ones. The Foundation esti mated that in a properly free election the MDC would have won 58 percent of the vote and between 87 and 91 of the 120 elected seats, instead of the 57 seats it actually won.

Strobe Talbott, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, visiting Johannesburg in early May, expressed strong concern about the Zimbabwean situation: "Africa's friends ... look to the SADC to do everything it can to encourage free and fair elections and to insist on an end to the violence." The United States, he promised, was ready to help Zimbabwe, but "we cannot and will not offer support in a climate of violence, lawlessness and intimidation." [27] The fact that this was headlined by the South African press as a ringing endorsement of Mbeki's position had less to do with Talbott than with the fact that the press was now under strong pressure to report Zimbabwean events in a way that would not overly embarrass Mbeki.

Thus, while the international press (and Johannesburg's Weekly Mail and Guardian) carried full accounts of how Mugabe's war veterans had established "torture clinics" to deal with election opponents, and of how gang rape had been deployed as a deliberate intimidation tactic against nurses, schoolteachers and pupils, such details did not get into the mainstream South African press--which also did not print the horrific pictures of opposition activists forced to sit naked on red-hot stoves. Business Day's long-standing correspondent, Michael Hartnack, could not get his reports of Zanu-PF atrocities into the paper, was accused of having "an anti-Mugabe agenda", and resigned from the paper. (It tells one not a little about the current South African climate that the foreign editorship of Business Day--the business community's house magazine--is held by a man who pled guilty in a German court to spying for the Soviet Union.)

Most of the South African press gave no publicity to a Suzman survey, held in March, showing that 63 percent of Zimbabweans believed it was "time for a change" and only 36 percent wanted ZanuPF to continue in power. The Foundation's June exit poll survey met a similar fate--despite the fact that both surveys received wide publicity in the international press. Instead, most of the press treated another Mugabe victory as a foregone conclusion and gave occasional space to articles suggesting that the MDC was really run by white South African interests. [28]

All of which focused increasing interest on whether the outside world would pronounce the elections free and fair. A "not free and fair" verdict would clearly embarrass Mbeki, leading to further questions as to how he could support an antidemocratic regime. It was, accordingly, apparent from a long way off that strong pressure would be applied to ensure a "free and fair" verdict, whatever the facts on the ground. The Victoria Falls Summit had shown that the other countries ruled by liberation movements--Angola, Mozambique and Namibia--could be relied upon to take this view. Indeed, Nujoma was such a strong Mugabe supporter that he stood happily by while Mugabe, on a state visit to Namibia in May, called on Namibians to stage land grabs from white farmers there, too. [29]

South Africa is, by a huge margin, the dominant state within the SADC, and it was immediately understood by the smaller SADC members that it would be unwise not to support the Mbeki line. Thus, for example, the continuous attempts by the MDC leader, Tsvangirai, to meet SADC leaders and put his case before them always came to naught; Mbeki's line that only state-to-state relations were acceptable was observed by all SADC members. Yet once the elections were over, Tsvangirai was to meet at least once with Mandela and with members of the Botswana cabinet.

Ironically, even while Zambia's Frederick Chiluba and Mozambique's Chissano gave Mugabe strong support, advertisements simultaneously appeared in the Zimbabwean press trying to tempt white farmers to settle in Zambia and Mozambique--Zimbabwe's white farmers are known for their productivity and entrepreneurship, and such qualities are in short supply in southern Africa. The logic of the situation was well understood by Pakalitha Mosisili, the premier of Lesotho, the country's poorest and most fragile ministate. He flew into Harare in order to offer support to Mugabe in terms so slavish as to achieve the near-impossible target of surpassing the standard set by Mugabe's chief propagandist, Jonathan Moyo. [30]

Some observers were beyond Mbeki's influence, however. The American delegations from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) were, like many others, hemmed into their rooms in Harare's Meikles Hotel, effectively forbidden by one government restriction after another from leaving the capital to observe the election. Like all other international observers--and even journalists--they had to pay a special $100 fee to Mugabe for being allowed to observe, and had one obstacle after another thrown in their way. In the end both pulled out before the election (as did the team sent by the UN), since they simply were not allowed to do their job. The head of the NDI delegation, Alex Ekwueme, Nigeria's vice president from 1979-83, announced that conditions for a free and fair election simply did not exist. [31] The IRI delegation pronounced the elections to be "the worst we have ever seen." [32]

Similarly, the EU observers--the largest of all the observer missions--excoriated the manner in which Mugabe had undermined democratic choice at every turn, as did Amnesty International, the Zimbabwean Human Rights NGO Forum, the Southern African Legal Assistance Network, and a host of other monitoring and observer groups. The Mugabe government argued bitterly that it did not need or want all these foreigners coming to observe its election, and it tried hard to prevent the election monitors trained by local Zimbabwean NGOs from deploying themselves around the country. In the end less than a quarter were able to do their job.

