March 11, 2002
Whose
Problem Is It Anyway?
Although,
according to The Daily Telegraph, those considered disloyal
to Robert Mugabe are today in Zimbabwe being, 'subjected to terror
on a scale that bears comparison with the Khmer
Rouge', it would be dishonest if I claimed that that was what
bothered me the most. No, I'm afraid that what I found most depressing,
in as much as it was the sole thing that triggered anything more
than metaphorical shoulder shrugging, was the desecration of the
Anglican cathedral in Harare.
Zanu
goons stripped the church of various 'colonial' memorials,
for which read, monuments pertaining to white people. It wasn't
so much the obvious racism of it, as the sheer stupid disrespect
to the past that rankled. Mugabe and his fellow kleptocrats, in
their fondness for renaming streets, and indeed, whole cities, show
an appreciation for the palimpsest that makes a nation, and in,
twenty years on, vandalising a Christian meeting house, the
fundamental fraud that always underlay African 'liberation' movements
is betrayed yet again. Bad an idea as nationalism is everywhere,
in Africa the virus was unleashed in bodies – the successor
states to European colonies – quite incapable of bearing it.
Contrary to what every passing Conservative will tell you, Africa
is 'our fault'. The question this admits is, what, if anything,
should we do, in addition to that we already have done?
The
first thing to reflect on when considering Zimbabwe is why we're
considering it at all. There's plenty of misery everywhere else
in Africa – think
merely on the Congo, where, through incompetence as much as
anything, elections have been reduced to a fine old choice of one
candidate. No, the reason we're looking at Zimbabwe is because there's
white folk involved. In the case of Britain, to dredge up a phrase
beloved by the right in this country, our 'kith and kin'. And who'd
want to be a white Zimbabwean farmer? Brave people, one and all,
the font of whatever prosperity this poor place ever once possessed,
but indisputably, in their recent travails, the reason why so much
Western media interest has been lavished on Zimbabwe of late.
To
put the argument that, it's not the suffering of MDC activists which,
uniquely of all African democrats, earns our interest, in context,
think for a minute about Apartheid era South Africa. In Britain,
and, as far as I could tell, all the other English speaking countries,
South Africa was up there as heap big 1980s news story – night after
night some wickedness of PW Botha would be paraded in front of us
by the BBC. At the time, sour right wing types muttered, there's
stuff happening elsewhere you know, but always the vast interest
we were meant to have in the fate of South African blacks dictated
the news agenda of Western media. Why? Again, because, unlike pretty
much everywhere else where unpleasantness was going down, South
Africa had white people involved. Compare and contrast the attention
South Africa receives from whatever your preferred news source is
today, to that which it got before white minority rule was
overthrown. There then, as Zimbabwe now, our thoroughly racist liberal
press has eyes only for the comings and goings of white people.
To
rant for a second longer, for the Anglophone fourth estate (and,
it would appear, for the press in most first world countries) the
preference very firmly is: white people doing terrible things to
black people; black people doing uncongenial things to whites, if
that's all that's on offer; and, if there's very little to
go round, whites being uncivilized to other whites will do. Black
on black action, however, is not box office. You could, with mathematical
precision, demonstrate this through the behaviour of any British
or American television channel. For your equation, take, the number
of people killed in all the Balkan conflicts of the last decade,
and the number killed in, oh, the Great Lakes in the 90s, and then
place those two figures over the amount of airtime devoted, respectively,
to each .
So – and I can almost feel the hand-wringing pleasure liberals get
when they say this – you and me, by paying attention to Zimbabwe,
when we could turn our fine minds to dozens of other issues, are
part of the problem too . . . and that's where we have to sit
up and say, actually, if I want to be interested in, say, Zimbabwe,
and bored rigid by [jabs pen randomly at opened atlas] Chad's
misery, that's very much up to me. True enough, and looking at Zimbabwe,
what do we see? Well, I'm afraid, devoid of her continental context,
far too many of us see far too much.
