ocialist survivor since the days when they were both young journalists in Dar es Salaam in the late 1960s, says that he must be mindful that everyone who has trod the boards before him has not only had the misfortune of breaking a leg but also of experiencing the loneliness of being booed off the stage.
Can Ben Mkapa, who is now 68 and often only available in a Swiss clinic because of the severe gout caused by his devotion to rare red meat and rich red wine, succeed where so many other African lead actors have failed?
When South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki played the part of mediator between Robert Mugabe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) he got the slow handclap.
When Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano who was Mugabe’s best man when he married his second wife Grace strutted his stuff on the stage, a few ripe oranges and moldy apples landed his way.
When Nigeria’s Olesegun Obassanjo ranted and raved like Othello on speed the audience walked out.
“But Ben just might pull this one off, ” said a veteran media Commonwealth watcher in London this week. “He’s a very clever man and he received his political education sitting at the feet of Dr Julius Nyerere who survived for 24 years. Ben is very pro-British, very committed to the Commonwealth and he’s said ‘off the record’ that there can be no forward movement in Zimbabwe until Mugabe goes but that he must be honoured during his departure even if he really deserves an appearance at The Hague.
“Ben Mkapa is one of the best African leaders to ever come to power,” says Jim Adams of the World Bank. “He was able to safeguard Nyerere’s reputation as Father of the Nation while making Tanzania acceptable in the eyes of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”
Anyone who thinks that Mkapa is going to be a Mugabe stooge when he starts trying to repair the damage caused by 26 years of Zanu (PF) rule in Harare does not know the man. Almost everyone in the independent African media is predicting a terrible defeat for Mkapa.
“No hope for Mkapa’s mediation,” screamed a headline in this paper recently.
“Mkapa mission doomed” shouted a long report by Njabulo Ncube in the latest edition on The Financial Gazette, one of the few quasi independent papers still functioning in Mugabe’s impoverished land of 11.5 million people.
“Mkapa needs divine intervention from Zimbabwe” said a headline over a report by Dianna Games in the Johannesburg Business Day.
But in the loyal to Mugabe press, Benjamin Mkapa’s “appointment” as mediator (without approval of the SADC leadership which meets again in Lesotho on August 17 when the question of who is funding Mkapa and what’s his brief will be put under the microscope) between Britain and Zimbabwe is another story.
Zanu (PF) officials reminded me in a series of telephone calls I had with them this week: “When President Mkapa came to see us last October to say goodbye and thanks before he stepped down as president, he spoke about President Mugabe in glowing terms.”
There’s no doubt in my mind that out of touch leaders in the Zimbabwean government – many now in their dotage including Mugabe – know next to nothing about the real Mkapa. They have only seen him perform in a role he does so well – a praise singer for failed African leaders.
He got used to that while working so long for Julius Nyerere, first as one of his editors then as one of his ministers. These are but a few things he has said publicly about Robert Mugabe, perhaps the most failed and dangerous African leader of them all:
“A new leadership is emerging in Africa that cannot accept tutelary relationship with our erstwhile colonizers. A new leadership which would rather listen to its elders such as Cde Mugabe, thus being faithful to the counsel of the African saying -The one who listens to the voice of the elderly is strong like a tree, the one who turns a deaf ear is like a twig in the wind.”
“There is no gainsaying Cde Mugabe’s outstanding record of struggle against colonialism and minority settler rule.”
But if you think that this highly respected journalist, former foreign minister, English Literature honours graduate from Makerere University and a man who survived being a speech writer for the anti-Nyerere’traitor’ Oscar Kambona hasn’t a good word to say about anyone in the West – think again. When Tanzania’s Dr Nyerere died in 1999, Mkapa paid tribute to Tony Blair and Her Majesty’s Government for looking after Mwalimu.
