IOL
May 04
2008 at 08:59AM
By Peta Thornycroft
Harare - There are
now about 7 000 casualties of the rapidly worsening
violence in Zimbabwe as
the military's campaign against the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC)
opposition party hots up, according to doctors
treating the
injured.
Statistics gathered countrywide in Zimbabwe this week show
that only
10 percent of those beaten and tortured are able to get medical
treatment.
At least 700 people have been treated since the
elections.
A state-registered nurse, part of a small team gathering
information
as patients are examined, said on Saturday: "We take statements
from those
who manage to get to see medical personnel. We estimate that we
only get to
about 10 percent of those who have been attacked, mostly by
uniformed
soldiers."
The nurse, who would not be named,
said that the violence started
slowly in the Mashonaland East province,
where Robert Mugabe's ruling
Zanu-PF suffered defeat in the March 29
election, but had spread throughout
the country.
Until
Saturday, the stated number of victims treated by medical
personal remained
at about 400, then it was disclosed that the number had
almost
doubled.
"We are particularly worried about people with fractures
who are still
out there because their injuries will go septic in about a
week and there
are no drugs in the government hospitals," the nurse
said.
He said older victims of the vicious attacks say that the war
they are
now caught up in is as bad as the bush war of the 1970s, when tens
of
thousands were caught between Mugabe's insurgents and the forces of the
Rhodesian administration.
He said ambulances could no longer
travel into certain areas to pick
up the injured.
Unicef said
there were mounting reports of families fleeing the
violence, and of aid
groups finding it increasingly difficult to operate.
"We need to
ensure an open and safe space for reaching those in need,"
said Dr Festo
Kavishe, the UN Children's fund (Unicef) representative in
Zimbabwe.
Many children are being hurt. A 14-month old was
admitted to a Harare
hospital on Thursday. She had been beaten unconscious
on her mother's back
in an attack by Zanu-PF youths and men calling
themselves "war veterans".
The war against civilians is
particularly directed against MDC office
bearers and has decimated the party
organisation in many rural areas.
About 35 houses in a village near
Shamva, about 80km north of Harare,
were burned and smashed this week, ahead
of the country learning that Mugabe
had been beaten by Morgan Tsvangirai,
the MDC leader.
Wilfred Mhanda, one of Mugabe's top commanders in
the 1970s bush war,
whose nom de guerre was Dzinashe Machingura, said this
week that an "orgy of
violence" had been perpetrated by state security
forces, "complemented by
war veterans, youth militia and Zanu-PF
enthusiasts.
"The Mugabe regime descended on the defenceless people
of Zimbabwe as
retribution for voting for change. Command structures for the
campaign of
violence are now fully operational.
"Mugabe's
illegitimate and repressive rule has degenerated into a
fascist dictatorship
reminiscent of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge reign of terror in
Cambodia. It is a
crime against humanity … and an abomination for former
liberation fighters
to indulge in retributive atrocities and human rights
abuses against the
people they fought to liberate."
The MDC is meeting in South Africa
this weekend to discuss whether it
should take part in the run-off election
scheduled for May 19. The official
results of the presidential election gave
Tsvangirai 47,9 percent of the
vote and Mugabe 43,2 percent.
If
Tsvangirai does not contest the rerun, Mugabe will be sworn in for
a further
five years in power. - Foreign Service
This article was
originally published on page 1 of Sunday Independent
on May 04, 2008
Cape Argus
May 04,
2008 Edition 1
Zimbabwe's Movement for Democtraic Change opposition
yesterday held out the
possibility its leader would face President Robert
Mugabe in a presidential
run-off, but called on the nation's neighbours to
verify the disputed vote
count from the first round.
Thokozani Khupe,
vice-president of the MDC, said the party still believed a
run-off was
unnecessary, maintaining opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won
the first
round outright on March 29.
Results released by the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission gave Tsvangirai the
lead, but not enough to avoid a run-off with
Mugabe. The opposition rejected
those results as fraudulent.
At a
news conference yesterday, Khupe called on the Southern African
Development
Community to help verify the results. "We still need to be
convinced before
we participate in a run-off," she said.
Opposition leaders were meeting
this weekend to consider their next step.
The MDC has consistently
rejected a run-off, but its stance has appeared to
soften since the official
results were released and Mugabe's party said he
would take part in a second
round.
On Friday, Tsvangirai's deputy, Tendai Biti, acknowledged that
skipping a
second round could mean another term for Mugabe.
Biti said
the only way out of the impasse was a power-sharing government led
by
Tsvangirai, but with no role for Mugabe.
"The ruling party's bloody
crackdown on the opposition makes a free and fair
run-off vote a tragic
joke," Georgette Gagnon, Human Rights Watch's Africa
director, said in a
statement. - AP
Independent on Sunday, UK
Taking part would allow Mugabe to steal election, opposition
leaders fear
By Raymond Whitaker
Sunday, 4 May
2008
Zimbabwe's opposition leaders face an agonising dilemma today as
they meet
to decide whether to contest the second round of the presidential
election
against President Robert Mugabe.
On Friday, nearly five
weeks after Zimbabweans went to the polls, the
country's nominally
independent election committee finally announced that
Morgan Tsvangirai, the
leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), had beaten Mr
Mugabe. The margin of victory, 47.9 per cent to
43.2 per cent, contrasted
with independent counts which put Mr Tsvangirai
much closer to an overall
majority and the MDC's claim that he had won 50.3
per cent of the vote,
giving him outright victory.
Since the poll, on 29 March, MDC spokesmen
have insisted that to take part
in a run-off would amount to allowing Mr
Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party to
steal the election. The long delay in
releasing the results, and the wave of
violence that has engulfed former
Zanu-PF strongholds, heightened suspicions
that the government wanted to
manipulate the first-round results and ensure
victory the next time. "They
needed to narrow the gap, so that they can
justify a 'win' for Mugabe in the
second round," said David Coltart, an
opposition senator.
No date has
yet been announced for any run-off. But the decision now facing
Mr
Tsvangirai and his colleagues is whether to refuse to take part, which
would
immediately hand victory to Mr Mugabe, or to go ahead, knowing that
thousands of MDC supporters have already been assaulted, burned out of their
homes, and in some cases killed. Since the poll, the MDC leader and his
deputy, Tendai Biti, have remained outside the country, mainly in South
Africa, for fear of arrest or attack. Mr Tsvangirai, who was badly beaten a
year ago during a "prayer rally", has hinted that he fears for his
life.
