China’s morality-free pragmatism, Russia’s habitual antagonism,
South Africa’s shameful cowardice — these are the three most
appalling responses to the British and U.S. attempts to place
sanctions on Zimbabwe and its president-cum-tyrant, Robert
Mugabe. China and Russia vetoed a proposal that would have barred
Zimbabwe from receiving weapon shipments, frozen Robert Mugabe’s
foreign assets, and restricted his travel. Also voting against
that resolution was the colorful dictatorial throng of Libya,
Vietnam — and South Africa.
Even if Western morality comes to bear only when there is little
to lose, economically, or some other self-interest is involved,
the British/American action was and is the right thing to do, and
it’s the least that should be done. The vetoes and no-votes raise
many worrying questions. Less for Vietnam, a peon of China’s, or
Libya — whose self-interest in protecting African dictators
governs their behavior. China proves that even the Olympics can’t
deter it in its stubbornly amoral pursuit of economic interest in
Africa. Troubling, but not unexpected.
Most perturbing are the stance of Russia and South Africa. The
former for showing the Janus-faced post-Putin regime. Dmitry
Medvedev, who told Zalmay Khalilzad at the G-8 summit in Japan
that Russia could support sanctions, turns out to be the
pleasant, ambiguously pro-Western face of an antagonistic Russia
steered by Prime Minister Putin and stuck in its post-Stalinesque
ways.
South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, who has now brought Mugabe
and Morgan Tsvangirai into talks on “power sharing,” is hardly an
honest broker. Mbeki, despite the woes his own country
experiences because of the acute humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe,
remains, somewhat inexplicably, a stalwart supporter of Mugabe’s.
To ask him to negotiate between Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and Tsvangirai’s
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) seems — exaggeration
notwithstanding — akin to asking Vidkun Quisling to negotiate
between Germany and Edvard Benes. In any case, political talk
will prove largely useless, because the symbiosis of Mugabe and
the military is a power that won’t budge with just a few
political concessions.
There is a more than a touch of deja vu in the situation, which
seems ripped from 1965: Marxist/leftist regimes feigning
solidarity with the “legitimate aspirations” of the African
peoples against the fading Western “colonial oppressors.” It is
as if the UK had not opposed the (white) unilateralists in the
former Rhodesia, or the U.S. had not (along with many
multinationals doing business in South Africa) seen the light and
helped nudge apartheid off the world stage. The last thing Africa
needs is a revival of the Cold War proxy battles between Marxism
and Capitalism, which helped delay Africa’s postcolonial rebirth
by a generation, or more.
The official excuse for blocking sanctions against “Mugabeism” is
that the Zimbabwean crisis is an internal one, and the UN is
designed to resolve cross-national problems. The former assertion
is factually false, as Zimbabwean refuges pour across the border
into South Africa, which in turn is increasingly hostile to its
“guests” to the point of violence in some cases. Further, the
total collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy has region-wide, if not
continent-wide, ramifications, none of them good. Finally, if
another reason is needed, Zimbabwe was nurtured into existence by
Britain and the Commonwealth to set an example for the continent:
that racial domination was a thing of the past, and the
democratic principles and Anglo-American political structures,
not dictatorial thuggery, were the key to Africa’s future.
If the Western model of freedom and representative government
fails in Zimbabwe (as it indeed has, until regime change occurs),
and hangs by a thread at times in South Africa, what African
nation will retain the courage to fight against tyranny, military
or civilian, foreign or domestic?
The Zimbabwe crisis is the world’s crisis. That is well known to
Russia and China, who shamelessly exploit it for short-term (and
very minor) geopolitical advantage. It is known too in South
Africa, which wants the exclusive right to choose which foreign
interests it will obey, all the while pretending to be “in
charge” of the situation. Time to call the bluff: public and
private sanctions across the board, implemented by each nation in
turn if necessary, dramatizing in the process another sterling
example of the UN talking big and carrying the smallest of all
sticks.
