Zimbabwe | ukwatch.net

Zimbabwe election: US and UK move to impose sanctions

tim — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:52:22 +0000

Robert Mugabe was inaugurated for a sixth term as President of Zimbabwe on Sunday, following an election campaign characterised by government backed violence and intimidation.

Mugabe, standing for the ruling ZANU-PF, claimed to have received more than 85 percent of the vote. But his only opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had withdrawn from the campaign because of the level of violence and intimidation. International observers condemned the elections. “The current atmosphere prevailing in the country did not give rise to the conduct of free, fair and credible elections,” said Marwick Khumalo head of the Pan-African Parliament monitoring team.

Observers from Zimbabwe’s neighbours in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) concurred. “The elections,” the SADC observers concluded, “did not represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe.”

The elections were “worse than those we witnessed in Angola in 1992, after decades of war, and are not credible,” one SADC observer said.

Zimbabwean observers called off their plans to monitor the polls because it was too dangerous.

A government-sponsored campaign of beatings, kidnappings and murders has left 104 people dead and 3,500 injured. Doctors who have been treating the wounded say that this is just the tip of the iceberg. “What we are seeing is probably 10 percent of what has actually happened,” a doctor who wished to remain anonymous told reporters. He said that the violence was the “worst the country has witnessed.”

The injuries he had treated were more serious than those experienced during the liberation war of the 1970s. “This is much, much more severe,” the doctor said, “We are not seeing simple fractures, we are seeing bones smashed into 20 pieces. People being forced to walk on burning coals, having scalding water poured over them and their wounds poisoned.”

Marwick Kumhalo said that monitors had evidence of violence and intimidation all over the country in the run up to the election. The turnout, he said, was low.

In Mashonaland the number of votes announced by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) exceeds the number of registered voters. The ZEC claimed that the turn out was comparable to that in the first round of the elections in March. But some polling stations in Bulawayo reported that they did not receive a single voter.

In Harare, the capital, few voters were seen. Many registered voters said that they did not intend to vote. There were a large number of spoilt ballot papers. Some had obscene language directed at Mugabe.

Turnout was very low in major urban areas. Voters in those areas can expect retribution. Reprisals have already been reported in the working class suburb of Chitungwiza outside Harare.

In the wake of the election the repression is continuing. Anyone who does not have the red ink stained finger that shows they voted is immediately at risk.

The ZEC has handed the details of polling patterns in each electoral ward to the government. Security forces and government-backed militias will be able to target voters in wards that did not endorse Mugabe.

Leaked minutes from the Joint Operations Command (JOC), which has been coordinating the coercion, indicate that the regime has decided to wipe out the opposition MDC.

The UK based Independent has seen sworn affidavits from reserve bank officials who transported money to regional organisers to finance the campaign of violence against the opposition.

There are reports that re-education camps at which opposition voters have been tortured are being re-supplied for a second phase of the campaign. An opposition activist told reporters that local businesses in Chinhoyi in Mashonaland West are being forced to make contributions to fund the repression.

“These camps are now regrouping. They’re going to unleash another terror campaign,” he said.

Mugabe went almost directly from his inauguration to the African Union (AU) summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. The response of other African leaders to his presence was muted. They are reluctant to criticise a fellow African leader in public. Many of them have records of repression as bad, or worse than Mugabe’s.

Other African leaders, such as the summit’s host Muhammad Hosni Mubarak, are notoriously corrupt. Mubarak is accused of rigging the 2005 election. These were the first multi-party elections to take place since he came to power in 1981. He has maintained a state of emergency rule for the last 25 years.

Mubarak and his fellow African leaders have no more desire to allow democratic rights to their people than Mugabe. All the African rulers at the Sharm el Sheikh summit have for the most part enriched a tiny elite at the expense of the majority of the population.

But these regimes value their relationship with the United States and are coming under intense pressure to isolate and condemn Mugabe.

Egyptian prisons, for example, have proved invaluable in providing a secret base for the torture of US detainees in the so-called war on terror. The Italian authorities are currently investigating the “extraordinary rendition” of Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric living as a refugee in Italy. He was seized by the CIA from the street in Milan in 2003. He was then taken to the US airbase at Brescia and flown to Ramstein in Germany from where he was taken to an Egyptian prison and tortured.

Even the Sudanese government, which is regularly condemned in the US press, has proved useful in intelligence matters to the US government. Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya was recruited to the US “war on terror” in 2004.

The African states may well acquiesce to US demands on Mugabe, if they want to maintain their favoured status as allies in the war on terror.

Zimbabwe has become something of test case for US power in Africa, which has suffered a serious setback following the military debacle in Iraq and the emergence of China as a major player on the continent.

“I would suggest that one not take from the soft words in an open plenary as a reflection of the deep concern of leaders here of the situation in Zimbabwe,” said US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Fraser. “I would expect them to have very, very strong words for him.”

Her remarks were as much an instruction to the African leaders as a comment for journalists. The US, Britain and the European Union have made it clear that they will not recognise Mugabe as president of Zimbabwe.

Visiting Beijing, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for China to support an arms embargo against Zimbabwe. But Chinese Foreign Secretary Yang Jiechi insisted that the only way forward was for the government of Zimbabwe to enter into talks with the opposition.