In 2001, he grew even closer to Tony Blair after Tanzania spent £28 million to supply Dar es Salaam with an air traffic control system. British ministers disputed Oxfam’s claims that the money could have been put to better use – feeding children and educating them, for instance. Mkapa is also seriously on-side Tony Blair and George Bush in the world hunt for terrorists.
It should not be forgotten that the East African coast is a breeding ground for the fervent anti-Western (anti-Christian) unemployed juvenile Islamic militants.
Reports so far recall that all the other African leaders who took on the job of reconciling Mugabe with democracy failed miserably. Predictably, they are being presented to Zimbabweans as members of a sort of “Rogue’s Gallery”
Mbeki, Obassanjo and Chissano are pictured together under the headline “Prophets of Doom.” But Mkapa is not in that league and his picture will not hang in that gallery for, I believe, the following reason.
After the disastrous Nyerere years when Tanzania was left bankrupt and when it was the African state most in debt to the West after decades of’self-reliance’ policies, Presidents Mwinyi and Mkapa had to pick up the pieces and start all over again without de-constructing the myth of Mwalimu.
Mkapa did that job brilliantly while privately acknowledging that Dr Nyerere, had been badly’misled’ by a collection of mildly idiotic intellectuals from Western universities playing out their political and economic fantasies in an African Disneyland.
He is going to be on a mission not to keep Mugabe where he is but to see he makes a dignified exit so that the West, led by Britain and the EU, can pump into Zimbabwe billions of dollars in a massive salvage exercise.
His plan – say highly informed sources in Dar es Salaam – is to seek a way of saying goodbye to Mugabe without humiliating that clever, proud and (I think) once potentially great man.
Already Western diplomats in Harare are ending a long silence and making what they think are constructive suggestions.
On Thursday (July 20) American and French statements out of Harare suggested that what’s needed is for Mugabe to come to terms with his own people, not Britain, and above all to stop pretending that the world hates him and boycotts him because of his land policies.
Mugabe has suspended democracy. The people want it back. “Why not re-engage in political dialogue, as we propose, which would allow you to resume links which have been broken or slackened…and after all…if you accept to discuss with foreigners, why not talk among Zimbabweans as you are? ” said an oddly worded (or poorly translated) statement from the French Ambassador, Michel Raimbaud.
None of them – so far – are analyzing what exactly Mkapa could contribute to this the latest attempt to bring Zimbabwe in from the cold or why this man has such special qualities to help dismantle the regime of a tired stubborn old man. And if anyone thinks he will tolerate yet another ear-bashing ceremony on the merits of scientific socialism, the need for a new form of communism (even non-alignment) to tame the USA, the EU, the World Bank and the IMF they should all think again.
Rather than going to Harare to prop up that grumpy old octogenarian despot, Mkapa of Tanzania – I believe – is going there to make straight the way for investors once the curtain finally falls on Robert Mugabe.
Rotten fruit or a standing ovation? Ben Mkapa will be as keen as everyone else who cares for Zimbabwe to read the reviews.
Mkapa co-chairs ICF
On June 1 this year in Cape Town Ben Mkapa was appointed co-Chairman of the Investment Climate Facility for Africa whose chairman is the ubiquitous Niall FitzGerald KBE, former Chairman of Reuters.
The ICF will be launched in Africa later this year, around the time Ben Mkapa steps into the limelight. It is a public private partnership, funded by companies, bilateral and multilateral donors and working in close partnership with African governments and regional organizations such as NEPAD.
British Prime Minister Blair and International Development Secretary Hilary Benn have confirmed that the UK Government will provide US$30 million over three years to the ICF facility in Africa. Royal Dutch Shell plc and Shell Foundation have also announced that they will contribute a combined total of $2.5 million over five years and Anglo American has confirmed that they would also contribute $2.5 million over the same period of time.
“This new and exciting facility will act on key obstacles to doing business in Africa,” says Mkapa. “Together we can remove the obstacles that stand in the path to Africa’s prosperity.”
And one of those hard to jump over obstacles is Robert Mugabe.