In Johannesburg Mr Biti reflected the difficult choice facing the
MDC. He
acknowledged that a boycott would give another term to the
84-year-old Mr
Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for the 28 years since
independence. But he
said there could not be a run-off because Zimbabwe "is
burning", with
economic collapse as well as violence. He said the only way
out of the
stalemate was a power-sharing government led by Mr Tsvangirai,
but with no
role for Mr Mugabe.
International organisations have also
cast doubt on whether conditions for a
fair contest exist. Georgette Gagnon,
Africa director of Human Rights Watch
(HRW), said: "The ruling party's
bloody crackdown on the opposition makes a
free and fair run-off vote a
tragic joke. The violence must stop and an
impartial process be put in place
before any new vote is held."
Apart from the violence in rural areas,
police have arrested 15 to 20
officials of the Zimbabwe Election Commission
on charges of vote-rigging for
the MDC, raided the offices of the country's
largest independent poll
monitoring group, and staged a raid on the MDC
headquarters in Harare, where
hundreds were arrested.
The situation
is worst in Zanu-PF's former strongholds in northern and
eastern Zimbabwe,
where it lost many seats to the MDC, forfeiting its
parliamentary majority,
and narrowly holding on in several others. Zanu-PF
youth militias and "war
veterans" have sought to punish voters for their
disloyalty, with the
crackdown reported to be most violent in Mashonaland
East, near
Harare.
Tiseke Kasambala, an HRW researcher who has travelled throughout
Zimbabwe
during the crisis, told The Independent on Sunday that during her
latest
tour, ending a week ago, she had been unable to return to several
areas she
had previously visited. Mashonaland East was "totally
inaccessible", she
said. "There are roadblocks everywhere, and nobody is
allowed in or out. We
have been told of people sleeping in the bush because
their homes, crops and
animals have been burned.
"Some have been
injured in beatings, but are unable to get treatment. People
have been
forced to attend meetings and swear allegiance to Zanu-PF. If they
don't,
they are assumed to be MDC and beaten."
Ms Kasambala said she had seen
burnt homesteads in Mashonaland West and
Central provinces, and interviewed
refugees in the eastern Manicaland region
who spoke of widespread
intimidation. "If the MDC goes for a run-off at this
time, it can't win,"
she concluded, adding that Human Rights Watch was
increasingly concerned at
the humanitarian crisis caused by "state-sponsored
violence".
The UN
children's agency, Unicef, said there were growing reports of
families
fleeing their homes and added that aid groups were finding it
increasingly
difficult to operate.
Scotland on Sunday
Published Date: 04 May 2008
By Angus Shaw
in
Harare, Zimbabwe
ZIMBABWE'S opposition yesterday held out the possibility
that its leader
would face Robert Mugabe in a presidential run-off, but
called on the
nation's neighbours to verify the vote count from the first
round.
Thokozani Khupe, vice president of the Movement for Democratic Change,
said
the group still believed a run-off was unnecessary, maintaining that
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round outright on March
29.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission released results on Friday,
giving
Tsvangirai the lead, but not the clear majority needed to avoid a
run-off
with Mugabe.
The opposition rejected those results as
fraudulent.
At a news conference yesterday, Khupe called on the Southern
African
Development Committee to help verify the results. "We still need to
be
convinced before we participate in a run-off," she
said.
Opposition leaders were expected to meet this weekend to consider
their next
step. No run-off date has been set.
Deputy information
minister Bright Matonga said the constitution requires a
second round no
sooner than 21 days from the announcement of the results,
and no later than
a year.
The opposition has consistently rejected the idea of a run-off,
but its
stance has appeared to soften since the official results were
released and
Mugabe's party said he would take part.
On Friday,
Tsvangirai's deputy, Tendai Biti, acknowledged that skipping a
second round
could result in another term for Mugabe.
Biti told reporters in
Johannesburg that the only way out of the impasse was
a power-sharing
government led by Tsvangirai, but with no role for Mugabe.
Biti also said
a run-off would be illegal and there could not be one "for
the simple and
good reasons that the country is burning" amid violence and
economic
collapse from rampant inflation.
International observers have questioned
whether a run-off would be
legitimate, given the violence the opposition has
faced.
The opposition's leaders, including Biti and Tsvangirai, have been
staying
out of Zimbabwe for fear of arrest.
The New York-based Human
Rights Watch said: "The ruling Zanu-PF party, the
army and so-called war
veterans have conducted a brutal state-sponsored
campaign of violence,
torture and intimidation against (opposition]
activists and supporters." The
group said limits on the opposition's access
to the media and questions
about the impartiality of electoral officials
have also not been
addressed.
"The ruling party's bloody crackdown on the opposition makes a
free and fair
run-off vote a tragic joke," Georgette Gagnon, Human Rights
Watch's Africa
director, said in the statement.
In a separate
statement, Unicef said there were growing reports of children
fleeing their
homes with their families as a result of political violence,
and aid groups
were finding it increasingly difficult to operate.
Mugabe's officials
have denied fomenting political violence, instead
accusing the opposition of
being behind the widespread unrest.
Zimbabwe Guardian
Dyke Sithole
Sun, 04 May 2008 00:02:00
+0000
THE newly elected MDC Senator for Khumalo
constituency, David Coltart says
there is need for the transformation of
both the public and private media
into critical and analytical institutions
of the government of the day and
opposition political
parties.
Addressing journalists in Bulawayo during the
eve of this year’s world Press
Freedom celebration, Coltart said the MDC if
elected into power during the
forthcoming presidential run–offs will allow
the public media to criticize
its shortcomings.
“If the MDC
forms the next government, we will create enabling conditions
for the
independence of both the public and private media. Allowing the
media to be
in the hands of government or the ruling party is an unhealthy
situation for
democracy,” said Coltart who is a lawyer.
Coltart said in the
post Mugabe era there is a need for the private media to
critically probe
opposition parties and the government unlike the present
situation where the
private media is seen as a mouthpiece for the
opposition.
Coltart said the MDC government will push for the
amendments of media laws
in the country—in view of creating freedom of the
press and more players in
the industry— which is presently dominated by
state controlled media.
The Senator said he strongly believes
that foreigners should not be allowed
to control the press, but funding of
newspapers and radio stations from
foreigners should not be
restricted.