It seems that a call for a negotiated settlement and a power-sharing government like that established in Kenya following the disputed election earlier this year may emerge from the AU summit. On the second day of the summit the South African paper Business Day reported that President Thabo Mbeki was close to brokering a deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

Even if Thabo Mbeki succeeds in establishing a government of national unity, that is unlikely to be the end of the matter. The US and UK seem to have already rejected this option.

An article in the Financial Times on 25 June posed a somewhat different scenario. The article’s authors reflected on the recent pronouncements by a series of African leaders and former leaders denouncing Mugabe.

Rising commodity prices and economic liberalisation has ensured that growth rates across much of Africa remain at 5 percent, the article said. But food prices and transport costs are rising fast, it warned. Under these circumstances, Mugabe’s intransigence may have unforeseen effects.

“Not only has Robert Mugabe put southern Africa in jeopardy. Like ripples on a pond, which can drown a man already up to his nose in water, his actions can strain an uneasy peace in Kenya, affect food shipments to refugees in east Africa and add to the trials of Britain’s beleaguered government.”

The article was written by former Africa editor of the Financial Times Michael Holman and Dr Gregg Mills, director of the Brenthurst Foundation, a think tank founded by the Oppenheimer family to further the economic development of Africa. These two old Africa hands proceeded to imagine a scenario in which attacks on whites might lead the UK to attempt an evacuation of its nationals and a convoy to the South African border might be attacked.

Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo, the article suggests, might become a centre of resistance and railway connections might be severed. Mbeki might offer Mugabe sanctuary in South Africa, but President of the ANC Jacob Zuma and the South African trade unions might respond by organising “countrywide protests.”

In the midst of all that, Holman and Mills imagine, “Somali-based terrorists bomb a tourist hotel” while in Kenya further ethnic riots disrupt the power-sharing government and hamper relief to refuges in central Africa.

This could be the plot of a political thriller rather than an article in a sober financial journal. But the fact that it appears in the Financial Times and is the work of two senior commentators on Africa gives it a certain weight.

Such is the fragility of the world situation following the credit crunch and the still expanding speculative bubble in commodity prices that Mugabe’s attempt to hang on to power threatens to destabilise not only southern Africa, but the entire continent. In recognising that threat, Holman and Mills evince a desire to seize the moment and precipitate a crisis that they envisage to be already on the horizon.

How far the US and UK intelligence agencies would be behind the disastrous scenarios that Holman and Mills draft out, we may never know. But it is revealing that such influential commentators assume only a bloody outcome is possible in Zimbabwe.

The article is an indication of the extent to which the attitude of the US and UK towards Zimbabwe has shifted. At present it is accepted that the US and UK cannot intervene openly in Zimbabwe. As the Economist recently said, “other methods, with Africans to the fore, must be tried first.” But the scenario drafted out by Mills and Holman would provide a pretext for American and British intervention.

An editorial in the Financial Times expressed the western powers’ dissatisfaction with Mbeki’s attempts to establish a government of national unity in Zimbabwe.

“Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s president, who has sought to resolve the crisis with a Kenyan-style national unity government, should accept he has failed. There is no way any western nation will send international aid to a regime that has Mr. Mugabe or ZANU-PF at the helm. An MDC government that included a small ZANU-PF contingent would be an acceptable price for ending the violence, but is unlikely to happen.”

The Financial Times called for tighter sanctions and demanded that “Western financial institutions should be debarred from operating in Harare.”

US and UK policy is moving rapidly in this direction. President George Bush announced that he had instructed Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to “develop sanctions against this illegitimate Government of Zimbabwe and those who support it.”

The giant mining company Anglo-American has come under intense pressure to abandon its planned investment in a Zimbabwe platinum mine. Barclays bank is coming under pressure to cease business in Zimbabwe after more than a century. The UK-based supermarket chain Tesco has announced that it has stopped sourcing goods from Zimbabwe.

These economic measures and the proposed sanctions will inevitably have more impact on the population of Zimbabwe than on the ruling elite, who have long since established their own secret channels for funding. Tesco, Barclays and Anglo-American are major employers in what is left of the formal economy in Zimbabwe.

Sanctions will mean that it will become even more difficult for hospitals to source medicines and for ordinary people unconnected with the regime to buy fuel. As the West tightens the screws on the Zimbabwean economy, more people will flock across the country’s borders to escape poverty and malnutrition.

The experience of the recent election has demonstrated that Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition offers no alternative to Mugabe or to Western domination. From the outset, Tsvangirai’s party has been a pliant tool of the West and the international financial institutions.

Tsvangirai’s pusillanimous performance in the second round of the presidential elections seems to have convinced any potential backers in the West that he is useless for their purposes. He announced his withdrawal from the election last week with a letter to the Guardian in which he appealed for international military intervention. Within days he had denied that he ever sent that article to the paper. On its part the Guardian, while loath to discredit Tsvangirai, had to point out that they had received the article from the usual sources.

