Zimbabwe The African Mark Of Cain

THE farcical run-off took place in Zimbabwe, predictably so, in the face of a world opinion dismissing the sham elections and the irrelevant result rightly so already in advance.

Mugabe’s legitimacy is one of a dictator, whose power is dependent upon a military junta’s good will. If not for the securocrats and their silent coup after the first round of elections, Zimbabwe would now be governed by political officebearers, who would have the legitimacy of a majority of the votes cast from the electorate.Even with the state organised terror machinery intimidating the people and forcing them to vote for an unwanted aging despot, his “victory” is nothing but a fallacy and mockery.Shame on the southern African community of states, who were willing to witness such a defiance of the people’s will.Intimidation, repression, physical harm, torture, rape and murder were all part of a so-called election campaign.At the end, the contestant – who unlike six years ago in 2002 – could no longer be denied the claim to legitimate political power, withdrew for admirably sound ethical and moral reasons.After all, the regime had disclosed its will for the systematic execution of brute force in such a ruthless way, that any further sacrifices among the ordinary people would have been unnecessary testimony to a situation already fully obvious.To add further misery, mutilation and death to the long register of human rights violations bordering on crimes against humanity would have been an irresponsible symbolic political act.Anyone who therefore blamed Tsvangirai for his withdrawal would not only be carelessly naïve, but either Machiavellian or hypocritical in the extreme.When the rule of law is no more than the law of the rulers, reference to formal procedures is in support of a totalitarian system, which cares not an iota about true legality as legitimacy.It dictates the rules of the game, and they follow only one goal: to stay in power, whatever the cost.’typical African’? The headlines produced since the turn of the century from within the former “jewel in the crown of Africa” (so said Nyerere to Mugabe at Zimbabwean Independence, when he asked him to handle it with care) contributed to the Eurocentric perception that Africa is all about hunger, civil war, HIV-AIDS and despots, who treat human rights with contempt and with impunity.That Mugabe’s pseudo-anti-imperialist populism made him for many a true patriot (mostly outside of his direct sphere of influence, since it is once thing to endorse his rhetoric and another to bear the consequences in your daily living) was part of an unfolding tragedy with ironical undertones.His finger-wagging posture to Blair, Brown, Bush and Co – who as Western leaders did indeed apply the usual double standards when criticising Zimbabwe and turning a blind eye to other blatant violations of human rights (including some of their own practices since the “war against terror” was unleashed) – was misleadingly suggesting defiance of Western imperialism.It was a mere smokescreen to cover up that he was just one of them, if not of the worse kind.After all, he oppressed his very own people, who were the basis for a successful chimurenga (liberation struggle) ending with sovereignty in 1980.Mugabe was then the figurehead of an anti-colonial liberation project based on popular support and the sacrifices of the povo (people).They had reasons to expect a better life afterwards and were bitterly disappointed by a new post-colonial elite, which had as its liberation project only their own privileges on the agenda.Mugabe and his cronies betrayed the people’s struggle.It is one thing if the British are blamed for not honouring their commitments under the Lancaster House agreement.One could argue that there were no reasons to expect more.But it is another matter when the new rulers betray their own people.This is what finally resulted after 20 years in a meaningful opposition, which had its roots in the workers and urban marginalised, who felt the brunt of the misery.A misery created not by the external forces and their imperialist agents but by the new clique, whose self-enrichment schemes and obsession for power, privilege and luxury treated ordinary people and their needs with utmost disrespect.The next chimurenga was not, as misleadingly claimed, one by the Zanu/PF regime under (self-inflicted) siege, but one by the people against the abuse of power by the government.In contrast to the one preceding Independence, it was fought by mainly non-violent means and against a heavily armed regime willing to use its weapons against those who brought them to power.The former liberation movement, elected at Independence as government, soon abused its position by the appliance of state terror against the people.The mass violence in Matabeleland showed that it doesn’t take a lot to turn victims into perpetrators and to act in the same fashion as the colonial oppressors did.Solidarity re-visited But this has little if anything to do with Africa.It is about the abuse of power and the reign of terror of cliques.This is a phenomenon of totalitarian mindsets and rulers all over the world.That these are also shaped in the struggle against foreign rule like in the case of Southern African