A new documentary portraying a white Zimbabwean farmer’s struggle to resist the unlawful seizure of his land by a senior Zanu PF politician is undermined by its lack of ‘historical and political context’, writes Blessing-Miles Tendi.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/359/47178race.jpgBlessing-Miles Tendi argues that it is too early to rule out a Mugabe led Zimbabwe - he will find ways to remain in power.

I have been following Zimbabwe's 2008 elections closely. My emotions have mutated with alacrity, checking news sites more often than I should, and receiving calls and messages from family and political contacts in Zimbabwe. Since last week, I have gone from 'Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF will win' to 'it will be a landslide victory for the opposition' to 'Mugabe has already fled the country fearing retribution' to 'the army has ordered the electoral commission to declare Mugabe the winner' and now, my present mood and thinking is that a lot of people are going to be disappointed by the eventual outcome of the presidential poll because we are headed for a do or die run-off between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai.

The two things that stand out about Mugabe's political pattern is his consistency, and that he is too wily and resolute in power to be swept away in a pseudo democratic election. Zimbabwe is better off without him at the helm but we must temper our emotions and stop our imagination from running wild. Mugabe has been in difficult situations before and wriggled out of them amazingly. 'Jesus rose from the dead once but I have come back from the dead several times', he once boasted. The probability is high that Mugabe can come back from the dead once again. I would not bet against it. This is my position now, after what has been a rollercoster week of miraculous flip-flopping on my part.

Sovereignty is a vehicle towards the good life for the ZANU PF political elite. The font of sovereignty is the powerful executive presidency through which ZANU PF has privatised the institution of the state as a means to authoritarian rule and personal aggrandisement: 'the desire to retain sovereignty and not to surrender it or even share it is a powerful motive perpetuating the ex-colonial status quo in Sub Saharan Africa. Sovereignty gives a relatively small number of people control of state positions which confer enormous palpable advantages and privileges. Ruling elites literally live off sovereignty and most live very well indeed - as long as they live. They fight to keep it and others fight to take it away from them'.

When Mugabe and ZANU PF play up sovereignty it is in order to protect their hold on power and its benefits. Their uses of sovereignty are less about protecting the country and its inhabitants' sovereignty but more about protecting the 'enormous palpable advantages and privileges' sovereignty affords them. In Zimbabwe it is not the governed who are sovereign – it is ZANU PF that is sovereign. ZANU PF elites live off sovereignty. Thus, sovereignty is one of the themes commanding broad consensus in ZANU PF and the party will strive – at all costs - to keep its hold on sovereignty by retaining the presidency in the looming run off.

A run off between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai may suit Mugabe better than facing Simba Makoni in a runoff because if there is anything many in ZANU PF and Zimbabwe's top security officials are united on, it is that Tsvangirai must not rule. Those comprising the status quo not only stand to lose their sovereignty but also fear prosecution for crimes committed in office if Tsvangirai prevails.

ZANU PF was divided in this election but expect it to put its differences aside and to rally behind Mugabe forcefully in a run off with Tsvangirai. Mugabe risked damaging defections if he had faced Makoni in a run off. A Mugabe-Makoni run off would have presented Makoni's secret and powerful backers in ZANU PF, such as Solomon Mujuru, with the opportune moment to abandon Mugabe in favour of Makoni. Mugabe will also find it easier to marshal ZANU PF's rank and file to campaign for him against Tsvangirai as opposed to Makoni who has many sympathisers in the ruling party. Indeed some will not need to be marshaled at all for retaining the presidency means guaranteeing their life of privilege.

ZANU PF will leave no stone unturned in a Mugabe-Tsvangirai face off. ZANU PF was complacent in the rural areas and some of its rural party structures were not as formidable as they normally are. It underestimated the extent to which Tsvangirai would make significant in roads into its rural strongholds. The free political space Tsvangirai enjoyed in the rural areas during this campaign will be gone in the run off. A run off in 3 weeks, or 90 days as has been suggested, also allows ZANU PF some time to tinker its rigging machinery. The war veterans have started making threats. There is a developing discourse proclaiming the return of white farmers and how the land revolution can only be defended by re-electing Mugabe. The military looks set to be more involved than ever before in guaranteeing Mugabe's re-election. We are about to be blitzed with everything ZANU PF has left.

* Blessing-Miles Tendi is a researcher at Oxford University.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Blessing-Miles Tendi argues that If Mugabe is to stand trial for crimes against humanity, he must do so as close as possible to the site of his crimes - Zimbabwe.

On February 27, 2008, the BBC’s John Simpson asked Simba Makoni if he ‘would not stand against the principle of sending President Mugabe to The Hague’.

Makoni replied: ‘No. We will be a full member of the international community and we will act in accordance with the normal standards of international justice’.

International newswires immediately went into an excited frenzy about the prospect of Mugabe standing trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), which functions to try individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This ‘international’ excitement needs to be shot dead in its tracks.

