Thabo Mbeki Makes No Sense
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Foreign Affairs | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
See if you can make heads or tails out of this:
South African President Thabo Mbeki has defended his record on Zimbabwe, while playing down the crisis at a UN debate.
His governing ANC party, however, said it was concerned about the deepening crisis brewing in its neighbour.
Gordon Brown told the UN Security Council no one believed Robert Mugabe won last month's presidential election in the country.
Meanwhile, the opposition in Zimbabwe said 50 supporters were arrested after a strike over delayed poll results.
Mr Mbeki had said there was "no crisis" in Zimbabwe after meeting Mr Mugabe on Saturday.
He defended those remarks in New York, saying dialogue was essential to bring about a resolution to the situation in Zimbabwe, where 18 days after presidential elections, electoral officials have yet to announce a result.
"The solution to the problem of Zimbabwe lies in the hands of the people of Zimbabwe," he said.
"In our engagement with the situation, we needed to talk continuously at all times with both the ruling party and the opposition."
Relatedly, Josh Trevino is kind enough to direct my attention to this:
China has secretly shipped tens of thousands of small arms to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, raising fears the consignment has been brought in to crush any attempts to unseat Robert Mugabe from power.
The consignment has cost the regime millions of United States dollars and came through Durban harbour in a Chinese registered vessel, An Yue Juang.
It includes 3 million rounds of ammunition for AK47 rifles, the standard assault weapon for the country's defence forces. There were also 1,500 rocket propelled grenades, a support weapon for the infantry, plus 3,500 mortar bombs.
If true, this would make for something of a crisis, now wouldn't it? What sayeth Mr. Mbeki?
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My impression of this is that Thabo Mbeki has invested a great deal of effort in supporting Robert Mugabe because of Mugabe's position as the leader of a "liberation movement". The fact that Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party quickly morphed from liberators to corrupt oppressors is irrelevant to Mbeki. He's uncomfortable that the opposition party in Zimbabwe (the MDC) maintains good relations with the small population of white Zimbabweans. If Zimbabwe actually tossed out the historical liberation party in free elections it might give voters in neighboring countries the idea that they can hold their own governments accountable. Mbeki doesn't want South Africans to consider whether his ANC party should win every year.
To that end he's willing to swallow repeated instances of election stealing even though the MDC did a marvelous job of documenting the actual vote totals reported at each polling location. Mbeki apparently wants ZANU-PF to pension off Mugabe and put someone else on the ballot for a runoff with Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC. That way ZANU-PF can steal the runoff, put a new guy with less negative history in charge, and keep going with business as usual.
Mugabe is doing his best to garner Chinese support in order to keep Zimbabwe afloat for his own benefit and the Chinese know that this is the best doorway for them to entrench themselves in Africa. The opposition leader Morgan Tsangerai would be have a far more open market approach, which would not suite the Chinese, because then Zimbabwe would recover without them. Hence the supply of arms to the dictatorial Mugabe. Here is another reason for boycotting the Chinese Olympics. You Americans better hurry and get Mugabe out even if it is only for strategic reasons alone, let alone the more important moral reasons. Also South African "leaders" like Mbeki will not lift a finger to help the Zimbabwean people against this fellow African "leader" unless they feel the heat themselves, in a boycott of the platform from which he is looking forward to boast from, namely the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa.
...Mugabe frames this as an anti-colonialist struggle, Mbeki is duty-bound to be his lap dog and meal ticket, as the ANC has become as racially and socially negligent as their apartheid predecessors. I don't think Mbeki has the political force within his own country to safely turn back on Mugabe, regardless of how ugly the situation gets. He is, effectively, reaping the whirlwind.
"No matter how much lipstick you put on the taxation pig, it's still a pig... and it's currently snout-down in your wallet." - Michael Fisk