This
column's very own
blog is a compendious source of scepticism about Zimbabwe, or
more precisely, about the notion that here, in succession to all
those crusades so willingly entered into by Messrs Blair and Clinton,
is yet another offence against decency, requiring the Royal Marines,
or the US Marines, or whatever instrument Western morality best
sees fit, to right it. Though, and you'll have noticed our uncharacteristic
hesitation to use arms, it would be to set me haring off again after
liberal racism, were I to reflect on our willingness to bomb Serbs,
on any pretext, as compared to our comparative reluctance to bomb
Zimbabweans. I'm probably missing something, much like the way I'm
puzzled by the whole 'Zimbabwe: worst thing happening on the planet,
at the moment' schtick.
Take
just the death rate, standing at, at least forty, no one can doubt
that Robert Mugabe presides over a lousy state of affairs. Yet,
neither in the context of neighbouring states, nor post-independence
African history is this anything to write home about, or broadcast
endless TV special after TV special on, one might have thought.
Which African country has violence-free elections? Which ever had?
When Nigeria, one
of our great colonial 'success stories' emerged in 1960, clothed
in every democratic institution Westminster could bestow, the result
was that
The
1964-65 elections saw very low voter participation, followed by
increasing violence that led to the death of as many as 2,000 persons.
After an abortive coup attempt in January 1966, the army took over
under Major General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo, and a Federal
Military Government was formed. Ironsi's tenure was short-lived
because northern officers staged a countercoup in July, in which
Ironsi was killed and Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon, a Christian
from the middle belt area, took control. Tension increased between
the infantry, who were mainly of northern origin, and the Igbo soldiers
in the south. The conflict led to the bloody civil war of 1967-70
(also known as the Biafran War) that took the lives of about 2 million
persons.
Of
course a civil war (or a defeated effort at self-determination,
call it what you will) doesn't help, but looking to post-colonial
Africa for pristine elections isn't especially sensible.
Ironic
detachment would seem to have pervaded the international crowd of
harpies that too many professional election monitors amount to (SOAM,
SADC, and a Commonwealth Observer Mission are all at work in Zimbabwe
– the EU ran into a bit of bother with its lot when Mugabe
took against nationals from the protestant member states), if
the words of one Ugandan observer are anything to go by:
[on
being asked if the elections would be free and fair] We stopped
using language like 'free and fair' 10 years ago. We believe that
an election can be free without being fair, or fair without being
free. That's why we stick to saying whether the results are a credible
expression of the will of the people, or not.
And
you can see why it would take special training, in the absence of,
oh, valid ballots, to be able to divine that.
Ah,
but that's just 'affected Tory cynicism: throw in a reference to
the past (funny how you lot always find that larded with bad things
when it suits you) and you can dismiss anything in the here and
now – it's just an excuse for inaction', says you, being a progressive
sort. At least, that's whom one would imagine ones interlocutors
to be, but the weirdness of recent events has been that it's serried
shades of rightist who keep whining away about issues like, 'where
best to land the Marines as we bring democracy to . . .'? [My atlas
is now shut, so you'll have to stab your own pen]. However, their
(these strange self-declared, often fairly recent, 'conservatives')
chief concerns are no more convincing coming from them than they
would be from any Sontagian halfwit.
On
the simple matter of, 'is Comrade Bob telling the truth?' Pretty
much, when it comes to his manifesto issues. In point of fact – and I can see no reason for shame about this – Mugabe is, as he
keeps claiming, being opposed by a political movement that both
attracts the support of his own, aboriginal as it were, white elite,
and of foreign backers. He does want to complete a vile redistribution
of land promised by Britain at Lancaster House (admittedly, he wants
to redistribute this land to political chums), and Morgan Tsvangirai
doesn't, as much – and that does cost votes in the country areas.
Turning
to the issue of Britain's 'obligations' to Britons-in-Zimbabwe,
it has to be pointed out that they're only British when they're
in trouble. On the whole, these people, five or more generations
into life in Rhodesia, have, even after the passing of white rule,
found life in Zimbabwe more entrancing than the prospect of life
actually lived in Britain. More profoundly, if we demand the right
to intervene thus on behalf of our nationals abroad, do foreign
governments have similar claims upon us? if it could be demonstrated
that 'Nigerians' resident here, whether of Nigerian descent or actual
passport holders, were suffering racism in Britain, does this mean
that we should prepare to receive a delegation from their
supposed government? To me, white Zimbabweans are just that, Zimbabweans.
