Political leaders and the tabloid press are well apprised of the fact that we all love to hate a bogeyman, someone who can be mocked, loathed, ridiculed and demonized as the incarnation on pure Evil on earth. Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president has emerged as the latest in a long line of eminent dictators and faux-Hitlers to receive this ‘honor’ and has been subject to ample vilification across the board. Though Mugabe is certainly an unpleasant and nasty piece of work, a dictator with little respect for the rule of law or legal and political institutions more generally, and whose fulminations and unwavering contempt for the democratic opposition, international community and anyone else who dare opposes his will, have made him an easy target with much fodder for the plethora of editorials, which have in recent week hit the press, denouncing yet another ‘African Hitler’.
Though Mugabe might be a vicious megalomaniac, he’s no Hitler and such poorly framed historical analogies are frankly ridiculous. He’s a thug with a monopoly on violence and contempt for democracy. He has left a trail of murder, beatings, intimidation and thuggery in his wake and it’s become painfully obvious that he’s going nowhere without a fight, notwithstanding criticism, words of caution and mounting sanctions, from Western leaders, the UN Secretary-General, fellow African leaders, opposition forces and even dissenting factions within his own party. He has also repeatedly abused the rhetoric of anti-colonialism to justify state brutality against his own population and to tighten his grip on the reins of power. He has himself said that “only God” can remove him from power, and some have glibly replied they hope God takes up the octogenarian leader’s invitation sooner rather than later.
The ephemeral ray of hope during the course of April when it looked as though Mugabe’s 30-year stint in power was on the verge of coming to an abrupt and triumphant end, and Zimbabwe on the cusp of a new era, was rapidly jettisoned and brought crashing down to earth after Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the presidential race after Mugabe’s Zanu-PF turned up the heat and stepped up violence against supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Fearing reprisals Tsvangirai fled to the Dutch Embassy, his movement left in tatters.
Mugabe has since gone on to win Zimbabwe's presidential run-off election, in which he was the only candidate. A dog-and-pony show which was supposed to confer legitimacy on the proceedings but did little more than reveal the depth of the electoral charade. Zimbabwe's electoral commission dutifully announced the results of the largely discredited poll and the results showed a large number of spoiled ballots. Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, is now set to be inaugurated for a sixth term as president. Meanwhile, the world stands half agog, half indifferent, with little idea of what to do or where to turn.
Many have immediately and without much thought adduced yet more sanctions as the answer. Britain felt itself briefly empowered after stripping Mugabe of his knighthood and a string of denunciations, while Mugabe was only too eager to bark back with equal virulence at his former colonial masters. And so the spectacle continues. Targeted sanctions against the regime and those who buttress it might have some effect, but it is highly unlikely that such measures will bring about the change many claim they desire. Moreover, those who most vociferously support the use of economic sanctions are at a loss to provide any credible evidence that would suggest they ever produce benign outcomes.
Advocates of economic sanctions as the Wunder-solvent to all internal and international political issues were flummoxed by the salient 1999 Congressional evidence of Richard Haass of the Brookings Institution. After having been backed into a corner from which no amount of rhetorical piroetting or flourishes would extricate him he was reduced to admitting that economic sanctions were a "blunt instrument that often produces unintentional and undesirable consequences". Last week, Simon Jenkins of the London based newspaper, The Guardian, was accurate in his review of the history of economic sanctions and their repercussions, which have been anything but rosey and have only compounded the trials and tribulations of the ordinary people who must bear the misfortune of living under such repressive and unforgiving regimes.
‘Their first use in modern times, against Italy over Abyssinia in 1935, crashed the lira but did not free the Abyssinians. The US's most ferocious sanctions drove Cuba into the arms of Russia and came near to precipitating a nuclear war - and cemented Castro in power.
The same futility was seen in action against Russia, Poland, Rhodesia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Iraq and Iran. Subjecting a political economy to siege leads to consequences. It enforces a command economy, in which the rulers keep what they want for themselves, skimming every deal and corrupting every transaction. It made Saddam Hussein the sixth richest man in the world, as it enriched the Taliban warlords, the Burmese generals and Robert Mugabe.
Sanctions over time destroy the mercantile, managerial and professional classes, the rootstock of opposition to totalitarian government. They push power into the hands of brute force. The withdrawal of trade closes factories, farms and mines, and debilitates the political effectiveness of those dependent on them. More people must rely on state handouts - that is, on the regime.’[i]
It’s crucial that we acknowledge the crux of economic sanctions so that we are to able to surpass this ‘catch-all response’ to any foreign government of whose actions we don’t approve or find morally reprehensible. Sanctions have already mired the Zimbabwean economy in total and utter disrepair, where people have a hard time getting their hands on the most basic food stuffs like bread and milk, let alone meat and vegetables; the latter which is but a vague and wispy memory for the overwhelming majority. All the while the ruling and inveterately kleptocratic clique continues to thrive and even reap the dividends of the economic crises by means of the burgeoning black market in petrol and pretty much every else that is hard to come by in Zimbabwe.
