Should Zimbabwe have a unity government?
With Zimbabwe falling into chaos, or worse, tyranny, it was timely that I should receive an email call to action from global poverty and peace campaigning group Avaaz. I normally reflexively support whatever Avaaz is campaigning on. But this time I paused because its email to me was calling for a unity government - lead by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. (Avaaz’s website is not asking for a unity government just the email I received).
It’s a tough thing when you try to move from dictatorship to democracy. And often it seems that people need to opt for halfway measures along the way. But my understanding of a unity government, such as the type South African President Thabo Mbeki is calling for, is that Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change would share power with Mugabe’s Zanu PF party. This is despite Tsvangirai clearly winning the first round of the presidential vote in March.
I’m of two minds. Peace will require a way to assure Zanu PF supporters and members that they will not suffer retribution for their violence and abuse. But democracy requires that Mugabe and his discredited government make way for a new democratically elected government. The role of unity governments ideally should be in healing a population that is deeply divided rather than sheltering a dictator from the winds of democracy.
Because I don’t know what the answer is I’m hoping Mbeki has guessed right, because it seems he is the person who now holds the most chance of averting more tragedy.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Mugabe lead a “unity government” with Joshua Nkomo in 1980s and IIRC it ended sadly for Nkomo.
Mugabe has never respected democracy. His military backers don’t either. Both sides need to have their own militia to keep the other honest. A balance of terror, if you like. Mugabe respects nothing else. Nor do his generals…and there are enough Zimbabweans who agree with them to keep them in power.
If no one supported them, they really would be gone.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:59 am
well well
finally the self appointed of guardians of everything have got around to the facing up to Zimbabwe farce
it seemed to me the left just couldn’t bring its self to criticize one of their black African socialist heroes
where are your hero’s John Minto and Trevor Richards now ( their silence condemns them !!!!)
Maybe just maybe Ian Smith wasn’t the colonist idiot the left made him out to be
Dont get me wrong, every one has the right to chose their own destiny with a vote and Smith denied black Africans that right, but the head long rush to self rule has been a disaster for Zimbabwe
June 25th, 2008 at 11:17 am
No one, except the left it seems, are remotely surprised about Zimbabwe.
Wrong again, eh. Now you want the ‘copters sent in? What happened to sitting around talking over a nice cup of tea?
June 25th, 2008 at 11:45 am
panda, John Minto has actually been quite outspoken about human rights in Zimbabwe. both recently and earlier in the campaign to stop the Black Caps touring there and the Zimbawean cricket team touring here.
It is not the “head long rush to self rule” that has been the disaster for Zimbabwe, it is the corruption, brutality and economic ineptness of the Mugabe regime.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Ah yes, Comrade Minto who is on record as saying that he is not happy the way South Africa turned out after his years of struggle.
it seems that Comrade Minto wanted the communists to rise up and replace the apartheid regime.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
BB said: …Minto who is on record as saying that he is not happy the way South Africa turned out after his years of struggle
Are you happy with the way it turned out BB?
Minto wrote in an open letter to Thabo Mbeki in January this year:
In that I believe him to be totally correct. How about you BB?
June 25th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Yes precisely Toad and the reason that South Africa is in such a poor state is that the political institutions in South Africa are an empty shell as they don’t have the means deliver key aspirations that were set down in the ANC’s Freedom Charter, because at negotiations with the incumbent Nationalist government, negotiators from the ANC (among them Thabo Mbeki) made concessions to the incumbent that would unknowingly ensure those aspirations of equality, full economic participation, etc would be effectively impossible to deliver, the most dispicable of which were those that the new government would have to assume the debt of the incumbent apartheid government that it owed to the IMF, the World Bank, and international commercial banking institutions, which was both perpetuated the racist regime and which had financed the tools of repression used by its Police State. They also made the concession that the Minister of Finance would remain in his position in the new government and the Boer were also allowed to retain all their assets that they had accumulated under the Nationalist apartheid regime.