If elected, Coltart said, the MDC government will put
more resources into
the training of journalists as well as promote
investigative journalism.
Meanwhile the Minister of Information
and Publicity Sihkanyiso Ndlovu is
expected today to address the journalists
on World Press Freedom day.
Thought Leader. SA
Michael Trapido
Loading ...
South African
President Thabo Mbeki, having failed to query how Zanu-PF knew
the result of
the presidential election a month before the ZEC, and ignored
all reports of
murder, torture and intimidation which started immediately
thereafter — no
doubt in anticipation of the run-off Mugabe had decided on —
has now advised
religious leaders that he is sending a team to investigate
the claims of
violence being made in Zimbabwe.
This is the same president who urged
quiet diplomacy until the world could
no longer bear the atrocities and
placed it on the Security Council agenda.
This is the man who believes in
the softly-softly approach until our UN team
abandoned all of that in order
to side with China.
This is the same president, whose team at the UN
could not meet with the MDC
representative in New York, but raced across to
meet Mugabe who was
boycotting a meeting by Southern African “leaders” — I
use the word in the
broadest possible sense — to try and resolve the crisis
in Zimbabwe. Can you
imagine the contempt that Mugabe has for these leaders
if he can’t even be
bothered to attend a summit called to assist his own
country?
This is the same president who encouraged “quiet diplomacy”
while 85% of
Zimbabwe are unemployed, 150 000% inflation exists, there is a
life
expectancy of around 35 for adults and a quarter of the Zimbabwean
population live in exile. This is despite the fact that the overwhelming
number of South Africans and Zimbabweans support the end of Mugabe and the
introduction of the new, duly elected Morgan Tsvangirai and the
MDC.
This is the same president who watched as, prior to elections,
Mugabe banned
overseas observers, only allowed government media, stopped
rallies, murdered
and tortured his opponents and their supporters, rigged
the ballots,
arranged the constituencies to suit his party, ensured that
only a certain
amount of MDC voters would have time to cast their ballot and
then lost!!!
Mr President, with millions in exile — they’d rather serve
tables or work in
gardens than live under Mugabe – with vote rigging and
Mugabe’s ZEC counting
the votes — the butcher of Zimbabwe still lost! Can
you even begin to
imagine how much Zimbabweans hate Mugabe, and that under
these conditions
the ZEC still has had to concede that Mad Bob was
beaten.
This is the same president who, post elections, sat back and
watched as
Mugabe called it a run-off within days of the election but had
the ZEC
furiously counting votes week after week, immediately began a
campaign of
murder and intimidation in anticipation of the run-off,
boycotted the
summit, used South Africa to block UN intervention, used South
Africa to
import Chinese arms until South African unions told them to sod
off, forced
thousands more into exile this time via Botswana, arrested his
own monitors
for not being biased enough, released the result while the ZEC
was going
through the process of verifying the numbers with parties
(staggering!) and
now calls for this run-off in conditions more dangerous to
Tsvangirai than
those prior to elections?
I have a few questions for
Mbeki:
a.. Why are you following a line that is totally indefensible and
contrary
to the wishes of the people of South Africa and Zimbabwe?
a..
How can you ever expect Morgan Tsvangirai to stand in a run-off under
these
circumstances?
a.. Can South Africans also expect Chinese troops and arms on
our streets at
some time in the future if party popularity wanes?
a.. Is
recolonisation in Africa acceptable if a “liberation leader” invites
the
colonisers?
When all is said and done, why is South Africa doing the dirty
work for
Mugabe?
We deserve an explanation as to why this is in the
interest of the people of
this country.
Why we don’t load-shed in
Zimbabwe, route arms and prop up a regime that is
costing our country
billions in caring for the millions of exiles who cannot
bear to live under
that tyrant any longer.
Perhaps there is a suitable explanation. I’m sure
the whole country would
love to hear it.
This entry was posted on
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
IOL
Maureen Isaacson
May 04 2008 at 09:23AM
Morgan
Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC), is not
Tom Cruise. Tendai Biti, the MDC secretary-general and one of
Zimbabwe's top
lawyers, says Tsvangirai, the former mineworker who looks set
to rule
Zimbabwe, is no actor, nor is he manipulative in the way that
politicians
often are.
When the MDC split because of Tsvangirai's decision to
vote against
the introduction of the senate to the houses of parliament in
October 2003,
Biti was forced to choose between the leadership of Tsvangirai
and the
leader of the faction, Arthur Mutambara.
"I chose
Morgan because he is a human being with very strong points
and weak points
also. If he makes mistakes you know they are bona fide and
this draws
loyalty out of people. What you see is what you get," says Biti.
Our political proclivities determine what we see and Mugabe's people
did a
good job of discrediting Tsvangirai. But even as the crisis over the
March
election rages, (despite the MDC's clear win), we are undoubtedly
looking at
a winner.
Tsvangirai has brought 99 seats to parliament, while
Mutambara's
faction gained 10. Together this makes a majority and it means
that Mugabe
has no power to vote for a national budget, no small feat;
certainly a
vindication for Tsvangirai.
This week after the two
MDC factions united against the repressive
regime, Mutambara said in an
interview: "...given the attempts by [Robert]
Mugabe to sabotage the votes
of the people, we are closing ranks and saying
we are going to work together
in defending the people's vote. On March 27,
we voted for change. Morgan
Tsvangirai is the embodiment of that change."
Tsvangirai embodies
revolution. He has always spoken truth to power.
He took on Mugabe, and was,
with Arhcbishop Pius Ncube in the 1980s and
Edgar Tekere in the 1990s, a
singularly powerful voice of opposition. The
son of a bricklayer, the eldest
of nine children, he was forced to abandon
his education to support his
family. This was possibly the making of
Tsvangirai, but it has also been his
albatross.
His character and leadership are under scrutiny - on the
continent,
where he has moved under the shadow of Mugabe's Pan-Africanism -
and at home
where struggle credentials were valued as highly as the tertiary
education
he lacked. He was made to suffer by Mugabe because he had not
fought in the
chimurenga war: the Struggle for Independence.
In
1972, in Ian Smith's Rhodesia, job reservation for whites was in
place. But
the white men had gone to war with Mugabe's Zimbabwe African
National Union
(Zanu) soldiers and Tsvangirai got a job in a textile
factory, where his
union work began.
