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Reporting on ruination

Thursday, December 4, 2008

DATELINE: Cape Town, South Africa -- Thanks to globalization, everyone is learning, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, how interconnected we all are, in the world economy, in law, and in information about both.

I was a good way north of here last week, in Namibia, but every country in the southern Africa region is keenly aware of each other and of each others’ doings – these 14 countries were to the fore of the globalizing process when they banded together as one economic and political grouping SADC (the Southern Africa Development Community). One consequence is that Zimbabwe’s downward spiral to disaster, further north again beyond Namibia, is a major preoccupation for all southern Africa’s concerned citizens.

 

Indeed, I caught an under-reported but dramatic legal decision being announced in Namibia, part of a significant civil suit against Robert Mugabe’s venal and brutal government. SADC’s over-arching legal tribunal, sitting in Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, ruled that his ongoing seizure of commercial farms violates international law and must be halted immediately.

 

"The applicants have been discriminated against on the grounds of race", said the Tribunal’s president Judge Luis Mondlane, deciding in favor of the more than 75 commercial (a category that in effect means “white”) farmers who challenged the land redistribution program which Mugabe began in 2000, and which - as it inexorably deteriorated into an insane land-grab - became a prime trigger for the country’s economic collapse. (Pictured above left is one of the litigating Zimbabwean farmers, Ben Freeth after he was beaten up by Mugabe supporters earlier this year.)

 

I can guarantee that this ruling won’t make a jot of difference to Mugabe and his pursuance of this self-destructive policy – but it’s an important stab in the eye of the desperate dictator. His lawyers have been delaying this moment of judgment via a series of flailing courtroom and sidebar tactics for months, until now.

 

The farmers’ long battle is being documented by a video team commissioned by the UK network, Channel Four. It’s led by independent production company Explorer Films’ energetic fieldman Andrew Thomas, who is also hoping for a sale to HBO in the US.

 

The documentary will include sad and outraging stories of Mugabe-supporting, so-called “war vets” invading, squatting on and ruining long-worked family-owned farms. These will doubtless stir support for the farmers. I’d say, though, that it’s tactically a tad unwise for them to choose a British outfit as their media “shadows” throughout their legal odyssey, since Mugabe repeatedly condemns the commercial farming lobby for being agents of the British government.

 

Being tarred with a UK connection is a common hazard among anyone Mugabe doesn’t like. The opposition Campaign for Democratic Change who won March’s round of elections, and with whom Mugabe is now supposed to be cooperating, as part of the recently negotiated settlement for power-sharing (“Ha!” I can hear you snort) gets calumnied by the Mugabe camp as working for the Brits.

 

It’s a mistake to dismiss such notions as the ravings of a reverse-racist madman. For no greater reason than that Mugabe still commands a lot of credibility in this region. In Windhoek, one of the biggest roads is named “Robert Mugabe Avenue”. The major daily newspaper The Namibian has carried reader correspondence suggesting the honor should be withdrawn from “Uncle Bob” (as he’s called in less respectful circles). But no-one in the ruling party, longtime fellow combatants during a parallel anti-White Supremacy war, would accede to such a change.

 

The President, Hifikepunye Pohamba, is known to be personally close to Mugabe, and – just as significantly - political talk of adopting the “Zimbabwe model” for land redistribution has gained currency there, driven by activists among Namibia’s impatient and disadvantaged peasants.

 

BUT HERE IN SOUTH AFRICA, EX-PRESIDENT THABO MBEKI, who brokered the still-only-notional Zimbabwe agreement, is forlornly now trying to get it to actually work. He has supposedly been helped by the fact he too is a comrade-in-arms of Mugabe from the liberation struggles’ days (though two more different comrades I can scarcely imagine).

 

However, with his office (leading the region’s political and economic powerhouse) unceremoniously pulled from under him by internal African National Congress party strife, Mbeki lacks the authority to broker anything. Look for any attention paid to his Zimbabwean efforts by his own country’s media, and you’ll look in vain.

 

Paradoxically, it is the new President-in-waiting, the politically and morally ugly Jacob Zuma who is raising the ante (verbally at least) in favor of enforcing a settlement that brings about some betterment for Zimbabwe’s long-suffering people.

 

Whether he can succeed there, or equally whether he’ll operate for his own people’s betterment on ascending to the presidency (an ascension which is almost certain to happen, unless the corruption investigations mounted against him manage finally - and against the odds - to derail his progress) amount to big uncertain questions.

 

Last night I heard a veteran ANC activist from Zuma’s part of the country, who grew up with him as a family friend (her mother generously paid the traditional lobola - "bride-price" - for Zuma’s first marriage) say very sadly that he was simply “not suitable” to be President.

 

 

**CONNECTICUT'S NPR STATION, WHDD (ROBIN HOOD RADIO) AIRS A DISCUSSION BASED ON THIS COLUMN EVERY WEEK - Fridays at 7.35 am, and Saturdays at 4.45 pm.**

 

Listen to THE MEDIA BEAT podcasts by clicking HERE.

   

  

 

ANY POPULATION’S SUFFERING IS HARD TO GAUGE with real accuracy – especially from the outside - and I remain an unwelcome outsider to Zimbabwe, given how fiercely unwelcoming Mugabe’s regime is to international journalists. (As it was last week to freelance diplomats Kofi Annan, Graca Machel and Jimmy Carter.) Cannily, I’m not going to try entering that country during this regional trip – and I have to say it’s all very disconcerting to me, even a tad galling in personal terms, as a reporter who was deported by the country’s previous White Supremacist regime.

 

To assess the overall state of the place, though, we all have available those bald indicators like … the country’s incalculable rate of inflation, pegged this morning at a number that defies credence: 230,000,000 percent per year … and a rising level of hunger that has made food aid agencies estimate 5.1 million people will need emergency feeding by next month. That’s about 45 percent of the country’s entire population (- just a few of them, pictured above right).

 

Beyond this kind of overview, it’s through determined and resourceful correspondents like Peta Thornycroft, the ex-British reporter (she opted for Zimbabwean citizenship to be able to continue her freelance coverage) … Sebastien Berger of Britain’s Daily Telegraph … and Thabo Mkhize for The Times of London) that the rest of world has been learning details about, on top of everything else, the horrific spread of cholera in Zimbabwe. The outbreak has now killed well over 500 people and rendered up to 10,000 deathly sick.  The capital city, Harare’s water supply was shut off this week, because the government-run water company ran out of bacteria-killing chemicals, only to be restored yesterday. Can we believe the water is now safe again?

 

And on top of all THAT, there’s a less well-reported outbreak, this time of anthrax. That disease normally affects only animals, but there are signs that it is jumping to humans (usually the result of handling or eating diseased animals) and so far one adult’s and two children’s deaths are confirmed, in the Zambezi Valley. There will be more reported. Hunger is making people eat infected carcasses.

 

It’s been asked before, and forces itself on our conscience again now in Zimbabwe’s case - just how much wretchedness can one nation be made to bear?
 

 

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