Tag Archives: Zimbabwe

sustaining african (imp)unity

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There is something to be said about the fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has mostly concentrated on atrocities committed on the African continent. Charges of a regional bias emerging from African State Houses definitely have some truth to them. For the court to appear serious about ending offenses that shock the human conscience like genocide and ethnic cleansing it must have a balanced, global reach.

That said, the current anti-ICC mood widespread across Africa is unfortunate. The African Union (AU) defended Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir against the ICC. Now it emerges that Kenya is lobbying other African states to garner support for an anti-ICC resolution in the upcoming AU summit later this month. Four prominent Kenyan politicians, a former police commissioner and a media personality have been named by the ICC as key suspects in the violence that rocked the East African nation in 2007-08.

In retrospect, the ICC might have shot itself in the foot by aggressively pursuing the Kenyan case. Mr. Ocampo’s actions betrayed the ill-informed view that Africa’s many diverse countries are all the same. Kenya is not Sierra Leone. The country receives less than 5% of GDP in overseas development assistance and has considerable regional influence. Many have been shell-shocked by Kenyan politician’s resolve to pull out of the ICC, even in the face of international pressure. Their threats are credible because they know they can without too high a cost.

The biggest losers from this anti-ICC drive within the AU will be citizens of poorer, less able African states. It is places like Chad, (North) Sudan, Central African Republic, Niger, Guinea, Zimbabwe, among others, where the collective interests of targeted communities are more or less not represented in the capital that most need the ICC. If Kenya succeeds the Deby’s and Mugabe’s of this world will get even more emboldened.

Impunity on the African continent is on the rise, again.

from the archives…

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Robert Mugabe might have pulled off the biggest prank of all time. When he came to power in Zim in 1980 (up until things started falling apart in the southern African country in the mid 90s) many saw him as a responsible gradualist reformer. Then he changed, perhaps back to his real nature. Here is a quote from Newsweek in a March 20th 1978 publication that depicts uncle Bob as we know him today. He may have given up on Marxism but ZANU-PF rules Zim:

Robert Mugabe told Newsweek’s Raymond Carroll and Lynn James he would fight on to make Rhodesia a Marxist “one-party state.”

 

interesting links

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The Economist has a nice chart showing a cross-section of states and their performance as far as human development goes. Kudos to Benin for doing a good job of improving its human resources. And shame to the tail-enders on the chart on the right hand side.

I just watched this interesting video from the MIT World video archives. Jump to about the 1hr mark to hear his take on African states and their development prospects.

Lastly, Aid Watch has a post on childhood development. For those (Kenyans) out there who think that having the primary school exams determine a kids future is wrong, think again. Everything might be determined at the kindergarten level.

mugabe’s marital blues

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When I first read the story of Grace Mugabe’s alleged extra-marital affair with Gideon Gono, Zimbabwe’s governor of the Central Bank, I was a bit skeptical. However, it appears that the story might be  true. Grace (often caricatured as an extravagant spender) married uncle Rob (41 years her senior) in 1996, four year’s after the death of President Mugabe’s first wife Sally. The couple have two children.

zimbabwe is more than just afloat these days

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As this piece in the Economist reports, Zimbabwe is slowly emerging from the hole that Mugabe and his men run it into. The pragmatic Tsvangirai and his MDC supporters appear to have decided that confronting the old man on every issue is a losing war and opted to placate him in the short run for long term gains. Importantly, Tsvangirai has strove to earn the confidence of Jacob Zuma, the South African president who is the de facto regional leader.

That Robert Mugabe is in the twilight of his despotic career is a given. What Tsvangirai and his men (and women, TIA) should be worried about is his cabal of leeches supporters who have continued to milk the country dry even as thousands of their fellow citizens died under crashing poverty and government brutality. These are the people in the way of Zim’s future.

southern adventurism?

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Charles Onyango-Obbo, in Africa Review, has a piece documenting the cases of infidelity in Southern Africa involving the wives of heads of state. From Swaziland to South Africa to Zambia heads of state have had to manage spouses with “restless skirts.” Mr. Onyango-Obbo argues that part of the reason is that “Southern Africa as a region tends to have a more liberal take on sexual matters” adding that

“It is a mining region, and for over two generations men have left their families behind to go and work in the mines in a neighbouring. Some never returned, others did infrequently – often with second wives they had married. Just like lonely miners sought out newscompanionships in the new areas they worked and lived in, the wives they left at home eventually also filled the void left by their long-absent husbands.”

