AfricaTrip08.com

Hi all,

I hope that you have been following the Zimbabwean elections; it’s been all over the news.  Sadly, the results weren’t good, and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party created an environment extremely unconducive to a free and fair election.  He won with 85% of the vote; obviously a sham.

Below is an op-ed I wrote that I’ve been circulating around.  It’s pretty harsh, but I think some of this needed to be said.

When opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai decided to withdraw from the second round of Zimbabwe’s presidential election, he essentially provided the international community with a historical challenge. Tsvangirari knew that he had no chance at winning the runoff, and his decision fully acknowledged President Robert Mugabe’s stranglehold on power.  His departure from the race constituted a direct appeal to the international community. Tsvangirai acknowledged that he could not save Zimbabwe from Mugabe’s oppressive rule by himself; he needed outside support.  But, as Mugabe and his cronies blissfully proceeded with the illegitimate election, the international community delivered its tragic response to Morgan’s challenge: we want to help, but we have no idea how.

On a trip to Zimbabwe last month, I met with opposition party activists and Members of Parliament.  Frightened of possible repercussions that would accompany being discovered with westerners in downtown Harare, our meetings were held in clandestine coffee shops and in the back of taxicabs.  The talks resulted in a familiar refrain: the opposition, which overwhelmingly won the March 29 presidential and parliamentary elections, had been thwarted in rightly assuming power and needed the international community to intervene to restore the rightful order in the country.  When pushed, however, my interlocutors could not articulate the form of this intervention.

Tsvangirai’s challenge, echoed by opposition members throughout my meetings, is motivated by the idealistic foreign policy rhetoric that has surfaced in the post-Rwanda years.  Embarrassed by his organization’s complete failure to end a genocide that resulted in 800,000 deaths in 1994, former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan commissioned a group of foreign policy experts to design a doctrine that would prevent future humanitarian neglect.  The result, coined the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), asserted that if a state was unwilling or unable to protect its population from suffering serious harm, then it ceded its sovereignty to the international community.   The actualization of this concept would have represented a monumental shift, resulting in an international community that no longer allowed the tragic Rwandas of the world to occur.

Indeed, activists protesting against the ongoing genocide in Darfur have frequently cited R2P as their “Bible”, using the doctrine to support their argument that the international community should do more to halt the atrocities inflicted by the Sudanese government.  These activists believe there has been some acceptance of the principle, citing the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force and increased political pressure on the Sudanese government as evidence of the doctrine’s slow evolution towards an international norm.  Recent events in Zimbabwe, however, has tragically demonstrated that R2P is currently little more than an idealistic slogan with little applicability in the harsh real world of international politics.

Tsvangirai’s departure directly pleaded with the international community to uphold its responsibility to protect the innocent civilians currently exposed to violence and hunger in Zimbabwe.  As Mugabe’s government overtly targeted Zimbabwean citizens who supported the opposition with beatings, torture, and killings, the opposition realized it was helpless to protect itself.  They idealistically turned to the rest of the world for help.

The European Union, the U.S., the Southern African Development Community, and some of Zimbabwe’s neighbors have responded with strong rhetoric, condemning the violence and emphasizing that a credible election under the current circumstances was not possible.   This rhetoric, however, has not been met with effective action.  Mugabe has brushed off long-standing targeted sanctions—which restrict travel and freeze assets of regime insiders–, and even further consolidated his power while using the economic restrictions as a scapegoat for Zimbabwe’s collapsing economy, including its virtually unprecedented hyperinflation rate (now close to 4 million percent).  While Mugabe claimed that his tremendous victory at the polls gives him a mandate for another six years, the international community decried his victory because of the farce of an election.  It is unlikely this will provoke real change.

The West and a growing number of African countries are united in their opinion that Mugabe and his cabal must leave power to give way to the political and economic reform necessary to restore the livelihood of millions of Zimbabweans.  Political rhetoric and targeted sanctions have proved ineffective, and there is little left in the international community’s armory.