The “usual sources” turned out to be a “media consultant” who had provided 400 pieces under Tsvangirai’s byline for the Guardian, the Melbourne Age and the Washington Post. Inadvertently, Tsvangirai had admitted far more than he intended about the nature of his campaign and the extent to which it is run by big business interests and is far removed from the interests of the people who are being beaten and killed in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe, Britain and the Abuses of Anti-Colonialism

eddie — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:28:33 +0000

Over forty years ago, as Africa commenced the long and arduous process of decolonization, one of its foremost liberationist thinkers issued a prophetic warning. Frantz Fanon, himself a freedom fighter, wrote that the national leader in the postcolonial era should not ‘fall back into the past and become drunk on the remembrance of the epoch leading up to independence.’ His powerful descriptions of a once effective leader who gradually secedes from reality and betrays the people who entrust him with their future has resonances for the tragic situation in which Zimbabwe finds itself today. Having reduced a once significant anti-colonialism to a self-serving dogma, Robert Mugabe is the kind of fallen leader Fanon cautioned Africa against. Hesitant African leaders who are being called upon to intervene might want to reread his classic essay, ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ from that classic liberationist text, The Wretched of the Earth,

As Zimbabwe spirals into further political chaos, Mugabe and his party’s addiction to power will further indulge an equally self-serving Western appetite for spectacles of Third World despotism. If Mugabe finds it convenient to invoke the demon of colonial oppression (which many Zimbabweans, barely thirty years out of colonial rule, remember all too well), he also enables British politicians to spout pieties condemning violence while their own nation is currently implicated in two dubious and bloody wars. Were the BBC and Channel 4 to show as many close-ups of injured and dead Iraqis as they do of Mugabe’s maimed victims, criticism of violence against innocents might be somewhat more evenly distributed than it currently is. The British government turns accusatory fingers in Zimbabwe’s direction while Mugabe shouts back anti-colonial slogans. It is a perfect symbiosis, a mutually convenient embrace of denunciation, with each party laying claim to the higher moral ground. The only innocents, however, are ordinary Zimbabweans.

Both Mugabe and Britain are guilty of avoiding historical truths in favour of a skewed story which legitimates their own position. Britain’s persistent refusal to acknowledge its own colonial legacies is contradictory. It reneged on its commitments to the land reform programme claiming, in Claire Short’s words, that there were no ‘links to former colonial interests’ while nevertheless concerning itself with the fate of the white farmers who represent these interests. Alongside an extremely selective use of human rights discourse, such contradictions mean that Mugabe’s denunciations have some truth to them even if their main purpose is to detract from the ruling elite’s own depravities. While Africa is ostensibly central to Britain’s international development agenda, the emphasis has always been on the paternalism of aid rather than acknowledging and making reparations for the economic devastation wrought by colonialism. Rarely do condemnations of land seizure, violence and intimidation extend back to the time Matabeleland came under British rule. This too was accompanied by the seizure of vast swathes of fertile land by a handful of British farmers while large numbers of Ndebele and Shona people were killed or forced into labour. Brutal modern regimes in that part of the globe didn’t begin with Mugabe.

Mugabe, meanwhile, should also reacquaint himself with the original aims of anti-colonialism and the people’s expectations of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe. Having resisted the anti-poor agendas of international monetary institutions and initiated necessary land reforms, the Zimbabwean leader has also refused all responsibility for those many failures of his rule not reducible solely to the colonial past. A once dynamic band of freedom fighters have degenerated into a party who brandish their liberationist laurels while they subjugate, starve and brutalize an entire population in the name of anti-colonialism. The sanctions imposed by the West have, as they usually do in such cases, strengthened Mugabe’s brutish hold on power and further harmed the vulnerable. Real anti-colonialists like Fanon and Gandhi both insisted that that freedom was not about replacing the white tyrant with the brown or black one. Mugabe is the exemplary cautionary tale here, a freedom fighter who has essentially recolonized his people. Indeed, the very techniques of suppression and intimidation which the Zimbabwean leader whereas Mugabe has essentially recolonized his people. Indeed, the very techniques of suppression and intimidation deployed by the Zimbabwean leader, a knight of the British Empire until yesterday were taught to him by the colonial masters he professes to despise. Censorship, brutal suppression of resistance and the dismissal of any form of criticism as seditious were all part of the colonial arsenal. Quick to claim credit for spreading parliamentary democracy, Britain is less forthcoming about acknowledging the legacy of authoritarian rule also left behind by its empire.

Frantz Fanon died young, but one can imagine what he might have to say to his fellow former liberationist. Mr Mugabe, it is time for you to return the power which the Zimbabwean people once vested in you but which they now legitimately wish to reclaim. Liberate them from the tyranny of the rule you have exercised for too long and without a continuing mandate. Your actions weaken all of us who hold the accomplishments of liberation dear and only strengthen the hypocrisies of former colonial powers. The great tradition of African anti-colonialism to which you constantly refer has never been about blaming the colonizer alone; it has always taken account of the culpability and responsibilities of African leaders and elites.

As for those in Britain, it is time for the ‘proper analysis’ some commentators have called for, one which would include honest reflections on the imperial legacy rather than ‘shutting up’ because of colonial guilt. It is the only way to deprive Mugabe of his main moral weapon.This is not just about the kind of simple-minded ‘balance’ which the BBC generally advocates (though it has long since abandoned that value with regard to Zimbabwe), but also an informed sense of how history shapes the present. Failing this, Zimbabwe and the rest of us are destined to asphyxiate ourselves in what Fanon aptly termed ‘the tragic lie’ of the aftermath of colonialism.

