ADDRESSING DELEGATES to the congress of President Robert Mugabe’s party in Bulawayo on Saturday, secretary general of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) Gwede Mantashe said his party would help with strategies that would “deliver victory” to Zanu-PF in elections expected next year.
Mantashe insisted, however, that the help the ANC would give would not affect or compromise President Jacob Zuma’s role as a Southern African Development Community mediator for the Zimbabwe crisis. The latter was a state role, he suggested, while the position of the party which Zuma also leads could be different.
Really, Mr Mantashe! The announcement is not only an outrageous kick in the teeth to the democracy activists of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in Zimbabwe who have faced beatings, arbitrary arrests, and murders at the hands of Zanu-PF goons, but to the ANC’s own finest traditions. But, once again, regrettably, the organisation which ushered in and has presided over two decades of democratic transition in South Africa, which stands as the embodiment of the hopes of a continent-wide democratic transformation, is being seen to consort and prop up dictators. Its, and South Africa’s, diplomacy, is sadly becoming a crude caricature of the regional power brokering and influence-peddling associated with the old imperial powers. And all that, unconvincingly veiled, as Mantashe did, in the rhetoric of anti-imperialism and support for former comrades in the liberation movement.
It doesn’t wash. The record is clear. At the UN Security Council, South Africa has – to use an American football term – “run block” for former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo in attempts to defy an election result, for the Burmese junta, Gadafy’s regime and that of Syria. It has curried favour with China by preventing a visit by the Dalai Lama. The list goes on.
And Zuma’s softly softly approach to the 87-year-old Mugabe, under the guise of brokering endless failed mediation, has also been deeply disappointing, serving to provide cover internationally for Mugabe’s blatant thwarting of agreements to share power with the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai, who defeated him in the first round of the 2008 presidential elections. With Mugabe’s allies pressing for elections next year and the army/police apparatus still firmly in Mugabe’s hands, the MDC faces a huge challenge in confronting what is inevitably going to be widespread electoral intimidation and abuse. The ANC has just promised to make their task harder.