We want to adhere to the idealistic premise articulated by the Responsibility to Protect.  The unanswered question is how to achieve this.  We know we need to do more, but do not know what to do.  As Tsangirai’s challenge goes unanswered, the Zimbabwe opposition continues to be decimated, and the Zimbabwean people continue to suffer.   Simply, the world is failing its responsibility to the people of Zimbabwe.

Hey guys,

Several of you have written me regarding this incident:  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=a_i5diw.L90c&refer=uk.

Basically, some Zimbabweans detained a convoy of American and British diplomats outside Nairobi.  Colin and I are in Kenya, and my dad wasn’t in the convoy, so we’re all ok.  The Ambassador, along with a woman who had dinner at our house a few nights ago, was.

This is a pretty big deal.  You don’t mess with the US Ambassador like they did here.  Strong language came from both him and the State Department.  It’s extremely outrageous, and we’ll keep you posted, but we and everyone we know are alright.

As Colin wrote, we had our third round of meetings today. There’s a number of common themes emerging, and they’re all pretty depressing. The economy is in beyond dire straits, with an inflation rate of about 1,700,000% (yes, that’s over a million). People live in a constant state of fear. And people are being targeted, and being killed, on a daily basis. To be honest, I’m really cynical about change actually occurring with the June 27th run-off. The whole situation makes me pretty sick, as does the lack of a complete response from the regional SADC block, or the United Nations Security Council.

There’s one thing that does give me some amount of hope, though, as I get ready to culminate my third stay in Zimbabwe; the people. We’ve talked about it a lot in these posts, but the people in Zimbabwe are absolutely amazing. In the US, we often complain about, well, a lot. Things like traffic, bad cafeteria food, unfair professors, lame weekend nights, people we don’t get along with. People here don’t complain. They fight.

This is true of almost every individual we have met. And it’s the small things that count. It’s Jane, our maid, who consistently works six-seven days a week, even though we try to force her not to, who perseveres with a smile on her face even though her son is in South Africa, educated, but unable to get a job here with the faltering economy. It’s Otto, who we met this morning, passing up a six figure salary in the stable US to work weekends and drive a rental car, with suspicious people following him daily. It’s the guard we met at the American Embassy tonight, who started a conversation with Colin and I with a smile. He, as love as anyone I’ve ever met, told us he wished to marry his girlfriend on August 15th. Problematically though, he did not know how he was going to pay for the cake or the gown for his bride. Every single Zimbabwean encounters Colin and I with a smile. Despite the fact that we live comfortable lives, that we have everything while they have nothing, they only are friendly. It’s incredible.

One incident sticks with me today. We were engaging with an intense conversation with the MP-elect we met in the afternoon. He had told us about the violence in his rural constituency, how youth were abducted the day before, how he feared he was being followed constantly. Then, after about a 45-minute interview, he lay back in his chair, head facing the ceiling. He closed his eyes. We were all silent for a few minutes. He opened them, tears welled in his eyes. And then he smiled, sadly, and simply said, “We will see. We will see.”

This situation is complicated. It won’t be solved overnight. But, to an extent, I’m tired of the empty rhetoric and the excuses for inaction. Zimbabwe is more than a complex African conflict that dates hundreds of years and prevents harsh action from the individual community. Zimbabwe is about Jane, Otto, the guard, and the MP-elect. And, despite the fact that they continue to smile at us, we’re failing them.

Scott and I had a long day today, four different interviews and a lot of walking around Harare (I can’t complain too much cause it’s absolutely gorgeous here). I won’t write a long post today, but there’s just one thing that really jumped out at me over and over during our interviews: living activism.

We met first with an attorney at Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights. The work his group has going on is incredible. They work five different projects ranging from international justice, to HIV/AIDS work, to representing Zimbabweans who have wrongfully been thrown in jail in the rural areas of the country. He is a really impressive character. He works 12 hour days and would work more if it were safe to leave later at night. He has a Columbia University education and is clearly brilliant. He could easily work in the US, probably making 6 figures. Scott and I pointed that out to him today, and we asked him why not seize the opportunity? Why come to Zimbabwe and risk his life and his family’s life, for barely any money? He firmly told us “this is OUR country.” Every day he has to worry about his own safety. He has to change the car he drives every week so he isn’t followed by the government. He works as many hours as he can at the office, and more at his house. He has to sweep his office for bugging devices and use 5 different emails for security. Every aspect of his life is affected by his activism, and if he wanted, he could drop it all and leave it behind.