In a 1990 interview with Richard Saunders, a
Canadian academic turned
journalist and researcher, Tsvangirai said: "I was
one of the few, maybe 10
or so, "lucky" blacks to have been offered a
"white" job at the mine.
"I worked at Trojan [mine] from 1975 to
1985, but within that period I
had risen up to the rank of plant foreman,
almost up to the level of general
foreman of the plant, which was considered
a middle management position."
He has not lost that common touch.
He is powerful and he is popular -
for his empathy as well as for his
errors. Solomon "Sox" Chikohwero, the
vice chairman of the Zimbabwe Diaspora
Forum, who was the MDC's head of
intelligence until 2003, says: "I don't
know if Morgan is a Christian - he
acts like a Christian, though I have
never seen him going to church. If he
finds something on someone he takes a
long time to act on it. He is
empathetic, as if he was always trying to feel
how I am feeling."
Daniel Molokele, a human rights lawyer who, as
head of the student
union of the University of Zimbabwe in 1997, worked with
Tsvangirai when he
was the secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions (ZCTU),
is less flattering: "At the moment he is the only
credible leader to
challenge Mugabe but that does not mean we should treat
him like an angel.
He is not holy, he is not infallible, he is not the
pope.
"He is affable and has a good personality. You can work with
him, but
he is not a decisive leader and as a chairperson he does not come
across as
a strong leader."
For a time, recently, after the
refusal of President Robert Mugabe's
Zanu-PF to release the election
results, Tsvangirai went into hiding,
leaving Biti to face the music. Biti
made it plain that the movement "was
not in exile but in transition".
Tsvangirai has been criticised for this
absence, unfairly, given the violent
tactics of Zanu-PF, say those close to
him.
There have been
problems. But you cannot forget, says Brian
Raftopolous, who worked closely
with Tsvangirai at the end of the 1990s and
in the early 2000s, that
Tsvangirai has led the party, which he merged from
the trade unions and
civic organisations, in the most difficult of
circumstances and managed to
shift people from a liberation movement."
Raftopolous, who is the
programme manager of Transitional Justice in
Africa at the Institute for
Justice and Reconciliation, says Tsvangirai has
been immensely brave. "He
has the capacity to win the people over. He has a
very good touch with
ordinary people. He relates to people's struggles and
has had problems with
intellectuals in his party as have many political
parties on the
continent."
In May 2006, at a Mutambara faction rally in London,
Priscilla
Misihairabwi-Mushonga, a Harare MP, accused Tsvangirai of having
failed to
respect the party's constitution. She said he had used coercion
and violence
to hold onto his position, Mugabe-style.
Welshman
Ncube, the MDC's former secretary-general who joined
Mutambara's MDC, said
that 24 youths had been recruited as a kind of
mini-army to defend
Tsvangirai's cause. Two months previously, David
Coltart, an MDC senator and
shadow justice minister, left Tsvangirai's
faction to join Mutambara's.
Coltart says that he disagreed with
Tsvangirai's handling of intra-party
violence. "I did not accuse him of
being personally involved in the
violence. I felt that he was not direct
enough in stamping it out," he
said.
Raftopolous says the violence within the MDC should be seen
within the
wider context of Zanu-PF's repression and violence. In response
to its own
organisational problems, the MDC set up its structures along
parallel lines
with Zanu-PF's, he says. Still it faced problems with
accountability,
corruption, uncontained violence and tribalism. These, and
problems with
Tsvangirai's "kitchen cabinet", are on the table.
But, these are stressful times for the MDC. And Tsvangirai has
concentrated
on - and virtually succeeded in - getting Mugabe out of power.
George Bizos, the advocate who defended Tsvangirai in his high-profile
treason trial in 2004 in Harare, says that Tsvangirai's political nous is
evident in the fact that he has resisted resorting to violence in the face
of Zanu-PF's attacks.
"He understands his constituency, is in
touch with what the people
want," says Bizos. "Like [the late] Walter
Sisulu, with whom he has in
common a limited education, he is street smart.
He is intelligent, but his
lateral intelligence is less developed than
Sisulu's, but nonetheless is
there," says Bizos.
The treason
trial essentially was the result of a set up. Tsvangirai,
Ncube and Renson
Gasela, the shadow agriculture minister, had been
contracted by Ari
Ben-Menashe, whom Bizos describes as an Israeli
"professional fraudster".
Unbeknown to Tsvangirai, Ben-Menashe had already
been hired by Mugabe.
According to Tsvangirai, Ben-Menashe invited him to a
meeting to discuss
fundraising. Unbeknown to him the conversation was being
videotaped. When
Ben-Menashe mentioned plans to "eliminate Mugabe",
Tsvangirai became
suspicious and immediately left. On the basis of doctored
evidence from the
video, Tsvangirai was charged with treason.
"He [Ben-Menashe] held
himself out as a former Mossad agent, an arms
dealer, a commodity merchant
and influential peddler, all of which our
clients had naively believed was
true", Bizos wrote in his 2007
autobiography, Odyssey to
Freedom.
Bizos says: "In the witness box Tsvangirai was brutally
honest with
himself, he paid tribute to Mugabe for his role in the
liberation struggle."
He had after all started out in Zanu-PF, before
Mugabe's aversion to trade
unions became apparent.
Saunders
remembers Tsvangirai in the 1980s as "a brave, charismatic
figure. Morgan
was younger and more dynamic. He managed to get people to
rally around him.
Strategically he was always thinking ahead all the time
and was willing to
compromise with his enemies."
My own impressions of Tsvangirai bear
out this bravery. He was the
secretary general of the ZCTU when I
interviewed him in August 1999. It was
the week after the union had endorsed
the national MDC, which had been
formed that May as a broad civic movement,
but not yet as a formal political
party. Tsvangirai was among the leadership
candidates.
He pointed out the sheer drop from his 10th floor
office in Chester
House in Harare's Speke Avenue. The previous December he
had almost been
thrown out of the window. He was beaten by men who he was
certain were sent
by Mugabe.
In 1989, he was detained
repeatedly. Among his alleged sins was the
accusation of spying for the
South African government. "I have grown used to
harassment. I don't care if
I get killed. We cannot live like this, we
cannot go on being so
poor."
In 1990 inflation was soaring, to what was considered an
intolerable
63,7 percent and the International Monetary Fund was getting
anxious and
calling for a cutback of 30 percent. Current unofficial
estimates place
inflation for the year to April 2008 at higher than 400 000
percent.