This is an extended version of an article published in the Guardian which can be found
here

Zimbabwe and the Question of Imperialism

Ellie Keen — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:54:38 +0000

Listen to the Interview
Audio stream
Download mp3

Criticism of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the actions of his ruling Zanu PF party is growing. The most recent condemnation comes from former South African President Nelson Mandela, who mourned the “tragic failure of leadership” in Zimbabwe on Wednesday. They were the former leader’s first comments on the situation.

President Bush also criticized Mugabe Wednesday for defying international pressure to cancel a run-off election scheduled for Friday.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of elections in March but withdrew from the run off late on Sunday and sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare out of what he says is concern for his safety. On Wednesday he called for the African Union backed by the United Nations, to lead a “transitional process” in Zimbabwe. He also emphasized that Friday’s vote would not be recognized.

But Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission has ruled that Tsvangirai’s withdrawal from the election last Sunday was filed too late and has no legal force. Meanwhile at least 300 Harare residents have taken shelter from the political violence at the South African embassy.

Today we host a discussion on Zimbabwe: We’re joined in Washington DC by Professor Gerald Horne. He is the Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of numerous books including “From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980.” Joining us on the phone from Syracuse, New York is Professor Horace Campbell. He is Professor of African American Studies and Politics at Syracuse University. He has written extensively about Pan-Africanism and Zimbabwe.

Gerald Horne, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of numerous books including “From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965-1980.”

Horace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Politics at Syracuse University. He has written extensively about Pan-Africanism and Zimbabwe.

Rush Transcript

AMY GOODMAN:As we move now from Iraq to Zimbabwe, Juan?

JUAN GONZALES:Well criticism of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the actions of his ruling Zanu PF party is growing. The most recent condemnation comes from former South African President Nelson Mandela who mourned the quote tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe on Wednesday. They were the former leaders first comments on the situation president Bush also criticized Mugabe Wednesday for defying international pressure to cancel a runoff election scheduled for Friday.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Friday’s elections appear to be a sham. You can’t have free elections if a candidate is not allowed to campaign freely and his supporters aren’t allowed to campaign without fear of intimidation—yet the Mugabe government has been intimidating the people on the ground in Zimbabwe. And this is an incredibly sad development. I hope that the AU will, at their meeting this weekend, continue to highlight the illegitimacy of the elections, continue to remind the world that this election is not free, and is not fair.

JUAN GONZALES: Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of elections in March but withdrew from the runoff late on Sunday and sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harari out of what he says is concern for his safety. On Wednesday he called for the African Union backed the United Nations to lead a quote transitional process in Zimbabwe. He also emphasized that Friday’s vote would not be recognized.

TSVANGIRAI: That our decision to pull out of this shame election was in the best interest of the people of Zimbabwe. Any election conducted arrogantly, unilaterally on Friday will not be recognized by the MDC, by Zimbabweans and by the world over.

JUAN GONZALES: But Zimbabwe’s electoral commission has ruled that Tsvangirai’s withdrawal from the election last Sunday was filed too late and has no legal force. Meanwhile at least 300 Harari residents have taken shelter from the political violence at the South African embassy.

MAN SPEAKING: My house is destroyed to the ground level. And my whole apartment has been destroyed and looted, and my family-–I do not know where my family is right now. I don’t know where my wife, my kids.

AMY GOODMAN: Today, we host a discussion on Zimbabwe. We’re joined in Washington D.C. by Professor Gerald Horne, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of numerous books including “From the Barrel of a Gun, the United States in the War Against Zimbabwe, 1965 to 1980.” Joining us on the phone from Syracuse is Professor Horace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Politics at Syracuse University in New York, has written extensively about Pan-Africanism and Zimbabwe. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! I want to begin with Gerald Horne in Washington. Can you talk about what is happening in Zimbabwe and the coverage of it, how we understand what is happening in Zimbabwe in the United States?

GERALD HORNE: Well obviously what is happening in Zimbabwe is quite tragic and I would hope some of the sympathy that is extended to Zimbabwe could be extended as well to other African nations that do not have white minorities. For example, the statement condemning or questioning the Zimbabweans elections emerged from Swaziland, a South African nation that is one of the last absolute monarchies on this small planet. Some might well question why isn’t Swaziland’s human rights situation being interrogated and investigated? A scant year ago in Nigeria, the continent’s giant, you had shambolic elections, had hundreds killed yet that barely registered a blip on the international media. At least not in the North Atlantic. Many talk, perhaps understandably, about the fact the President Mugabe has served as President since 1980, but what about Omar Bongo of Gabon, a close ally of the U.S, an oil-rich country in West Africa, which of course, he has served as president since 1967? 13 years before Mugabe came into power. I mean, I could go on in this vain, but I think the fact that thousands were killed in Zimbabwe in the 1980’s and yet, he received a virtual knighthood from Queen Elizabeth and received an honorary degree from Massachusetts, and yet, today in 2008, he is a subject of international scorn after of course he expropriates some white farmers, really speaks of profound racism in terms of how this issue has been covered in the North Atlantic media.

JUAN GONZALES: Horace Campbell, I want to ask about this issue. It does seem that the western media did not focus on Zimbabwe at all until the expropriations began of land. But does that deal with—the land of the white-minority there-–but does that deal with the underlying class conflicts that are obviously clearly percolating in reaching ahead right now in the country?

