Denying hospitality to the elders was un-African

If there is one thing that is common among Africans, wherever you go and wherever they are, it is their hospitability and welcoming attitude. Even in the most difficult of circumstances, Africans are renowned for opening their arms wide to any visitor even and especially strangers. Many years ago when I was a young man, I remember visiting one of my relatives in a far off place. Somehow the bus I travelled on was delayed and I arrived at my disembarkation point well at night when people had gone to sleep. As I didn’t know where I was going, I knocked at some door in a village which I stumbled upon in the dark night to ask for directions.

The residents of the village woke up to receive me and after I explained where I was going they told me that it was too far and too dangerous for me to travel at night. So they offered me a place to sleep for the night. In the morning, they offered me some breakfast and sent me on my way. I am sure there are many stories like this which testify to the African tradition of hospitality and accommodation. It is therefore most sad, disgraceful and bizarre that the Zimbabwean authorities have barred three eminent personalities from travelling to the country to offer support in addressing the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding in that once beautiful country.

Former US President, Jimmy Carter, who is now a world renowned philanthropist together with Mr Kofi Anan, the former secretary general of the United Nations and Mrs Graca Machel, the wife of Nelson Mandela and herself a leading humanitarian were due to have travelled to Harare, the Zimbabwe capital city, this weekend to confer with government and other stakeholders about the humanitarian situation in the country and the means to ameliorate the suffering. However the Zimbabwean authorities advised that the trio were not welcome and refused to grant them visas to enter the country.

The reasons? The government officials are too busy preparing for the agricultural season and negotiating the government of national unity to meet with these eminent persons. It is very well for government to be busy preparing for the farming season, especially in present dire circumstances of food shortage and it is also important for the authorities to apply themselves to the onerous task of establishing a legitimate government that will resolve the current political impasse. These are tasks that should not be delayed or approached half- heartedly and, therefore, in that respect I fully sympathise with the government on the challenges that it is facing.

But to say that all other matters of government must necessarily be relegated to the sidelines is incredulous, disingenuous and highly irresponsible. You may recall that at the height of the recently concluded election campaign in the US, one of the candidates, Senator John McCain, offered to suspend his campaign in order to deal with the unfolding financial crisis in the country and invited his opponent to do likewise. The opponent, Senator (now president-elect) Barack Obama retorted that a president must be able to deal with more than one crisis at a time. The same should be said of any government worth its salt – it should be able to deal with more than one priority at any given time.

In the case of Zimbabwe, the real priorities are to provide food to the starving population, to provide clean and safe drinking water to urban centres, electricity to power the nation and medicines to treat the spreading cholera epidemic and the runaway HIV/aids pandemic. Other important priorities are to provide people with easy access to their money in banks and resuscitate the comatose education and health sectors, amongst other social and economic sectors. These are the challenges which the trio from the Group of Elders were planning to review and assess and offer their wisdom on an appropriate way forward. Surely the government and people of Zimbabwe should have spread their hands even wider to welcome them.

The three are members of a group of highly influential people – former heads of state and government and chief bureaucrats. Jimmy Carter is a former president of the US, the world’s only superpower, Kofi Anan served as the secretary general of the UN, the world’s most foremost bureaucrat, while Machel is the widow of the late president of Mozambique, Samora Machel, who was a gracious host to Zimbabweans during their war of independence. She is now the wife of the world’s top political icon, Mandela. If anyone has an interest in helping the suffering people of Zimbabwe and if anyone has the means to do so, then this Group of Elders is it.

These are the people with the power and influence to click their fingers and unlock desperately needed aid to relieve the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe. So why have they been denied the opportunity to lend their hand? The answer is very simple indeed. It is that there is no longer any government in Zimbabwe, never mind the legitimacy or otherwise of such a government. Indeed, there are people who claim that they are still ruling the country but these are the very people who were rejected by the electorate in the March 29 elections and have been trying their hardest to circumvent that humiliating loss of power. They have raped, tortured and murdered in an attempt to regain their losses but all to no avail. They cannot function as a government because they have lost their authority to govern. The only tools left in their power arsenal are denial, posturing and dreams of the past.