I had asked Tsvangirai then if Zimbabwe was on the brink
of
revolution. "Of course," he'd answered.
The fruits of that
revolution have yet to be realised. The land issue
that Tsvangirai earmarked
in 1999 is yet to be resolved. He spoke
specifically in our interview about
the consideration of skills in land
redistribution.
Tsvangirai
was pleasant, respectful, very sympathetic. He apologised
profusely that the
lift at Chester House was broken and that I had walked
the 10 flights to his
office. He was warm, accessible.
He was focused. He answered the
questions. He did not flaunt the
knowledge I have learned he has in good
measure. Tsvangirai, by the account
of those in the know, reads widely,
focusing on the lives of leaders, in
particular on Nelson Mandela and Bill
Clinton. He is an avid reader of The
Economist, New African and Newsweek,
and newspapers.
Mugabe's characterisation of him as an ignoramus is
ridiculous.
Stephen Chan, professor of international relations at
the University
of London and dean of law and social sciences at the School
of Oriental and
African studies, who in 2005 published a series of
interviews with
Tsvangirai, says he has "an instinctive intellectual
sense".
Biti describes him as quick on his feet. Everybody I have
asked to
characterise Tsvangirai has said that he is a good
listener.
Some say that this listening is inclusive, considered and
useful. For
some this deference to the collective and to consensus is a
weakness. But
when he leads a party that is so directly the opposite of
Mugabe's
tyrannical rule, an alternative style of politics will be
necessary, says
Raftopoulos.
A criticism: Tsvangirai is
impressionable. He takes as gospel what the
last person he has spoken to has
said. Biti suggests that "... perhaps he
listens too well. He will have to
restrict entry at his door when he assumes
office."
Chan, the
author of several books on Africa, including Grasping
Africa: A Tale of
Tragedy and Achievement (2007), proposes that Tsvangirai
" … give more time
to framing his responses and to reflection after having
talked to a wide
number of people".
Whether he is cut out for the hot seat is not
yet clear, but Biti says
he is confident that Tsvangirai "...has this quiet
acknowledgment of the
fact that he has a duty and a responsibility and that
history has chosen
him".
Bizos, and many others I have spoken
to say that Tsvangirai is "a good
man". In Africa and elsewhere, such a man
is notoriously hard to find. And
he is humble, by all accounts.
Chan says that while Tsvangirai, like most of the Southern African
Development Community leaders, likes a bit of bling, at home he tends his
garden in shirt sleeves. He enjoys a quiet night in. He is attached to his
wife and his six children. Hopefully, he is never going to become a "Big
Man". He's learned the hard way that Africa has had one too many of
those.
But it is early to judge him as a ruler, Raftopolous says.
"We must
give him the benefit of the doubt."
This article was
originally published on page 9 of Sunday Independent
on May 04, 2008
africasia
JOHANNESBURG, May 4 (AFP)
The crisis in Zimbabwe has exposed divisions among southern African
nations
who have traditionally supported each other against what they
perceive as
Western interference, analysts said.
The rifts in the
Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), a 14-member
regional bloc, are
mainly between countries led by anti-colonial national
liberation leaders
and heads of state driven by a more pro-Western agenda.
Neo Simutanyi,
political science lecturer at the University of Zambia, said
there is a view
among the old guard that Western nations wants to replace
leaders such as
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe with "imperialist
agents."
"The
situation has been worsened by the fact that young leaders are
departing
from the old culture of solidarity. They want to publicly condemn
when
things are going wrong in a neighbouring country," Simutanyi said.
A
generation of new African leaders, riding on the agenda of democracy and
good governance, has emerged within SADC and wants to change the culture of
solidarity between comrades-in-arms based on old friendships.
"The
leaders pushing for a hardline stance on Zimbabwe are either third or
fourth
presidents of their respective countries. They have no strong links
to the
liberation struggle," said Kapembe Nsingo, chairman of the African
Renaissance Institute, a think tank in South Africa.
Zambian
President Levy Mwanawasa -- backed by his Botswanan counterpart Ian
Khama
and Tanzania's Jakaya Kikwete -- are said to be the only vocal leaders
within SADC who have demanded intervention in Zimbabwe.
Mwanawasa and
Khama are third heads of states while Kikwete is the fourth.
"It is
difficult for the old leaders to openly share information with the
young
breed of leaders because they don't trust them," Nsingo said.
Mwanawasa,
chairman of SADC, which was formed in 1980, is a vocal critic of
the
government in Harare and has come under constant attack by allies of
Mugabe,
who perceive him as an agent of neo-colonialism.
It is no wonder,
analysts argue, that SADC has failed to resolve the
stand-off in Zimbabwe
since the SADC-appointed mediator, South African
President Thabo Mbeki, is
biased towards liberation hero Mugabe.
"Mbeki is a 'scion' of liberation
movements. There is no way he can dump
President Mugabe at this critical
moment," said Campion Mereki in an opinion
piece published in Zimbabwe's
state-run Herald newspaper.
Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) and its
leader Morgan Tsvangirai have often been
accused by Zimbabwe officials of
receiving financial support by outside
powers to pursue an imperialist
agenda.
The main leaders in SADC who
have not condemned Mugabe publicly include
Mbeki, Angolan President Eduardo
dos Santos, Namibian President Hifikepunye
Pohamba and Mozambican President
Armando Guebuza.
All these heads of state share a common background of
taking part in the
liberation struggle and believe in offering each other
solidarity in times
of trouble, analysts said.
For the Herald
commentator, the outside threat against the liberation
struggle is not in
doubt. "The West wants to wipe out all liberation
movements in Africa,
especially in southern Africa," he argued.
Irish Sun
Sunday 4th
May, 2008
Cash shortages and long queues at banks have returned
in Zimbabwe.
The crisis comes days after the central bank governor
announced that
consumers and businesses would be able to withdraw
significantly more from
their accounts on a daily basis.
Sources in
Harare and Bulawayo reported unusually long queues at banks
leaving some
customers without cash when banks closed for the day. In Harare
and Bulawayo
financial institutions were dispensing relatively smaller
denominations of
Z$750,000 and Z$10 million and ATMs in both cities were
empty by late in the
day.
Some banks in Mutare, Manicaland Province, had Z$25 million and Z$50
million
dollar notes but limited withdrawals to Z$1 billion, not the Z$5
billion
limit which Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono announced on
Wednesday.
