A Tainted View: Remember Apartheid?

Posted by Andy Bracken on 04.09.2007

If South Africa benefited so greatly from the international effort to end their oppression, shouldn't they feel some obligation to help another oppressed country?

A Tainted View: Remember Apartheid?

It has been more than seventeen years since Nelson Mandela emerged from the Victor Vertser Prison in Cape Town to face the media of the world. His release, and subsequent election as South Africa's first black President, was the culmination of decades of worldwide anti-apartheid campaigning.

The elimination of Apartheid in South Africa was obviously a noble cause, regardless of the nature of the group leading the effort.

The party that Mandela led upon his release, the African National Congress (ANC), had a long history of violence that was somewhat glossed over in the international hysteria that surrounded his release and election. They exhibited their penchant for brutality against not only their white oppressors, but also against rival black parties and even their own supporters, should they have been "disloyal".

It was a case of refusing to condemn the lesser of two evils, in fear of legitimising the greater one. The world wanted to see the minority regime fall, and even if the ANC had less-than-subtle methods (the practise of "Necklacing", or forcing a petrol-filled tyre around the arms and body of a so-called "disloyal" party member and setting it alight, is one of their more gruesome inventions), they were the only domestic opposition capable of delivering a majority government and were thus excused.

Regardless, the desired outcome was achieved. The last president of the minority regime, FW de Klerk (who, frankly, is the forgotten hero of South Africa's reconciliation) enabled the first free vote in their history, and Nelson Mandela was elected as the country's first majority elected president.

The fifty-year struggle against Apartheid was based upon the notions of racial equality and majority rule- both completely sound and honourable policies- and delivered on the idea that change can be achieved when international pressure supports the internal will.

Unfortunately, less than twenty years on, those lessons have been forgotten by the very people who benefited from their success.

Just to the north of South Africa lies the country of Zimbabwe, led by the despotic Robert Mugabe. Mugabe, who led the country to their own liberation from minority rule, has devolved from the popular hero to the masses to an unrepresentative tyrant.

As happened often in post-colonial Africa, from the beginning Mugabe increased his personal power against the backdrop of the anti-colonialist movement. He utilised coalitions with other rebel groups, and upon the end of their usefulness, he mercilessly crushed them. In an obvious parallel to the subsequent South African situation, this was by and large ignored by the world in the hope that the greater goal would be achieved.

At the turn of the century, Mugabe, who had remained popular since independence, found his electoral dominance threatened. A trade unionist by the name of Morgan Tsvangirai, organised and led a new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The MDC was formed in the aftermath of a state-sanctioned assassination attempt on Tsvangirai, after he was instrumental in withdrawing union support from the Mugabe regime. The party first campaigned against Mugabe's unsuccessful 2000 attempt to rewrite the constitution, giving his officials immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed against the people, among other less-than-democratic initiatives. On the back of a successful SMS based campaign, the referendum was defeated.

Mugabe was not deterred; in fact, it was this embarrassment that sparked his descent into tyranny.

After telling the world that he would "abide by the will of the people", not four months later he pushed new amendments through parliament, forcing white-owned farms to be forcibly surrendered to landless blacks. The new laws, taken word-for-word from the rejected referendum, were the start of the downfall of his country. In the aftermath of these laws, thugs of the Mugabe regime started dispossessing and killing land owners and their employees. Those that survived fled the country, robbing the country of the expertise required to run the farming industry, Zimbabwe's only significant export earner.

Mugabe followed this by making a raft of changes to the constitution, including creating presidentially appointed parliamentary positions (ensuring an absolute majority and the ability to change the constitution at will), destroying the shanties of poor urban blacks who suffered most from his "reforms". He turned Zimbabwe into a police state, with his forces beating, arresting and murdering political opponents (including Tsvangirai himself, who was arrested on trumped-up chares of treason), rigging elections, and preventing any opposition protests.

He has destroyed his country. Once referred to as "the breadbasket of Africa" for her agricultural output and export wealth, Zimbabwe now suffers constant food shortages. The farms that once ensured her wealth now lay dormant and in ruin, thanks to Mugabe and his thugs.

With little foreign currency, Mugabe resorted to printing more and more banknotes in order to pay his hired thugs. This sent his already-ailing economy into freefall, with inflation reaching a world-high 1729% (no, that's not a typo) in February this year.

His people are starving and oppressed, and his government is corrupt and desperately unpopular. As was the case in Apartheid South Africa, Zimbabwe is burdened with a government that doesn't reflect the will of the majority, and is maintained by unjust, undemocratic, oppressive laws.

Some parts of the world have been vociferous in protest. Great Britain has been at the forefront, along with other Commonwealth countries Australia and New Zealand. The US, while coming to the party a bit late, joined the EU and the Commonwealth in imposing sanctions against Mugabe and his regime. Unfortunately, some countries have been notably silent.

China, who isn't exactly a bastion of human rights herself, has predictably supported Mugabe, along with others in Asia and the Middle East. Most troublingly, though, has been the support of their most important ally, South Africa.

South African President and ANC chief Thabo Mbeki has actively resisted any attempt to marginalise the Mugabe regime, and has vehemently protested any sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe. His stated position is that Zimbabweans must solve Zimbabwe's problems, and that the rest of the world should, for the want of a better term, butt out. Even the hero and the champion of the noble anti-apartheid cause, Mandela himself, has been conspicuous in his silence.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect that the ANC government in South Africa, who benefited so greatly from the concerted international effort to end their oppression, would be at the forefront of the global chorus against another oppressive regime, especially one that happens to most readily influenced by them. The fact is, though, that it just won't happen.

The simple fact is that Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and the ANC are different incarnations of the same movement. They are both left-wing paramilitary parties that paraded as liberation movements in order to maximise their political success. Mbeki and the ANC won't join the effort to depose Mugabe, because in Mugabe Mbeki sees himself.

With his utterly ridiculous and extraordinarily hypocritical refusal to join international pressure against Mugabe's atrocious regime, Mbeki is ensuring that the people of Zimbabwe continue suffer the same repression that similar pressure freed he and his people from. South Africa is the only country in the world that can exert meaningful diplomatic pressure on Mugabe. By giving his support Mbeki has betrayed the people of Zimbabwe, and he has destroyed the credibility of his country, his party and his cause, and has become the very same thing that his party fought against. It is uncomfortably easy to remember apartheid, because we are witnessing it in Zimbabwe right now.

Zimbabwe is imploding, and is getting to the point that something will have to change. There are only really two ways that it can happen: either Mugabe's advancing years will catch up with him, and upon his death there will be a chance of a peaceful transition back to majority rule (as happened in South Africa, when PW Botha died, and the reformist de Klerk was installed), or civil disobedience will erupt into full-scale rebellion, and Zimbabwe's freedom with come at the cost of many lives.

Should the latter happen, Thabo Mbeki and the ANC will have blood on their hands.