liberation movements, is a sobering lesson from history.But it also is an obligation for those who supported the anti-colonial liberation struggles, wherever they come from and live.This support was an act of international solidarity, also from activists within Western countries, who mobilised for an anti-imperialist struggle as much as others elsewhere did.The support came from the majority of countries within the United Nations, from the Liberation Committee of the OAU and former Frontline States.Those who now pretend that Zimbabwe is “just another African case” are wrong.Such pseudo-argument points to the fact of those rulers (not leaders) wanting to remain in office for the rest of their lives unless driven out by sheer force of the people.This analogy, making reference to countries like Gabon, Libya, Gambia, the People’s Republic of Congo, Togo and so on (feel free to add) overlooks the one fundamental difference just noted: it was international solidarity and in particular also African solidarity, as well as an internal popular support by a majority of people, which brought to power the liberation movements in Southern Africa.It was a collective endeavour stretching far beyond the borders of the societies being liberated from settler colonialism.Independence in Zimbabwe 1980 (in as much as in Namibia 1990, as well as the democratic transition in South Africa 1994) was in part also an international achievement.This struggle was not only against unjust minority rule but as much for democracy, human rights, civil liberties and most importantly the necessary material redistribution of wealth to allow all these other values to become social and political reality for the broad majority.Once these goals are betrayed by a new post-colonial elite, solidarity requires a re-positioning and a responsibility to protect and support those cheated and denied the fruits of freedom, now continuing to seek emancipation from new forms of oppression and totalitarian rule.If we turn a blind eye to this challenge, we are accomplices of those who abused the earlier solidarity for their own narrow and selfish gains.And we are disloyal to the same values and norms we were faithful to when mobilising in support of the anti-colonial struggles.We ultimately betray not only others, but ourselves.That in the meantime many have realised this, shows in the recent statements by Cosatu and other mass-based organisations in the region and elsewhere, which ultimately at least came clean and abandoned their fence-sitting passivity.The solidarity among organised workers in Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia and Angola to refuse unloading the arms supply destined for the Zimbabwean junta from the Chinese “ship of shame” was a powerful reinstatement of the notion of international solidarity with the oppressed in a neighbouring country.It is an embarrassment to witness that few if any of the governments are prepared to take a similar stance, even though they claim to represent the very same people who acted in this spirit of people’s solidarity.What about democracy? Zimbabwe shows once again that Frantz Fanon’s prophecy remains a sad truth almost half a century after his untimely death.In “The Wretched of the Earth” he bemoaned “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” through a party, which “controls the masses, not in order to make sure that they really participate in the business of governing the nation, but in order to remind them constantly that the government expects from them obedience and discipline.”Fanon echoed the concerns articulated almost half a century earlier by Rosa Luxemburg.In her unfinished, posthumously-published manuscript on the Russian revolution, she conceded that, “every democratic institution has its limits and shortcomings, things which it doubtless shares with all other human institutions”.But against Lenin and Trotsky she argued that, “the elimination of democracy as such, is worse than the disease it is supposed to cure; for it stops up the very living source from which alone can come correction of all the innate shortcomings of social institutions.That source is the active, untrammelled, energetic political life of the broadest masses of the people.”Luxemburg categorically stated: “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all.Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.Not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.”Until gruesomely assassinated by reactionary militia, Luxemburg lived and advocated the essential nature of socialism as a democratic form of governance and freedom Robert Mugabe and his cronies do not and never had.Those who continue to support or tolerate his dictatorship based on military rule against the people they misleadingly claim to represent, betray all the African liberation project stands for.They deny the very same people their right to freedom just as colonialism did.By doing so they abort the notion of freedom.They carry the mark of Cain.They do not guard and protect African emancipation, but deny and delay it.They have sacrificed the same values and norms, which they claimed to promote during the “struggle days” and have through their inconsequential (non-)response forfeited any moral high grounds.