Gono unveiled a number of policy changes in his quarterly
policy statement,
among them the establishment of a 'twinning' arrangement
to bring together
willing buyers and sellers of foreign exchange - albeit
subject to central
bank review.
Some economists attribute such cash
shortages to hyperinflation - as prices
soar, the requirements for cash
expand across the entire economy. Zimbabwe's
inflation rate was last
officially given as 165,000% for February.
Director Dennis Nikisi of the
Graduate School of Management at the
University of Zimbabwe told reporter
Patience Rusere of VOA's Studio 7 for
Zimbabwe that the latest cash
shortages reflect higher demand due to soaring
prices for goods and
services, and inadequate issuance of notes by the
central bank.
Jamaica Gleaner
published: Sunday | May 4,
2008
Ian Boyne, Contributor
"An evil remains an evil whether
practised by white against black or black
against white".
- Robert
Mugabe, 1980.
If only that African dictator Robert Mugabe could
internalise those words of
his, uttered on the eve of independence in 1980,
we might have been spared
all that canard about "Western colonialism and
imperialism," which has been
used to mask his naked oppression of his fellow
black people in that tragic
land of Zimbabwe.
Fortunately, through
one of the relics of British colonialism - a
competitive electoral system -
the people of Zimbabwe might have the
opportunity to be rid of him after 28
years. Mugabe's rape of his people and
his squandering of their opportunity
for liberation provide a sad reminder
of the colossal failure of the
post-independence leaders of Africa, who are
distinguished more by their
kleptocracy and autocracy than by any democratic
impulse.
The country
has sunken
Morgan Tsvangirai, whom all indications show has won over
Mugabe in the
recent elections, might not turn out to be vastly different
from Mugabe, but
there are inducements which can be given by the United
States, Europe and
the Commonwealth which would make life easier for the
Zimbabwean people.
Mugabe has sunk Zimbabwe from the fastest-growing
African country in 1997,
with some of the richest farmland in Africa, to a
country where, incredibly,
inflation now runs at 165,000 - the highest on
the globe. GDP has shrunk by
over 45 per cent since 1998 and 80 per cent of
Zimbabweans are jobless. The
country has moved from one which used to be a
net exporter of maize, cotton,
tobacco, roses and sugar cane to one which
exports "only its educated
professionals" as the Atlantic Monthly puts it in
an article titled "How to
kill a Country" (December 2003). More than
one-third of all of Zimbabwe's 13
million population now need food
assistance.
Life expectancy
More alarmingly, life expectancy has
dropped from 61 years in 1990 to 37 for
men and 34 for women in 2006. And
UNICEF estimates that well over one
million Zimbabwean children have lost
one or both parents to AIDS.
Mugabe's disastrous economic policies,
exacerbated by his misguided policy
of expropriating the land of white
landowners, have plunged the country into
ever-deepening crisis, complete
with his autocratic and criminal rule. The
manufacturing sector has almost
ground to a halt and gold producers are
operating below one-fifth of
capacity.
The private sector has been crippled by Mugabe's plans to
indigenise 51 per
cent of major commercial enterprises. Price controls and
other failed
economic strategies of the dogmatic Left have guaranteed the
ruination of
the economy.
Honour-bound
Over three million
Zimbabweans are estimated to have fled the country, many
to neighbouring
South Africa. Zimbabwe now needs to be liberated from the
man who liberated
it from white racist rule. And yet, there are still
progressives who feel
honour-bound to defend Mugabe against his "Western
detractors". In their
view, the Zimbabwean economy has been wrecked by the
British colonialists
and the US imperialists in retaliation over the take
over of land owned by
white people. The Zimbabwean revolution was going well
until the
colonialists and imperialists sought to punish Mugabe for
exercising his
sovereignty.
This kind of mindless, supposed Pan-Africanism and African
nationalism can
be seen in the magazine New African which, in its May 2008
edition
("Zimbabwe on a knife-edge"), continues the myth-making. Says the
main
article written by someone reporting from the front lines in Zimbabwe:
"The
trick has always been to gradually wear down the people of a targeted
country via economic hardships and thus push them slowly towards an
imaginary 'tipping point' from where they will kick against the government.
The tipping point has been almost reached in Zimbabwe and the results of the
29 March elections were just a reflection and confirmation of that fact. In
other words, the people voted with their stomach".
50-50
split
Parallels are then drawn with Chile, though the writer noted -
apparently
with some relief - that in the case of Mugabe he "still managed
to hang on
and split the vote 50-50 with the opposition", while managing to
keep his
life, unlike Allende.
Mugabe had been saying since 2000,
when he began his forced expropriation of
the land of white landowners, that
the British were working to overthrow him
and that they were funding the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC).
The New African
magazine quotes foreign minister Dr Stanley Mudenge as being
told by former
British foreign secretary, the late Robin Cook : "Stan, you
must get rid of
Bob (Mugabe)" The magazine says the Zimbabwean foreign
minister was shocked.
But Cook reportedly went on: "You heard me right. You
guys must get rid of
Bob". Mudenge then said something which is very
significant and which is the
sentiment of many in the progressive movement:
"So long as you want him out,
we want him in."
Cook then told him, according to the report: "Don't say
we didn't warn you.
If you don't get rid of Bob, what will hit you will make
your people stone
you in the streets!" And then New African ends, "Cook's
words nearly came to
pass on 29 March!"
Africans, who have suffered
under the cruel and tyrannical hands of the
white colonialists, and the
progressives throughout the world, who have
understood how Western
imperialism has suffocated the lives of large numbers
of people, have to
find a way around a knee-jerk support for dictators with
black faces and
those with an anti-Western posture. That you are
anti-colonialist and an
anti-imperialist does not give you the right to
oppress people, deny them
freedom of association and freedom of expression.
Distraction
This
is why I have always maintained that Cuba must stand condemned, despite
its
impressive human development indices, because of its denial of civil
liberties and human rights. Man shall not live by bread (or cassava!) alone.
For too long the "anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist" flag has been waved as
a distraction from the brutal oppression of the masses by the criminal and
corrupt class of political leaders.
