For such a small and relatively poor country, Zimbabwe has drawn an inordinate amount of worldwide attention over the past few years. Unfortunately for its people, the reasons are not positive ones. As many as one-third of Zimbabweans are infected with HIV; perhaps 80 percent are unemployed; and more than half are now at risk for starvation. The country's president, Robert Mugabe, does not appear to care about addressing these problems. He is more interested in exacerbating them by continuing to violate the human rights of his people, such as terrorizing political opponents and forging ahead with an irrational and misguided land-redistribution scheme that has led directly to economic misery and death.
At a forum at OSI's New York offices on March 14, 2003, Tawanda Mutasah, the executive director of OSI's Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), discussed the current situation in Zimbabwe and why, despite the plummeting living standards and despair, Mugabe remains in power. Mutasah placed primary blame on the president and cronies in his political party, ZANU-PF. But he also took to task the leaders of other countries who have not only failed to condemn Mugabe, but condone his violent actions as a necessary step in the process of anticolonialism.
Summary
During his talk, Tawanda Mutasah said that Zimbabwe today is a classic case of a failing African country, especially in terms of its leaders' commitment to human rights. In power since 1980, President Mugabe was reelected in March 2002 after a campaign in which supporters of the opposition candidate were intimidated or even murdered. In recent years, journalists have been arrested for appearing to criticize his regime and its policies, including the controversial seizure—without compensation and conducted with violence in many cases—of farms owned by white families. Mugabe has defended the land seizures, claiming that they are necessary to redistribute land to a black majority population.
Some international governments, such as Britain's, have sharply criticized Mugabe's policies and implemented sanctions against the country. Zimbabwe's membership has been suspended from the Commonwealth, for example, and some of its top leaders are barred from visiting certain countries.
In many African nations, however, Mugabe's actions have been met with little criticism or even thinly veiled support. According to Mutasah, the president received a "tumultuous welcome" during a recent visit to Zambia, and he has also been greeted warmly in Mozambique. Officials in neighboring South Africa, a stable democracy that is arguably the continent's most influential nation, have refrained from directly pressuring Mugabe to change his ways despite pressure from elsewhere to do so.
Mutasah said that these African countries are acting solely out of a sense of pan-African solidarity—with little concern for the rights of Zimbabweans. According to Mutasah, some African leaders have said that as far as regional or international conferences go, their countries "are there with Zimbabwe, or we're not there at all." He said that those governments' behavior is indicative of their leaders' lack of commitment to human rights on a global scale and is, more broadly, yet another example of the tentative nature of the international community's efforts to help those most downtrodden.
According to Mutasah, Mugabe has managed to maintain support and deflect criticism of his inept economic and human rights policies by playing the race card. After all, the president has pointed out, the loudest critics of his land-seizure policies are from white-majority countries, many of which were colonial, oppressive powers in Africa at one point. Members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main Zimbabwean opposition party, dispute Mugabe's arguments. They claim that Zimbabwe's problems stem from a combination of an entrenched, corrupt government; a weak constitution; rigged elections; and economic decay. Mutasah largely agrees with the opposition, adding that the lack of a powerful counterweight to the president—such as a truly independent parliament—is a huge impediment to change.
Mutasah said that change will be difficult because ZANU-PF controls the media and has supporters throughout the country in key posts such as law enforcement. For example, it is nearly impossible for a torture victim identified with the opposition to report an attack; he is more likely to be arrested and subjected to further abuse than be helped.
The best hope now, Mutasah said, is to step up regional and international pressure on Mugabe. One way to do this is for media outlets to continue publicizing his regime's abuses and lobby national governments to take a firm stand against Mugabe's policies—which may eventually force governments that directly or tacitly back him to change course. Members of the international community must not be afraid of standing up for human rights wherever they are violated, he said, regardless of the risks to bilateral or multilateral relationships. Otherwise people in Zimbabwe and countries in similar crises will continue to suffer needlessly.