The key point made by NDI, IRI, Amnesty and the other groups was that, irrespective of what happened on polling day, the election could not be adjudged free and fair because of what had happened in the months before it: the violence against and intimidation of the opposition, the refusal of fair media access, and the multiple administrative irregularities in the organization of the election itself. It seemed clear, for example, that the electoral register included the names of many dead or bogus voters, creating huge opportunities for electoral fraud. But the government would not allow anyone to examine the register, even though it was constitutionally bound to do so. [33]

The advance conclusions that the elections could not be free and fair were naturally not congenial to Mbeki, so on June 12, 2000 he gave an exclusive interview to the pro-government Independent Group press, in which he insisted, "We want free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. We are against stolen elections." But, he added, no one could have any idea at this stage whether they would be free and fair; such opinions were wholly speculative. [34] This pretense of neutrality was doubly bogus. It disregarded the wave of human rights atrocities occurring just across the border, as well as the close alliance that now existed between the ANC and Zanu-PF.

A Zanu-PF delegation led by John Nkomo, the Zimbabwean minister of home affairs, had been greeted with great warmth by the ANC secretary-general, Kgalema Motlanthe, in Johannesburg just a fortnight before. The ANC sided unequivocally with Zanu-PF, issuing a communique in which the parties announced they had "reached common ground on resolving Zimbabwe's land crisis." In particular, the ANC supported the Zanu-PF demand that Britain should give financial aid for land reform without any conditions about violence, transparency or the rule of law. [35] The meeting dispelled any lingering doubts that might have existed: the ANC was already committed to assessing any Zimbabwean election that returned Mugabe to power as free and fair.

This ANC party line had a strong impact on all the election observer groups under any degree of South African influence, notably the South African Parliamentary Observer Group and the observers sent by the SADC, the Organization of African Unity, and the Commonwealth. The parliamentary observer group--dominated, naturally, by its ANG component--arrived two weeks before the election, though with the die already cast. "The ANC members of the delegation arrived with their minds made up", one delegation member told me:

They were all convinced that the MDC had very little support, that it would get five seats at most. We got briefed by both the parties. The ANC responded warmly to the Zanu-PF briefing but after the MDC briefing they complained that they 'didn't want to hear any more MDC propaganda.' They got a bit uncomfortable when they saw what things were really like and the evidence of violence against the MDC was so overwhelming. But of course that wasn't going to alter their conclusions--they were following a party line. They didn't even bother to observe the election properly and just spent all their time at discos, receptions and nightclubs. [36]

The head of the ANC delegation, Tony Yengeni (a leading member of the Communist Party), was in daily telephone contact with Mbeki throughout the election campaign and flew back to Pretoria a few days before the voting--in order, it was assumed, to report to Mbeki. He returned to Harare in time to see Zanu-PF scrape back to power by the narrowest of margins. The MDC not only trounced Zanu-PF in the towns and in Matabeleland (John Nkomo, who had led the Zanu-PF delegation to South Africa a few weeks before, lost his seat by a landslide), but even won a number of seats where its candidates had been in hiding, unable to campaign. The MDC immediately announced that it would challenge the results in over 40 of the 63 seats Zanu-PF had won, citing gross irregularities of every kind. This made no impact on Yengeni, who went to Mugabe's presidential palace, appeared hand in hand with Mugabe on television, and loudly criticized Western election observers who tried to impose their values on Africa. Africans had their ow n distinctive style of elections and democracy, he declared, and only it was authentic and legitimate. Mugabe sat next to him wreathed in smiles during this performance.

It was, after this, no surprise when the observer delegations from the South African parliament, the SADC and the Organization of African Unity all concluded that the election had been free and fair, or at least acceptably so. The hardest baffle was fought within the Commonwealth delegation, with the South African and other allied African delegates arguing fiercely for a free and fair verdict--to the horror of the Canadians, Australians, Indians and New Zealanders. In the end the latter prevailed sufficiently for the Commonwealth report on the election to be decently critical. The EU delegation, the largest and most experienced of all, was untroubled by such divisions and came to far tougher conclusions. Mbeki proceeded to push a motion through the South African cabinet declaring that the Zimbabwean election had been "substantially free and fair"--though, of course, there had been no need for the cabinet to make any pronouncement at all on the matter.