And, too often, they have carried
out their atrocities under the shield of
"territorial integrity" and
"national sovereignty". What gives political
leaders the right to oppress
and commit crimes against people simply because
they are locked up in
borders over which they have political control? The
debate which is raging
in international law and politics over the
Westphalian notions of
sovereignty and "non-interference in the internal
affairs of states", as
opposed to "the responsibility to protect" people in
the global commons from
human rights abuses must continue - for the good of
humanity.
Countries have signed international treaties and
conventions and they must
live up to them or face punitive actions from the
international community.
The African Union has been impotent in dealing with
the barbarities of
African countries, because of the legalism over
territorial integrity and
sovereignty. Mbeki has been engaging in quiet
diplomacy for a long time,
while Mugabe continues his plunder of people's
rights and to murder his
opponents.
There is too much hypocrisy and
double-standards among African leaders and
progressives when it comes to
principles. For many, it is not the principles
themselves which are
sacrosanct but which side happens to be espousing them.
If the United
States and other Western countries do certain things or behave
in a certain
way, then they are wrong and must be condemned, but it is okay
if our
friends and ideological allies do those very same things.
Secret
negotiations
As the International Herald Tribune says in its April 17th
edition ('The
Silence of Mbeki'), Despite the fact that in late 2007 Mbeki
presided over
secret negotiations between Mugabe and the Zimbabwean
opposition on a new
constitution which included major reforms and democratic
safeguards, Mugabe
rejected Mbeki's efforts and conducted the elections
under the old
constitution. (And he still does not want to give up power
though he has
lost on all counts.)
Says the International Herald
Tribune: "Mbeki's refusal to condemn Mugabe
and lead a regional diplomatic
front to pressure him to honour the vote -
either by holding a fair runoff
or stepping down - is particularly
disappointing because he and other
anti-apartheid activists condemned
Western countries for precisely that sort
of softball diplomacy during the
1980s. When the African National Congress
called for universal suffrage and
sanctions against the apartheid regime,
the Reagan Administration, instead,
pursued a gradual policy of
'constructive engagement'". And that, of course,
was
condemned.
"Quiet diplomacy"
Says the Council on Foreign Relations
October, 2007, report titled Planning
for Post-Mugabe Zimbabwe, "Many within
Zimbabwe and in the international
community had pinned their hopes on the
South African Government for
effective international action to help resolve
Zimbabwe's crisis. South
Africa has leverage as Zimbabwe's most significant
trading partner and is a
major supplier of electricity to Zimbabwe. But its
policy of 'quiet
diplomacy' has been a loud failure to the Zimbabwean
masses."
China also has been propping up the Zimbabwean dictatorship,
being birds of
one feather in terms of sharing a common authoritarian
ideology. (In the
midst of the Zimbabwean terror, China recently shipped
more arms to Mugabe.)
Zimbabwe's sadness is shared by many of us. I
remember sitting close to
Mugabe, the African freedom fighter, in the
canteen of the then Agency for
Public Information (now JIS) in the 1970s
when he was brought here by
Michael Manley. He spoke passionately of his
desire to liberate his people
from white oppression and to bring a new day
to Zimbabwe. That day has
turned into a nightmare under his
misrule.
Many of us might recoil from the right-wing vituperation of
George Ayittey,
distinguished economist at American University, set forth in
his 481-page
book, Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's
Future.
But we can't go on blaming all of Africa's ills on colonialism
and
imperialism. That would be a cruel disservice to the people who have to
live
under the tyranny and corruption of some in the African political
class.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com
SABC
May 04, 2008, 07:30
ANC
Youth League President Julius Malema has expressed disappointment at the
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe for refusing to make way for new
blood.
He was addressing party members during the Peter Mokaba memorial
lecture in
Kimberley yesterday.
Malema urged Mugabe to learn from the
ANC's Limpopo conference where
President Thabo Mbeki was voted out as ANC
president.
"Those are the great lessons you must learn from the
leadership of the
ANC... We don not support Morgan Tsvangarai ourselves as
the youth league,
our party is Zanu PF.
“We have struggled... the
problem is the old man who doesn't want to give
space and allow the new
generation and young generation in Zanu-PF and this
has disappointed
us.”
The people of Zimbabwe are still waiting for the results of the
elections
which were held last month.
No result has been announced to
the public yet, but senior government
sources said Tsvangirai won 47% of the
vote against the president's 43%. If
confirmed, that would mean that a
run-off is necessary in that country.
Zimbabwe put aside its troubles last week for a
spectacular festival of
music and dance
Sunday May 4, 2008
The
Observer
Given that Zimbabwe has for a long time been staging a drama
before a
worldwide audience, it's amazing that anyone felt it necessary to
mount an
arts festival. But someone did 10 years ago, and the Harare
International
Festival of the Arts (HIFA) has been running ever since.
Perhaps when the
world is looking in your direction and counting down to
economic and civil
collapse, the only thing to do is to build a giant stage
and start thinking
the impossible.
This week audiences have been
flooding into Harare for the annual six-day
event, and the capital has been
engulfed in a refreshingly bright and
effervescent carnival atmosphere.
Thanks to a clutch of donors and sponsors,
tickets are so heavily subsidised
that they're almost free.
The opening show was a spectacular event,
structured around the story of
Dreamworld, a beautiful land once full of
singing and dancing until the
people, dressed in pyjamas (or were they
prison uniforms?), were repressed
by their king, an effigy bearing an
uncanny resemblance to Robert Mugabe,
Zimbabwe's President since
1980.
The audience was treated to a mixture of musical styles as the
allegory of
their nation was acted out. Songs included a rendition of the
Cranberries'
'Zombie', sung by Prudence Katomeni, her voice stretching the
word zombie to
echo Zimbabwe. Evocative, too, was Bob Marley's 'Zimbabwe'.
By the close,
everyone was swaying with candles.
Afterwards, one
spectator said that while 'Mandela will always be a hero
because he changed
South Africa and then left with dignity, Mugabe has
become a villain because
he won't go'. Appropriately, perhaps, the official
theme for 2008 is
'Determination'.
Yet as Dobet Gnahoré, a musician from the Ivory Coast,
intoned wearily: 'I'm
tired of politics in Africa.' If the arts can be
political, they can also be
defiantly apolitical. In the words of Manuel
Bagorro, the festival's
inspirational founder and now its dapper artistic
director: 'The arts bring
people together, providing a vocabulary for
understanding our predicament
and a venue for communal
experience.'