Other
claims upon our common humanity are advanced in favour of intervention
– though, again, it is notable how unsketched out, in comparison
to our Balkan, or even our Middle Eastern adventures, these are
in the case of Mission Africa – but one does have to keep coming
back to, 'why Zimbabwe?' It's, patently, not where the most harm
is being done, and therefore where the most good could be accomplished.
We sigh when white judges are driven off the Supreme Court precisely
because, for the better part of two decades there was a fairly independent
judiciary to be bothered about. When, out of a crashed police car,
tumble forth ballot papers 'cast' in favour of Mugabe, obviously
it's sordid, but at the same time, it's hapless. It's like nothing
as much as the manner in which Milosevic fell – Mugabe is having
to attempt to rig an election, exactly due to his inability to rule
by dictatorial fiat.
Mind
you, much as, if the people of Yugoslavia had been unwise enough
to re-elect Slobo, we in the West, for all our prattling that we
were bombing them for the sake of democracy, would not have countenanced
recognising the result for an instant, it is a high principle in
these affairs that we already know who should win the Zimbabwean
election, and heaven help the people of that country if they are
silly enough to vote the wrong way.
I
started by saying that the coming into being of modern African states
is the core sin in all this – decolonization, whatever one makes
of colonization, is the great liberal crime against humanity of
the twentieth century. In the specific instance of Zimbabwe, however,
what we are seeing is not a failure of the state, but of the regime.
Mugabe's time is almost done, and hence, in the flux entailed thereby,
all these things the BBC finds to show us. Masterly inaction by
Western governments would see this problem take care of itself (and
not just because various important bits apparently keep falling
off President Bob), if only they could resist the constant clamour
for action from their own domestic media.
Despite
all this, I can't say that I would throw my hands up in horror,
should Mugabe attempt to steal, as it seems certainly would be the
case, the election, and, as a result, Britain intervened. It's not
even the hardest thing in the world to imagine how – the army's
(ours that is) always training in Namibia, the Caprivi Strip takes
you close enough to Zimbabwe, we appear to like this sort of thing,
we greatly enjoyed Sierra Leone, we'd have a friend in Morgan, heck,
lots of, not so much reasons, as opportunities to get the job done,
if we decide that this is where the fancy takes us. And why isn't
that anywhere near as shocking as what the US is up to, in dozens
of countries across the globe? In part it is a question of scale
(i.e., Britain's self-evidently not attempting to secure global
hegemony, which, not least amongst its demerits, currently involves
us being subject to US tutelage), and, in part, this is a more plausible
admixture of intervention due to morality and self-interest than
most the US gets up to. As I keep droning on, the colossal pity
about American intervention overseas is that it's so inept: being,
in far too many cases, neither moral, nor sensible from the point
of view of her national interest, whether that national interest
is viewed through an imperial prism or not.
Out
there somewhere, some of you will now be screaming very loudly,
'you hypocritical swine, you're not opposed to imperialism per se,
merely the American variant'. True enough, and we'll chat about
that, in detail, some other time, but for now: though I think there's
nothing intrinsically wrong with imperialism, that's the whole point
about Toryism, or competent Conservatism for that matter – horses
for courses, or, as they'll insist on phrasing it at universities,
it's all to do with particularism. Imperialism might sit well with
the British experience, but it may, equally, sit badly with that
of another country. I don't know if it's because of some primordial
republican virtue being transgressed against, or whether your rulers
are simply too nice, or too nasty, but you're, plain and simply,
not very good at imperialism. I'd get out of this line of work,
and leave it to those who put most of the problems your rulers claim
to be so exercised by there in the first place. Britain should tidy
up her own mess; indeed, were we, independently of American sanction,
to do this, we would do American anti-imperialists the signal favour
of removing neo-con pretexts for US intervention overseas.
So
there you have it – the quickest way to America being a Republic
again is for Britain to be an empire again. Handy that.
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