Fooled Again

MBEKI's unswerving support of Mugabe was the more striking not only because he appeared to have been double-crossed by Mugabe at Victoria Falls, but because in May he had put a great deal of effort into running around Europe and the Middle East trying to line up financial aid for Zimbabwean land reform, ultimately getting Saudi Arabia and Norway to pledge 100 million rands to buy 118 white farms for redistribution. Immediately after Mbeki had done this, however, Mugabe announced he wanted to take over all 4,000 white farms--without paying for them at all, thus scuppering the deal. [37] Even such cavalier treatment seemed not to affect Mbeki's support: with the election over he flew into Harare with a large team of ministers and officials for talks on how best to help the Zimbabwean economy. The visit was, to say the least, insensitive, for it fell on the day chosen by the opposition for a mass work strike protesting the government's refusal to uphold the rule of law. The strike, supported by the unions and th e farmers, turned Harare into a ghost town, as Mbeki's cavalcade rolled through deserted streets. Naturally enough, Mugabe saw this as a calculated snub to the MDC and rewarded Mbeki by having the entire cabinet meet him with ululating Zanu-PF activists singing revolutionary songs. [38]

Once again, the meeting saw Mugabe make a public fool of Mbeki. Once again, there was the same talk of large-scale South African aid and of Mbeki mediating with the IMF and other donors on Mugabe's behalf. Once again, Mugabe made public promises of good behavior, appearing on camera to assure that he would uphold the rule of law, that war veterans who harassed farmers would be arrested, and that all war veterans would soon be made to leave the farms they had invaded. The next day, with Mbeki back in South Africa, Mugabe went on camera once again to insist that he had never said all the things he had said the day before. [39]

Undaunted, Mbeki, attending the UN Millennium Summit in New York in September, met with Kofi Annan, Mugabe and the presidents of Malawi and Namibia to try to broker UN and UK aid to Zimbabwe--and even prevailed on Tony Blair to come to dinner with Mugabe to the same end. As before, everything broke down on Mugabe's refusal to concede transparency, an end to violence, and the rule of law. [40] The fact that Zimbabwe's economy was crumbling into ruin day by day made no difference to Mugabe, who had, in effect, decided that to concede such conditions meant losing power. Indeed, he showed a cavalier disregard for economic constraints, bringing a delegation of forty-seven (including family members) to New York at enormous cost.

Mugabe moved on from the UN to Harlem, where he held a large rally together with Louis Farrakhan, Herman Ferguson of the New African Liberation Front and other such figures. Coltrane Chimurenga of the December 12 Movement introduced Mugabe, saying, "On behalf of 40 million captured Americans we have brought our President home." Among the proposals made to an enthusiastic crowd were that all black prisoners in U.S. jails should be given honorary Zimbabwean citizenship, and that genetically modified food was a way of "killing black people in the U.S. slowly." Mugabe told the crowd that the IMF, the World Bank, Britain and America were all "an Anglo-Saxon plot between Congress and Blair and his lot", this despite having just been Blair's dinner guest. Mugabe told the crowd what he thought of whites: "What we hate is not the colour of their skins but the evil that emanates from them." [41] The relatives of a number of those tortured or murdered by Mugabe's thugs in Zimbabwe took the occasion to serve him a writ seeking $400 million in damages and accusing him of gross human rights atrocities. Mugabe did not contest the case, heard before a Manhattan Court, and judgment was rendered against him, making it highly problematic for him to visit the United States again.

None of this--not the food riots in Harare in October nor Mugabe'S continued campaign of violence and murder against the MDC and white farmers--seemed to have any effect on Mbeki, who, by December, was back in Harare with President Obasanjo of Nigeria tying to get the United Nations Development Program to fund Zimbabwean land reform. Once again, Mbeki was pictured hand in hand with Mugabe--and once again, the UNDP backed off because of Mugabe's refusal to accept conditions about the rule of law and a halt to violence. [42]

Meanwhile, South Africa has continued to supply Zimbabwe with the oil, electricity and credit lines without which Mugabe could not survive. In December 2000, South Africa's Eskom cut electricity prices to Zimbabwe by 25 percent, despite increases in oil prices and the $20 million in arrears Zimbabwe owed Eskom. In addition, a new $75 million loan was extended to Zimbabwe to guarantee a basic minimum oil supply in the year ahead. [43] There is no prospect that the loan can be repaid. Such behavior can only be attributed to Mbeki's determination to keep Mugabe/Zanu-PF in power.

Mandela's Shadow

THE Zimbabwean opposition enjoys widespread sympathy from Britain, the United States and other Western countries, but none of these states wishes to offend Mbeki by adopting too forward a position over an issue in his backyard. In effect, this gives Mugabe a free hand as he mobilizes all his resources to crush the opposition before the presidential contest of March 2002. Mugabe, who will then be 78, is clearly determined to run again.