Since the treaty for the ICC was assented to by countries around the globe in 1998, 105 countries have ratified the treaty to date. Zimbabwe is not one of these 105 countries hence the ICC has no jurisdiction over Zimbabwe.

Furthermore, the ICC treaty came into effect in 2002. The ICC can only prosecute crimes committed after 2002. The crime that could provide the strongest basis for Mugabe standing trial at a court such as the ICC is the Gukurahundi atrocities. However, the Gukurahundi was perpetrated before 2002.

Mugabe cannot stand trial for the Gukurahundi at the ICC.

Mugabe committed many crimes after 2002 but the burden is on those who advocate for Mugabe standing trial at The Hague to prove how these crimes qualify as genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

And while it is within the power of the UN Security Council to refer a human rights situation to the ICC for investigation, this has failed to materialise for years now and it is debatable whether consensus for such a measure can ever be reached given some of Zimbabwe’s long standing allies on the Security Council.

States that have not ratified the ICC treaty can opt to accept the court’s jurisdiction but for Zimbabwe, this option is undesirable and unnecessary.

Zimbabwe’s justice system has been corrupted by Zanu PF over the years but it remains competent and it has retained a considerable level of independence despite manifold state pressures. More importantly, there is a pertinent tension between the universal jurisdiction embodied in the ICC and the local.

Justice that is local or national is better felt than justice delivered in distant international courts such as the ICC.

Justice at The Hague is not felt by widows deep in Tsholotsho who lost their husbands to the Gukurahundi. It is not felt by the homeless and displaced victims of Murambatsvina who are living like cockroaches on Caledonia farm. If Mugabe is to stand trial, he must do so as close as possible to the site of his crimes - Zimbabwe.

The appropriate place for Mugabe to face the judgment of history is in Matabeleland where he had thousands slaughtered and in the areas where Murambatsvina was conducted.

There are many unanswered questions in Zimbabwean history, and there is a need for national healing and reconciliation. Mugabe has a part to play in addressing these issues, and he can only do so adequately if his fate and confessions are a national affair.

The likes of John Simpson, the ‘international’ media, the executive director of the International Bar Association Mark Ellis, and some members of the British House of Commons, who make a lot of noise about Mugabe standing trial at The Hague must be reminded that Zimbabweans have a strong historical perspective, and that Zimbabweans are not blind to their double standards.

For instance, were it possible for Mugabe to stand trial for the Gukurahundi at The Hague, serious questions about British sins of omission and commission in Zimbabwe would arise. Britain was aware of the killings in Matabeleland but in 1983, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit in India, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did not raise the matter of the Gukurahundi.

In the same year, Malcolm Rifkind, Foreign Office Minister, visited Zimbabwe and held diplomatic consultations with Mugabe. Rifkind did not mention the Gukurahundi in his report to the British House of Commons on his return to London.

Perence ‘Black Jesus’ Shiri, the dreaded commander of the Fifth Brigade during the Gukurahundi, was the first Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) officer to attend London’s Royal College of Defence Studies as an honoured guest in 1986. The Royal College of Defence Studies describes itself as ‘the senior Defence academic institution in the United Kingdom… the most prestigious institution of its kind in the world’.

Retired General Edward Jones, Director of the British Military Advisory and Training Team (BMATT) in Zimbabwe from 1983 to 1985, explained the motive for Britain’s offer of tenure at the Royal College to Shiri as follows: “Undoubtedly, he was the man who was going to be important in Zimbabwe and I think it was important that we should influence him positively in so far as we could.” In 2000, Tony Blair’s Labour government authorised the sale of spare parts for British made Hawk 200 jets to the Zimbabwe Air Force, now commanded by the same Perence Shiri. Farm invasions during the Third Chimurenga were coordinated by ZNA officials with Shiri playing a key coordinating role.

The military man whose excesses Britain had turned a blind eye to in the past, honoured at London’s Royal College and supplied with military parts became a key impediment to attempts at ending the violent farm invasions. In light of this, the ‘international’ moral grandstanding about Mugabe going to The Hague must be abandoned.

There is no powerful ‘international’ lobby for Tony Blair and his associates - or George Bush and his cronies for that matter - to stand trial at the ICC for their naked crimes in Iraq. The few criminal cases the ICC is dealing with today involve countries such as the Central African Republic, Sudan, the DRC and Uganda. Thorny questions about African sovereignty are brought into play by this focus on crimes in Africa. There is clearly one standard of international justice for the powerful and another one for the weak.

The ‘international’ clamour for Mugabe to stand trial at The Hague must be seen against this background.

*Blessing-Miles Tendi is a researcher at Oxford University.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Blessing-Miles Tendi argues that because Britain lacks the moral authority to comment on or interfere in Zimbabwean affairs, it would serve the Zimbabwean search for freedom and justice by keeping away.

