Is Robert Mugabe Responsible for Genocide?

One of the under-reported stories of the past four years is the tragedy of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. That the near collapse and human decimation of one of Africa’s most beautiful, prosperous and resource-rich countries has been relatively ignored at the UN and in Washington and the European capitals is, perhaps, the unfortunate result of a confluence of distracting world events —- the war in Iraq, the genocide in Darfur -– and the clever positioning of Mugabe with both the South African and Chinese governments. RW Johnson raises the question in the Sunday Times whether, in fact, the policies and practices of Mugabe can be considered genocide:

Genocide is not a word one should use hastily but the situation is exactly as described in the UN Convention on Genocide, which defines it as “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. Reckoning the death toll is difficult. Had demographic growth continued normally, Zimbabwe’s population would have passed 15m by 2000 and 18m by the end of 2006.

But people have fled the country in enormous numbers, with 3m heading for South Africa and an estimated further 1m scattered around the world. This would suggest a current population of 14m. But even the government, which tries to make light of the issue, says that there are only 12m left in Zimbabwe.

Social scientists say that the government’s figures are clearly rigged and too high. Their own population estimates vary between 8m and 11m. But even if one accepted the government figure, 2m people are “missing”, and the real number is probably 3m or more. And all this is happening in what was, until recently, one of Africa’s most prosperous states and a member of the Commonwealth.

Johnson details in the article the ways in which the people of Zimbabwe– in particular women and children — are dying in large numbers as a direct consequence of Mugabe’s brutal policies:

World Health Organisation figures show that life expectancy in Zimbabwe, which was 62 in 1990, had by 2004 plummeted to 37 for men and 34 for women. These are by far the worst such figures in the world. Yet Zimbabwe does not even get onto the UN agenda: South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, who has covered for Mugabe from the beginning, uses his leverage to prevent discussion. How long this can go on is anyone’s guess.

After Rwanda, the UN vowed “never again” but Mugabe — and, to a considerable extent, Mbeki — have already been responsible for far more deaths than Rwanda suffered and the number is fast heading into realms previously explored only by Stalin, Mao and Adolf Eichmann.

Read the whole thing. The most recent HRW report on attacks on civil society institutions and crackdowns on political opposition can be read here.