Mbeki's last chance on Zimbabwe

Editorial.

Summary - Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka believes South Africa can learn from Zimbabwe how to accelerate South Africa’s land reform programme. Cognisant of recurring complaints that land reform in South Africa is proceeding too slowly, she states that it needs “a bit of oomph” and that a “skills exchange” with Zimbabwe might imbue it with greater impulsion.

We agree that South Africa has lessons to learn from Zimbabwe, as do Mlambo-Ngcuka and President Thabo Mbeki. They are radically different lessons, however.

The lesson for Mlambo-Ngcuka is that she cannot make statements like that without being held to account for them, even if she does so with a disarming smile and a nervous laugh. As an educated person she should know that remarks made in jest are often either taken at face value or, if they are insensitive about the suffering of innocent citizens, as hers were, viewed as gratuitously offensive and nauseating.

The lesson for Mbeki is that he cannot escape responsibility for the remarks of his ministers when they convey sympathy for and/or admiration of Mugabe’s policies.

Mbeki stands accused of failing to speak out unequivocally and timeously against Mugabe’s violation of human rights. Instead of condemning them, he is on record as complaining that the only reason why they invoked disapprobation in Britain, Europe and the United States was that the main victims were white farmers, conveniently forgetting that many black farm workers were summarily evicted by invading “war veterans” along with the white farmers.

Mbeki has noted more recently — and with apparent gratitude — that Mugabe halted his “land reform” policies in the early 1990s to avoid frightening South Africa’s white government and thereby delaying the settlement that led to the election of an African National Congress-led government. It invites the deduction that Mugabe’s decision to defer his land redistribution programme accounts, partly at least, for South Africa’s “quiet diplomacy” in the face of post-1994 human rights violations in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe’s profligacy and desperate need for funds from South Africa has given Mbeki a chance to exercise leverage on Mugabe to negotiate a new dispensation with his political opponents, church leaders and civil society generally. If Mbeki does not follow through to ensure that a new government is elected to power in free and fair elections, international patience may snap and his role may be reduced to that of a spectator.

Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka believes South Africa can learn from Zimbabwe how to accelerate South Africa’s land reform programme. Remarks she made in the wake of her earlier commitment to reappraise the willing buyer, willing seller principle that underpins land redistribution in South Africa leave no doubt about that. Cognisant of recurring complaints that land reform in South Africa is proceeding too slowly, she states that it needs “a bit of oomph” and that a “skills exchange” with Zimbabwe might imbue it with greater impulsion.

We agree that South Africa has lessons to learn from Zimbabwe, as do Mlambo-Ngcuka and President Thabo Mbeki. They are radically different lessons, however.

If South Africa wants to learn how to transform its status as a country whose granaries are well stocked to one that is dependent on food aid, it need only replicate the policies pursued by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, starting with his surreptitious approval of the invasion of productive white-owned farms by disgruntled war veterans or men purporting to be heroes of Zimbabwe’s war of liberation or chimurenga.

The litany of Mugabe’s disastrous mistakes is still ringing in the air for all to hear: violation of property rights, refusal to heed court injunctions, awarding expropriated farms to a greedy elite, abandonment of the rule of law, failure to empower the “new settlers” with the required skills and capital to become productive farmers and, finally, in a culminating act of madness, the wanton destruction of houses and shops in the informal economy under the demonising slogan murambatsvina (drive out filth).

The lesson for Mlambo-Ngcuka is that she cannot make statements like that without being held to account for them, even if she does so with a disarming smile and a nervous laugh. As an educated person she should know that remarks made in jest are often either taken at face value or, if they insensitive about the suffering of innocent citizens, as hers were, viewed as gratuitously offensive and nauseating. A cartoon on the last page of Focus shows that it is not the first time Mlambo-Ngcuka has expressed sympathy for Mugabe’s abhorrent policies.

The lesson for Mbeki is that he cannot escape responsibility for the remarks of his ministers when they convey sympathy for and/or admiration of Mugabe’s policies, as several of his ministers have done in the past few years, including Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza. The same deduction applies to his apparent condonation of the hero’s welcome accorded to Mugabe’s former confidant, Emmerson Mnangagwa, at the African National Congress’ 2002 national conference, his complicity as Zimbabwe’s minister of state security in the Matabele massacres in the early 1980s by the North Korean-trained 5th Brigade notwithstanding.

Mbeki stands accused of failing to speak out unequivocally and timeously against Mugabe’s violation of human rights. Instead of condemning them in plain language, he is on record as complaining that the only reason why they invoked disapprobation in Britain, Europe and the United States was that the main victims were white farmers, conveniently forgetting that many black farm workers were summarily evicted by invading “war veterans” along with the white farmers.