HORACE CAMPBELL: Well, thank you for having me on the show. First of all, I would say this platform on Democracy Now! is a platform for the progressives, the left, and those who are involved in the peace movement. Our discussions on what is going on in Zimbabwe or any other part of Africa should be guided by how our solidarity with the peoples of Zimbabwe, with the oppressed workers of Southern Africa, and in all parts of Africa can assist our own struggle in this country against all forms of oppression. And so, comparing Zimbabwean’s oppression with other oppression in Africa does not excuse the oppression of the Zimbabweans people by any means. I think Gerald is very right about these oppressions across Africa, but organizations in this country that are in solidarity with the peace movement across the world ,that are in solidarity with the Zimbabwe people, should take the cue from the Congress of South African Trade Union that is calling for a blockade of Zimbabwe because of the oppression. And I think what distinguished Zimbabwe from those countries that Gerald speaks about is that none of those countries is representing themselves as being in the forefront of liberation. Robert Mugabe and Zanupe started out like they were Lumumba in the Congo. They ended up like Mubutu, killing from the people, arrested opposition leaders, killing people, calling homosexual pigs and dogs, and killing hundreds, tens of thousands of people. 18% of the Zimbabwean people are unemployed. While the stock exchange is the most successful in Africa. We on the left, in the peace movement, we acknowledge that George Bush nor Brown have any moral authority to criticize Zimbabwe because of the unjust war that they’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. But having said that, we on the left and the progressives, we must take the moral leadership in having solidarity with those opposition leaders, those workers, those human rights workers in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa who are being oppressed by the Mugabe government.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Gerald Horne?

GERALD HORNE: Well I think there is very much to recommend with what Horace Campbell said. As a taxpayer to this government here in Washington, my first approach must be this regime of George W. Bush. And I think we have to question the hypocrisy of George Bush who has engaged in questionable elections in Florida and Ohio, questioning the legitimacy of the elections in Zimbabwe. More than that, if the situation in Zimbabwe is so terrible, and I agree it is, why is it that the Bush administration continues to send undocumented Zimbabwe workers back to Zimbabwe? There’s been talk about a so- called genocide unfolding in Zimbabwe, yet, you see the Gordon Brown administration in London not giving asylum to Zimbabwe workers who are exiled now in London. We talk about the Mugabe regime, but just the other day it was revealed that Anglo American, the major transnational corporation with close South African ties and headquarters in London, is about to make a $400 million investment in Zimbabwe. Barclay’s bank is in Zimbabwe. Rio Tinto-Zinc, the major mineral conglomerate is in Zimbabwe. It seems to me in the first place, we in the North Atlantic should be focusing on these kinds of contradictions that we can affect and as the African National Congress has said, leave Zimbabwe to the Zimbabwean people themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to a break and we’ll come back to this discussion. Our guests in Washington, Professor. Gerald Horne, Professor of African Studies at the University of Houston, he has lived in Zimbabwe, Professor Horace Campbell also joins us, professor of African- American studies at Syracuse University. We will be back with them both in a moment.

[music break]

AMY GOODMAN: This is democracy Now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. We’re talking about Zimbabwe. Professor Gerald Horne of the University of Houston is in Washington, Professor Horace Campbell of African American Studies and Political Science of Syracuse University is speaking to us from Syracuse. If you could respond, Professor Campbell, to what Gerald Horne said before the break.

HORACE CAMPBELL: Yes, I want to reiterate a point that any kind of political work we do on Zimbabwe should assist us in educating our people here so that when the Zimbabwe political leadership represents itself to say that it is being persecuted because it expropriated the land of the former white settlers, we have to interrogate what did the expropriation of the land mean for the millions of Zimbabweans workers, small farmers. It is very clear that the Zimbabwean people needed to reclaim the land from the white settlers. But the Mugabe government, when he was receiving his knighthood from the british government, never negotiated about the land because throughout the period from 1980- 1992, Zimbabwe had the legal powers to be able to set in motion the possibilities for strengthening the working peoples, the farm workers, the women, the plantation and agricultural workers. And hen we speak about land, we must understand that whether the land is owned by white farmers are black farmers, the fundamental productivity on the land emanates from the labor of the working people—working people. So our task is how is it we defend the working people of Zimbabwe? The hundreds of thousands of workers who live on the conditions of wretchedness, who have been exploited by the black capitalist farmers, who are in the Zimbabwean government just as the whites have done. So any kind of transition in Zimbabwe must involve strengthening the rights of the workers, the women, and the use in Zimbabwe. I think that what Gerald said should throw away all of the talk about Mugabe been against imperialism because it was very clear that anglo- American, Barclay bank, and Rio-Tinto and diamond dealers have made billions of dollars while Mugabe was talking about the land. And what we’re calling for is for any transitional period in Zimbabwe to be one where there is intervention by the African Union so that the billions that have been carried out by the ruling elements in Zimbabwe, that we do not have them carried out repression of the workers with impunity and then stealing the money as they have done the past 8-10 years.

JUAN GONZALES: Gerald Horne, I’d like to ask you. Obviously Mugabe has been an icon and a hero, a giant in terms of the liberation movements in Africa for decades. But your sense now, do you believe that he still represents any forces for progress in Africa or has he gradually transformed himself into a dictator?

