 But when the much-heralded renaissance actually arrived in Zimbabwe two years later, in February 2000, and threatened the power of Zanu-PF, South Africa’s leaders took fright and became paralysed as President Robert Mugabe set out to extinguish by force the nascent Renaissance.
This paralysis eventually acquired a name: it became known as South Africa’s “quiet diplomacy”. Meanwhile, Mugabe went about systematically terrorising the supporters of the opposition, the agents of the African Renaissance and wrecked his country’s economy, with predictable results. A quarter of Zimbabwe’s people fled to neighbouring countries, that is, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, but especially to its bigger and richer neighbour, South Africa.
The South African government estimates that between two and three-million Zimbabweans now live in SA, mainly as illegal immigrants. Let us imagine that as a result of certain actions by a Chinese government, 100-million Chinese took flight to India, another 100-million poured into Russia and a further 100-million into Japan. If this were to happen between China and its three neighbours, the outcome would be predictable. Japan, India and Russia would form a military alliance and in no time their armies would force out the offending regime in Beijing.
Proportionally, the 300-million Chinese referred to equates to the size of the population that has fled Zimbabwe’s economic and political crises and taken refuge in the neighbouring countries. Far from the governments of Zimbabwe’s neighbouring states calling the Zanu-PF government to order, they take every available occasion to wine and dine Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe. They even go so far as to demand that the rest of the world must also wine and dine him. Southern African governments recently demanded that Mugabe be invited by Portugal to the Europe-Africa Summit in Lisbon last year (December 8-9) despite the travel ban to Europe by the European Union on Mugabe and his cronies. Why are Zimbabwe’s neighbours mollycoddling the very man who is destabilising the Southern African region? The simple answer is shortsighted leadership in Southern Africa, coupled with fear of emerging more democratic political forces in Zimbabwe. As Zimbabwean society became increasingly more sophisticated, its citizens became better educated and more prosperous; they also demanded a greater say in how their country was run.
The emergence of these new, well-organised, cosmopolitan and vocal constituencies that were no longer interested in the politics of race, but in the accountability of governance, has struck fear in the hearts of established rulers, not only in Zimbabwe, but in the whole of Southern Africa.
It is this fear of fundamental social and political change that explains Southern African governments’ solidarity with Zanu-PF and Mugabe.
Southern Africa is unique in Africa in that most of its countries are still ruled by nationalist parties that fought against colonialism. These ruling parties: Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe; MPLA in Angola; CCM in Tanzania; Frelimo in Mozambique; BDP in Botswana; ANC in SA; or Swapo in Namibia, consider themselves to be entitled to rule their countries forever by virtue of having struggled against colonialism. Their attitude to the mass of the people is paternalistic and they do not accept that they should be accountable to them. The new ANC president, Jacob Zuma, recently prophesied the ANC would rule South Africa at least until the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. All this is, of course, shortsighted and largely futile. Nationalist parties and their governments in Southern Africa can no more stop the march of progress and history any more than the colonialists before them could.
During 1998-99, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), with the support of many non-profit civil society organisations, established the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a new political party. MDC’s key objectives were to fight for a more democratic constitution, to combat corruption and to re-organise the grossly mismanaged national economy. The new party received support from many prominent Zimbabweans in the professions, trade, industry, media and agriculture. ZCTU seconded two of its leaders to the party – its general secretary, Morgan Tsvangirai, became MDC president and Gibson Sibanda, its president, became MDC’s deputy president. The rise of the MDC illustrated, more than anything to date, the arrival of the African Renaissance.
Twenty eight years ago, when Zimbabwe became independent, its social structure was simple: its social classes were defined by race. At the apex of the social pyramid were the whites, who controlled the economy, the professions, and the mass media in an alliance between public and private sectors. Below that were an intermediate stratum, barely differentiated, made up of wage earners, many of them peasant migrant workers, with a sprinkle of semi-professions and professionals who acted as teachers, nurses, a few doctors and lawyers, shopkeepers, salespeople etc. At the bottom of the pyramid was a vast mass of undifferentiated peasants who eked a living off the land. Twenty years after independence in 1980, Zimbabwe had become a transformed society with a rich and complex social structure. New black players were prominent in business, the mass media, and other professions, organised labour and civil society in general.
In this fast changing and dynamic environment it was the ruling party, Zanu-PF, that remained unchanged. In fact, the opposite had happened, it had fossilised. It was estimated that no Zimbabwean below 35 supports Zanu-PF.
Within one year of its establishment, MDC,with the support of its civil society allies, in February 2000 defeated Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF in a referendum to adopt a new, more democratic constitution. The new constitution would have drastically reduced presidential powers and would have abolished the 30 unelected members of parliament appointed by the president. This was what caused panic among the rulers of Southern Africa. A new type of party had emerged in the region that had been created by the people and was therefore not controlled by the African elites.
Nationalism in Africa has always paraded itself as a movement of people fighting for their liberation. Reality was rather different. African nationalism was a movement of a small, Westernised black elite that emerged under colonialism. Its fight was always for its inclusion into the colonial system so it, too, could benefit from the spoils of colonialism.
This was why independence did not bring about economic transformation in Africa as it did in Asia; if anything, independence entrenched the economic inequalities inherited from colonialism. The new black elites merely replaced the former white colonial elites, but the exploitation of the black masses continued as before as did the exploitation of Africa’s natural resources, which were exported to the rest of the world. It is this that explains the fear of new age parties such as the MDC by nationalist-ruled Southern African governments.
They fear that new age, people-created parties, will destroy the neo-colonial system that the nationalist elites live off. This also explains the support for the Mugabe regime by SADC states despite the havoc Mugabe’s actions cause in neighbouring countries.
Moeletsi Mbeki is deputy chairperson of the South African Institute of International Affairs, an independent think tank based at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg
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