We met with a party organizer for the MDC. From the second we sat down, his level of stress was obvious. He seemed tired, worn down, and most of all frustrated. Because of his prominent position in the movement, his security situation was particularly difficult. We listed off 3 or 4 places to meet with him before he finally found one that he was comfortable with. Scott and I didn’t realize that the two men in suits sitting at the table next were his guards until they trailed him out and into his car at the end of our conversation. He has no office at which he can work, and is forced to run all of his business through different cafes and building in Harare. His disappointment in the situation was so obvious that Scott asked him if he was hopeful. He said, “Of course I am hopeful. If I were not hopeful then I would not be doing this.” He clearly accepted this lifestyle as a necessary evil for his country. He told us, “the world is the way it is… this ends when it ends.” At first, this may sound like defeat or resignation. Sitting across from him, however, I could tell that it was an acceptance that he had no other choice but to keep fighting for what was best for his country, no matter how long it took or what inconveniences it caused.

Our third meeting was with a young and very recently elected MP for the MDC. He, more than anybody we met with, was concerned about security. We met him outside of a hotel, where Scott and I offered to arrange for a taxi to take us somewhere else. He told us that we might be followed if we got a taxi there, so we took a quick walk to another lot to get one. He had the taxi take us to an office building, where he pretended to make an inquiry until the cab left. We then walked to another MDC members house and waited inside for a few minutes, before finally walking 20 minutes to a house in the suburbs out of which a civic organization is run. This MP told us that he had been arrested at least ten times, beaten on several occasions, and had sent his family out of the country. He said he hadn’t slept more than 2 nights in his house since the election and had no office out of which he could work. His frustration, like Mudzuri’s, was obvious. Scott and I asked him why he continued to be so vocal about these issues, instead of fleeing the country or finding another profession when there was such a great chance that he could be tortured or even killed because of it. He responded with this: “I am not ashamed to die while I am young. I am ashamed to die before I have done something for humanity.”

Scott and I have dedicated a lot of our time in the past year to activism, specifically on the Sudan issue. We’ve complained to our friends and family about lack of sleep, suffering grades, failing friendships and monetary expenses. It’s true, all of those things have affected us, and all of them have made the last year harder than it would have been if we decided not to be activists. But whenever Scott and I wanted to, we could take a break from the madness. We could go out on weekends, follow our sports teams on TV, take a few days off, or sleep in from time to time. The activists in Zimbabwe simply don’t have these luxuries. The price for their activism is that they can never escape their efforts. Every aspect of their life is affected by their decision to make a positive change in their country and they never look back.

So this post ran on longer than I wanted, but I wanted to give all you activists reading this a taste of the inspiration that Scott and I have been so lucky to experience here. I hope that you can think of the Zimbabwean activists when you feel defeated or worn down, lost or ineffective, skeptical or pessimistic. I’m not suggesting you make your life miserable because you’re fighting for change, this will only hurt you and your cause. But, I think we might all be stronger activists if we got further away from thinking of activism as an after-school activity or extracurricular and closer to making it a way of living.

Colin

This weekend, we went to a pretty remote hotel; beautiful place.  We went on hikes, ate good food, and relaxed a bit.  Colin may comment more on that, but we’ll definitely upload some pictures from it (just an FYI, our pictures have decreased because Colin and I are getting more cautious, not because we’re getting lazy.  I got a pretty stern lecture from my parents saying the government hates people taking pictures, and they didn’t want to spend time getting me out of jail.)

The results from the Democratic primary in Puerto Rico are coming in right now ( a curious notion in itself) so democracy is on my mind.  This will be more of a reflection post, when, as a 21 year old, I pretend to know more than I actually do.

