The Great Betrayal

17^th May 2002

President Thabo Mbeki emerged from his talks with the Nordic leaders on the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) this week almost rubbing his hands with glee. Mbeki's overwhelming relief at the positive response of European powers is linked to the impending meeting of the G8, whose stance will be crucial to Nepad. We seriously doubt ordinary Zimbabweans share his enthusiasm.

Mbeki's message was that he and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo have brought Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to heel, and that Nepad's pledge of African democracy for Western economic assistance remains on course. Presumably because they are anxious for an African success story, European leaders, including Britain's Tony Blair, are colluding in this lie. The most grotesque case of wilful blindness was a statement by the Canadian High Commissioner in South Africa, Lucie Edwards, that the "dangerous corner" of Zimbabwe has been "passed relatively smoothly", that "the first test had been overcome", and that Mbeki and Obasanjo's acceptance of Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth had saved the day.

What are the facts? This week Zimbabwean human rights monitor the Amani Trust reported that attacks by Zanu PF youth brigades and "war veterans" have intensified since the election in a "campaign of violent retribution". Highlighting "a sustained attack on opposition supporters by agents and supporters of the ruling party", Zimbabwe's Human Rights NGO forum reported 16 cases of torture and kidnapping in the last two weeks of April alone. Since the election, eight journalists have been prosecuted under the Access to Information Act, which - in an uncanny echo of apartheid press law – criminalises inaccurate reporting. Mugabe's government may have started to move illegal squatters off white farms, but farm seizures have taken a sinister new twist as Zanu PF grandees personally evict farmers and grab their land, houses and other possessions. The principal of a well-known Harare secondary school has been prosecuted under the Public Order and Safety Act for questioning the legitimacy of the election in a circular to parents. Famine - the direct consequence of the systematic disruption of commercial agriculture - stalks a land once self-sufficient in staple foods. And this week Zanu PF unilaterally called off reconciliation talks with the Movement for Democratic Change.

The promise of unity government had been Mbeki's trump card in his attempts to avert Western eyes from a manifestly fraudulent election. One argument is that until the African Union (AU) is launched, there are no mechanisms for African self-policing on governance and human rights. This is nonsense. We have a regional peer review system in the Southern African Development Community, set up at the April 2000 mini-summit at Victoria Falls. It has been ineffectual, much as the AU peer review mechanism is likely to be. It is not enough to say that if one is serious about African economic and political resurgence Nepad is the only game in town. With corrupt and brutally repressive governments in place, passively endorsed by South Africa and the West, no amount of aid will make a difference. It is little short of ominous that Nepad is being laid on a foundation of lies and the international betrayal of the rights of ordinary Africans.

Comment from The Mail & Guardian (SA)