Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangarai has been visiting the US, Britain and the EU countries and their headquarters in recent weeks to seek support for his country’s transition period. He hopes that the visit will help him to get great support from the west.
As the EU leader said during Tsvangarai’s visit, the EU has always been supporting the former Zimbabwe opposition, the Movement for Democracy and Change with 90 million Euro every year. Now the opposition has become the ruling party by forming a coalition government with Zanu-PF led by President Robert Mugabe.
While answering a question by the Swedish journalist in Stockholm after meeting Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt, Tsvangarai said, ’There is no opposition in Zimbabwe. The MDC is the majority. We won the majority or half and we reached an agreement and formed a coalition. ’
He also said that Zimbabwe has almost become paralyzed over the past decade from the Garden of Eden dubbed by the Europeans. Due to land reform and sending troops to Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe became isolated by the western countries, was listed as dictatorship by the Bush Administration and its economy crashed.
Now both Mugabe and the opposition made concessions so that the situation in Zimbabwe becomes stable. Tsvangarai urged the western countries to support his government to conduct reform. He said that Zimbabwe’s future is rosy. It’s time to actively support Zimbabwe’s development. Why?
Firstly, time is ripe for support since the coalition has been established and the situation has become stable. It needs financial support and expertise for reform and development. Zimbabwe was not a poor country. Even today if you mention golf, Zimbabwe is still a country with very good and inexpensive golf courts. Zimbabwe’s deteriorated situation had something to do with western isolation and sanctions in addition to its domestic politics.
As early as 1998, Zimbabwe wanted to carry out land reform. That is to get land from white farmers to give it to the landless black farmers. The process needed money. A donors’ conference was held early September. But that was just a week after Zimbabwe announced to send troops to the DRC to rescue Kabila government which was threatened to fall by a military rebellion. When Kinshasa was almost taken over by the rebels, it was President Mugabe who organized an emergent defense minister meeting among SADC countries at the request from Kabila. At the meeting, Mugabe called for support for Kabila because there was an agreement within African Unity that they will not support any military coup to get power. At that time, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe expressed that they were willing to send troops to DRC to support Kabila’s government. The western media speculated that the reason for Angola and Namibia to send troops was that they have borders with DRC. This would be conducive to deal with their own separatists. But Zimbabwe doesn’t have any border with DRC. The reason Zimbabwe sent troops was that Mugabe’s nephew had diamond mine in DRC. I personally think that Mugabe sent troops to DRC was because President Kabila asked for his help and he as the leader of SADC military and defense commission should take the lead. Later Mugabe admitted that his sister’s son had business in DRC. But it was not enough to say that was the only reason. Without support from the three countries, Kabila’s government would have been taken over within weeks or days by the rebels who were supported by Uganda and Rwanda then. The only difference here was that Zimbabwe was not as strong as the US and South Africa. The US could bomb former Yugoslavia and then withdrew. South Africa later intervened in Lesotho’s military coup with a success because they sent about 2000 troops there and the coup was cracked down within days. But Zimbabwe didn’t have that strength. It was opposite to the other scenario. Zimbabwe is a small country while DRC is one of the largest countries in Africa. Maybe Mugabe didn’t expect that his troops would have to stay in DRC for a long time before the UN sent any peace-keeping forces there. Even though Kabila’s government survived from the emergency, half of the country was lost to the rebels. Kabila was assassinated by his own people later.
Thus when the donors’ conference concluded at the end of the day, almost nobody except China promised to give money to Zimbabwe for its land reform because they thought Zimbabwe was a rich country, let alone to send troops to DRC.
But Zimbabwe people wanted the land. Without proper compensation, they wanted to push ahead. Mugabe accused Britain of going back to its promise of 1980 to support Zimbabwe’s land reform when it was needed. He also accused the US of against the international law by bombing former Yugoslavia. Soon he became less and less popular in the west. Foreign currency in the country ran out. Oil crisis aggravated the economic situation. Many white people moved their money out of the country.
I was still in Harare early 2000. Seeing the Zimbabwe dollar depreciating day by day. I often went to the bank to wait for US dollar in case anybody happened to save some. I would take it out for my salary. I suspected that Southeast Asian financial crisis also affected Zimbabwe very much. Otherwise, there would have been more investment coming to the country from Malaysia or other rich Asian countries. For a small country such investment could also matter.
Meanwhile domestic dissatisfaction from workers arose. About the terms of presidency, Mugabe was open for a referendum. But he overestimated his own fame or underestimated the opposition’s strength. The referendum was passed to shorten his presidency. Many people were not happy because of Mugabe’s foreign policy made Zimbabwe isolated and caused economic crisis. But Mugabe was tough. When the Common Wealth commission decided to expel Zimbabwe from it, Mugabe said ‘Goodbye to the Common Wealth’.
He tried all means to win the presidential election. One of the methods was to limit the number of voters. Those who held two passports must give up one if they wanted to vote. Thus Mugabe became a ‘dictator’ in the eyes of western world and even within his own country.
I personally think that his critic to Britain and the US were not unreasonable. But his mistake was to challenge too much. To send troops to DRC was the beginning of the fall of Zimbabwe’s economy and political isolation. He prevented DRC from being overthrown, but he couldn’t prevent other countries. So his efforts not only didn’t win him any praise, but also dragged his own country into crisis.
In the current world most people prefer peaceful means for solving conflict. Negotiation and compromise are the main way to solve the problem. The thinking of either you or I die is out of date. Under the international and national pressure, President Mugabe might have realized this since he compromised to form the coalition government with MDC.
Second, one should consider the difficult situation of the Zimbabwe people. Western aid always depends on whether Mugabe is in power. But as Prime Minister Tsvangarai said this was Zimbabwan people’s choice to develop economy no matter Mugabe is president or not. People need production, construction, democracy, food and stability.
I like to argue that since the west always emphasize whether the people will benefit from the aid. If the west doesn’t support, no one will benefit. The difficulty will last much longer. Therefore, I think it is better to support now than later. Don’t wait until all the infrastructure have broken. To be honest, Zimbabwe’s infrastructure was better than many other African countries. In recent years, tourism industry, a pillar in Zimbabwe suffered a lot. But I was always impressed by the beautiful streets in Harare.
Thirdly, since it was the Prime Minister who came out asking for help, people should help. No matter it is for democracy or economic development, it will need money, time and great efforts. The new government will experience this or that difficulty. But believe in it, as long as you are constructive, but not destruction, the country will go forward. Former opposition now becomes one of the ruling parties. How to treat them? Shall we support another opposition to put pressure on them? It is time for the west and international community to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe and provide support to Zimbabwe. I think it is more constructive to support the current government than to support any opposition now.
Of course any political party that started with revolution or strike will face great test of building its country. It will need more experience. As everyone knows during this process, Prime Minister Tsvangarai lost his wife and his grandson. Maybe like a Chinese saying goes, God will give him a bigger mission to fulfill. It is time to actively support Zimbabwe’s development.
By Xuefei Chen, People’s Daily Online, Stockholm. Xuefei Chen used to be a correspondent in Harare for two years from May 1998 to June 2000.
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