S. Africa, Bush Facilitate Terror in Zimbabwe


By Robert Kirby
Robert Kirby is a columnist for the Mail & Guardian of Johannesburg, South 
Africa. Sheryl McCarthy is off.

October 9, 2003


South African newspapers have been almost vituperative in criticizing 
President Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy" concerning the crisis in next-door 
Zimbabwe. One paper observed that it's been active advancement by Mbeki of 
tyrant Robert Mugabe's government.

What the press seems to have overlooked is a parallel culpability by those 
world leaders - most notably George W. Bush - who could bring pressure to 
bear, not only on Mbeki but on other southern Africa leaders who have not 
only allowed but, in some instances, openly encouraged Mugabe in his 
outrageous dictatorship.

When it comes to making fine-sounding promises about arresting Zimbabwe's 
human tragedy, Bush has been just as good as Mbeki. If quiet diplomacy has 
been a fiasco, what of Bush's African speciality, fly-by diplomacy - his 
version of doing absolutely nothing?

It is not hard to understand why fresh press condemnation has erupted: the 
summary closure by Mugabe of the courageous opposition Daily News and its 
Sunday sister publication, followed by violent police harassment of their 
staff and the snubbing of a supreme court order restoring the papers' right 
to publish. Previously, Mugabe took action against the Daily News in the 
form of a bomb in its presses. Last year, 22 of its journalists were 
arrested and tortured. This time it's been vandalism or seizure by Mugabe's 
police of the papers' equipment and computers and, again, detention of its 
journalists.

In response to this and the many other brutal excesses of the Zimbabwean 
regime, the silence of Mbeki's government has been thunderous. From 
Washington there hasn't been the whisper. But then, dead promises don't 
talk. While he was hurtling around Africa at Mach-point-8 a few months ago, 
Bush raised a lot of hopes, speaking baronially about American hands-on 
involvement in helping Africa heal its festering political wounds; of how 
deeply his administration was committed to the relief of Africa's suffering 
masses; how the U.S. military could be deployed in helping maintain peace.

Perhaps Bush's advisers have not told him about how effective a literally 
tiny British military force - fewer than 200 troops - in Sierra Leone has 
been in helping contain wholesale anarchy; how the French, with another 
small detachment, are holding the peace in the Cote d'Ivoire.

Only last week new massacres were reported from Liberia. Yet a couple of 
U.S. Navy ships quietly upped anchors off Liberia's coast and slipped away 
in the night with a contingent of Marines.

While attending the United Nations' fall picnic last month, Mbeki loftily 
dismissed the Zimbabwean crisis as being "something they will get over." If 
Mbeki does not consider the shocking human calamity on his own doorstep as 
requiring meaningful intervention, then surely Zimbabweans should expect, at 
the least, some signs of direct action from those who could make a 
difference.

Bush had both purpose and means when it came to ridding the Middle East of a 
tyrant. In the case of Zimbabwe, he would be helping to rid the African 
continent of one of its most grotesque despots. And Bush would have no need 
of guns; he has both the economic and political power to pressure the South 
African government and its neighbors into taking positive steps toward 
ridding Zimbabwe of its lunatic helmsman.

If the current Zimbabwean dictatorship is allowed to run its ruinous course, 
the consequence could be a return to the civil war that preceded the 1980 
democratic elections, which brought Mugabe to power. As in Liberia, all the 
warning signs are there, unheard or ignored: the intensifying human tragedy 
in Zimbabwe, its economic collapse, and its starving rural millions, which 
each month cause thousands of desperate Zimbabweans to cross the porous 
border and seek relief in South Africa.

Mugabe's political derangement now seems not only unstoppable, but carrying 
mute approval of those who could bring him to heel. Mbeki's foreign minister 
continues to state that South African government will never "abandon" 
Mugabe. And, all the while, George W. Bush stares fixedly in the opposite 
direction.


Bro. Germaine G. Verdier
Chairman
http://www.vhi-sweden.org

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