- What a shame! * Henning Melber is Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjoeld Foundation in Uppsala/Sweden.As a son of German immigrants he joined SWAPO in 1974.If not for the securocrats and their silent coup after the first round of elections, Zimbabwe would now be governed by political officebearers, who would have the legitimacy of a majority of the votes cast from the electorate.Even with the state organised terror machinery intimidating the people and forcing them to vote for an unwanted aging despot, his “victory” is nothing but a fallacy and mockery.Shame on the southern African community of states, who were willing to witness such a defiance of the people’s will.Intimidation, repression, physical harm, torture, rape and murder were all part of a so-called election campaign.At the end, the contestant – who unlike six years ago in 2002 – could no longer be denied the claim to legitimate political power, withdrew for admirably sound ethical and moral reasons.After all, the regime had disclosed its will for the systematic execution of brute force in such a ruthless way, that any further sacrifices among the ordinary people would have been unnecessary testimony to a situation already fully obvious.To add further misery, mutilation and death to the long register of human rights violations bordering on crimes against humanity would have been an irresponsible symbolic political act.Anyone who therefore blamed Tsvangirai for his withdrawal would not only be carelessly naïve, but either Machiavellian or hypocritical in the extreme.When the rule of law is no more than the law of the rulers, reference to formal procedures is in support of a totalitarian system, which cares not an iota about true legality as legitimacy.It dictates the rules of the game, and they follow only one goal: to stay in power, whatever the cost.’typical African’? The headlines produced since the turn of the century from within the former “jewel in the crown of Africa” (so said Nyerere to Mugabe at Zimbabwean Independence, when he asked him to handle it with care) contributed to the Eurocentric perception that Africa is all about hunger, civil war, HIV-AIDS and despots, who treat human rights with contempt and with impunity.That Mugabe’s pseudo-anti-imperialist populism made him for many a true patriot (mostly outside of his direct sphere of influence, since it is once thing to endorse his rhetoric and another to bear the consequences in your daily living) was part of an unfolding tragedy with ironical undertones.His finger-wagging posture to Blair, Brown, Bush and Co – who as Western leaders did indeed apply the usual double standards when criticising Zimbabwe and turning a blind eye to other blatant violations of human rights (including some of their own practices since the “war against terror” was unleashed) – was misleadingly suggesting defiance of Western imperialism.It was a mere smokescreen to cover up that he was just one of them, if not of the worse kind.After all, he oppressed his very own people, who were the basis for a successful chimurenga (liberation struggle) ending with sovereignty in 1980.Mugabe was then the figurehead of an anti-colonial liberation project based on popular support and the sacrifices of the povo (people).They had reasons to expect a better life afterwards and were bitterly disappointed by a new post-colonial elite, which had as its liberation project only their own privileges on the agenda.Mugabe and his cronies betrayed the people’s struggle.It is one thing if the British are blamed for not honouring their commitments under the Lancaster House agreement.One could argue that there were no reasons to expect more.But it is another matter when the new rulers betray their own people.This is what finally resulted after 20 years in a meaningful opposition, which had its roots in the workers and urban marginalised, who felt the brunt of the misery.A misery created not by the external forces and their imperialist agents but by the new clique, whose self-enrichment schemes and obsession for power, privilege and luxury treated ordinary people and their needs with utmost disrespect.The next chimurenga was not, as misleadingly claimed, one by the Zanu/PF regime under (self-inflicted) siege, but one by the people against the abuse of power by the government.In contrast to the one preceding Independence, it was fought by mainly non-violent means and against a heavily armed regime willing to use its weapons against those who brought them to power.The former liberation movement, elected at Independence as government, soon abused its position by the appliance of state terror against the people.The mass violence in Matabeleland showed that it doesn’t take a lot to turn victims into perpetrators and to act in the same fashion as the colonial oppressors did.Solidarity re-visited But this has little if anything to do with Africa.It is about the abuse of power and the reign of terror of cliques.This is a phenomenon of totalitarian mindsets and rulers all over the world.That these are also shaped in the struggle against foreign rule like in the case of Southern African liberation movements, is a sobering lesson from history.But it also is an obligation for those who supported the anti-colonial liberation struggles, wherever