Excerpts from NY Review of Books:
If Mugabe wins the election on June 27, his victory will represent, in part, the last, desperate gambit of a regime that long ago lost any shred of legitimacy. But it will also demonstrate how the possibility of genuine electoral change turned into a continuing nightmare—a nightmare of open, repressive brutality—thanks, in large part, to the refusal of Mbeki and other African leaders to intervene (with the exception of Ian Khama of Botswana, who has provided quiet support for Tsvangirai). This abdication of responsibility bears consequences not only for the future of Zimbabwe under the apparently unhindered violent rule of Mugabe, but also for the possibility of some minimal kind of multinational African concern for protecting democratic processes and human rights.
. . . Particularly distressing to Zimbabweans have been reports that 2,700 teachers have fled or were evicted, while dozens of schools have been closed down and 121 are being used as bases for the ruling party's youth militias. One of Mugabe's achievements was opening up schools to poor blacks. Literacy rates rose from 2 percent in 1990 to 70 percent in recent years. Now Mugabe has been destroying the country's education system.
. . . Not every SADC leader has followed Mbeki's lead: Botswana's president, Ian Khama, has been quietly providing Tsvangirai with government planes and other logistical support as the MDC leader travels around Africa, attempting to increase pressure on Mugabe. (The Herald commented that Tsvangirai's MDC was criss-crossing southern African capitals, "all in a bid to slough off its white western skin for an African one.") And Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa, the current chairman of the SADC, has been vilified as a neocolonialist by ZANU-PF officials for his outspoken criticism of Mugabe.
. . . This split within the SADC was perhaps most glaring during the notorious "Ship of Shame" incident that unfolded while I was traveling through the region in April. During my stay in Namibia, local newspapers published extensive reports on the odyssey of the An Yue Jiang, a Chinese merchant vessel that was carrying thousands of tons of arms and ammunition to the Zimbabwean government—some of it, presumably, to be used by the army and police to put down opposition protests. After dockworkers in the South African port of Durban refused to unload the vessel, the An Yue Jiang attempted to drop its cargo at the Namibian port of Walvis Bay. But Namibian civil leaders and union pressure obliged the government—normally friendly to Mugabe—to deny the ship landing rights, and it was forced back out to sea.
After a several-week odyssey, however, ZANU-PF officials boasted that they had finally taken delivery of the cargo. The An Yue Jang reportedly unloaded the weapons in May in the Angolan port of Lobito. From there, the cargo traveled by train to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it was loaded onto regular military supply flights and flown to Harare. It was yet another example of how a lack of SADC solidarity in the face of Mugabe's abuses had emboldened and strengthened one of the world's most abusive regimes.
. . . When I talked to Tsvangirai at the end of his speech, I reminded him of our election-day meeting at his home in Harare. I asked him if he thought his life would be in danger if he went back to Zimbabwe. The regime was capable of anything, he replied, and "I'm as vulnerable as everyone else." His words, as it turned out, were prescient. The next day, Tsvangirai was forced to postpone his homecoming after MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti said the MDC had uncovered a Zimbabwean army plot to kill Tsvangirai using a team of snipers.Volume 55, Number 11 · June 26, 2008 The Reign of Thuggery By Joshua Hammer
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