THERE was nothing surprising about the brutal treatment by Zimbabwe’s police of opposition politicians arrested at a prayer meeting that the government had banned. Robert Mugabe has shown himself to be among the most disappointingly incompetent and unreasonable post-colonial African leaders. He has single-handedly plunged his country into economic and social chaos.
What has been surprising has been the attitude of the neighboring South African government. While international condemnation of the Mugabe regime has steadily increased, the administration of President Thabo Mbeki has stuck resolutely to the line that rather than confront the Zimbabwean authorities for their flagrant abuse of power, their fixed elections and their increasingly repressive measures, it is better to work through quiet dialogue. The harsh truth, however, is that a moderate and cautious approach has born no fruit at all. South Africa’s acquiescence has rather been taken as a signal by the Mugabe government that it can continue to behave as it likes — which is pretty bad.
At one point this week, a South African minister insisted that his government had no right whatsoever to intervene because Zimbabwe was a sovereign country. This protest surely must have disgusted many long-term supporters of a multiracial South Africa. The now-ruling African National Congress once appealed to the international community to take stringent measures against the reprehensible apartheid regime — even though South Africa was a sovereign country. They rejoiced when world pressure finally persuaded the white supremacists that they had embarked upon a policy that could no longer be sustained.
Ironically it was South Africa’s white government that once sustained the former Southern Rhodesia under the Ian Smith administration when it tried to preserve white domination by unilaterally declaring independence from British rule. Without the flow of trade and aid through South Africa, the Smith regime could not have survived the international sanctions imposed upon it. Equally important was the diplomatic support given by Pretoria to the breakaway state.
South Africa remains a beacon of hope for all of Africa. It is therefore all the more remarkable that the Mbeki government has not been more outspoken in its insistence that the Zimbabwean government return to the rule of law and civilized behavior. Some may see this reluctance as sinister. Zimbabwe’s economic disaster is firmly rooted in the seizure of white-owned farms, which were then handed out to Mugabe’s cronies and allowed to go to ruin. South Africa is now moving toward a similar policy, having failed to persuade many white farmers to sell their properties. The principle of returning land to the people from whom it was seized in colonial times is not wrong. It is how the return is managed, without disrupting economic output nor undermining confidence in a multiracial future, which is all important.
South Africa, the rainbow nation, still has considerable international credit. It must nonetheless take care. The president’s extraordinary denial of the frightening reality of his country’s AIDS epidemic was worrying. The continued acceptance of a brutal and repressive regime as its neighbor is even more so. South Africans owe it to themselves, as much as to the people of Zimbabwe to pressure President Mugabe to mend his ways.