they come from and live.This support was an act of international solidarity, also from activists within Western countries, who mobilised for an anti-imperialist struggle as much as others elsewhere did.The support came from the majority of countries within the United Nations, from the Liberation Committee of the OAU and former Frontline States.Those who now pretend that Zimbabwe is “just another African case” are wrong.Such pseudo-argument points to the fact of those rulers (not leaders) wanting to remain in office for the rest of their lives unless driven out by sheer force of the people.This analogy, making reference to countries like Gabon, Libya, Gambia, the People’s Republic of Congo, Togo and so on (feel free to add) overlooks the one fundamental difference just noted: it was international solidarity and in particular also African solidarity, as well as an internal popular support by a majority of people, which brought to power the liberation movements in Southern Africa.It was a collective endeavour stretching far beyond the borders of the societies being liberated from settler colonialism.Independence in Zimbabwe 1980 (in as much as in Namibia 1990, as well as the democratic transition in South Africa 1994) was in part also an international achievement.This struggle was not only against unjust minority rule but as much for democracy, human rights, civil liberties and most importantly the necessary material redistribution of wealth to allow all these other values to become social and political reality for the broad majority.Once these goals are betrayed by a new post-colonial elite, solidarity requires a re-positioning and a responsibility to protect and support those cheated and denied the fruits of freedom, now continuing to seek emancipation from new forms of oppression and totalitarian rule.If we turn a blind eye to this challenge, we are accomplices of those who abused the earlier solidarity for their own narrow and selfish gains.And we are disloyal to the same values and norms we were faithful to when mobilising in support of the anti-colonial struggles.We ultimately betray not only others, but ourselves.That in the meantime many have realised this, shows in the recent statements by Cosatu and other mass-based organisations in the region and elsewhere, which ultimately at least came clean and abandoned their fence-sitting passivity.The solidarity among organised workers in Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia and Angola to refuse unloading the arms supply destined for the Zimbabwean junta from the Chinese “ship of shame” was a powerful reinstatement of the notion of international solidarity with the oppressed in a neighbouring country.It is an embarrassment to witness that few if any of the governments are prepared to take a similar stance, even though they claim to represent the very same people who acted in this spirit of people’s solidarity. What about democracy? Zimbabwe shows once again that Frantz Fanon’s prophecy remains a sad truth almost half a century after his untimely death.In “The Wretched of the Earth” he bemoaned “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” through a party, which “controls the masses, not in order to make sure that they really participate in the business of governing the nation, but in order to remind them constantly that the government expects from them obedience and discipline.”Fanon echoed the concerns articulated almost half a century earlier by Rosa Luxemburg.In her unfinished, posthumously-published manuscript on the Russian revolution, she conceded that, “every democratic institution has its limits and shortcomings, things which it doubtless shares with all other human institutions”.But against Lenin and Trotsky she argued that, “the elimination of democracy as such, is worse than the disease it is supposed to cure; for it stops up the very living source from which alone can come correction of all the innate shortcomings of social institutions.That source is the active, untrammelled, energetic political life of the broadest masses of the people.”Luxemburg categorically stated: “Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all.Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.Not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.”Until gruesomely assassinated by reactionary militia, Luxemburg lived and advocated the essential nature of socialism as a democratic form of governance and freedom Robert Mugabe and his cronies do not and never had.Those who continue to support or tolerate his dictatorship based on military rule against the people they misleadingly claim to represent, betray all the African liberation project stands for.They deny the very same people their right to freedom just as colonialism did.By doing so they abort the notion of freedom.They carry the mark of Cain.They do not guard and protect African emancipation, but deny and delay it.They have sacrificed the same values and norms, which they claimed to promote during the “struggle days” and have through their inconsequential (non-)response forfeited any moral high grounds.- What a shame! * Henning Melber is Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjoeld Foundation in Uppsala/Sweden.As a son of German immigrants he joined SWAPO in 1974.