Africa Day

 

I have often mentioned a figure first brought to my attention by Mozambican intellectual Mia Couto:  since 1957, only 6 of the 153 heads of state of independent African countries have left office voluntarily.  Robert Mugabe is following suit.  Having rigged the 2002 elections to stay in power, he is making another attempt to subvert this year's elections.  He has bullied the electoral commission, SADC and the opposition party into a run-off, even when conditions on the ground are not conducive.  Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu said in Germany last week that he would advise Mugabe to give it up and let Tsvangirai rule – while he can still get away with diplomatic immunity.  For if he rigs another election, Tutu pointed to the lessons of history - he would be cut off and have to fold up, in due course, at which time immunity would no longer be on offer.

Both candidates started electioneering today, on Africa Day, for voting on June 27^th.  Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai returned to Zimbabwe yesterday, after 7 weeks in cautious self-exile.  Will he be the next Benazeer Bhuto, one wonders?  God forbid.

Democracy is on Africa's list of endangered species, but on the face of it, Tsvangirai has a good chance of winning.  The third candidate being out of contention now, he is likely to pick up that “swing vote”.  Plus his Movement for Democratic Change has already won a majority in Parliament and in the local elections, and tied in the Senate race.  So he clearly has a strong backing.

Mugabe's campaign will follow the carrot and stick approach.  He will bribe voters with food and other blessings from the proverbial “pork barrel”, while at the same time unleashing punishment on any voters suspected of voting for the opposition.  This is more than intimidation, it is cynicism.  He is even deploying the organs of the state – police, army, security and intelligence forces. 

One optimistic note is than a lot of Zimbabweans in exile, who did not vote in the first round because they had already “voted with their feet” and left the country, are now returning.  Sadly, though, this is because they have been horribly mistreated of late in South Africa.

Xenophobia

Over the past two weeks, violence has erupted again in South Africa.  This time is is not along ANC-Inkatha lines, as in the past.  This time it was directed at non-South Africans, including Zimbaweans, Mozambicans, Malawians, Nigerians and so forth.  At first it was only in the high density townships around Johannesburg, but it has spread to all major cities.

Mozambique was ravaged by the apartheid regime for letting the ANC remain there during the Struggle.  A deeper irony is that South Africa's economy has been built on migrant labour from these other countries.  Over the years, though, local people have come to resent that foreigners get jobs and share government social benefits.  Officially, South Africa is the most xenophobic nation in the world, according to a World Values Survey on International Attitudes to Immigration, conducted by SAMP (Southern Africa Migration Project).  Views in South Africa are the harshest among the 29 countries surveyed.  More than 20% of South Africans want all foreigners barred from entering the country on any grounds, compared with 13% in Britain, 11% in China and 4% in both the USA and 4% Mozambique.

SAMP has conducted more than one survey and has found that views are getting harsher, not more lenient.  One-third of South Africans would “support the government deporting all foreigners living in South Africa, even if they are there legally”, according to the most recent survey of 3,600 respondents of both genders and all races and income levels.  The survey exposed another prevailing attitude among most citizens, that all HIV-positive foreigners should be deported – and the also the conviction held by three quarters that border fences should be electrified.

The president's brother blamed the government's “failure to acknowledge the crisis in Zimbabwe, failure to control the borders, and failure to grant these people refugee status” as the “real reason” for the violence that has erupted.  In fact, the SAMP survey indicates that 53% of citizens believe that refugees should be  housed in camps near the border.  Voices of civil society have been telling government this for months, but government saw it as a challenge to its policy of “quiet diplomacy”.  It is pretty clear now that Mbeki's policy failed, has cost many people their lives, and has tarnished South Africa's reputation as a rainbow nation.  On SAMP's 0-to-10 scale, where 10 is “not at all xenophobic”, South Africans scored a dismal 3.9 and the harshest attitudes, by income, are held by both the poorest and the richest brackets (under R499 and over R20,000 per month).

The ANC was pretty quick to come up with a “third force” theory.  That is a familiar blame-game.  Every time they screw up, they blame it on some invisible reactionaries who are plotting against democracy!  One cabinet minister wrote this: “We need to understand that xenophobia has historically been used by rightwing populist movements to mobilize particularly the lumpen proletariat against minority groups in society... Political mobilization on the basis of xenophobia poses grave threats to progressive forces in our society and to our democracy.”  These are the same ones who see a Western conspiracy behind the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe!

A more likely interpretation is that of Methodist Bishop Paul Verryn, who has a long and direct experience of dealing with refugees.  His Joburg church has been and is a haven.  He said there was evidence that police were behind the attacks.  Certainly there is a motive – they want to get rid of a problem.  Perhaps they didn't think that the “lumpen proletariats” would kill other Africans?!

The Mail and Guardian reports that thugs were singing “Umshini Wam” (Bring me my machine gun) as they attacked foreigners.  This is Jacob Zuma's trademark song.  Desmond Tutu and others warned some time ago that it was inappropriate for Zuma to persist in using it.  But how, you may wonder, can a rampaging mob distinguish those from other African countries?  Zapiro's editorial cartoon in the Sunday Times had one thug saying to another – behind the charred body lying on the ground - “I could tell he was a ##!*^$?!! foreigner!  He didn't know the meaning of Ubuntu!”

Checks and Balances

But the big news this week is that all five opposition parties joined Hugh Glenister's bid to stop the ANC from closing down the Scorpions, by registering as friends of the court.  Could this be the embryo of a future coalition, like the one that eventually unseated Arap Moi in Kenya?

Then the top two Scorpion bosses made a submission to the court, on the day before this case came up, and that really upped the ante.  It outlines the way government has gone about this, in great haste, and indications are that some illegal steps might have been taken in the process.  Furthermore, it suggests that fast-tracking is undermining all the legal cases that are “in the pipeline” as present, and that their collapse would not serve the cause of Justice.  This might put the court in a position to block the legislation.  Maybe it could call for a plebiscite?

One wonders, though, what effect any court ruling would have on the ANC.  For when a court last year rejected Health Minister Manto's bid to gag a newspaper from making further comments about her health records, she went ahead and ran advertisements in the media that objected to that aspect of the judgment.  The Public Protector (i.e. ombudsman) was asked to investigate.  This week he advised the National Prosecuting Authority that the content of those adverts could constitute an offense, namely contempt of court.  But she is still in Mbeki's cabinet.

It came as no surprise, then, that today Africa's best-selling newspaper ran a front page column under the headline: MR PRESIDENT PLEASE STAND DOWN NOW.  They meant Mbeki, but it could apply equally to Mugabe.  There is indeed a growing Movement for Democratic Change.