One of things you learn while in Zimbabwe is that democracy and human rights are, more or less, complementary; you need both to occur at the same time.  The Zimbabwean people aren’t getting their voices heard at the polls, and thus, their rights are marginalized.  At the same time, the government is extensively violating basic human rights to ensure an electoral (democratic??) victory.  A prime example of this is their behavior towards the rural citizens.  They’re terrorizing them, threatening them, and even killing them to ensure they’ll vote for the ZANU-PF ruling party.  Moreover, they’re displacing rural voters in mass numbers, literally taking them away from their required polling stations so they won’t be able to vote in the June 27th run-off.  So, as you can see, democracy and human rights are interchangeable.

Here’s our problem though: we look at democracy from a simplistic perspective, it becomes little more than a vote process, rather than a type of society.  In other words, we see Zimbabwe achieving democracy (and thus achieving better human rights) as simply ensuring a valid vote process, without recognizing all the other tangibles that go into democracy, including (but not limited to): freedom of the press, freedom of speech, government accountability, and civic participation.  This same attitude is relevant in Sudan; we note the importance of the 2009 elections and 2011 referendums, and neglect to focus on the pervasive issues required to guarantee those processes will be fair and valid.

This is really relevant in Zimbabwe because the democratic process, as an extension of the voting process, is inherently flawed.  We’ve seen this continually.  The majority of the papers are controlled by the government; today’s noted that the opposition party was carrying out the violence (false) and promising white farmers they could have their land back (also false).  People are prevented from speaking their minds, as evident from the fact that everybody that meets with us is constantly (and literally) looking over their shoulders.  The government propaganda is also startling; the area surrounding my house is littered with ZANU posters, describing Mugabe as a “revolutionary before, now, and in the future” and promising complete independence and sovereignty through his election (some pics in the photo gallery).

So, in order to stop inflation, curve human rights abuses, and stop the senseless killing, you need fair elections in Zimbabwe.  But you also need the essence of a democratic society; which is going to take a long time.  This is true in conflicts everywhere, especially in Kenya, where we’ll visit Wednesday.  It also demonstrates why I think that having purely “anti-genocide” or “pro-human rights” or “pro-democracy” groups can be problematic.  All the issues need to co-exist.  It’s absolutely essential.

Anyways, let me know what you think of this.  It’s not really my own thoughts, or rocket science or anything, but it is a shift from the way most activists think.  It’s a little more comprehensive.  We’ll be talking to some more people tomorrow, so it’ll be more recaps, less analysis.

Scott

P.S.  I don’t want to get partisan on this blog, but just because we’re on the issue, you might have seen that HIllary Clinton last week compared the people of Michigan and Florida to the plight of Zimbabweans.  This is problematic, and sick on many levels.  Firstly, although I feel that the people of Michigan and Florida shouldn’t have been disenfranchised (well, maybe Florida cuz they always mess up elections), they’re not dying or being threatened because of their votes.  But besides the moral argument, it’s theoretically flawed.  Michigans and Floridans still are entitled to many aspects of a democratic society; Zimbabweans aren’t.

First off, read Colin’s last post before you read this one. He’s got a lot of good recap of our meetings, and I’ll probably spend more time on analysis. Sorry the posts are getting long-ish, but it really is interesting, and worth-while reading if you can. We’re learning a ton about the situation, and it’s very underrepresented in the international community.

I won’t elaborate on the meetings themselves, but it is pretty cool that we’re having hour meetings with members of parliament and NGO leaders. These guys are incredibly busy, but are spending significant time talking with us. They’re also incredibly interesting, but incredibly modest. Every person we’ve met has been jailed, most have been tortured, and all are careful when meeting with us through fear of being targeted. You don’t get their perspectives in the international media, so we’re trying to portray them as best we can. Each person we’ve talked to has had a different take on the current situation, and more specifically, what the next steps should be from the international community. I’ll try to address that a bit.

