Mugabe Archives - Jean-Jacques Cornish

Will AU accept the neighbourhood ruffian?

Jean-Jacques Cornish — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 22:00:00 +0000

Robert Mugabe has always played the region like a violin. He behaves like the neighbourhood ruffian sauntering around the place like he owns it.

When it comes to the security arm of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), he quite literally believed it was his to keep.

It took then President Nelson Mandela to bring him to heel. The confrontation nearly upstaged the Non Aligned Summit that South Africa was hosting in Durban 16 years ago.

It was the final straw for the Zimbabwe president, who never got over Mandela upstaging him as the regional liberation leader of international choice. It has coloured bilateral relations between Zimbabwe and South Africa ever since.

Mandela’s successor Thabo Mbeki attracted almost as much international opprobrium for overlooking the inequities of his northern neighbour as he did with his AIDS denialism.

He was loath to take on Mugabe and he placed solidarity with the president driving his country deeper and deeper into the sand above the moral high ground South Africa occupied internationally following it’s relatively bloodless transition from apartheid to democracy.

Remember how his foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said one would never hear any criticism of Zimbabwe and Mugabe from South Africa?

Next up, President Jacob Zuma looked like he might take a more measured stance. He avoided the comradely hugs Mugabe is so fond of imparting to show who is really the boss.

He joined Zimbabwe’s neighbours in holding Mugabe’s foot to the fire to end Zimbabwe’s crash dive by forcing the ruling ZANU PF to enter into a power sharing deal with the two branches of the Movement for Democratic Change.

The SADC summit at the Victoria Falls earlier this week has effectively endorsed the disputed outcome of elections swept by ZANU PF last year that ended the arrangement.

It is not the least bit surprising that Mugabe should enjoy the support of the region that has previously given the seal of approval to even more contentious elections so blatantly stolen by Mugabe that the United States and Europe slapped punitive sanctions on him and a number of his henchmen.

Whatever encouragement Mugabe might have drawn from the regional thumbs up it has not fooled potential investors who continue to give the thumbs down to the once prosperous country of 13 million people.

Probably most repellent is legislation requiring 51% of foreign and white-opened businesses to be ceded to black Zimbabweans.

Unemployment in what could be the breadbasket of the region is estimated to exceed 80%.

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa has halved the growth forecast for the present financial year to 3,1%. The World Bank expects nothing better than 2%.

Small wonder the line at the passport office in Harare stretches several blocks as Zimbabweans leave their country in droves. Most of them head south over the Limpopo River.

Following a plea by Harare authorities the South African Home Affairs Ministry has extended until 2017 the dispensation for Zimbabweans seeking residence here.

In the race to succeed Robert Mugabe the smart runners are still hiding behind the hedges. But with a 90 year old leader to replace some are becoming bolder.

Deputy foreign minister Christopher Mutsvangwa was given a spread on the ZANU PF mouthpiece on the eve of the summit to denounce the party’s secretary for administration and once presidential favourite Didymus Mutasa as a coward during the liberation struggle who is now mistakenly trying to market himself as a kingmaker.

One sure indication that the tribal drum is sounding is when the activists return to draw from the Chimurenga well.

In his rambling question and answer interview with the Herald, Mutsvanwa also warned Deputy President Joyce Mujuru to get behind the aspirations of Mugabe’s wife Grace who has decided to enter the political arena. It remains to be seen whether the impending loss to South African luxury goods retailers will be Zimbabwe’s gain.

With the exception of Botswana’s President Ian Khama, who has been the lone voice of criticism against Mugabe within SADC, regional leaders look on benignly.

Their sense of irony was tested to the limit by the man they have chosen to make the new rotating president of their body urged them to rely less on foreign aid. His actions have choked off most assistance from abroad, leaving him to bite the British hand that continues to feed him.

They ignored the calls by human rights watchdog groups to discuss abuses in Zimbabwe and other SADC countries.

They have, however taken the first steps to revive the SADC Tribunal – but in a form more acceptable to Mugabe to had the previous regional court scrapped who it ruled in favour of a white farmer who’s land has been seized.

Will leaders of the African Union be as accepting of Mugabe to whom they are due to hand the baton next January?

A previous holder was Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Africa’s longest serving dictator, so maybe.

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Look who Barak Obama’s having to dinner

Jean-Jacques Cornish — Sat, 02 Aug 2014 22:00:00 +0000

By Jean-Jacques Cornish

There are more questions than answers as the United States hosts four dozen African leaders for their first summit in Washington this week.

Will it produce the deals and investment being sought by the fastest growing continent on the planet?

Or will it become a public relations exercise for Barak Obama showing yet again that he is only as African as one wants him to be?

One awkward question has been answered by South African foreign affairs chief Maite Nkoana Mashebane.

President Jacob Zuma snubbed the Europe-Africa summit in Paris last December because Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe was excluded.

He said then Africa will decide who to send, and it’s not for the hosts to decide on the guest list.

Yet Zuma’s at the Washington gathering to which Mugabe was pointedly not invited.

It’s about mechanisms, explains Nkoana Mashebane. Europe has form on summits with Africa. Washington does not.

Obama’s summonsing African leaders was a first.

Joining Mugabe off his invitation list is Omar Al Bashir of Sudan, Issaias Afeworki of Eritrea and interim Central African Republic president Catherine Samba Panza.

No word of complaint has been heard from Africa.

Presumably it is acceptable for Barak Obama to decide who he’s having to dinner, but French President Francois Hollande does not have the same right.

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al Sissi has indicated he will not be there.

The Cairo leader plays a pivotal role in the Middle East, so the summit will be the poorer for his absence if Obama was planning to air the greatest crisis this region is undergoing in a century.

It is not crystal clear exactly what will be discussed.

Ministers accompanying the leaders will deal with issues of trade and investment, security and multilateral cooperation in communications, health, infrastructure development and the like.

They will construct the final documents for their leaders who generally to not board their aircraft heading for a summit meeting without draft agreements and a communique remarkably close to the final versions.

This time there is barely of hint of what will be inked.

Wish lists are plentiful.

US officials are talking about scaling up security cooperation with Africa increasingly best with problems from Al Qaeda, Al Shabab, Boko Haram and other militatnt Islamist groups that cause both African and American security operatives to wake up clammy with sweat in the early hours

They have to deal with an Africa quick to take what Washington offers but reluctant to be seen getting into Uncle Sam’s pocket.

Best example of this is the inability of the US Africa command to find a permanent home on the continent it is designed to help safeguard.

Africans, in their turn, want an extension without conditionality on the African Growth and Opportunity Act giving their exports preferential access to US markets.

They’re pressing for Obama to announce a 15 year extension.

The reality is that whatever the US president offers has to pass a sceptical Congress with a plethora of local interests to protect.

The African leaders would be mistaken thinking they will be received with open arms by US lawmakers, already on their summer holiday.

They will be very fortunate to avoid being roasted by the US media that takes a perverse delight in spitting in the soup of the president’s dinner guests.

They have been asking for weeks why Obama is breaking bread with counterparts guilty of corruption, human rights violations and profligacy.

They will leap at their chance to take those leaders to task personally.

Many questions may linger, but excitement is a central ingredient on the menu this week.

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