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/charter.html
http://www.jubileesouth.org/tribunal/accusation_3/south_africa.htm
http://www.odiousdebts.org/odiousdebts/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID =321
The IMF in collusion with the same gang who was responsible for similar “reforms” in Russia, imposed the very same economic “shock therapy” instruments on South Africa, which even the neoliberal’s “good cop”, USAID, admits has had a disasterous effect on the country.
http://www.polity.org.za/article.php?a_id=120421
http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNADH667.pdf
June 25th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
BB,
Do you know what crops the oh so productive white farmers used to grow primarily? Tabacco and ! Precious little it would have done to feed the people of Zimbabwe, eh? Whilst the natives were poor and hungry the wealthy white sold fckn flowers and tabacco! No wonder the Africans demanded land reforms.
http://www.afrol.com/articles/17158
http://www.new-agri.co.uk/01-5/focuson/focuson9.html
June 25th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Toad
It is their country and therefore they and they alone should be left to sort it out.
Comrade Minto obviously wanted a communist regime to take power and the fact that they did not does not sit well with him.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
pls upload my posts frog
June 25th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
BB, where did you get “a communist regime” out of toads quote?? Did you even read it?
June 25th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Sleepy, methinks it doesn’t matter what you grow, as long as one can afford to buy food! This was the case and it sounds awfully like you’re defending illegal land seizures there.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
big bro,
why don’t you just read up on the issue, rather than smearing people with baseless accusations.
Even the neoliberal Cato Institute laid the blame of South Africa’s unemployment on low education standards, but what they didn’t admit was the cause. That being the IMF imposed Structural Adjustment Policies that made the government cut the Education Budget by 6% despite have a literacy level of only 58%.
“Lamentably, much of the labor force is unemployable due to deteriorating educational standards.”
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9475
http://www.polity.org.za/article.php?a_id=120421
“Education has already started to feel the pinch of GEAR. During the 1997/98 financial year, the education budget was cut by more than six percent. Even the national Education Minister Sibusiso Bengu warned of the consequences of such a move in a country with a 48 prcent illiteracy rate.”
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/37a/072.html
June 25th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Emphasis was supposed to be on ‘was’, but that’ll do
June 25th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
StephenR
Sleepy, methinks it doesn’t matter what you grow, as long as one can afford to buy food! This was the case and it sounds awfully like you’re defending illegal land seizures there.”
How were the the native African’s going to buy food when white racist colonalists owned all the land and GREW FLOWERS AND TABACCO???
How does one determine whether the land seizures were illegal when its questionable whether the whites were legitamate owners, because most of it would have been stolen from the natives anyway? Why should African nations compensate white colonists when the land was a) stolen and b)they’ve already probably earned many times over from the land that its value anyway?
No I don’t condone the violence that the whites were subjected to in the process of expropriation, but I don’t think they have any grounds to complain about expropriation itself.
Its like the European landlords complaining about land reform in New Zealand during the late 19th Century, when they’d tried to imposed English social relations on the new colony after buying up all the land that had been seized from the Maori.
“Wakefield’s idea involved rejecting the practise of granting land to settlers for no cost. If the land had to be purchased labourers could not afford to buy land immediately and would have to work for those who could purchase land.
He wanted the complete cross-section of English rural society to be transplanted to the new colony.�
http://tinyurl.com/6j4osj
“Where land is cheap and all men are free, where every one who so pleases can obtain a piece of land for himself, not only is labour very dear, as respects the labourers’ share of the product, but the diffi- culty is to obtain combined labour at any price.�
E.G. Wakefield, “View of the Art of Colonization�
June 25th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Well apparently they had food, because as of 2006 women in Zimbabwe live an average of 34 years and men 37, half of the life expectancy of little more than a decade ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jul/17/zimbabwe.topstories3
Presumably the land was farmed well, farmers made money, then racist-ly paid the labourers, who bought goods and services with the money. Not so easy nowadays eh?
Certainly a good point. The manner in which whites lost their land was no more legal (”to address the balance”) than when it was taken from the blacks, (if it was - I don’t know - but history would suggest it was). That wrong doesn’t make a right, although some farmers were compensated (whether it was justly, i’m not sure).
June 25th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
SleepyTreehugger Says:
June 25th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
> Do you know what crops the oh so productive white farmers used to grow primarily? Tabacco and ! Precious little it would have done to feed the people of Zimbabwe, eh? Whilst the natives were poor and hungry the wealthy white sold fckn flowers and tabacco!
They didn’t only grow flowers and tobacco. Zimbabwe was a net exporter of grain to the rest of Southern Africa until Mugabe started his land seizures. And lots of black Zimbabweans lived and worked on the farms. Now the farms that have been seized employ hardly anyone and produce hardly anything, and are owned by every bit as small a number of people as before.