As Colin said, we spent the latter half of the day at a place called Mbare, which is a local marketplace. It was packed with people, but we were the only white people in sight. It feels slightly intimidating, but never at danger (we also walk around with nothing on us). It was a pretty dirty area; it smelled of a broken sewage and there was trash littered everywhere on the side of the street. The market place itself is pretty vibrant; food is sold at significantly cheaper prices than elsewhere, and a lot of people were out and about. There was also a handicrafts section, which would usually serve as a tourist component. I’ve been there everytime I’ve been here, but the most recent time was six months ago. Every single person recognized me, which speaks much more to the fact that tourists frequent the area, rather than myself being a memorable person.

The crafts themselves are gorgeous (hopefully we can give some as gifts). They’re shona sculptures (google it) that require days and days to intricately make and polish. We got a tour of a cooperative with about forty individuals making different types of sculptures. But each person told us that no one was coming to buy them; one person told us his last customer came 3 weeks ago. These are guys that already have nothing, and aren’t gaining anything through an art that really is difficult manual labor. The saddest part was that we bought four miniature statues for ten dollars (which is overpaying by a ton), and they were extremely grateful for it. We probably were their first business in months; and that’s all we could muster. It’s a weird feeling, just through being white, we provide hope to them. That’s what American represents, an opportunity that they will never have. We represent that opportunity.

The great part of the trip thus far is that we’ve been able to talk to people from every sector; individuals at the market, members of parliament, NGO’s…and we had a great dinner tonight with my dad and some women that also work in the political section. Each person though, has a different prescription for the conflict.

Here’s my (probably uninformed) take: Zimbabwe is a really good example of how incredibly difficult it is to apply any sort of Responsibility to Protect doctrine to countries throughout the world, and how far away we are as an international community from making such a though process a norm (for those of you unfamiliar with R2P, it basically says that states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens, and if they fail to do so, the international community must intervene). Firstly, by all accounts, the Zimbabwean government is failing to protect its own people. They are torturing, displacing, threatening, and killing individuals to hold onto their power. Moreover, everybody we talk to says this violent behavior is completely calculated towards supporters of the opposition, small-scale politicide, if you will.

The problem is that it’s too small-scale for anybody to care about. Only fifty plus people have died. When contrasted with Sudan, the DRC, Burma, that’s chump change. But you come here, see the inflation, the displacement, talk to torture victims, see the unemployment, and tell me the Zimbabwean government is doing its job. The international community has to do something. The problem is, simply, it won’t. Everybody I’ve talked to at the US State Department is pretty resigned to the fact that the UN Security Council will not send in peacekeepers, however needed they are, and will not take definitive action. There’s no possible way the US or UK would, or should, take unilateral action, so we’re stuck. Saying that Zimbabweans should take care of their own problems, on the other hand, is, as someone said to us, an extremely privileged position. We’re not being tortured, threatened, or killed.

So despite the great meetings and interactions we’re experiencing, this place does leave me rather depressed. And, as an international community, if we’re actually serious about taking R2P into account, Zimbabwe’s a good case study. We need to move beyond using buzz words and simplifying conflicts in order to try to create a norm. It’s necessary to understand the nuances of conflicts, the obstacles of intervention, and the possible courses of action. That’s really hard in Zimbabwe. But it’s also crucial.

Today was another busy day for us, with three really amazing experiences that I’ll talk about, and Scott will elaborate on later tonight. I want to try and address Janessa’s question of the role of the international community (unfortunately we can’t do this from a female perspective yet), and a few other questions that we’ve gotten about people’s ideas for what the solution for Zim is.

Our first meeting was with a Member of Parliament (MP) for the MDC, or the opposition party. The MP is a young, active, and very vocal MP who was elected in 2000. We called him yesterday to set up a meeting, and he agreed, knowing very little about us. We met him outside a hotel at 9 this morning, but immediately had to get in a car and leave because he didn’t feel safe staying in the same place to talk to us. We drove around for over an hour, and stopped infrequently due to his safety concerns. There is virtually no danger for Scott and I in talking to him, but sharing information with white foreigners holds significant risk for him. He has been targeted by the government on several occasions for his activism, the most recent of which resulted in a 6 month imprisonment where he was tortured to the point that he could not open his eyes from the swelling. When we asked him why he continued to serve as an MP, he resolutely stated that “somebody has to do it.”

