>The background to decision making is clear. Zanu (PF)’stole’ the last three elections and will not win any other unless all the refugees are prohibited from voting. Mugabe does not want, cannot afford, any democratic election as that will place him and his cronies in International Human Rights Courts. The lesson, now so evident: stop pinning hopes on Mugabe’s participation in a new Constitution. Rather deal with Zimbabweans.
The Zimbabwe $ is now no longer a working currency. Until there is a working currency, there can be no working economy. Something has to replace it immediately. Internally, people are demanding payment in Rand. And yesterday the beer ran out! The Z$ buys nothing as there is little production inside Zimbabwe. Without production, even barter is difficult.
The four million adult Zimbabweans now here and the extra one million already on their way must be treated as fellow Southern African citizens. They need the means to help their families survive in Zimbabwe. Today, they cannot send money as there is nothing to buy and any official conversion of US$ or Rand to Zim $s is a straight loss – a gift of hard currency to Mugabe for worthless money. Food, bought here by refugees and sent privately to families in Zimbabwe costs an extra 120% -150% for transport. Hence, refugees are now buying less than half the food they were able to deliver to family just two months ago!
That vast movement of food across the border is now the target of Mugabe’s ire and corruption. Better to walk to where there is food!
Zimbabwe is now virtually a hapless province of South Africa – something considered many times since 1910. Yet, it can once again become a positive asset within Southern Africa.
The present international position
The myth of Zimbabwe as a national entity ended in 2004 when Mugabe stole that general election. Since then he has engineered the largest genocide for decades worldwide. We are witnessing the latest stage – after beating up Matabeleland, getting rid of farm workers by ruining commercial agriculture, sending, as did Pol Pot, the urban opposition to the countryside by destroying houses and businesses, Mugabe is now chasing the remaining formal economy members across the borders. That genocide remains unnamed. Hence, the international community, headed in this instance by President Mbeki, has not had to act, to intervene to stop it.
At the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz, 2005, Kofi Annan, Africa’s then UN Secretary General, called for an end to genocide. “It is, above all, a day to remember not only the victims of past horrors, whom the world abandoned, but also the potential victims of present and future ones. A day to look them in the eye, and say: “you, at least, we must not fail”.
Annan said not a word about Zimbabwe’s genocide. Nothing has been said by any authority. Not by South Africa, SADC, the AU, EU or the UN. Yet, Kofi Annan quoted the old chestnut, “Truly it has been said: ‘All that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing'”. This defines Annan’s response and our failed “Quiet Diplomacy”.
This criminal neglect, led by our government, has allowed Mugabe to continue his ‘mad’ rampage against all Zimbabweans.
The current danger is that, with Mugabe weak and old, the field is ripe for new demagogues to take over.
The Mugabe government does not have the ideas or the integrity to persuade the international community to rescue the country while it governs. Recently, at last, a senior ANC member, Cyril Ramaphosa, stated that South Africa should intervene in Zimbabwe. He, however, did not say how. Kadar Asmal has just called for UN Security Council action however embarrassing that call is to the Mbeki government.
Immediate Steps to Take
The UN and South Africa should declare genocide in Zimbabwe and a failed and tyrannical state. As long called for, it should open the borders to people and goods and give all Zimbabwe refugees, here already or coming, three year working visas. This will allow the hire of Zimbabweans whose skills are badly needed in our failing education, health and agricultural / small farmer / land restitution systems and use them to bolster the vast public and private middle management and engineering sectors where there are real shortages.
Massive training can take place by fellow Zimbabweans, who have the skills, within ‘refugee’ camps where they live so that Zimbabweans going back over the next three years have enhanced their abilities to rebuild Zimbabwe.
South Africa must allow the Rand to become the working currency in Zimbabwe. The 5 million Zimbabweans in exile world wide earn R10 billion a month and seek to send home R3 billion a month. If there were suitable banking regulations to keep the hard currency out of Mugabe’s hands (now paying for his 5* hotel and shopping spree in Malaysia), this money would do the major part of humanitarian and reconstruction work urgently needed. With Rand backed demand inside Zimbabwe, South African goods can flow and local production be revived.
The international community will co-fund (with foreign currency payments) support to Zimbabweans in South Africa, Botswana etc. This will ease any undue pressure on the Rand.
Finally, the UN and AU, with South African leadership should provide a mandate to treat Zimbabwe – a failed state – as a Province of South Africa until its people choose to hold a referendum on its ‘national’ future. India has a similar provision. ‘Presidential Rule’ allows the central government to take over the administration of any Indian state (with from 30 to 130 million residents) when it ‘fails’. ‘Super Administrators’ replace politicians and head the bureaucracy.
Banking on Zimbabweans
The real Zimbabwe economy has moved ‘off-shore’ to South Africa, Botswana, the UK and the USA! The so-called Zimbabwe Diaspora.
It is here that family members try to find work or run businesses or do crime so that they can send money – no longer a real option – or food home. These Zimbabweans must have around 3 million bank accounts in these countries in dozens of banks, none of which has a programme to work with them.
It is time to form The Zimbabwe Bank, that is, a bank run to support Zimbabwean refugees. It would become a powerful player able to negotiate with the Mugabe ‘regime’ as the major provider of foreign currency, some R3 billion per month, to Zimbabwe. It would reinforce the open use of the Rand and a free flow of monies to Zimbabwe citizens. It, as a member controlled bank, would also become a central piece in the rebuilding of Zimbabwe.
A model now exists whereby such a Zimbabwe Bank can be created quickly. It uses an existing high street bank – Standard and ABSA / Barclays fit the bill as they are prominent in Zimbabwe – to accommodate the new bank as a client so that it has immediate access to technology and banking skills. The network of Zimbabwean refugees can carry the message and mobilise at little cost.