The collapse of just about every social, economic and political system and institution in the country is bare testimony that there is no longer any government in place. If indeed there was a government, would schools and hospitals be closing at such an alarming and accelerated rate? Would people be starving because there is no more food in the country and, the little that is still available, is well beyond the means of many citizens? Would any government which is democratically elected (or pretends to be so) allow unemployment levels of over 90% and inflation measured in billions percent? Would it allow its national currency to become worthless?

The answer to all the questions is a resounding no. Yet we have a group of people who have presided over such an unimaginable debacle but yet believe that they remain popular and are entitled to rule ad infinitum. No sir, this is no government at all! It is not even a dictatorship because sometimes even dictatorships have a heart and know when to hold back and to empathise with their suffering subjects. After the March elections, during the long hiatus of waiting for the election results, I recall one analyst who explained to a cable network reporter that the ruling cabal in Harare was no longer a political party in the true sense of the term.

He stated that these people were criminals who had been involved in such heinous and hideous crimes that they realised that they would be arrested immediately they lose power. He explained that it was for this reason that they were unlikely to leave power voluntarily. I think this is the most plausible explanation which I have heard yet about the real cause of the political deadlock in Zimbabwe. Which begs the question, why should anyone want to form a unity government with such devious miscreants? That is an issue for another debate.

What is blindingly obvious at this stage is that the actions of the authorities in Harare of denying Mrs Machel and Messrs Anan and Carter entry into Zimbabwe breaks the well known African tradition of warm welcome and hospitality. It is very un-African and unbecoming of anyone who purports to be an African. But I doubt very much that the authorities in Harare care anymore. They are cornered and plain dangerous. In that respect, it is probably wise to stay as far away from them as possible. More than three million of their own citizens have already done that.

SADC mediation failure in Zimbabwe: Options for the MDC

It would have been quite remarkable if the Southern Africa development Community (SADC) had made a significantly different ruling to what they did over the weekend in the latest round of mediation talks on Zimbabwe. The problem is not really that they made a decision which clearly favoured Mr Mugabe’s position and undermined Mr Tsvangirai’s. I do not believe that these leaders had any choice really but to endorse what Mr Mbeki had proposed and the SADC’s own Organ on Politics and Security had endorsed a fortnight previously.

The problem is that the SADC has to be seen to protect this much fractured agreement which is a product of undemocratic and dictatorial considerations rather than the observance of democratic values and principles. The latter were discarded when the region failed to uphold and protect the vote of the people which was delivered on March 29. Everything that has happened since, including the much discredited June 27 elections, has been about reversing the people’s verdict and protecting a rejected president and his defeated party.

The agreement signed on September 16 should have been a product of compromise by the then opposition which had secured a parliamentary majority and a handsome lead in the presidential ballot, notwithstanding that such results had been compromised by failure of timeous disclosure and overt manipulation. The government of national unity emanating from the agreement should thus have reflected the MDC as the lead party which, through its magnanimity, had embraced and accommodated its vanquished opponents. Unfortunately the reverse is now the reality – the vanquished has accommodated the victor. This would be laughable if it were not so tragic.

In years to come historians will debate and analysts will sift through evidence to establish how and why the parties, particularly the MDC which is now patently disadvantaged, ever agreed to this deal in the first place. But that is a matter for the future. The reality of now is that the agreement is in place and the issue to consider is what are the options of the two major parties going forward. I believe that for Zanu-PF the choices are much straighter forward. Armed with a mandate from the SADC, Mr Mugabe can now proceed to establish his government with or without the MDC. Having secured what they have always wanted – recognition and legitimacy – there is neither the incentive nor the will for Zanu-PF to continue with the negotiations.