Why has Mbeki behaved as he has? Even the blowing up of the printing presses of Zimbabwe's independent Daily News on January 28 failed to trigger South African condemnation. The deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, specifically said that South Africa did not wish to comment in a way that might seem critical of Mugabe--an incredible statement, for it assumed, as did everyone else, that Mugabe was guilty of the bombing. Similarly, the foreign minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, vigorously refused to criticize Zimbabwe over the expulsion of BBC and other foreign journalists.

As with his denial of the link between HIV and AIDS, Mbeki's support of Mugabe looks like a huge unforced error. The result has been enormous political damage at home and abroad, and it has wrought great economic damage as well. The IMF warned in December 2000 that the crisis risked pulling down the whole southern African region. There is no doubt that had Mbeki taken a firm stand, insisted that human rights and the rule of law were basic to any African Renaissance, he would have earned enormous respect at home, in Africa and abroad, and, in one bound, would have stepped out of Mandela's giant shadow. Indeed, he could have simply cut off fuel and electricity and brought Mugabe down, making himself a hero in Zimbabwe, too.

If one talks to official sources, one is told that Mbeki feels that he has little option but to support Mugabe because he provides the only viable government available, that if Mugabe falls, Zimbabwe could descend into Shona--Ndebele strife. Another standard line is that the Zimbabwean economy must be shored up because it is one of South Africa's most important trading partners, and because economic collapse would produce a vast flood of immigrants into South Africa. None of this makes much sense. Anyone familiar with contemporary Zimbabwe knows that ethnic strife is now a very unlikely scenario; the opinion surveys carried out by the Helen Suzman Foundation over the past several years repeatedly probed this question and found nothing worth reporting. As for economic collapse, this is exactly what Mugabe himself is producing. Almost any alternative would be bound to do better--and the flood of immigrants is already a reality.

One is also told that Mbeki, faced with radical opposition from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), is deeply aware that former President Kaunda of Zambia was ultimately toppled by a trade union-based opposition. If another African nationalist, this time a liberation leader next door, were to be toppled by a similar union-based movement like the MDC, this would enormously strengthen Cosatu's leverage and encourage it to float its own workers party. There is probably something to this. But it should be remembered that the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and Cosatu were close allies, which meant that Cosatu, along with South Africa's Communist Party, was warmly disposed toward Morgan Tsvangirai, the ZCTU leader. Had Mbeki embraced the MDC and opposed Mugabe at the outset he would have won plaudits from the South African Left. Even now Cosatu and the Communist Party are uncomfortable at finding themselves, as a result of their alliance with the ANC, on the opposite side from persecuted farm workers, organized urban labor and township food rioters in Zimbabwe.

The real key to this question is to remember that South African policy toward Mugabe would clearly have been very different if Mandela were still president. In other words, there is nothing intrinsic in African nationalism that necessitates Mbeki's attitude; both men are ANG leaders, but Mandela is clearly revolted by human rights abuses, while Mbeki clearly is not.

What is the central difference between the two men? Without doubt it is that Mandela preached racial reconciliation within "the rainbow nation" while Mbeki has preached the doctrine of "the two nations, one rich and white and the other black and poor." Over and over again he has played the race card against his domestic opposition, has insisted that South Africa's greatest problem is not AIDS, poverty or unemployment--but racism. The strategy is clear: Mbeki is insecure in power and the "two nations" tactic isolates the opposition and makes any black who supports it a race traitor. Provided he can maintain racial solidarity and racial blocs, the ANC is bound to win simply because elections then become a form of ethnic census, with Africans constituting 75 percent of the electorate. Given that the ANG is failing very badly and openly on its promises to provide "a better life for all", beating a retreat back to racial politics seems a safe recourse.

This, in turn, explains why Mbeki has not been discouraged even by Mugabe's multiple betrayals. For domestic reasons Mbeki has decided that he cannot be on the side of white farmers against a black liberation leader. Now that he has played the game that way, he has not only created a constituency within South Africa that would criticize him if he let Mugabe fail, he would now have to admit that he, the ANC's foreign policy and diplomatic expert, has misjudged disastrously over his first real foreign policy challenge.

The problem is not just that Mbeki has sacrificed the whole human rights tradition of the anti-apartheid struggle to support Mugabe, but that Mugabe must eventually fail. He is 76, is leading his country to negative 10 percent growth, he harbors as a friend the Ethiopian Pol Pot, Mengistu Haile Mariam, he is bankrupt, he is execrated by world opinion, and he knows there is no way back. Betting on him is betting on a certain loser.

