Mandela's shameless comrades: Why African Dictators are unmoved on Zimbabwe from Abou's blog

When Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council Resolution proposing to tighten up sanctions on Zimbabwe, David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary fumed and in a near teen-age bewilderment, labelled it ‘incomprehensible’. But for those of us who were born and brought up in Africa, the veto comes as little or no surprise. It merely reaffirms the settled wisdom that when it comes to confronting the excesses of African dictators, the international community is often impotent in charting a workable road map for salvaging the suffering masses. This remains so even in post-cold war global politics where, to the chagrin of cosmopolitans, international legal instruments fall into desuetude when expected to be emancipatory or act as a site for resistance. The genocide in Darfur and the madness in the forgotten war in Somalia all the more consolidate this pervasive inertia and imperfection. So unlike Miliband, we are neither bewildered nor do we, to borrow from Makau Mutua, ‘stampede to the temple’ in search of a goddess of hope only to find it lacking.

Indeed the veto was seen as the last credible weapon in forcing Mugabe to heed the voices of reason. Two cues must be taken from this latest international deadlock on Zimbabwe. On one hand, it demonstrates the unwillingness of Russia and China to put aside national and economic interests for the indigenisation of international normative values irrespective of the dreadfulness of the human condition. On the other, it exposes the fragility and imperfection of the present international order. No matter how promising international institutional and normative engagement appears, politics and lack of commitment from the community of nations could produce a bifurcated dialogue and thereby make the most simple of tasks look almost Herculean. Take the African Union for instance. In its present configuration, the AU has the most progressive legal instruments amongst the existing regional organisations. Its Constitutive Act prescribes a number of responses to the growing complexities of Africa’s crises. For example Article 4 provides for a right for the AU to intervene (with or without consent) in a member country in ‘grave circumstances ofwar crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide’. This threshold was lowered in a subsequent 2003 amendment to include ‘serious threat to legitimate order to restore peace and security’. Yet like the UN, the AU remains largely unmoved on Zimbabwe despite the conditions of that country warranting the invocation of at least its Act’s basic human security conceptions.

What has, and is happening in Zimbabwe is shameful and unacceptable. Life is intolerable and the future uncertain. Food shortages are causing starvation and disease. Inflation has reached a level that will almost certainly take a decade or more to stabilise. But statistics, we must remember, do not adequately capture human suffering. They may even undervalue it when churned inappropriately. The narrative of Africa’s suffering can perhaps only be aggregated when felt. As the UK based Guardian newspaper investigations recently reveal, even the few on Mugabe’s payroll live in constant fear, carrying a disproportionate burden of being the regime’s involuntary flagship. But analysts say that of all the Southern African countries, Zimbabwe had the least chance of dripping to its present abyss. The reason is not far fetched. Though born out of a fragile political thread ball, it had at independence, a progressively thinking crop of young technocrats and a buoyant social stratum moulded and unified by its liberation struggles. The country started relatively well and peaked in the early 90s. Its leadership was revered at home and abroad. Mugabe was rewarded with a knighthood by British Prime Minister John Major in 1992. His participation in international forums was no mean feat either. For example, Mugabe is partly credited for the initiation of an important UN dossier, An Agenda for Peace, in 1992 under former Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. In contributing to that particular General Assembly debate seeking to explore effective international responses to conflicts and human insecurity, Robert Mugabe proposed that the Secretary General be instructed to come up with a ‘careful drawing up and drafting of general principles and guidelines that would guide decisions on when a domestic situation warrants international action, either by the Security Council or by regional organisations’. By a twist of fate, he is today’s most sought after tyrant and his 1992 UN proposal is being considered to contain his tyranny.

But reasons for exactly why Africa’s leadership is still very much mute on Zimbabwe amidst increasing violence transcend Milibands ‘incomprehensible’ rhetoric. It requires an understanding of the calibre of leaders that holds the continent to hostage. With all the past months of constant global media and political attention on Zimbabwe, most of the state owned print and broadcast media in Africa was gushing weekly eulogies of the steadfastness and individual prowess of Comrade Mugabe against what they call western intrusion and neo-colonial ranting. Through their silence, at least publicly, African leaders have wittingly granted a seal of approval to the excesses of Mugabe. This has also filtered to the few ‘democrats’ standing. A few months ago, a video appeared on YouTube showing President Wade of Senegal in a secret stop-over visit to Zimbabwe showering praises and message of goodwill to a tyrant he described as ‘misunderstood’. And mind you, Wade is still depicted in the West as a benchmark for human rights and good governance.