The outcome for proceeding along that route is not going to be much more different from what is already on the ground. Political isolation and economic deterioration will continue, but so what? Zanu-PF know that they have managed quite well for eight years and so can manage for another few years at least. The situation may be much tougher for the citizens but they really don’t care as long as their power is secure. More money will be printed, diamonds will be mined and traded illegally, more commercial farms will be taken over and more deals will be struck. They will continue to prosper and, at the very least, they will survive quite comfortably. So by the end of this week or next, it is quite likely that Mr Mugabe will announce a new cabinet to run the government.

For the MDC I believe there are three clear options going forward. The first is to capitulate and agree to join Mr Mugabe’s government and take whatever portfolios are offered to them. This will mean basically that they accept a junior and not equal role in government and they forfeit the electoral mandate which they secured in March. I think that adopting this option will only serve to confirm the status quo – that Mr Mugabe and Zanu-PF remain in power and that the MDC has failed to wrestle that power away from them.

Taking this option may not be as defeatist as it sounds. If anything, it is a pragmatic choice to make because it is now all too clear that the conditions do not exist for a change of power. The leadership of Zanu-PF will not allow it (remember Mr Mugabe’s “never ever” declarations?), the military leadership will not allow it (remember the “not saluting anyone but Mugabe” declaration?) and now the regional leadership will not allow it. It is doubtful whether the AU will offer a different verdict. So what is on offer is the best that can be secured under the circumstances and Mr Tsvangirai will do well to accept and make do with that.

I also think that there are other material and psychological benefits for MDC getting into government even as junior partners - especially if they gain the Ministry of Finance. There is a saying that he who holds the purse strings calls the tune. MDC could leverage the ministries which they control to improve the lives of the people and hence strengthen their position for the next elections. They can also use their positions to monitor what government is doing in the other areas which they do not control and raise the alarms if anything untoward is happening. The fact that the opposition will have a majority in the cabinet will also be a source of comfort and strength. They could use their numerical advantage to counter, overcome or neutralise any Zanu-PF excesses.

The second option is for the MDC to continue to fight for the positions which they crave. This will mean appealing to the AU (which, in my view, is a futile exercise) and ultimately to the UN. If they take this option, they are likely to receive a few more sympathies but I have grave doubts that this will result in anything substantial or fundamental. There is no appetite in the AU to force out or undermine Mr Mugabe because many of the leaders share similar experiences and traits with him. The UN is badly divided over the Zimbabwe issue because of both political and historical circumstances. This option will therefore amount to a longwinded way leading back to the first option – capitulation, or the last option – abandonment.

Yes, abandoning this agreement is the last options which the MDC has. To say that they should not have entered into this agreement in the first place is perhaps stating the obvious. But Mr Tsvangirai now has the real opportunity to walk away from it all if he chooses to do so. Firstly, this may redeem much of the respect and goodwill which he lost as a result of agreeing to this faulty deal. Second it may just help push the economy over the steep cliff from which it is currently tottering. History shows that no party, even one as strong and entrenched as Zanu-PF, can survive a completely collapsed economy. Thirdly, time is on Mr Tsvangirai side and not on Mr Mugabe’s. At 56 Mr Tsvangirai can afford to wait a few more years to get into power. At 86 years of age, Mr Mugabe has precious few years left to hold on to power.

There will be some who will argue that if Mr Tsvangirai withdraws from the agreement this will only prolong and exacerbate the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe. My argument is that the people are already suffering and it is not because of Mr Tsvangirai. Why should he take the responsibility to remove the suffering which he has not caused in the first place? I don’t believe that Mr Tsvangirai should feel guilty or ashamed of pulling out. He may even be hailed as a hero if he does. More importantly he will not be held complicit to the suffering which the people will no doubt continue to experience if there is no genuine sharing of power in government. On balance, I believe that this is the option which the MDC should now take. The suffering will continue for a little longer, but the relief will be much greater.

I saw Obama walk on Planet Mars

This morning at approximately 6am (West African time), I allowed myself one more small indulgence – another glass of red wine as I watched on television the United States president-elect Senator Barak Obama give his victory speech in Chicago. To be honest, I had had several shots during the long sleepless night as I awaited the results trickling in. Nothing remarkable about that, you may say, but it really is because I stopped imbibing in alcoholic substances more than three years ago.