June 25th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Land reform to replace a small number of big farms with a large number of smaller farms has been done successfully in many countries, including New Zealand (late 19th century) and South Korea and Taiwan (mid 20th century). The Zimbabwean government had plenty of successful examples it could follow, and one of the major aid agencies (I can’t remember which one) even drew up a plan for how it could be done in Zimbabwe. But Mugabe chose to ignore them, and chose a system that led to all the farm workers being kicked off the land, and the land coming into the hands of people who had no idea how to farm it.
In my opinion, he should have encouraged the white farm owners to sell plots of land to their farm workers, by (1) using punitive taxation to make large farms uneconomic, and (2) providing suspensory loans to help the farm workers buy land. With a system like that, the productivity would never have fallen (and would ultimately have risen), and nobody would have gone hungry.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
“Well apparently they had food, because as of 2006 women in Zimbabwe live an average of 34 years and men 37, half of the life expectancy of little more than a decade ago.”
True. Fair enough. I realise my opinions on this matter have been rather vehement, but I recognise the central part that land ownership has to play in determining a persons wealth, because a) it allows a person to acquire capital to finance improvements to their land whether for agriculture or industrial production. Its much easier and cheaper to attract capital, because the owner is able to offer their land title as security on the loan to banks who act as a trust intermediary who are acting on behalf on people who have surplus wealth. Bear in mind that this surplus wealth was accumulated through a historical process of expropriation of others wealth and the enforcement of unjust and inequitable social relations.
DON’T EVEN ASK ME ABOUT BANKING. I’ll be forced to go out on a whole knew tangent.
“Certainly a good point. The manner in which whites lost their land was no more legal (â€?to address the balanceâ€?) than when it was taken from the blacks, (if it was - I don’t know - but history would suggest it was).”
Who determines whats legal and whats not?
Theoretically a government has the sovereign right to do as it wants as long. Democracy is such a con job. All it is, is glorified horse trading. If you give me that, I’ll give you this. I’ll make this concession, whilst you make that.
The government of Zimbabwe spent hundreds of millions to compensate the white farmers for the expropriation of “their” lands prior to 2000, EVEN THOUGH THEIR CLAIMS WEREN’T EVEN LEGITAMATE!
kahikatea,
“Now the farms that have been seized employ hardly anyone and produce hardly anything, and are owned by every bit as small a number of people as before.”
Thats like saying that a thief has a legitamate claim to his ill gotten gains, because he gave a portion to charity.
I’m not arguing whether that the land reform process as carried out by Robert Mugable was good for the country or not, I’m arguing to defend the legitamacy of expropriation itself.
Irrespective of the expropriation, Zimbabwe’s economy was buggered anyway. Inflation was surging already in the 1990s, the government had borrowed and spent 20% of GDP, which partially funded its intervention in the conflict in the Congo, and there was a drought in the most fertile areas as well.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
“My opinion, he should have encouraged the white farm owners to sell plots of land to their farm workers, by (1) using punitive taxation to make large farms uneconomic, and (2) providing suspensory loans to help the farm workers buy land. With a system like that, the productivity would never have fallen (and would ultimately have risen), and nobody would have gone hungry.”
Like I said, I’m not defending the means by which expropriation of the land was carried out. I did say above that New Zealand carried out its own reform process in the late 19th Century and naturally would advocate for Zimbabwe to have carried it out in a similar way.
Being a Geo-libertarian, I’m actually a passionate advocate of a graduated property tax and I’m looking at developing a proposal for it to be applied here.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
BB said: It is their country and therefore they and they alone should be left to sort it out.
Funnily enough BB, given the respective positions we have had on US intervention in Iraq, I actually think the UN should give a mandate to an international armed force to enter Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe from power.
But military actions like this should be UN mandated (and without the Permanent Security Council members’ veto) - not unilateral decisions like the one Bush (or, actually Cheney - Bush is too thick to understand the ramifications and advantages for the US and/or US-based corporates) took re Iraq.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Contrary to panda and BluePeter’s claims, I’m unaware of any Greens who have had anything nice to say about Robert Mugabe for many years.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Alright, here is my opinion and I genuinely apologise if anyone is offended.
