HARARE, 9 December 2003 — Zimbabwe Sunday night gave the cosy club of Commonwealth countries its most dramatic jolt since the South African apartheid furor more than 40 years ago, but its withdrawal from the 54-nation grouping is likely to have more symbolic than practical impact.
While several countries have fallen foul of the body over its 72-year history, sanctions and suspensions have usually proven only temporary before members are invited back into the fold.
And it is an important fold; though the common connection for almost all members is an often inglorious colonial past, the Commonwealth offers a useful forum for leaders to meet informally and establish common agendas.
Robert Mugabe will not mind leaving on economic grounds. His country may be suffering its worst economic slump since the guerrilla warfare of the 1970s, with food and fuel shortages, a currency crisis and runaway annual inflation of above 500 percent, but the Commonwealth’s funds are extremely limited and its aid packages tend to be modest.
And on political grounds, though self-exclusion will hurt, suspension was even more humiliating. The Commonwealth has few rules apart from the chief tenet which Mugabe flouted: Respect for democracy.
The grouping has made it clear that in rigging elections last year and violently muzzling his opponents, Mugabe has lost the right to sit at the table.
In Harare, his leading critics said they were not surprised by his action. They said he was furious about the continued suspension and did not want to submit to any Commonwealth investigation or to pressure.
“A rogue state like Zimbabwe needs to be isolated,” said Iden Wetherell, editor of the Zimbabwe Independent. He said that even though Mugabe had quit the Commonwealth, there was no doubt that he still wanted to be in the club.
Most of Zimbabwe’s neighbors are Commonwealth members, and Mugabe’s decision leaves his country even more isolated internationally.
“Despite all the rhetoric, few doubt that Mugabe wants to be readmitted,” Wetherell said. “He wants to strut upon the world stage. The suspension has been a huge humiliation for him.
“The announcement that he is quitting is just a case of bad sour grapes. The Commonwealth continues, by dangling the carrot of good governance before him, to hold out a real prospect of securing his readmission, and it should hold firm.”
A Foreign Office spokesman said Sunday night that Zimbabwe could only rejoin “when it returns to the values of democracy and tolerance on which the Commonwealth was founded”.
There have been endless rows since the organization was formed in 1931 — with South Africa and its apartheid policies being the most divisive. That country rejected the criticism of fellow members and withdrew in 1961, only to return in 1994 after the end of apartheid.
Others too have fallen foul, including the host of this weekend’s summit, Nigeria. It was suspended in 1995 when its military government executed the writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and was readmitted four years ago after a return to civilian rule.
Fiji was suspended in 1987 and readmitted in 1997, only to be suspended again in 2000 after a short-lived military takeover. Pakistan too was suspended from membership of key Commonwealth committees after its military coup in 1999.
Some larger nations such as Britain give the impression that the Commonwealth is an irrelevance, but others view it more positively. Mozambique paid the organization the ultimate accolade of asking to join even though it had been a Portuguese rather than a British colony.
Members of the Zimbabwean opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has welcomed Zimbabwe’s continued suspension.
The MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi, in Abuja on the sidelines of the summit, said that Mugabe’s abrupt withdrawal should not change the Commonwealth’s decision.