Mbeki has been able to get away with this folly only because Western states want to stay on his side at all costs. Some are so desperate to do so that they are even willing to find reasons to excuse Mbeki's policy on AIDS. Thus, Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace writes that Mbeki's stance on AIDS is "not an act of personal madness or deep ignorance" but "an act of frustration, a response to an international community that demands too much, offers too little and does not spare the criticism." [44] In practice, Mbeki's refusal to allow HIV-positive pregnant mothers or rape victims access to anti-retroviral drugs (which the manufacturers have offered for free) is killing over 50,000 African babies a year. Those who actually care about those babies or about human rights or about Zimbabwe will, in the end, come up with a different answer.

R.W. Johnson is an emeritus fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and co-editor of Ironic Victory: Liberalism in Post-Liberation South Africa (Oxford University Press, 1998). In 2000 he carried out three major opinion surveys in Zimbabwe for the Helen Suzman Foundation, Johannesburg.

(*.) As of February 1, 2000, one U.S. dollar was equivalent to 6.25 rands. One year later, the rate was one dollar to 7.89 rands.

Notes

(1.) Rotberg, "Africa's Mess, Mugabe's Mayhem", Foreign Affairs (September/October 2000), p. 61.

(2.) Private communication.

(3.) Ibid.

(4.) Sunday Independent (Johannesburg), February 13, 2000.

(5.) See R.W. Johnson, Political Opinion in Zimbabwe 2000 (Johannesburg: Helen Suzman Foundation, March 2000), especially pp. 5-10.

(6.) The Citizen (Johannesburg) and Business Day (Johannesburg), February 18, 2000.

(7.) Ibid.

(8.) The Citizen, March 29, 2000.

(9.) Business Day, March 24, 2000.

(10.) Sunday Times Business News (Johannesburg), December 17, 2000.

(11.) Business Day, April 7, 2000.

(12.) Business Day and The Citizen, April 10, 2000.

(13.) The Star (Johannesburg), April 22, 2000.

(14.) Ibid.

(15.) Ibid.

(16.) Johnson, Political Opinion in Zimbabwe 2000, pp. 5-20.

(17.) R.W. Johnson, Political Opinion and the Crisis of Zimbabwe (Johannesburg: Helen Suzman Foundation, November 2000), pp. 40-8.

(18.) Ibid., pp. 68-82.

(19.) Sunday Independent, April 30, 2000.

(20.) Business Day, May 18, 2000.

(21.) The Citizen, April 26, 2000.

(22.) Business Day, The Citizen and The Star, May 2, 2000.

(23.) The Citizen, May 5, 2000.

(24.) The Citizen, May 6, 2000.

(25.) Sunday Times (Johannesburg), May 7, 2000.

(26.) Ibid.

(27.) Business Day, May 10, 2000.

(28.) See, for example, the article by Jovial Rantao, "A Zimbabwe Run from Sandton?", The Star, June 21, 2000.

(29.) The Citizen, May 27, 2000. Hundreds of landless families in Kenya, clearly inspired by the Zimbabwean example, invaded farms in early May. They got short shrift.

(30.) The Citizen, May 23, 2000. For the full flower of Mosisili's rhetoric, read Zimbabwe's state-owned press, especially the Herald (May 23, 2000) and the Sunday Mail (May 28, 2000).

(31.) Business Day, May 28, 2000.

(32.) Business Day, June 21, 2000.

(33.) An investigation by the Helen Suzman Foundation suggested that the true number of voters registered was probably about 3,667,000, rather than the official figure of 5,049,815--that is, that the register was inflated by over 37 percent. See Johnson, Political Opinion and the Crisis, pp. 3-4.

(34.) The Star, June 13, 2000.

(35.) The Citizen, May 29, 2000.

(36.) Author's interview with Graham McIntosh, a Democratic Party (South Africa) member of the delegation, Harare, June 27, 2000.

(37.) The Star, May 31, 2000.

(38.) Business Day, The Citizen and The Star, August 3, 2000.

(39.) Ibid.

(40.) Business Day, September 7, 2000.

(41.) Business Day, September 11, 2000.

(42.) Business Day, December 1, 2000.

(43.) The Star, December 15, 2000.

(44.) Cited in Business Day, January 3, 2001.

Zanu-PF: Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Mugabe's party)

MDC: Movement for Democratic Change (Zimbabwean opposition party)

SADC: Southern African Development Community

ANG: African National Congress (Mbeki's party)

NDI: National Democratic Institute

IRI: International Republican Institute

UNDP: United Nations Development Program

Cosatu: Congress of South African Trade Unions

ZCTU: Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions

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