In October 1960, in the heat of the closest presidential race in
memory, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was arrested during a
de-segregation demonstration in Georgia and transferred to
Reidsville State Prison. There were legitimate concerns about his
safety.
Senator John Kennedy placed a call to Coretta King and
interceded in her husband’s behalf, securing his quick release on
bail. The gesture was appreciated in the black community, which
went massively for Kennedy in a year when its allegiance to the
Democratic Party was not taken for granted. President Eisenhower
had sent troops to enforce school integration in Little Rock a few
years earlier.
Now I do not believe in making inapt comparisons, but consider
that in an African nation called Zimbabwe, which some conservatives
noticed when it was called Southern Rhodesia and then lost track
of, inflation is in the upper hundred-thousand percents, and that’s
the benign news. More grimly, at least three score members of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change have been murdered. The
independent print press and radio, once vibrant in this beautiful
country, have been muzzled.
Indeed, the election, scheduled for this week, may not even
happen. President Robert Mugabe, 84, leader of ZANU-PF and
president since independence (1980), stated he would not let an X
on a ballot turn the country over to British imperialism, whatever
that is. You’d have to be Mort Sahl to see the grim humor in this
improvement on the old chestnut of communist militants and African
strongmen, “one man, one vote, once.”
Mugabe and his men and the generals, not well-known outside the
country, who back them, are by all evidence determined to prevent
the popular leader of the MDC, labor-leader Morgan Tsvangirai, from
taking over. Well aware of what they are capable of, he withdrew
from the runoff race, scheduled for June 27, making it clear that a
sham election was not worth the risk of people getting hurt or
killed while trying to vote.
BUT THE DEMOCRATIC movement will continue. With it will come some
accounting. Why is it that land reform in Zimbabwe — which, truth
be told, was a legitimate issue considering how land was
appropriated during the colonial years — turned into a spoils
system for ruling clique? How is it that no one has ever been put
on trial for a long train of crimes and abuses in the years since
independence, going back to the massacres (20,000 killed by some
estimates) in the Matabeleland which decimated the regime’s Ndebele
opposition?
Tsvangirai, in an attempt to calm things down and pre-empt a
descent into total repression and the civil war that would follow,
suggested last year that a national conference might work out a way
to trade amnesty for respect of democratic procedures. He was
thanked for this by a savage beating that almost killed him and
repeated arrests during this year’s election season, which has been
drawn out by the regime’s brazen tampering with the rules. The MDC
number 2, Tendai Biti, was arrested June 12 and charged with
treason, which carries the death penalty.
Our country is one thing and other countries are another. We
have a long and wise tradition of befriending liberty everywhere
while understanding that we can be the guardians only of our own.
But what if a U.S. presidential candidate suggested loudly and
clearly that the whole world would applaud if southern Africa’s
ex-breadbasket (whose people are now starving, while Mugabe accuses
organizations like CARE of being in cahoots with the British
imperialists, whoever they are) pulled back from the brink? There
is an unwritten tradition that American politicians do not get
involved in the internal politics of foreign nations, but it is
perfectly ordinary for them to say that such and such a country is
to be commended for its respect of law and freedom, or such and
such a country is sadly missing the bus for its disrespect of
same.
Of course, in this case it would not have the same ordinary
impact that the routine trips American politicians make to the
three I’s, Ireland, Italy and Israel. The shot would be heard
‘round the Continent and, perchance, at home too. But there is
more.
The lives of brave democrats like Tsvangirai and Biti and their
comrades matter. Moreover, in the larger perspective of building a
U.S. African policy that is consequential, American leaders can
point to Zimbabwe as a sorry example of the consequences of
libertycide. Until now, the ZANU-PF regime has received support
from its neighbors, notably South Africa’s Thado Mbeki, who is
loath to criticize a veteran of the anti-white wars in southern
Africa that, of course, formed much of Mbeki’s political
consciousness. His brother Moeletsi Mbeki, along with Graca Machel,
wife of Nelson Mandela, and many other prominent figures, signed a
call for free and fair elections.
Thado Mbeki’s tacit support for Robert Mugabe at any rate may be
revised for practical reasons. The wreck of Zimbabwe’s economy is
causing refugees to flee south in the tens of thousands. This has
led to murderous riots in areas where, unfortunately, the locals
view the refugees as unwanted competition for scarce jobs.
IT IS IN THIS CONTEXT that should be seen the refusal of
dockworkers in Durban to unload a shipment of Chinese guns and send
them on their overland journey to Harare. The Chinese have supplied
ZANU-PF with its weapons since before independence, but this brazen
reinforcement of its repressive capacities seemed grotesque. The
regime was all but claiming that guns would trump ballots, and one
of the generals actually stated that the army would defend Mugabe
“against Western agents.” The guns were last reported to have got
to their destination by way of Mozambique.
Apart from Zimbabwe, the best known recipient of Chinese
military help has been Sudan, whose government has been
countenancing, when not aiding and abetting, some major
bloodletting in its southern provinces as well as in the western
province of Darfur. A U.S. brokered peace supposedly put an end to
the southern wars in 2003, but they commenced again this year in
oil-rich Abyei, which is in the south. Chinese military assistance
to the Omar el-Bashir government in Khartoum includes supersonic
aircraft. A Congressional report noted that there are anywhere from
four to ten thousand PLA soldiers in Sudan, thinly disguised as
petroleum engineers.
Chinese military missions have been active in many other
countries; indeed they tend to follow the patterns of Chinese
economic interest, which is insatiable. The Chinese are not only
extracting hydrocarbons and minerals, they are putting down
infrastructure, opening restaurants (this is not a joke), and
developing markets. Surely this can have positive effects, but it
is impossible not to notice, as did Durban’s longshoremen, that all
this investment is accompanied by a preference for thuggish
political regimes.
China’s African scramble is, in fact, becoming a big topic
across the continent, and it would not be a bad idea if American
leaders, to the extent they can bring themselves to discuss the
“challenges” the next administration will face, at least mentioned
it. The Chinese themselves might even listen — after all, lately
they have warned the Bashir government quite publicly to cooperate
in stopping the violence in Darfur. It may be a mere gesture,
Olympics-related public relations. But people notice, as they will
notice who says or does what about what happens in Zimbabwe this
week, and as with that phone call in 1960, they will remember.