A few common question have surfaced in each of the interviews that Scott and I have conducted. What are you trying to do to ensure a fair election? What do you predict will be the outcome of the election? What will you do if the MDC wins, and Mugabe predictably refuses to leave his position? What role has the international community served, and what role should it serve?

He was very confident that the MDC could succeed in the run-off. He was inspired by the victory of the MDC in the first election, and seemed quite hopeful that enough voters would stick to the MDC in the run-off. However, he recognized the effect of the beatings, murders, and scare-tactics that Muagabe has employed recently, and knew that this would deter many voters from showing up or from voting for the MDC. Interestingly, he was leaving Harare for another location that he felt would be safer just an hour after our meeting because he heard the following week could be a dangerous one for him and his family. I probed him about his thoughts of Tsvangari’s flight from the country after a rumor of an assasination plot, and he said that he thought people did not have an issue with this because it was a matter of security. On the contrary, the man from the Progressive Teachers Union told us yesterday he was infuriated by this, and that he thought the MDC needed to take a much more powerful stance than they did post-election.

When we asked what the MDC would do if they won the run-off and Mugabe either rigged the results or refused to leave, he told us that it was the role of the international community to step in at that point. He emphasized that the MDC had no weapons and would (could) not cause violence, and seemed to think there was little else that they could do. This once again contradicted what Raymond told us, as he seemed to believe that it is the responsibility of the MDC to be more resilient, and to push for accurate reporting on the election.

The second person we met with was an officer for the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition. He once again met us with very little notice, and quickly drove us to a hotel on the outskirts of the city where we talked at an isolated table outside the hotel. The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition represents a number of civic organizations (out of which the MDC was born) and provides them with legal and logistical support. We learned that he had been arrested as well, and that their offices had been targeted over 10 times since the beginning of their work in Zimbabwe (which was well before the election). At this time, they were not even working out of their offices because of the consistent raids.

He took a different perspective than are other interviewees in terms of what would happen in Zimbabwe and what is needed. He seemed less confident that the MDC was surely going to win the run-off. He repeated several times that the MDC only had a good chance of winning if the MPs from the MDC got out into the community more, gained more support, and became much more transparent in their actions. Clearly, this is not easy for somebody like an MP to do when he is constantly in fear of violence against him, but he thought this was the only sure path for MDC victory.

When we asked him what he thought would happen if Mugabe refused to leave, and if the international community should respond, he again repeated that the MDC would absolutely have to make a greater presence for itself and empower the people, even after the run-off. However, he also told us that the UN, along with the African Union (AU), Southern African Development Community (SADC), and European Union (EU), would need to ensure the proper and fair result of the election. He specifically wanted a UN Humanitarian Resolution to be introduced that would condemn the violence and unfair electoral process that has been led by Mugabe’s Zanu PF party. It was interesting to see how he thought that the best chance for success would require both internal and external pressure, almost a hybrid of the two viewpoints we had previously heard.

After our two meetings, we made our way out to high density (slum) areas of Zimbabwe, where there is an increidble market. I’m going to let Scott talk about our experience there so I don’t drag on too much in this post, but I can safely say it was one of the saddest things I’ve experienced. I told Scott today that I’ve never learned so much in 48 hours, and I have so much more to say. I’m trying as hard as I can to consolidate and deliver what I think is most important and relevant, please tell me if I’m not doing a good job. We unfortunately won’t be able to post for the next few days, as we’re taking a quick holiday to the mountains of Zimbabwe, supposedly one of the most beautiful areas of the country. Keep the questions coming!

Colin

Quick recap of terms and events I referred to:

MDC = Movement for Democratic Change, the opposition party who won a greater amount of votes in the presidential election

Morgan Tsvangari = Current presidential candidate representing the MDC

Zanu PF = The current controlling party in Zim, led by Mugabe, who has carried out most of the violence.

MP = Member of Parliament, there are members from both Zanu PF and MDC (and other parties)

MDC won a greater percentage of votes than Zanu PF in the election, but the final (rigged) results indicated they did not reach a majority of 50%. Therefore a run-off is necessary.