The African World

I remember reading of the origin of the term 'Pyrrhic
victory.' It came from a battle in which Pyrrhus, the
King of ancient Epirus, won a victory over the Romans
at such a terrible cost, that he and his forces were
ruined.

Robert Mugabe has been declared the victor in the
Zimbabwean elections. The elections were so tainted by
murder and intimidation that they lost all credibility.
Leaders of African nations who, hitherto, had been
reluctant to criticize the undemocratic practices of
President Mugabe have now spoken out. South Africa's
former President Nelson Mandela felt compelled to break
with his successor, President Thabo Mbeki, in
denouncing President Mugabe and his 'failure of
leadership.' In the middle of this, President Mugabe
stands firm, as if a character out of a Shakespearean
play, proclaiming his eternal rule and willingness to
go to war should he lose an election.

Progressives around the world must now take a deep
breath and reflect on the situation. Those who have
been entranced by President Mugabe's anti-imperialist
rhetoric must do an assessment of the situation on the
ground. The Black farm workers who worked the land of
the white farmers, did not measurably benefit from
Mugabe's land seizures; inflation is at a scale
virtually unimaginable in economics; hundreds of
thousands of people were removed from their homes two
years ago in the middle of the Zimbabwean winter,
having no place to go, allegedly because they were
vagrants living in shacks, but more likely because they
were a base of support for the opposition;
assassinations and physical intimidation became the
modus operandi of pro-Mugabe militias in the aftermath
of the first round of elections this spring as a way of
suppressing the opposition; and the homophobic
President continues to ignore the depth of the HIV/AIDS
crisis in his country.

As noted Syracuse Professor Horace Campbell remarked in
a debate on the Pacifica program 'Democracy Now!',
while it is absolutely true that there are other
countries in Africa (and certainly around the world)
who have horrendous human rights practices, this in no
way lets Zimbabwe off the hook. Zimbabwe was, according
to its leaders, supposedly attempting to carry out more
than political independence from colonialism, but was
to be engaged in a project of social transformation.
For this reason alone we should hold Zimbabwe, and
President Mugabe, to a higher standard than we would
someone like Egypt's President Mubarak.

The dilemma for progressives in the USA who support the
people of Zimbabwe revolves around what steps we can
take. In fact, what we are most often asked is whether
we support the various actions by the Bush
administration to put pressure on President Mugabe.

I wish that I could support such efforts. I simply
cannot. Neither the USA nor Britain possesses the moral
authority to engage constructively in the Zimbabwe
crisis. At best they can play a supportive role where
African nations are taking the lead. The Bush
administration is not in a position to lecture anyone
on human rights or genuine elections. This fact,
however, should NOT mean that we remain silent simply
because President Bush holds President Mugabe in
distain. The enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our
friend.

Many progressives in South Africa have taken a leading
role in opposing the Mugabe tyranny, and they have done
this without the support of their own government.
Several weeks ago, for instance, a Chinese ship full of
weapons destined for Mugabe's government attempted to
unload in South Africa. South African dockworkers
refused to unload the boat. Ultimately the ship had to
turn around and sail back to China.

The example of the refusal to unload the Chinese ship
was interesting in that the workers imposed their own
sanctions on the Mugabe regime. It was also
interesting, as a side note, that China was supplying
small arms to Zimbabwe in the middle of a political
crisis; small arms that would have been of little use
against external invaders but certainly useful for
suppressing internal dissent.

Subsequently, and in the context of the fraudulent,
second-round Zimbabwean elections, the Congress of
South African Trade Unions went one step further and
called on South Africans to blockade Zimbabwe. They
actually took an additional step: they have called upon
friends of the Zimbabwean people to engage in total
non-cooperation with the Mugabe regime. I believe that
this is the course that should be followed. Nothing
should be done to assist or give the slightest bit of
credibility to the Mugabe regime. The Mugabe regime
should henceforth be recognized to be an oligarchy
administered by an autocrat in the name of a clique
that is currently benefiting at the expense of the
Zimbabwean people.

Those who support the people of Zimbabwe should not
follow the lead of President Bush or British Prime
Minister Brown. They have nothing to offer and they
will, in fact, worsen the situation. Rather, we should
be calling upon the African Union and Zimbabwe's
neighbors to take action. Perhaps with the right amount
of genuine pressure, a transitional government can be
put into place. A transitional government, however,
cannot be a mechanism for the practical elimination of
the opposition. It must be a means to step back from
the precipice of civil war.

A final point and actually one that I have made at
other moments in discussing Zimbabwe. Much has been
made of the contradictory and often pro-Western
politics of the principal opposition group, the
Movement for a Democratic Change. In fact, and quite
ironically there have been times when Mugabe was
perceived to be and portrayed as being pro-Western. He
certainly introduced economic policies to the
satisfaction of the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund in the 1980s.

Opposing the Mugabe autocracy does not mean supporting
the MDC. The future of the MDC, let alone Zimbabwe,
should be in the hands of the people of Zimbabwe. What
we, progressives and friends of Zimbabwe should
recognize is that we have a duty of solidarity with the
people of that country fighting to complete that which
their Liberation War started so very long ago.

______

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, Bill Fletcher,
Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy
Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica
Forum and co-author of the just released book,
Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a
New Path toward Social Justice (University of
California Press), which examines the crisis of
organized labor in the USA.