Tag Archives: zimbabwe

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A WP article that I posted on Monday, "2008 Zimbabwean cholera outbreak", was linked on the front page yesterday.

Furthermore, its an ongoing incident, with hundreds dead and tens of thousands infected.

I regret that I didn’t post this article last month, when cholera was already wreaking havoc in Harare and other areas with poor sanitation.

Worse, its becoming an international issue, with over 160 diagnoses of the disease across the border in South Africa, which has an extremely large Zimbabwean community in econopolitical exile.

This also comes during a stalemate between ZANU-PF/JOC and the MDC (both factions), as the government is functionally moribund without any new ministers appointed from the coalition agreement reached a few months back. While Zimbabwe’s government has allowed this to happen by extension of their utter lack of economic savvy or forethought (why would sanctions against certain ZANU-PF-affiliated persons, not the whole of the state, tie into why Zimbabwe’s plight is so frighteningly dreadful?), a few of the Western states are (reluctantly) giving emergency aid to the country, just enough to (supposedly) suppress the outbreak.

Will the AU pull an Anjouan or a Togo on Zimbabwe?

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In May this year, the African Union sent an invasion force to the island of Anjouan (part of the Comoros federation), which was ruled at the time by a regional president who had won a rigged election and, in the eyes of the Comorosians, overstayed his time as president of the island. So the Comoros requested the African Union to send a multinational force to overthrow the regional president and arrest him. It was a spectacular invasion where no one died, and the rebel president had fled to French territory nearby to avoid arrest and transport to the Comoros (he was arrested by the French, though).

In 2005, the long-time dictator of Togo, Gnassingbe Eyadema, died at a ripe old age; however, despite constitutional mandates for the President of the National Assembly to succeed the president of the nation on the latter’s death or resignation until elections were held, Eyadema’s son, Faure Gnassingbe, was given the post by the military, which also amended the constitution to legalize the move. The response was angry and swift: violent street protests against Faure’s usurping of the presidency broke out, and the African Union reacted by temporarily ostracizing the Faure government (sanctions, diplomatic withdrawal, etc.) until Faure was replaced by the National Assembly President before post-mortem elections. Faure stepped down temporarily, then won the election and resumed his rule with lots of electoral fraud.

So if the African Union has such a heart or conscious for electorally-backed (albeit often fraudulent), rather than militarily-backed, rulers and governances, then how will the African Union react if Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe loses the June 27 election to Morgan Tsvangirai but stays true to his (and his wife’s…and his general’s) word to never leave the presidential palace without bloodshed?

Will the African Union react with sanctions? Will the African Union treat any of Mugabe’s post-defeat belligerent antics as a military coup? Or will it (OMG) send its own multinational force into the country if Mugabe entrenches himself into the presidential residence in preparation for a last-ditch Chimurenga?

Plus, if Tsvangirai and the MDC do win the electoral mandate after all, if this drama does eventually end, how will the MDC deal with the Zimbabwean military, or with the military’s currently-dominating influence on the government (as exemplified by the Joint Operations Command)? Does the MDC plan to go for a new constitutional platform that strips the military of quite a bit of its power?

I suppose that Tsvangirai, after seeing how Mugabe had abolished the office of prime minister in the 1987 constitutional amendments and had made the president’s office both head of state and head of government, would do best to not just reverse Mugabe’s actions but also permanently wed the President’s mandate to the majority in the Parliament.

This would be the same or similar situation as to the current form of government in South Africa, Guyana, Switzerland, and Botswana.

Why a parliament-dependent executive, though?

I think that such a form of government makes the head of both state and government accountable (and maybe force some loyalty) to the largest party in parliament, of which he will most likely be a member or a head. In this atmosphere, the military is only an apparatus that is called to action by the president on very rare occasions.

A few disadvantages may exist for such a system (single-party-dominant, intra-party rivalries may become more important than inter-party contests), but it may, overall, benefit the MDC as a party if it manages to gain more of a majority in the Parliament in the next parliamentary election.

Will it benefit the people of Zimbabwe? It may get the military out of their hair and may even lead to a reverse exodus of the emigrants back from South Africa and Botswana, but will it result in the improvement of social services and revitalization of the economy from the stagnation caused by crappy economic policies of the Mugabe regime, coupled by international sanctions?

That has yet to be addressed. Hopefully, the MDC won’t be influenced by the ANC’s issues with handling the economy and social services at a municipal level.

Ohh…does that Rainbow taste too sweet?

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South Africa has been burning for almost two weeks now.

So yes, economically-driven anti-immigration nativism goes full-throttle with pumping adrenaline, and South Africa STILL plans to handle the 2010 World Cup.

Everybody’s condemning the violence, everybody’s shocked at the picture of a Mozambican man being immolated on the street with the covering of his own flame-saturated blanket, Zuma’s pissed that the nativists – from taxi drivers to miners – are using “his” 2007 hit song as a rallying anthem as they go searching for ‘dem furreners” shack-by-shack so that they can throw them out onto the street and burn their hovels to the ground (and maybe butcher them with a machete), the ANC is blaming everyone from the IFP to some unnamed pro-apartheid organization bent on discrediting it ahead of next year’s elections, and they’re being blamed by the DA, the IFP and the Zimbabwean diaspora community for shifting the blame and shirking more effective anti-violence measures against the rioting citizens.

What the fuck is new in this picture?

Oh, maybe the fact that the Zimbabweans are tucked between a rock and a hard place: they can’t go back but they can’t stay in South Africa (and they mostly can’t afford to head across the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. Otherwise, they might become fish food floating in a boat to God knows where.). So…stay and die or go and die?

But ooh, the Zimbabweans are fleeing from Mugabe, who’s trying to “liberate” his homeland from the clutches of the old Rhodies and big bad Britain, so the Zims who are fleeing must be part of the problem! Them Zims are taking our jobs! They’re sending valuable income back to their home country! They aren’t true black people! Let’s get ’em!

Togo, Kenya and (probably) soon Zimbabwe

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I name the three countries in the title because these are three countries which, within the last five years, have played host to political crises in which the largest opposition party’s supporters are willing to take their post-election grievances – often right after an election – and air them out onto the street in a manner that would force the incumbent government to reckon with the demands of the opposition.

Or at least, that’s what happened in Togo (2005, when the son of Gnassingbe Eyadema bypassed the President of the Senate in presidential succession following his father’s death, leading to anti-government violence and African Union sanctions, resulting in a general election) and Kenya (2007-2008, when the entire country exploded in random ethnopolitical violence after the incumbent was announced the winner of the election a few days before New Year’s Eve, leading to negotiations mediated and/or supported by the UN and AU and resulting in a currently-negotiating formation of a prime minister’s office for the first time in over 40 years).

So now in Zimbabwe, you have an obstinate incumbent who thinks he’s won, a persistent challenger who’s declared victory, an electoral commission that won’t release the results, a bunch of “war veterans” who’re raiding farms and knocking heads, several protesters who’re fed up with the incumbent, and everyone of these groups have drawn in their choice piece of air until they can hear anything from the High Court. Oh, and that diaspora that’s spread to quite a wide geographic range.

Either way that the High Court will lean, it is likely that there will be violence and bloodshed in reaction.

The main question to ask now is this: are South Africa and Botswana ready to welcome a flood of refugees from a familiar face?

And if this is to be the result, is it a sign that sub-Saharan Africa has entered into a new era in its political history, where the military has less of a role to play than it once did in similar crises during the 20th century?