by Mputhumi Ntabeni

G21 Africa Staff Writer

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Mputhumi
Ntabeni

QUEENSTOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - It's been said, ad nauseum, that the problem of Africa is the failure of leadership. Nowhere has this allegation been more true than in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean issue is confusedly complicated though and needs not only access to right information, but some acumen. Put aside all manner of cross-currenting due to past colonial history, its nostalgic purveyors disguised as genuine critics and all that perverting influence, and still Zimbabwe has become the archetype of what's wrong with African states.

The facts are clear: Post-colonial African leadership has failed its people by failing to find African solutions for African problems. They overlooked causative factors and chose to collect and transplant a motley of obsolete ideologies without even properly understanding them. When criticised they became intolerant. Viewpoints outside their controlled governing clubs were suppressed, even persecuted in some cases. Thus the story of African politics has, hitherto, been the case of the bland leading the bland.

Absence of intellectual freedom prevented a true search for and development of African internal solutions. This resulted in governments of intellectual mediocrity with snob officials who knew nothing but to toe the official line. Any criticism of their inchoate and intellectually frustrating policies was dubbed as either reactionary or unpatriotic. Sometimes the critic was accused of still being hung up in colonial-apartheid legacies. Ergo,the officials managed to conceal their systemic corruption, economic mismanagement, political tyranny, violations of human rights, and military vandalism.

Like most post-colonial leaders, Robert Mugabe (the president of Zimbabwe) owes his notorious reputation to the elegance of his errors. He's unique, though, in the sense that he seeks to conceal his failure in strange and original eccentricities.

He seeks to hide the mess of the flagrant economic mismanagement of his country, which he plagued with political favours and klepto-capitalism by exploiting the genuine grievances of his people against the uncorrected errors of their colonial history. Under the influence of the demented leaders of what eventually became known as War Veterans, he's led his people into queer adventures, forceful occupation of white farmer's land and so forth.

The culpability of England in that madness cannot be down-played. It promised to help with the reallocation of Zimbabwean land (more than sixty percent of which was held by the white minority - less than fifteen percent of the population). Twenty years after Zimbabwean independence, England has still not fully honoured its promises. England accuses Mugabe of allocating the land only to his cronies, not to the people who desperately need it, which is partly true.

The only thing the people of Zimbabwe see is that they are still labouring for, it must be admitted, racist white farmers who still have no respect for them. To these people it is as if nothing, no independence, had happened. They feel their freedom has been annihilated by the economic status quo. Thus they ran out of patience.

The War Veterans articulated the evidence of the people's everyday frustrations in catchy inciting phrases. Under this banner they started illegally occupying land that belonged to white farmers. The poor, bored, and idle majority of young Zimbabweans saw a chance to lead a splendid life in uniform (as policemen or soldiers). They gave colour to their miseries by means of a movement of land invasion. And how bright the colour was; the outside world started to notice.

They dared believe the incredible, imagining themselves sitting in the positions of the white farm bosses, with its green pasture promises. The colourful case for civil revolt was in the offing.

Mugabe knew he couldn't afford opposing this civil revolt even if he wanted to. He understood the first principle of democracy, i.e. holding in high regard things the majority hold dear. He showed his astuteness, it must be admitted, by exploiting the sentiments of the majority of the Zimbabwean people. He used their land distribution grievances to camouflage his obsolescence, like a drowning person hanging on the last raft. His strategy was to use the movement as a counterpoise to the growing power of the insurgents within and outside his party. (It is typical of petty dictators to seek external enemies in order to allay internal tensions.) So long as the public opinion concentrated on the land reform issue, he could take a breather and plan his next move for hanging on to power.

Mugabe has a gambler's temperament. He'll never accept a loss if there's a chance for regaining it by doubling the stakes.

The Zimbabwean Police establishment joined in [with Mugabe's ploy] out of fear or complicity with the landowners. This gave birth to a systemic confusion that started with the police ignoring court orders.

Parliament refused supervision by the judiciary system which, it must be admitted, is largely white and more sympathetic to liberal values. The rule of law broke down and then thuggery, murder and violent intimidation by Mugabe's followers followed hot on its heels.

This wave of popular feeling (land invasion) grew, against the interest of what I'll call the privileged classes in Zimbabwe; the urban affluent, the employed, the manufacturing and industrial business class, and, naturally, the farmers. Hence came into the picture the opposition party predominately made of trade union organizations under the banner of the MDC (Mass Democratic Movement), led by Morgan Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai's job was supposed to be to kick down the rotten door of Mugabe's obsolete administration; to crystallize in colourful words what events, like the country's economic down-turn, had already made clear: the imperative for Zimbabwe to get rid of Mugabe in order to cure itself.

But Mugabe, like an old tiger, does not surrender; he dies.