Strutting the boards were numerous home-grown acts, such as
Impumelelo
Shining Stars, a witty a cappella band, and Oliver Mtukudzi, the
Afro-pop
idol whose 30-year career charts a narrative of Zimbabwe's
struggles, as
well as bands that had jetted in from across the world. There
was
Freshlyground, a South African Afro-fusion band, Trio Ivoire, who
astonished
with their sonic waterfall of piano, xylophone and drums, and
Cañaman,
Spain's best known reggae group. To see the London Festival Opera
singing,
accompanied by the Zimbabwe National Ballet, was to witness arias
to freedom
and a choreography of hope.
HIFA has not been without
controversy. Some have boycotted it, saying that
it's wrong to celebrate
when the country is so beleaguered. That said, after
guffawing at one of the
stand-up comedians, a nurse observed that 'if you
don't laugh here, you'll
cry'.
'At our businessmen's prayer breakfast at 5.30 this morning,'
reported one
attendee, '15 hardened executives gave thanks for the miracle
of HIFA.' No
work of art ever stopped a tank - or reversed an election
outcome - but the
HIFA brought some relief in another week of political
turmoil.
The writer asked to remain anonymous
IOL
May 04 2008 at
10:39AM
By Patrick Laurence
As the controversy over
the Zimbabwean March 29 elections reaches a
new level of acrimony on the
question of whether the presidential election
result has been skewed in
favour of Robert Mugabe, it is appropriate to
pause and appraise the
significance of events in Zimbabwe over the past
month.
A
broadly based conclusion can be confidently offered: Mugabe's grip
on
unfettered power has finally been broken, even if he succeeds in
prolonging
his tenure of the presidential office for a few more months.
The
officially confirmed results of the parliamentary elections
affirmed the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as the winner,
thereby
conferring control of the legislative and budgetary processes on
it.
he MDC's dominance in the national assembly has been reinforced
by an
agreement between Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, the leaders
of the
MDC's majority and minority factions respectively, to act in concert.
Their
pledge to form a single bloc "with one caucus and one speaker" means
that
the MDC will command the allegiance of 57 percent of the national
assembly's
representatives against the 43 percent who were elected under the
colours of
Zanu-PF.
Aside from the restraints imposed on a
putatively re-elected Mugabe
presidency by an MDC-controlled national
assembly, the octogenarian
politician will be constrained by the
consequences of his earlier reckless
decisions on the economic front, should
he reoccupy the presidential office
by coercion and stealth. These decisions
include:
a.. His destruction of the flourishing
agricultural sector by handing
over viable farms to "war veterans", Zanu-PF
cronies and peasants without
the resources or qualifications for large-scale
farming.
The inflow of yet more virtually worthless notes has
merely compounded
the already severe problem of inflation. At present it is
running at 165 000
percent compared to 100 000 percent before the
election.
Seen in the context of an unemployment rate of 80 percent
or more, a
national debt measured in quadrillions and a severe shortage of
foreign
currency, it is no exaggeration to conclude that Zimbabwe is
degenerating
into an ungovernable failed state.
Only an
international aid package can avert collapse. The countries
with the power
and resources to offer the package will, however, make their
aid dependent
on Mugabe either vacating the presidential office or being
expelled from
it.
So much for the immediate implications of post-election events
in
Zimbabwe: the less immediate - but by no means less significant -
implication foreshadows the weakening of the solidarity between the leaders
of the liberation movements who came to power in the former white-ruled
polities in Southern Africa.
Moeletsi Mbeki, the
independent-thinking younger brother of President
Thabo Mbeki, offers an
interesting explanation for the failure of Mugabe's
presidential peers in
Southern Africa to take decisive action to persuade
him to desist from
pursuing his disastrous polices.
He notes that these policies
resulted in a huge exodus of Zimbabweans
seeking refuge in neighbouring
countries with, by his reckoning, between 2
million and 3 million fleeing to
South Africa and, for the most part,
settling there illegally.
He views the exodus as a potentially destabilising intrusion into the
host
countries. He adds a corollary: had a similar exodus occurred in Asia,
decisive action would have been taken by the neighbouring states to induce
the offending government to abandon its disruptive policies.
Moeletsi Mbeki attributes the failure of Mugabe's peers in Southern
Africa
to intervene resolutely to their fear that the rise and triumph of
the MDC
in Zimbabwe would encourage the emergence of similar opposition
movements in
their own countries. If his explication is true of the
situation before
Zimbabwe's March 29 election, there is evidence that it may
no longer hold,
evidence that is most strongly manifest in South Africa.
Under the
leadership of Jacob Zuma, the ANC has abandoned the "quiet
diplomacy"
approach of Thabo Mbeki towards the Mugabe regime.
Instead, it has
embraced "megaphone diplomacy" to call loudly and
unequivocally for the
long-delayed results of the election to be announced
without delay, hinting
that they interpreted it as a cover for dishonest
manipulation of
results.
To his credit, Zuma has openly defended the right of
Zimbabweans to be
ruled by a government of their choice, a stance which, in
the context,
implies that the right is under threat by Mugabe. More directed
criticisms
of the Mugabe regime have long been voiced by the ANC's allies,
the South
African Communist Party and Cosatu.
Instead of
seeking to restrain them, the ANC has joined them and, more
significantly,
may be preparing to lead them.
Taking an even longer historical
view, it might be argued that the
growing opposition to oppression in
Zimbabwe is part of a wider phenomenon.
Just as the world - or major parts
of it - took a stand against slavery in
the 19th century, and Nazism in
Germany and apartheid in South Africa in the
20th century, it may now be
beginning to take a hard line against
Afro-fascism in Zimbabwe in the 21st
century.
These observations should be appraised in the context of
the thoughts
of Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History and the
Last Man. He
postulates that liberal democracy, which was pioneered in the
West, may
become universal and the "end point of mankind's ideological
evolution" and
the "the final form of human government".
Fukuyama calculates that the number of liberal democracies in the
world has
grown from three in 1790 - when, by his evaluation, it was the
chosen form
of government in the United States, Sweden and France - to 30 in
1960 and
more than 60 in 1990.
Since then the establishment of liberal
democracies in South Africa
and in several former one-party states in Africa
has increased the number
still further. The re-establishment of liberal
democracy in Zimbabwe may
soon add another important state.
Independent political analyst Patrick Laurence is a contributing
editor to
The Star
This article was originally published on page 5 of Sunday
Independent
on May 04, 2008