Although I don’t quite agree with Onyango-Obbo’s assertion that Southern Africans are more liberal when it comes to sexual matters, I do think that labor migration necessitated by the mining sector in the sub-region has had a profound impact not only on the institution of marriage but also on health outcomes. As a result the sub-region has the highest HIV infection rates in the world. I must also add that governments in the region have realized this and are trying to deal with the problem. Botswana, for instance, has an elaborate and fairly well run programme of providing HIV positive individuals with ARVs. South Africa, emerging from years of denial under Mbeki, is also trying to catch up.

clown of the month

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The Zim ambassador to Washington has inspired me to begin a new monthly post titled Clown of the Month. His embarrassing actions at a recent dinner event are beyond madness. For having embarrassed not just Zim but the entire Continent with his unrestrained provincialism I hereby declare Ambassador H.E. Machivenyika Mapuranga Clown of the Month.

Just for the record, I am no fan of do-gooders who lecture the Continent on governance while turning a blind eye to their governments’ actions that impede the consolidation of good governance, among other structural barriers. That said, I think the debate should not be allowed to descend to mere name calling, a la Mugabe’s man in Washington. Mr. Mapuranga needs to grow up.

Mandela’s dream deferred?

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South Africans marked the 20th anniversary of the release of President Mandela from prison by South Africa’s apartheid regime in 1990 with a lot of pomp and celebration. It goes without saying that President Nelson Mandela belongs in the pantheon of the great sons and daughters of the Continent, and indeed of the whole world.

But after the celebrations are over and done with, South Africans should ask themselves what the life and trials of Mandela mean for them. Is Jacob Zuma the best they could do after decades of fighting for political representation? What role do they have to play on the Continent, being that they are by far its biggest economic and military power house? Should they sit and watch as Zimbabweans suffer under the tyranny of Rob?

stop the blame game and move on

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I am no apologist for colonialism. I am also not a fan of blaming everything on colonialism. Arbitrary borders, neocolonialism, assassination of presidents, unfair farm subsidies etc etc are the usual things we hear as explanations to why most of Africa remains economically backward. I say it has been more than 50 years and its about time we moved on. Colonialism had its evils, no doubt about that. However, it’s enduring legacy on the Continent has been the fault of Africans and their leaders. There are numerous other countries that have managed to take off even though they were also colonized and for some time were heavily dependent on the industrialised West.

Mobutu, Amin, Bokassa, Moi, Mugabe, Nimeiry, Gaddafi, Doe etc etc were all Africans who deliberately chose to mess up their countries. Nobody held guns to their heads to force them to do what they did. Guinea – at independence – is a clear case that it was quite possible to break free from the former colonizers. All the above mentioned men presided over wasted dictatorships. They killed and maimed and jailed thousands of their citizens but never attempted to do what Pinochet did for Chile or the dictators of the Asian tigers did for their countries. Instead they stole everything they could from their treasuries.

The reason I bring this up is because I just attended a talk on the legacy of colonialism in Africa where the general consensus seems to have been that European colonizers were to blame for most ills on the continent. I find this track of thought wanting. African failure should squarely be blamed on inept African leadership.

internally displaced people in Africa

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“There are other questions too. Should IDPs stay in rural areas or be resettled in towns? Providing the right amount of assistance is tricky as well. Too much, and an African government risks turning camps into subsidised slums. Too little, and people die.”

The above quote is from this weeks Economist Newspaper. As I have argued before, I think that the move to come up with a framework to protect IDPs on the Continent is a charade. I don’t get how the likes of Mugabe (one of the chief displacers of people on the Continent) are supposed to be entrusted with protecting the same people. Having UNHCR do the job sounds good but is riddled with huge moral hazard problems – as illustrated by the above quote.

Meanwhile, this is the kind of life that many an African autocrat (and soon the effects of climate change) forces his fellow citizens to live.

cannibals in zimbabwe?

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The economist reports…

“On one occasion, 15 armed invaders, banging on metal objects and chanting war songs, forced their way into Mr Freeth’s house, threatening to burn it to the ground, kill the two men present, rape the women and eat the three children asleep in their beds. Thanks to an earlier beating, Mr Freeth, an emaciated, soft-spoken man of 40, has never recovered his sense of smell. Mr Campbell, 76, was so badly thrashed that his memory is impaired.”

I had absolutely no idea that Zims were into eating little children. But then again it could just be a case of some air-head Economist reporter (and his/her editors) clinging to the notion of cannibalistic Africans irrationally inclined to commit rape and murder. May they soon realize that the world has moved on.

And dwelling on the issue of white farmers in Zimbabwe, I think it might be time for everyone to look at the facts and accept the truth for what it is. It is true that Robert Mugabe and his marauding thugs have committed economic and other crimes by dispossessing thousands of white Zimbabwean farmers of their land. But it is also true that a tiny section of Zimbabweans who happen to be white own(ed) a disproportionate percentage of the arable land in the country. Add into this imbalance the fact that the land may have been acquired through questionable means a few decades back by the ancestors of these farmers and you have yourself an explosive situation.

