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.