29 Jun Kristof: “If Only Mugabe Were White”
Nick Kristof asks the right questions about the lack of outrage against Robert Mugabe among the leaders of African states and discusses what may be the best solution to the horrors that have gripped Zimbabwe over these past months:
Africa’s rulers often complain, with justice, that the West’s perceptions of the continent are disproportionately shaped by buffoons and tyrants rather than by the increasing number of democratically elected presidents presiding over 6 percent growth rates. But as long as African presidents mollycoddle Mr. Mugabe, they are branding Africa with his image.
To his credit, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has taken the lead in denouncing Mr. Mugabe’s abuses, and Nelson Mandela bluntly deplored Mr. Mugabe’s “tragic failure of leadership.” Mr. Mandela could also have been talking about [South African President] Mr. Mbeki’s own failures.
The United States doesn’t have much leverage, and Britain squandered its influence partly by focusing on the plight of dispossessed white farmers. (That’s tribalism for Anglo-Saxons.) But there is a way out.
The solution is for leaders at the African Union summit this week to give Mr. Mugabe a clear choice.
One option would be for him to “retire” honorably — “for health reasons” after some face-saving claims of heart trouble — at a lovely estate in South Africa, taking top aides with him. He would be received respectfully and awarded a $5 million bank account to assure his comfort for the remainder of his days.
The other alternative is that he could dig in his heels and cling to power. African leaders should make clear that in that case, they will back an indictment of him and his aides in the International Criminal Court. Led by the Southern African Development Community, the world will also impose sanctions against Mr. Mugabe’s circle and cut off all military supplies and spare parts. Mozambique, South Africa and Congo will also cut off the electricity they provide to Zimbabwe.
So, whatever happened to the Responsibility to Protect? Or even the less robust 1990s versions of humanitarian intervention? Surely widespread deprivation, starvation, torture and political murder — whether or not tantamount to genocide — qualify as the kinds of mass atrocities that should trigger international intervention. But it is precisely because of the support Mugabe has received from China and from his more powerful neighbor to the south that any robust UN action is unlikely. It is also because the baseline principle of outside intervention — “first, do no harm” — makes action in Zimbabwe quite tricky.
If the AU implicitly or explicitly places an ICC indictment on the table, this will be a good test of the amnesty/exile vs. prosecution debate. Given his age, I am not sure Mugabe fears a long legal process.
Peggy, Peggy, Peggy. The ICC? Don’t you know that an ICC indictment will inhibit, if not destroy, the peace process that is just waiting to break out? Once the ICC ceases to exist, of course there will be peace in Zimbabwe! Have you learned nothing from Darfur, where peace was imminent until the ICC got involved?
The first time I remember the US saying the US had little leverage on a dictator in Africa was in the late 1970’s when then Ambassador Andrew Young said we had little leverage over Idi Amin. A couple of years later I learned that the coffee of Folger’s (“the richest most aromatic coffee” – I have forgotten the pitch person’s name but she was a wonderfully warm sympathetic lady with a German accent) mostly came from Uganda. Within days of the shutting down of those exports, Idi Amin was on the road to exile in Saudi Arabia. I seriously doubt the US leverage is as weak as it says. As to, if Mugabe were white, I think the experience of US support for South Africa for decades during apartheid, and events such as Mandela only this year at the age of 90 being moved from the US terrorist list, let’s us know that if Mugabe were white, the US most likely would be supporting him more aggressively in “constructive engagement” or some other euphemism. He would be looked at as an ally in the War on Terror. Raise the ante on China and use US leverage – that’s how we… Read more »