GERALD HORNE: Well, I think that president Mugabe is a force to be reckoned with in Zimbabwe. And I agree with those leaders in the region who feel that he and his party must be contented with if there is to be a settlement of this controversy in Zimbabwe. I should also say that with regard to professor Campbell, I’m here not to carry a brief on OPS, but they have argued they did not move on land reform before 1994, i.e. the date of the South African elections, so as not to unsettle the situation in neighboring South Africa, which of course has outstanding land claims of its own. We all know there are more white farmers killed in South Africa than have been killed in Zimbabwe. And likewise, there are outstanding land claims in neighboring Namibia as well. I think it’s understandable why there has been a focus on on Zanu PF, but standing in the wings of the opposition of the MDC and sadly, unfortunately, there has not been considerable focus on them such as their leaders, Roy Bennet, a top leader, a former major land owner in Zimbabwe who of course throttled an African leader on the floor of the Zimbabweans parliament—I would of thought that kind of behavior would have ended in independence in 1980. You have other leading Rhodesians in the leadership of MDC. One thing that worries many of us is that if MDC does come to power, there will be a split and quite frankly, they will pave the way for the rise of certain retrograde elements like Roy Bennet come back into power. In some ways, MDC, a trade union-led movement, is akin to solidarity in Poland which of course paved the way for the present right wing in Poland to come to power in Warsaw. So we have to be careful when we try to butt in to the internal affairs of a sovereign state. I think our energies would be best served by putting pressure on this government here in Washington and its comical sidekick in London.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Horace Campbell?

HORACE CAMPBELL: The intellectual subservience of the MDC and the leadership ofthe MDC is clear to most workers in Southern Africa. But this point in the history of Zimbabwe, the MDC doesn’t have political power. The social forces that are organized in Zimbabwe against the government have thrown their weight behind the MDC at the present moment. The Women of Zimbabwe rise, these are independent organizations, Padari, the workers, agricultural and plantation workers. I do not think—we do not have the right to say to the Zimbabwean workers that your under oppression and therefore, we should decide for you because of the history of Mugabe’s relationship to the liberation movement, 28 years ago, then we should be saying to you what your choices should be. In Southern Africa, the Congress of South African Trade Union movement has called for a blockade of the Zimbabwean government and is the Zimbabwe leadership and the Congress of South African Trade Union which is the largest trade union movement in Southern Africa is a movement which is calling for the isolation of Mugabe government. What we agree with Gerald is on as the falling—the land question in Southern Africa is an urgent question in the media, in south Africa, and in Zimbabwe. But having said that, we must learn lessons from Zimbabwe. To say that when land his been reclaimed it should not be reclaimed for rich, black farmers to replace white farmers. Land when it is being reclaimed in South Africa or in Nambia should be reclaimed in a condition where there is health and safety conditions for the working people’s. So yes, we should take lessons from Zimbabwe and we should introduce new politics in Southern Africa that is coming out of the politics of reconciliation. That no concept of victory should be victory which gives power to one group over another there should be ways in which the transition towards a new political dispersion—in south Africa it is one that strengthens the producing classes, the small workers, farmers, students. And these are the forces that have been repressed, brutalized, the trade union leaders that are in jail right now in Zimbabwe should be released. Opposition leaders should be released. Women should be released. Human rights workers should be released. So that yes, we can criticize the leadership of the MDC and I have done so in my writing, in my book, “Reclaiming Zimbabwe” but the government of Zimbabwe must now arise in a situation where we provide leadership in a condition where 80% of the people are unemployed, where women have been persecuted as prostitutes when a walk on the streets. Were homosexuals have been called pigs and dogs and where men go around trying to have sexual relations with young virgins saying this would prevent HIV/AIDS. We need a new political leadership to go against this kind of backwardness that came out of the kind of patriotic leadership that we had for the past 28 years.

AMY GOODMAN: We wanted to bring South African archbishop Desmond Tutu into this. He also came out forcefully against the violence and intimidation in Zimbabwe speaking in Cape Town Tuesday, who warned Mugabe should bend to international pressure or could risk facing universal sanctions and could risk facing an international criminal court.

TUTU: We are seeing a country not just steadily, but rapidly going down into chaos. The international community should, I believe, had intervened long ago when some of us appeared for a peacekeeping force, to ensure that people who are not intimidated, people are not attacked. And that the conditions for a free and fair election would then have been sustained. Now, I think obviously the effort should continue where we are hoping against hope that good sense might get to prevail and that Mr.Mugabe would agree that really his time is up. It’s 20 years or more that he has been head of state. I think they’ve got to tell him he still less the chance—if he continues and everyone decides to grant his administration illegitimate, then he stands a very very good chance of being arraigned before the ICC for human rights violations.

AMY GOODMAN: Archbishop Desmond Tutu Gerald Horne, your response both to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Horace Campbell.