But this night was unlike any other night I can remember for a long, long time. No, there has never been any night like this. Never ever! And there is unlikely to be another night like this even if I live another hundred years. I have been so keyed into this US election that I knew I was not going to sleep until the final results came in and the winner had been declared. I did allow myself to be distracted somewhat briefly by a football game featuring my favourite team Liverpool which snatched a late, late equaliser against the Spanish team, Athletico Madrid. But that was a very temporary tonic for my anxiety and jingling nerves.

However this was not a night for football. Liverpool may have won two (or even a dozen) European Cups on the night and that was still going to be insignificant in the scheme of things. This was the night the human race rediscovered itself and redefined its mission and purpose. This was a night when the phrase “making history” ceased to be just another overused cliché but an epitome of a profound defining moment or life-changing event. Not much unlike that July day in 1969 when man first walked on the moon or that sunny day in February 1990 when Nelson Mandela took the first gingerly steps out of Victor-Verster Prison to lead South Africa to racial equality, freedom and independence.

When Neil Armstrong declared: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" on setting foot on the moon, he may as well have been describing what Obama has just accomplished in winning the presidency of the world’s only super power. While Obama may not have punched the air in a victory salute at the Chicago victory rally, as Mandela did when he walked out of prison, the words uttered by Mandela that day may not have been out of place if they had been spoken in Chicago early this morning. Mandela said then: "Our struggle has reached a decisive moment. Our march to freedom is irreversible.”

The landing on the moon represented a significant triumph over nature and shattered a major barrier on man’s understanding of the universe around him and provided impetus for explorations to the outer reaches of the universe. It was a triumph of man’s spirit of curiosity, adventure and exploration and a demonstration of his technological prowess and advancement. Subsequent triumphs such as manned shuttle-trips into space, the unmanned missions to Mars and the building of the space station would not have happened if it was not for that singular moment of courage and inspiration.

This morning, when Mr Obama walked into the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park to deliver his victory speech, he was not just walking on any earthly edifice, he was like walking on planet Mars. No man had ever taken that walk before him. In many years to come, we shall see men and women like Obama take such a walk. We shall see men and women of colour lead other great nations and achieve great feats and deeds on this earth but we will remember that the first steps were taken during the early hours of November 5, 2008 and that we were there to witness the event.

And what an emotional night it was for all people around the world – Americans and non-Americans, black or white, Christian or Moslem. The results had come in what seemed to be a trickle the whole evening. The very early advantage which McCain seemed to have gained had evaporated as more states were called for Obama but nothing remained certain until the polls closed in the west of USA. Then with what seemed to be an exaggerated resignation all the networks began to call the election for Obama. I quickly flicked through a number of channels to verify what I was witnessing and, indeed, the election was over bar the shouting.

As the cameras focused on the cheering crowds in Grant Park, I saw grown man and women – black and white – shed tears of joy. I was touched by Rev. Jesse Jackson, the icon of the human rights movement and one-time aspirant of the Oval office in which Obama will be working in the next four years. I saw tears flowing down his face and realised what an absolute momentous occasion we were witnessing. I saw Oprah Winfrey wiping tears from her eyes and tears welled in my own eyes. Many other people could not contain their emotions. At was a fitting, if not somewhat melodramatic, when the news-channels briefly beamed scenes of celebration from the village of Kogelo in Kenya where Obama’s father was born.

It was very touching to listen to Senator John McCain’s concession speech. He praised and congratulated Obama for his victory and, in what appeared to be needless self-deprecation, he took the blame for his own failure to win the contest. He had run a very difficult and demanding race for which his party had very little or no chance of winning given the unpopularity of the incumbent president and the dire state of the country’s economy. Many analysts had conceded that much and I felt McCain was being too hard on himself. Generally, I thought he was thoughtful, gracious and magnanimous.

