Reject the "Zimbabwe option"
Since taking office President Thabo
Mbeki seems to have been largely preoccupied with foreign affairs. No
sooner was his inauguration over than he set off for the Congo, trying
to fit together the peace deal that has eluded all comers so far.
Thereafter we have seen attempts to bring peace between Eritrea and
Ethiopia, a trip to Algiers to lecture the Organisation of African
Unity on globalisation — and even back home Mbeki is hardly safe from
visitors such as Laurent Kabila. Perhaps it was not surprising that
when the gold price crisis struck, the government’s first instinct was
to attempt to solve that by diplomatic action too, sending missions
scudding around Europe to preach an anti-gold sales message.
Unfortunately, commodity prices are not set in that way.
No doubt, Mbeki’s efforts are inspired by his belief that if the rest
of Africa is continually a theatre of turmoil and war not only can
there be no African renaissance but the image of a basket case
continent will rub off on South Africa too. This is all very well but
South Africa cannot make itself responsible for the whole continent and
its own domestic problems are extremely pressing. The huge number of
job losses announced since the election has created a jobs crisis about
which Mbeki has thus far been silent. With the South African Communist
Party interpreting the election victory as a triumph for the RDP and
Mbeki’s own supporters treating it as a vindication of Gear — which has
yet to be fully applied — the country is still some way from clarity
and coherence in economic affairs. In the end the success or failure of
the Mbeki government will be judged on what it achieves economically,
whether it can bring crime under control and whether it is willing to
adopt a far more courageous and high profile anti-Aids strategy than
anything we have seen to date. While there is no certainty that the
government could control events elsewhere in Africa even if it were to
despatch ground troops all round the continent, one thing is sure — if
South Africa fails to get its act together this will be bad news for
the whole of Africa.
Yet most of the ANC’s energy in domestic affairs since the election
seems to have been devoted to flailing attacks on the Democratic Party
(DP), now variously branded as fascist, neo-Nazi and even Nazi. So
intemperate and irrationally aggressive has the tone of these attacks
become that one is forced to wonder how committed the ANC really is to
pluralist democracy. Indeed, the open pursuit of “hegemony” and
Soviet-style attempts to exercise a political monopoly over all public
sector appointments raises the same question.
Postures and policies such as these are extremely expensive.
Collectively, they give the impression that the government’s instincts
are still the same as those which led African nationalists to the north
to create a series of socialist one-party states, every one of which
has failed utterly. Nothing could more effectively drive money and jobs
away than to give domestic and foreign investors such an impression. To
put it bluntly, the pursuit of hegemony will bring economic failure,
while the acceptance of an open, liberal pluralist democracy will help
create wealth and jobs. And if the government fails economically no
amount of political manipulation or deployment of cadres will prevent
the fruits of failure — rising unemployment, rising crime, falling real
incomes and deteriorating services — from damaging the government to
its very heart. For these things are all of a piece. Much of the
skilled manpower that the country needs to retain voted for the DP at
the last election. To treat such people as lepers and to use hate
speech against them will not merely create a sour, embittered and
racially polarised atmosphere but will encourage a further brain
drain.
The risk is that, without ever choosing or wanting that outcome, the
government may gradually back itself into the same corner that
President Robert Mugabe has ended up in. As Zimbabwe’s economy and
government failed, he simply turned up the volume of racist abuse
against his erstwhile opponents. This has further damaged the economy,
leading to yet more intemperate rhetoric — and so on down. Neither
Mbeki nor even his doughtiest opponents want to see either their
country or its president end up in that position. If the president
wants to build a truly united nation around a single theme, he need
look no further than a full-hearted refusal of this “Zimbabwe
option”.