GERALD HORNE: Well obviously we have enormous respect for Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But I must return to the question that should occupy us in the North Atlantic. Which is why is it the Zimbabwe gets so much focus and attention on this side of the Atlantic when Paul Biya, the leader of Cameron a few weeks ago basically named himself President for life and it barely registers a blip? Similar situation unfolding in Uganda with Yoweri Museveni. I think part of the reason, not only the race and racism question, there’s also the question that many of the former Rhodesian have kith and kin on the side of the Atlantic. The spouse of Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State. The spouse of Chester Crocker, the former assistant Secretary of State for Africa under the Reagan administration. Even some distant relatives of George Washington for whom the city of which I’m sitting is named. Ian Smith, the former Rhodesian leader of course has relatives in San Diego. There were hundreds if not thousands of white mercenaries who flocked to Rhodesia in the 1970’s and 1980’s to fight against liberation of that particular country. And it befuddles and baffles me why this kind of basic historical background is not integrated into the conversation, integrated into the discourse on Zimbabwe. I think it gives a very bad impression on the African continent which leads many Africans to consider their only focus on the North Atlantic is on Zimbabwe because there is a white minority and that perhaps explains to why there has been such a lethargy in responding to some of the human rights violations that are unfolding in Zimbabwe. And until that kind of situation is rectified, I dare say there will continue to be an uncivil situation in Zimbabwe.

JUAN GONZALES: Gerald, all that being true and we clearly recognize that disparity in approach and coverage, back in 2005, there were massive forced relocations of hundreds of thousands of people by the Mugabe government that really stunned people, even here in a progressive community of the United States who have supported Mugabe and the past. Your response to those relocations and again to the issue of whether the government has increasingly become iron handed and dictatorial in dealing with its own people?

GERALD HORNE: Well, those dislocations were tragic and unfortunate. I know about them because I hail from St. Louis, Missouri. And of course it used to be said, with regard to that city and many other cities, that urban renewal meant negro removal. That kind of situation is not unique to Zimbabwe. In Senegal as we speak, there been tens of thousands of Africans who have been displaced because of a civil conflict there reaches back 25 years. It has barely registered a blip on the international press screen. So yes, those situations that are referred to in Zimbabwe are quite tragic and they need to be criticized as well as other analogous situations. And when those analogous situations are not criticized, it basically provides fodder for those who would like to downplay the situation in Zimbabwe.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Horace Campbell, we just have about 30 seconds, your response and your summary?

HORACE CAMPBELL: My response is that the government of Senegal, the government of Cameroon does not represent itself as a liberation government. The Zimbabwean government is very aware of the racism that exists in North America. And it is exploiting that racism and the antiracist sentiment among Africans in the west in order to legitimize its repression on the people. The government of Zimbabwe at this moment is illegitimate we must avoid war at all costs. Mugabe says only god can remove him and he will go to war. At present, he is at war with the Zimbabwe people and we must end the silence in the progressive and pan-African community against this type of manipulation and repression in the name of liberation.

AMY GOODMAN: We will leave it there. Professor Horace Campbell of Syracuse University and Professor Gerald Horne of Houston University, thank you for joining us. That does it for today’s show, if you want a copy of the show go to democracynow.org, tomorrow night I’ll be at Des Moines, Iowa at Simpsons College, tomorrow morning at ten in Fairfield Iowa at the library, and Tuesday night the Aspen Ideas Festival.

It's Time for Gordon to Dial the Despot

Tim Holmes — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 04:37:48 +0000

The Ambasciotori Palace Hotel ranks amongst Rome’s finest, being housed on the via Veneto, one of the most famous avenues in the world. It is used to hosting international dignitaries such as film stars Liza Minnelli, Sean Connery and Sofia Loren.

But earlier this month a more notorious guest stayed in a $900 a night, fifth-floor suite complete with king-sized beds, pink marble bathrooms and a luxurious jacuzzi. The guest brought with him his own uniformed butler and two chefs, who commandeered their own kitchen within the hotel to prepare succulent and delicious food for their master. No expense was spared by Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe who wined and dinned whilst back home his people slowly starve to death.

Mugabe was attending a UN food Summit in Rome. Why anyone had allowed the Southern African despot to attend the summit is beyond my imagination for here is a man whose deliberate policies on food and land have decimated his people and country. It was a fundamental mistake to allow Mugabe the prestige of rubbing shoulders with other politicians on the world stage.

Whereas other world leaders may have degrees in politics or economics, Mugabe once famously boasted that he had a “degree in violence”. And how true that is. Just days after the Summit, Mugabe’s contempt for his own people was savagely exposed yet again when his government suspended food aid in the country, on which millions of hungry people are dependent. Desperate to do anything to cling to power, food has become the latest weapon that Mugabe is using to force his people to vote for a man and his political party: ZANU-PF.

The respected Children’s charity, Save the Children, rightly said the “the suspension of aid will have appalling consequences for the country’s poorest and most vulnerable children”. They pointed out that without this lifeline children would start dying.

The food aid suspension is the latest attempt by Mugabe to beat, starve, maim and murder his people into voting for him in the next run-off election that will be held on June 27th. That election should be postponed if not cancelled. There is absolutely no chance of a free or fair election. Millions cannot vote with empty stomachs. Millions cannot vote under the threat of systematic violence and abuse. Every day we hear more evidence of systematic beating and terrorizing of people from the opposition Movement for Democractic Change (MDC).

Last week, Human Rights Watch released a devastating report on the state of human rights abuses in the country. “The campaign of violence and repression in Zimbabwe, aimed at destroying opposition and ensuring that Robert Mugabe is returned as president in runoff elections on June 27, 2008 is claiming thousands of victims as the government at national and local levels actively, systematically and methodically targets Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) activists and perceived MDC supporters.”