Since 2000, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe government has cast the Zimbabwe crisis as a struggle by Britain, an ex-colonial power, to re-colonise its former colony by supporting and funding the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party. Britain has blindly walked into Mugabe’s anti-colonial trap consistently, which has exposed Zimbabwe’s internal opposition to harmful labels such as ‘sell-outs to the imperialists’.

Britain has expressed its frustration with Southern African leaders’ unwillingness to censure Mugabe publicly and to force him into retirement. A number of factors explain Southern African leaders’ stance on Mugabe and chief among them is that for a long time the MDC was distrusted by regional leaders and perceived as sell-outs to new-imperialism. Britain bore responsibility for this false perception of the opposition in Zimbabwe because its anti-Mugabe stance made Zimbabwe’s opposition easy prey for Mugabe’s anti-colonial constructions. Britain is partly responsible for the failure of a democratic opposition to replace the undemocratic Mugabe in elections since 2000.

Mugabe has also proved adroit at articulating British double standards on global human rights promotion to bolster his refutation of Western criticism of his government’s human rights record. Britain dilutes its moral authority when it calls for its national cricket team to boycott tours of Zimbabwe because of the country’s poor human rights record but remains silent when its national team tours Pakistan, which is also a grave human rights violator. Britain’s condemnations and targeted sanctions against the Mugabe government would command more moral authority if the same human rights standards were applied everywhere evenly. Failure to apply human rights standards evenly results in staunch claims to sovereignty in the non-Western world. The danger lies in the fact that some of these claims are merely pretexts for internal repression – something Mugabe is guilty of.

After Britain’s involvement in the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq its moral authority is at its lowest ebb internationally. Thus, it is breathtakingly naïve for the Foreign Secretary David Milliband to insist, as he did in Oxford this month, that despite Britain’s failures in Iraq, Britain has ‘a moral duty’ to intervene in undemocratic countries – and by force if necessary – in order to spread democracy internationally. Very few countries still look up to Britain as a champion of human rights and democracy, and none in Southern Africa will countenance its involvement in their internal affairs. ‘We are tired of being lectured on democracy by the very countries which, under colonialism, either directly denied us the rights of free citizens, or were indifferent to our suffering and yearnings to break free and be democratic’ – remember these utterances by the Tanzanian government, one of Britain’s favoured donor recipients in Southern Africa, in 2004?

Britain has, as a starting premise, the logic that its modern day standing as a developed democracy automatically confers the moral authority to censure what it considers to be less democratic countries such as Zimbabwe. But its flawed history of intervention and interference in Zimbabwe has left it with little or no moral credibility there. Britain granted Rhodesia’s white settler community ‘responsible self-government’ in 1923. However, the country remained a British colony and Britain retained the right to veto legislation affecting the black African majority. Rhodesia’s white minority passed various laws that subjected the blacks to treatment as subhuman. Not once did Britain exercise its veto power to strike down Rhodesia’s dehumanising and racist laws.

In 1965, Rhodesia severed ties with the British crown by declaring the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). Britain was called upon to use military force to rein in the rebellious UDI government’s perpetuation of white minority rule. Prime Minister Harold Wilson ruled out the use of force. He chose to impose sanctions and declared that the UDI government would survive the sanctions for no more than 6 weeks. Rhodesia weathered the sanctions until black majority rule was attained in 1980, after a peace settlement a year earlier, which brought to an end one of the most bloody and bitterly fought liberation wars in Africa.

In the 1980s, Britain venerated Mugabe while he massacred 20000 civilians in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland province. The reason? According to Roger Martin, Deputy British High Commissioner to Zimbabwe (1983-86), ‘no British government wanted a couple of hundred thousand British citizens appearing with cardboard suitcases at Heathrow, the sudden expulsion of whites if we had pulled the rug on the aid [to Zimbabwe] and as it were denounced Mugabe [for the massacres].’

In spite of assurances Britain made to the Mugabe government at independence, to fund the redress of racially biased land distribution in Zimbabwe, in 1997 it declared that it did not accept ‘a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe’. 3 years later a violent programme of land seizures from white farmers without compensation began to unfold. Zimbabwe is what it is economically today partly because of these land seizures.

Foreign Secretary Milliband has called for international monitoring of Zimbabwe’s 2008 elections, saying conditions for the poll are ‘far from free and fair’. But Britain should be the last to speak out and it should desist from prejudging the forthcoming elections publicly because this is exactly what Mugabe wants Britain to do. Already, Mugabe has said his party’s 2008 election campaign will focus on resisting Britain’s regime change agenda in Zimbabwe. Mugabe has set his anti-colonial trap for Britain and if Milliband’s comments are anything to go by, Britain is walking into it once again. Britain would better serve the struggle for democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe by taking a back seat in the country’s elections next month because it has no moral authority in Southern Africa. Groupings such as the European Union and the Southern African Development Community should take the lead not Britain because it risks aiding Mugabe’s re-election bid.

*Blessing-Miles Tendi is a researcher at Oxford University.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org