International opinion outside Africa is united against the brutal regime of Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe. Since Mugabe lost a referendum on constitutional change in 2000—a referendum that, if successful, would have granted him sweeping new powers and permitted him a further two terms in office—Zimbabwe has been one of the worst places on earth to live. It has been witness to forced land seizures and vigilante and systematic government persecution of all opposition. One of Africa’s most promising economies has been reduced to near-destitution.
Zimbabwe has become something of a cause célèbre in the (Western) international community. Sanctions have been imposed and Great Britain, the European Union and Australia have been at the forefront of a very public campaign to demand Mugabe’s removal. Nothing less than regime change—the defining medium of international political reform for the new century—is deemed acceptable by Mugabe’s opponents.
In the weeks surrounding the conflict in Iraq—a conflict that has left Iraqis grateful to be rid of Saddam Hussein and equally insistent that foreign forces should leave its soil—Zimbabwe slipped from world headlines. Into the vacuum stepped a troika of presidents: Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Bakili Muluzu of Malawi, who visited Zimbabwe. The only solution capable of procuring enduring change, they argued, must be one coming from within Zimbabwe itself.
The talks were officially unsuccessful.
However, since the visit President Mugabe has spoken publicly for the first time of the need for a debate as to his successor.
The Zimbabwean president agreed, again for the first time, to hold direct talks with Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The stumbling block was Mugabe’s condition that the MDC first recognise his legitimacy as president and withdraw all pending legal cases challenging the deeply flawed elections of 2002. The MDC refused and the three leaders left Zimbabwe without an agreement.
Africa’s record on regime change has indeed been deplorable—a series of coups d’état, civil wars and sham elections.
African leaders have been steadfast in their policy of refusing to intervene in the internal affairs of neighbours, at least where intervention is merited on humanitarian grounds. The now defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was all about the politics of solidarity—not with the people of the continent but instead among largely illegitimate leaders protected by policies of non-intervention.
But the West has been equally culpable in fostering poor governance in Africa. Years of genocidal and