It is a show of Tsvangirai's failure as an effective leader that he cannot kick down the rotten door and strike. Tsvangirai lacks the ability of tailoring his ideas to the political preferences of the majority. To be kind to him, his failure as an effective opposition leader is related to his close association with foreign support. He makes most Africans, the majority of which are pan-Africanist in sentiment, nervous and suspicious. That's why even though Zimbabweans may be weary of Mugabe they don't rally after Tsvangirai. The people see him as a puppet who is enabling the evil success of Western imperialism for the ultimate benefit of comprador capitalists. They know Western support comes with a price and cannot stop wondering what pound of flesh they will have to pay after they put him in power.

Africans, in fact people generally in the world today, are starting to reject foreign servitude, even when packaged in material comfort.

That's Tsvangirai's downfall. He's caught up in a squirrel wheel. He can't make his ideas fit the prevailing mood of his country. He keeps raving, like an inspired idiot, about Mugabe's faults, which are clear to everybody, instead of telling the Zimbabweans in clear terms where he wants to take them and how. The masses are desperate for something new. But all Tsavngirai ever does is wait for political parades to pass his door and then step in front of them with his banner. He lacks initiative. He lacks leadership qualities; the inability to rise to the occasion and respond to clear opportunity. That's what made the Lenins of this world, not ingenuity. Ingenuity does not count in politics.

People will never follow what they've not felt first.

Added to that that to be elected as the leader in the voluntary association of freemen in an African situation comes with the string of having to prove yourself as a liberator from Western domination. To be seen as a lap dog of Western leaders costs you prestige among African constituents. African people still retain the memory of colonial experience and are aware of the residual racism that still lingers in most white people they come across in their daily lives. The worse that has happened to the MDC was finding itself with the strange bedfellows of the beneiciaries of Zimbabwe's colonial past.

The present South African government treats the Zimbabwean issue as some disease that'll eventually self-annihilate. True, the South African government has an advantage of a better understanding than most other nations of the origins of the Zimbabwean crisis. They know also how much of its fire is fanned by foreign influence, especially from England and the residue of its affiliates with have still vested interests in Africa.

Be that as it may, the issue is no longer about power politics. We have a dictator in Zimbabwe who is maintaining his rule through armed force. The polite comedy of non-intervention has deteriorated into a tragic farce that enhances the dictator. Once people start being incarcerated for peaceful marches things have reached the tragic. The world's public morality is faced with an outrage.

This is no time for evocations. If organisations like the AU (African Union) want to gain credibility, they must start by dealing with the likes of Mugabe effectively. There's no other way but down for Mugabe. We Africans are tired of our leaders' thimblerigging and expounding non effective wisdom in sophisticated conferences that have no real effect on the ground. They make vigorous advocacy for African solutions but use them as a substitute for the solutions themselves. Gone is the era where ambiguity won you converts. We want clear leadership and answers. Why was Mugabe invited to the last AU summit? Why are AU leaders not showing some initiative in burying Mungabe in the rubbish bin of history; the only thing he's now good for?

Some have likened the situation in present Zimbabwe to the invidious South African history of the apartheid era. The Zimbabwean liberator has become the tormentor. Let the Zimbabwean people also wake up from their reprehensibly pauperish attitude of waiting for foreign help in their own domestic problems. Let them imitate their South African brethren in rendering that country ungovernable until Mugabe is forced to go. They've to take the responsibility for their liberty in their own hands by rising up in revolt against the dictator that oppresses them in their own name. They need our support, but not in the American cowboy style of foreign invasion. They need us to show more signs that we stand by them.

Zimbabwe, for instance, depends on South Africa for almost all its commodities. Once these dry out, should South Africa institute economic sanctions, they'll feel the pinch more. Once the people feel the pinch and know the source of a solution for sure, they have a tendency of becoming intolerant of the problem. Zimbabwe has reached the stage where only a brush with the devil will wake it up. Mugabe's truculence, growing wild talk, and disregard for conventional democratic gestures indicate that he has gone berserk. We can no longer rely on the false hope that he will regain sense soon as long as an armed force is equipped to dominate and ruthlessly suppress the opinion of civilians.

If we fail to act now, the next thing we shall hear might be news of the speedy trial of Tsvangirai on his way to the gallows. Then the MDC's attitude toward the government will change into bitter hostility. The world will wonder how things got that far, as when the Nigerian junta executed Ken Serawiwa.

If we dont all act now, we might find we leave to future times the memorial of present atrocities. Then the MDC will feel compelled to resolve its frustrations with guerrilla warfare. Then the shit will hit the fan.

A peacekeeping force must be sent to Zimbabwe, paid for by England. Under that force the MDC and Mugabe's ZANUPF must be compelled to put aside their respective egos and talk. An interim government must come out of those talks and elections held within a year's time.

From there, let the opinion of the majority of Zimbabwean people prevail, even if, unfortunately they'll have to choose between complicated degrees of the wrong. It'll be a start.