It is no wonder that even Morgan Tsvangirai (the reformist Premier of Zim) is, according to the Economist, “blowing hot and cold” on the issue. He knows that he cannot, with a clear conscience, defend the system of land ownership that exists in Zimbabwe.

I am in no way supporting violent seizure of land in Zimbabwe. All I am saying is that there is a case for radical land reform in the country. And this is not a question of race and/or ethnicity. I have seen the same tensions in Kenya – where squatters have clashed with fellow Kenyan ( indigenous) owners of large tracts of land. I am totally against illegal redistribution of land. But at the same time I cannot defend an obviously unjust system of land ownership.

It is sad that Mugabe’s illegal (and at times murderous) repossession of land in the country has overshadowed the real land problem in Zimbabwe – to the extent that even a somewhat respected newspaper like the Economist feels no shame in allowing a subliminally racist line like the one quoted above in its pages.

quick hits

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The BBC reports that the Kimberley process, designed to rid the global diamond market of blood diamonds, is failing. This is largely because of second country exporters of diamond like the Ivory Coast. Made famous by the movie Blood Diamond which included among others the Beninois Djimon Hounsou and Leonardo DiCaprio, the attempts to stop the illicit trade in diamonds that was fueling wars across the Continent had so far been seen by many as a success. Many had hoped that the same success could be replicated in other commodities, especially in the DRC where mineral wealth in the eastern part of the country has been funding wars since the mid 1990s.

And in other news, William Easterly wrote a rather pointed critique of the Millenium Villages project and the tourism business surrounding it. This piece reminded me of the plight of the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania whose lifestyle has long been “preserved” by the two governments as tourist attractions reserves – even as thousands of Maasai children remain out of school and without proper healthcare or diet because of the incompatibility of the centuries old traditional Maasai way of life with 21st century living (and this is not exclusive to the Maasai). I think it is about time governments and development experts got honest with themselves. Development means having a good education system, having access to healthcare so that people do not die of treatable illnesses, having a diet of at least 2500 calories a day, being well clothed and housed, among other things. If a lifestyle, however cherished, denies the people practising it these essentials for a comfortable human existent it belongs in the rubbish bin of history, regardless of whether such a lifestyle is considered authentic African or not.

another joke from the Continent

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If you thought the election of Libya’s life President, Muamar Gaddafi, as president of the African Union was a joke wait till you hear who was elected chairman of COMESA, a regional trading block that comprises most of the nations on the east coast of Africa. Yes, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s strongman who ran his country’s economy aground has been elected chairman of COMESA! And as expected, this has generated some protest in the African blogosphere.

How do these guys pull off such stunts with a straight face?

some good news for Zimbabwe

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The BBC reports that the World Bank has decided to resume aid to Zimbabwe – the Bank has not lent the cash-strapped African country any money since 2000. Sad though is the fact that most of the money will probably go to clearance of Zim’s arrears to the WB and the African Development Bank (Zimbabwe owes $1 b). But the WB director, Toga Gayewea McIntosh, who is in charge of the group of African countries that include Zimbabwe promised that more grants will follow soon.

According to the Finance Ministry, Zimbabwe needs $8.3 billion for full recovery to be achieved any time soon after years of ruinous economic policies under the strongman Robert Mugabe.

can zimbabwe bounce back?

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Morgan Tsvangirai (a man who many believe ought to be Zimbabwe’s president) was sworn in Thursday as Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister. This marks the beginning of a compromise power sharing arrangement in Zimbabwe which forces the aging Robert Mugabe, 85 to share power with Tsvangirai’s MDC. Tendayi Biti, another MDC stalwart, will be Finance Minister.

This raises the question of whether Zimbabwe can bounce back  some time soon. Millions have fled the country. Millions depend on food aid. 3000 have died of cholera and many more remain at risk and the economy has virtually collapsed, with 9 in 10 people out of employment. I am a proud owner of a 100 billion Zimbabwe note. In short, a lot needs to be done and MDC will have it mostly uphill for a long time to come. But will they succeed? If the recent developments in Kenya are any indicators, Zimababweans should be warned that things will get worse before they get better. The same people who while in opposition were screaming about corruption have been coopted into the same shady deals they once fought against (the maize, oil and tourism scandals are testament to this). And the lack of a credible opposition has given the government some immunity against censure in parliament. Zimbabwe may find itself in the same position, unless they actively avoid it.

May be Tsvangirai and his MDC will do things differently. I wish them well.