The problem in Southern Africa is that Robert Mugabe is viewed in a similar light as Nelson Mandela; an independence hero that fought the white man. Unlike Mugabe, Mandela was smart enough to realise that he needed the co-operation of the white population to help South Africa reconstruct after nearly fifty years of apartheid.
The other problem is that many of the politicians in South Africa especially are complete idiots. I lost all respect for the ANC when their leaders started claiming that beetroot juice stops AIDS and comments that there is no AIDS in South Africa from our friend Mbeki.
Further to that, the other reason why there are problems in South Africa is that a massive welfare state has sprung up there and some people have learnt to exploit it to their own benefit. When I was there a couple of years ago, I took a trip to a slum village in Cape Town and then I saw a government developed suburb next door. To my utter amazement, outside one of these government houses (they would be about half the size of our state houses), was parked a Chrysler 300 which cost R300,000 (then about $60,000). That money would have given housing to at least ten of the families in the slum village, although the question would have been whether or not they would move as in the slum village, they get things like electricity for free (they steal it), and in the government houses, they have to pay for it.
The problem with much of Southern Africa is that when the whites left, idiots took over (except in Botswana, and except for Mandela)
June 26th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Mugabe is a murderous thug, he leads a gang of thieving murderers - the idea that there should ever be a “unity” government that includes those that have tortured, killed and starved those who opposed it is a disgusting form of appeasement. It is like saying that a husband that bashes his wife should be allowed to stay with the family after he’s abused all the kids who complain when he enriches himself and his mistress, whilst completely neglecting them.
People do NOT need to opt for “halfway measures in between”. Imagine Germany post 1945 with a Nazi-democratic coalition, how about a Marcos-Aquino coalition, how about a Ceaucescu-democratic coalition, or the Khmer Rouge-Vietnamese communist coalition (!).
When will you cultural relativists get into your head that a compromise with evil is a win for evil.
Democracy doesn’t require the overthrow of Mugabe half as much as justice and freedom - even if the majority voted for him genuinely, it wouldn’t justify rule that tortures, steals and shuts up the minority. It’s about freedom… funnily enough.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I would agree to an extent…the Zimbabwe Supreme Court has repeatedly foiled Mugabe in matters of…something, can’t really remember, but probably constitutional. So it depends on the nature of the judicial system too, whether they have power.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:58 am
But without the overthrow of Mugabe (impossible without an invasion right now), how is anybody going to get any justice or freedom? Without knowing the nature of any ‘unity’ government (perhaps an agreement for a proper election - am I naive?), it would seem that would be a more likely avenue for stopping the brutality (or er, having less brutality) than just yelling ‘no compromise’ from New Zealand.
It may be a win for evil, but if it is the only way apart from a war which reduces the impact of Mugabe, then why not?
An invasion sounds tempting..
June 26th, 2008 at 9:35 am
The useless UN and the blithering left may want to keep on talking and placating, but the answer is obvious.
We’re dealing with a nutcase.
Send in the guns, already.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I assume the ‘right’ somewhere are already dusting off their tanks BP?
June 26th, 2008 at 10:35 am
The right aren’t in control of the UN, StephenR.
Beginning to wonder what the UN actually does….
June 26th, 2008 at 10:37 am
“the blithering left may want to keep on talking and placating,”
Haven’t noticed the right leading the way when it comes to getting rid of dictators - they invented ‘appeasement’ after all.
The usual pattern in former colonies seems to be that colonial regimes hang on to power until the most vicious and bloody-minded opponents come to the fore, finally take power and repeat the cycle.
A government that includes Mugabe’s thugs should be unacceptable, problem is, I can’t think of any realistic and acceptable options.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:42 am
As a Green who is committed to the Green principle of non-violence, I actually think there is a case for sending in the tanks to remove Mugabe by force.
The principle of non-violent conflict resolution doesn’t mean absolute pacifism. Armed intervention can on occasion be justified, but only as a last resort in circumstances of inter-state aggression or intra-state situations of genocide or the gross and systematic violation of human rights. I think the Zimbawe situation meets the latter of those criteria.
But, unlike BP, I think such an operation can only be mandated by the UN. Use of force must be constrained by international law and regulated by legitimate decision-making structures, rather than some state or states rolling in with guns blazing as World Policeman. That approach leads to the debacle the US military and the Iraqi people are facing in Iraq.