Perhaps only Botswana and Zambia are exceptions by calling for change in Zimbabwe. South Africa could make a difference, a huge one indeed. But unable to take inspiration from Mandela, Thabo Mbeki has astonishingly transformed into a lame duck who has kowtowed to the forces of oppression. Yet that is not in itself an accident. After four decades of independence, Africa still has the most impoverished people on earth, governed by the most heartless of dictators. And of its fifty-plus states, there are only a handful leaders elected through free and fair elections under progressive constitutional frameworks. That is why only Zambia and Botswana could speak against Mugabe. Others dare not for the simple reason that those who live in makeshift huts must be weary of starting a fire. The rest of Africa has identical fact sheets: corruption, murder, tyranny, poverty etc. Take Omar Bongo, currently the world’s longest ruling head of state, for a start. Having ruled Gabon with an iron fist for about 40 years, he is alleged to have sanctioned the killings of dozens of political opponents over the decades, jailing journalists and human rights campaigners. Kissy Agyeman of Global Insight contends that the oil riches of Gabon have provided Bongo with an armoury to consolidate his grip on power by sweet talking light-minded opponents with money. His daughter in law, married to his son (presently defence minister) was seen on a US Television show, Really Rich Real Estate in 2006, buying a $25 million luxury mansion in Beverly Hills.

Sadly, Bongo is not alone. In Equatorial Guinea, an impoverished former Spanish colony, resides Africa’s worst dictator, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Like most dictators, President Obiang came to power in a military coup, though in his case, he had to kill his own uncle to take charge. Since 1979, he has presided over what the corruption watchdog, Transparency International, calls one of the ten most corrupt countries in the world. Torture and murder are the rule and not the exception. Human rights campaigners call Equatorial Guinea Africa’s hell on earth. Reporters without Borders almost agree. They consider the country as one of the five most censored societies on the planet. Like Gabon’s Bongo, Obiang has utilised his country’s oil riches to silence his political opponents as well as western governments. Despite his open disregard for human rights and international law instruments, and the emergence of his regime’s tendentious totalitarianism, Obiang enjoys considerable support from the United States, with Exxon Mobil a major player in Equatorial Guinea’s oil exploration. And like Bongo, Obiang’s family see the country’s wealth as their private treasure trove. His son is often spotted in expensive villas in Paris and Hollywood. All these from a country with the poorest people in the world.

At age 74, Cameroon’s Paul Biya is not to be outdone. He has, like most other African leaders, committed crimes of all kinds and of varying degrees; he kills, he jails and he siphons. In the 2004 general elections, Biya kept to tradition by rigging every stage of the election process. And when it was denounced by international monitoring groups, he took the route less travelled, initiating one of the most innovative strategies in fraudulent elections by hiring his own international election monitoring group. The group, mainly composed of former US Congress members, declared the election free and fair. Omar El Bashir of Sudan has shown us in Darfur, what he is capable of. He has used Sudan’s oil revenue to kill in thousands and fund entities and projects with criminal persuasions. Unlike other tyrants, his luck is running out. He has been recently indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and genocide.

The list of African dictators is endless and include notorious leaders such as Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Menes Zanawi of Ethiopia, Blaise Campoare of Burkina Faso to name a few. They have neither the interest nor the desire to alleviate the suffering of their own people let alone speak against a fellow tyrant like Mugabe. Change is a fact of life; circumstances change and people do in some shape or form. Not tyrants though. They live in denial and often die in futile resistance. Unlike ordinary folks, dictators’ social networks strengthen what Paul Kennedy calls their ‘collective psychosis’. They cannot accommodate common sense and the notions of fair play and justice. Doing so would expose their inadequacies and make them vulnerable. They cannot relate with opposing views either, as that weakens their lust for power and the determination to cling onto it.

We may love to hate them, but dictators are no fools. Or rather they are a particularly peculiar species. They create a bonding network to comfort themselves and consolidate a platform that frustrates our efforts to hold them accountable. Their commonalities of shared intentions make them to reach out beyond accessible ordinary spaces. To hold onto their attributes and optimise their capacity to destroy, they identify with Narcissus, the character in Greek mythology that is reported to have developed an obsession of his personal reflection in a pond of water. Like Narcissus, African dictators have that obsession with personality arising out of paranoia and a sense of worthlessness. Worthlessness is a serious human condition. It brings insecurity and breeds a desperation that urges the domination, failure or destruction of others. Those ‘others’ happen to be selfless people involved in the human project of peace and justice. How on earth dictators stoop this low is, of course, a combination of many defining factors. But the abdication of our collective responsibilities to tackle impunity at an early stage could well be one of them.

So in spite of the recent Security Council setback, and the inaction of other endogenous institutions, the world must not waver on Zimbabwe or any other constituents of tyranny. At the very least, a continuum of constant pressure must be mounted and maintained. For it only takes the silence of the good to allow evil to prevail. Dictators must be shown that they may maim, kill or destroy, but they cannot bully us to submission. We are faced with a struggle against evil that must be won. The people of Africa and indeed the world deserve better. We all have to make that happen. Only then can this world be a better place.