Human Rights Watch noted that the scope and scale of the violence since Zimbabwe’s first election this year in March, and far exceeds anything that they witnessed during past election years of 2000, 2002 and 2005.

Senior members of Mugabe’s army and security forces are behind the campaign of orchestrated violence and terror. At the end of last month, Mugabe’s Chief-of-Staff Major General Martin Chedondo said, “Soldiers are not apolitical; only mercenaries are apolitical. We should therefore stand behind our commander-in-chief.”

And with Mugabe as Commander in Chief, the army, its militias and supporters have set out to destroy the MDC. The Human Rights Watch report catagorized Mugabe’s campaign of terror against political opponents. At least 36 people have been killed, including many who have been abducted and tortured first. Given the movement restrictions in place and limited flow of information, Human Rights Watch believes that the number of people attacked far exceeds these figures.

In scenes reminiscent of Nazi-Germany, ZANU-PF officials and their supporters “are beating, torturing and mutilating suspected MDC activists and supporters in hundreds of base camps, many of them army bases”, according to Human Rights Watch. “Abusive “re-education” meetings are being held to compel MDC supporters into voting for Mugabe.” In one of these meetings, six men were beaten to death, seventy were tortured, including a 76-year-old woman who was publicly thrashed.

It is a campaign designed to terrorize. In nearly all the areas affected by violence, victims and eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that the violence was usually conducted at night and the abductions and beatings was systematically followed by looting and burning of huts, property and livestock. MDC supporters are routinely told that their “crime” was that they voted for the MDC in the recent election.

On one occasion soldiers addressing villagers at meetings in the village of Karoi, Mashonaland West, put a bullet in each person’s hands. They were then told: “If you vote for MDC in the presidential runoff election, you have seen the bullets, we have enough for each one of you, so beware.”

MDC members have been abducted and brutally murdered. Often victims have their eyes gouged out, and their tongues and lips cut off. Women too have been stripped naked and beaten. In other incidents men had barbed wire tied around their genitals with the other end tied around logs. The men were then forced to use their genitals to pull the logs. One man who received this kind of treatment, Joseph Madzuramhende was tortured and murdered for owning a radio. His attackers said to him: “Your particular crime is that you have a radio at your place and other villagers were coming to your home to listen to Studio 7 (Voice of America program which airs in Zimbabwe) and to listen to election results and this is your crime.”

Another person killed was Tonderai Ndira: a lifelong campaigner for political change and a man compared by some to South Africa’s murdered civil rights activist, Steve Biko. When his beaten and brutalized body was found his eyes too had been gouged out, his tongue cut off and his skull crushed. The 30-year-old was so badly beaten his father had trouble identifying him. It was only a distinctive ring that finally confirmed his identity.

Last week came the news that the wife of a prominent opposition supporter, Dadirai Chipiro had been brutally murdered by Mugabe’s mob. Dadirai, a former pre-school teacher, had had one of her hands chopped off, then both of her feet. She was then thrown into her hut, which was then locked, with a petrol bomb thrown inside. She was burnt alive.

Even those beaten or tortured cannot escape the brutal intimidation. Hospital staff have been warned not to treat victims of political violence or they face retaliation. Election observers have been beaten or arrested too. In total, tens have been killed, 1,500 have been treated in hospital, 25,000 have been driven from their homes and countless more have lost their livelihoods.

So how do we get out of this mess? On 10th May, when the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced that he believed he had won an absolute majority in the first election in March, but he would contest the run-off to “knock-out the dictator for good”. He spelled out his key conditions for MDC participation, including: an immediate end to the violence; deployment of international election observers, including a peacekeeping force from neighbouring Southern African countries and full access to the media.

But none of the above has happened. There is no point in holding the election. Even if Tsvangirai wins against the odds, Mugabe would not give up power. All the indications are that there would be a military coup by Mugabe’s supporters, or that Mugabe will unleash a full scale war.

Whilst the most logical solution has to come from Zimbabwe’s neighbours, President Mbeki from South Africa, who was brought in to mediate the crisis, has been totally inept. He should have stopped this charade long ago. If he won’t act who will?

When in Rome, Mugabe predictably blamed Britain for the crisis. He accused Britain of trying to orchestrate an “illegal regime change” in his country by crippling it economically.

Whilst such arguments are so absurd they are laughable, ironically it may be Britain that could negotiate some kind of peace deal. Heidi Holland is a writer who has spent years studying the psychology of Mugabe. She also interviewed him for her book “Dinner with Mugabe: The untold story of a freedom fighter who became a tyrant”.

She argues: “I think that there is an opportunity for the British to actually get re-engaged there, in the interests of Zimbabwe, Africa having failed. Because underneath Mugabe’s apparent hatred for Britain, is his love for Britain… It has the intensity of a family quarrel and I think that’s all it is.”

She says that although the British don’t want to re-engage with Mugabe, now that other leaders have failed “let’s not waste any more time on that because people are dying… I really think there is an opportunity for the British to be big and to get involved.”

Come on Gordon Brown, pick up the phone and dial the dictator. It’s worth a try because what is happening in Zimbabwe today is a crime against humanity that should not be allowed to continue for one more day.