A recent Chinese weapons shipment is a trenchant illustration of the point. Throughout the month of April one witnessed the saga of a Chinese merchant vessel by the name of
An Yue Jiang, carrying thousands of tons of arms and ammunition to the Zimbabwean government, some of which almost certainly went on to be used by the army, police and Zanu-PF zealots to put down opposition protests.
[ii] It is in examples such as these where the repercussions of economic sanctions crystallize: plenty of guns to harass, maim and kill ordinary Zimbabweans but nothing but empty supermarkets across the country and millions of empty bellies!
Sanctions merely perpetuate this cycle. What is most frustrating is that we thing we have already seen this horrific drama played out once before in Iraq. Secretary of State under Clinton, Madeleine Albright when asked whether the death of some 500,000 Iraqi children due to sanctions was a price worth paying, infamously replied that the administration felt “the price was worth it”. Is Zimbabwe to have the same fate? Let’s hope that world leaders decide to embark upon a more imaginative and less potentially disastrous path than we have seen in the past. With employment at 80% and inflation running at 100,586 %, a new round of sanctions would give new meaning to the expression ‘flogging a dead horse’.
As Brendan O’Neill of Spiked has assiduously reminded us, to blame Mugabe tout court for the present state of the Zimbabwean economy completely:
‘… ignores the key role played by Western governments and financial institutions in using sanctions, tough diplomacy and the proxy interventionists of the South Africa government and the African Union to isolate and harry Zimbabwe over the past decade.’[iii] In December 2001, the US passed the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which decreed that Mugabe could restore relations with international financial institutions only if he agreed to conditions on Zimbabwe’s rule of law, the presence of its troops in the Congo, and the conduct of internal elections. It’s worthy of note that in 2001, both Uganda and Rwanda also had troops in the Congo; and neither Uganda nor Rwanda allowed opposition political parties or a free press, yet both were allies of the US, and have since continued to receive considerable economic backing from the Bush administration.
[iv] So why was Mugabe singled out? This is still not entirely clear; some point to his anti-colonial rhetoric and hostility toward outside interference in the African continent; others contend, American and British hostility stems from Mugabe’s seizure of colonial-era, white-owned commercial firms in 2000, and it was this that marked the watershed when the West once and for all turned its back on Mugabe after dealing with him for so many years. Elucidation of the matter is yet to be seen, and in all likelihood will only emerge with time.
Mugabe originally came to power off the back of the struggle against the white supremacist regime of Ian Smith, whose continues to blight Zimbabwe’s future and struggle for democratic governance. After independence Mugabe came to power and promised to inaugurate a new era of peace, prosperity and above all else independence in his native land. Those promises over the last thirty years have been repeatedly broken and shattered. Economic stagflation has lampooned the one-time middle class into a spiral of debt and despondency from which they feel that might never recover. All they can espy is a band of erstwhile freedom fighters, ideologues and members of the resistance movement who have been transformed into a creaking, corrupt and parasitic coterie of fatcats. The white elite have been replaced with an indigenous one and the average Zimbabwean continues to suffer.
What remains clear however, is that both foreign meddling and sanctions aren’t the solution. The only response must be authored by the Zimbabwean people themselves on the road to restoring their historical agency and mastership of their collective destiny. There is no suggestion that this will be an easy task, but the West needs to divest itself of the penchant to meddle and ‘fix’ the internal political problems of nations.
Targeted humanitarian aid which eschews the clutches of the regime is a must. Support for the beleaguered opposition by individuals and non-government affiliated groups are also warranted. Private economic exchanges with Zimbabweans could also act as an effective means of building up the private sector and turning it into a bulwark against the state-run economy and all the economic patronage and monopoly power which has hitherto been the primary source of state-power, making it the only game in town. These are only a few ‘off the cuff’ ideas which could have some real results and circumvent the pitfalls of the ineffectual and regrettable policies unerringly relied upon up to now.
[i] Sanctions are a Coward's War, Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, Wednesday July 2, 2008
[ii] The Reign of Thuggery, Joshua Hammer, The New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 11, June 26, 2008
[iii] Zimbabwe and the New Cowardly Colonialism, Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, 3 April 2008
[iv] Ibid
© Sadegh Kabeer