Furthermore, it needs to occur with a mandated exit strategy and plan for the return to genuine democracy, both of which were also lacking in Iraq.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:49 am
It is clear to everyone he is not running fair elections, and his many hideous crimes are well documented.
If the UN can’t move on this, what can they move on? Doesn’t this situation indicate a weakness in process? To passive?
June 26th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Certainly right about a weakness in process - but not that sure where. The Security Council members were originally drawn from the victorious powers after World War 2!
I meant, what ‘right wing’ countries are calling out for an invasion BP? They’d be perfectly within their rights to put forth the option of military intervention (very carefully worded), but they aren’t doing it, are they?
June 26th, 2008 at 10:59 am
China and Russian will veto any attempt at UN intervention too - perhaps the flaw there is the need for consensus.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Fair point, StephenR.
I think this problem rests with the UN, and in my view they are too passive.
Perhaps process needs to be sharpened up when it comes to ensuring free and fair elections.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:14 am
The weakness of process is that the decision-making of the UN Security Council unduly reflects the interests of major powers in violation of the UN Charter’s principles of common interests and good faith.
New Zealand could be an international leader in calling for reform of the UN Security Council to make it compliant with the UN Charter - but we are not!
Such reform should include the establishment of:
- A verification committee, composed of experts from Security Council members and from the UN Secretariat, that would assess evidence submitted by a Member State pertaining to international peace and security for accuracy, before submitting it with comment to the Security Council; and
- A legal advisory committee, composed of legal experts from Security Council members and from the UN Secretariat, that would submit to the Security Council, in advance of consideration of any resolution authorising the use of force, confirmation of whether such force would be consistent with the purposes, principles and provisions of the UN Charter.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Yah, well, see toad’s 10:42 post BP.
The African Union has used its military a bit, and I think they certainly have a fair amount of legitimacy, especially on this matter.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Maybe someone needs to start a rumour that they’ve discovered oil in Zimbabwe and that Mugabe is hiding the discovery from the “colonialist West”
June 26th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Can’t someone ask George W to “help out”?
We could always pretend there is a load of oil there…
June 26th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Guys, saying that there is oil in Zimbabwe would not convince Bush to invade. There are one of two nations that you need the co-operation of before you could consider invading Zimbabwe - South Africa and Mozambique. We have already established that Mbeki is a complete idiot and he probably wouldn’t welcome an invasion force trampling through South Africa. I wouldn’t be sure about Mozambique though.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Mercenaries would be a fine idea, but NZ banned them because sometimes they are a bad idea. However, why shouldn’t a group of private individuals (coalition of expa Zimbabweans with friends), go in and defeat Zanu-PF. The obvious answer is that is spills blood - which of course is the same outcome if you do nothing.
The UN wont work because it operates on the lowest common denominator basis - the Human Rights Council has the likes of Syria elected to its ranks, a vile totalitarian one party state that executes and tortures political opponents at will. The simple point is that most countries in the world are run by governments that have little difficulty in throwing citizens behind bars, torturing them, suppressing the press and generally being abusive -certainly Africa does. Respect for individual rights resides mostly in Europe (and not all of Europe), Canada, USA, Aus/NZ, Japan, Chile and a few others.
Don’t forget if North Korea can run gulags with very young children in them without a peep from the UN, why should the UN act on Zimbabwe?
Of course it fumbled in the former Yugoslavia but steps were finally taken (as the US pushed hard along with Islamic states), and it wasn’t about oil (the usual tired leftwing anti-American comment)
June 27th, 2008 at 12:53 am
BluePeter: The right ARE in control of the UN. Bush vetoes whatever he doesn’t like. That is the primary reason WHY the UN is useless. It is an explicit neo-con goal to undermine any centre of power limiting, impeding or inhibiting American unilateral freedom of action. It is a right the S does not accord to any other nation. This IS what you champion of you back Bush. Go read the US national security statement. It’s a cut / paste job from the statement of principles of the PNAC.
June 27th, 2008 at 8:33 am
libertyscott, it would seem like the issue is not ’should’ (would seem indisputable), but can it legally do so? The fact is that the UN is bound to its own rules, often requiring some sort of consensus, and nothing will happen without the Security Council Permanent Members’ say so.