Then the President-elect and the first-family elect walked onto the stage accompanied with sombre music. It was an electrifying moment. The crowd ruptured in ecstasy. It was a bit too hard to take it all in. The four people who we all knew where black, suddenly became a shade darker and a shade more beautiful. It was like a clash of contradictions – that while complexion did not seem to matter anymore, black seemed to be that much more beautiful. Even when the first family was joined on the stage by members of his extended family and the family members of his vice-president elect, the scene represented a different and likeable sort of America. White people and black people mingled together - kissing, hugging, smiling and laughing.

He may have expressed it a bit earlier in his victory speech when he said: “It’s been a long time coming … but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.” But the picture we were witnessing on that stage represented a crystallisation of that magical moment of change. It may therefore have been somewhat pessimistic and out of step for Senator Obama to add that the caveat: “The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep”.

Even Mandela’s admonition in February 1990 that: "Now is the time to intensify the struggle on all fronts. To relax now would be a mistake which future generations would not forgive," may have been out of place on an optimistic occasion such as this. No longer can there be struggles, barriers and steep ascents. These have been shuttered and the bridge has been crossed. Obama has walked on Mars. And I was there to bear witness.

A new paradigm needed to deal with Africa’s problems

After a lifetime of watching news on international news channels like BBC and CNN, I have began to recognise certain code language of the news presenters. If they start a news item with a warning that images about to be shown may be distressing to some viewers, I recognise instantly that the news item is about Africa. And what usually follows are heart wrenching images of starving children with protruding stomachs and flies feeding out of their mucus-filled noses, bed-ridden Aids sufferers facing their last moments, mutilated victims of political and other forms of violence and similar distressing scenes.

This past week there has been a continuous deluge of such imagery emanating from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where fresh rebel attacks in the eastern areas of the country have triggered another humanitarian catastrophe. As is now all too common, the international community is rallying efforts to confront the unfolding tragedy. Humanitarian organisations are struggling to attend to the many suffering people while leading politicians have negotiated a cease fire and are pushing for urgent talks between the belligerents to secure future peace and stability. Perhaps, and just perhaps, the current ceasefire will hold and sooner rather than later the whole issue will again be forgotten only to resurface at some other point in future, as it has done in the past decade or so.

Superimpose this humanitarian catastrophe on other desperate situations elsewhere in Africa – Darfur in Sudan and Zimbabwe, of course – and you begin to have a sense of the depth of the hole which the continent of Africa is in and how much it has to work to dig itself out of the morass. It is all very well to claim that there are some successes elsewhere on the continent but the sheer scale of failure in these few spots dwarfs any small successes as may be claimed. There have been many attempts to explain why Africa, despite its unimaginable wealth of natural resources and other God-given blessings, remains wallowing in the depths of poverty and underdevelopment.

Leading historians, scholars and other researchers have not reached a consensus on these issues. Some few years ago, a professional friend recommended to me a book by Chabal and Daloz entitled Africa works: Disorder as political instrument. In this book, the authors argued that the acuteness of Africa’s crises is such as to defy the usual parameters of current political analysis because the reality of the politics in contemporary Africa is exceptionally multi-faceted as compared to the realm of politics in the West which is relatively well-defined and self-contained. Chabal and Daloz described a new paradigm for Africa which they labelled the “political instrumentalisation of disorder”.

This paradigm referred to the process by which political actors in Africa seek to maximise their returns on the state of confusion, uncertainty and sometimes even chaos which characterise most African polities. They argued that all African states share a generalised system of patrimonialism and an acute degree of apparent disorder which is “evidenced by a high level of governmental and administrative inefficiency, a lack of institutionalisation, a general disregard of the rules of the formal political and economic sectors and a universal resort to personal(ised) and vertical solutions to societal problems”.

Aha, I thought! That sounds all too familiar! That may certainly explain why in a country which is reeling with inflation measured in billions of percentage points, where hospitals are empty of any drugs, where a majority of citizens are surviving on wild fruits and roots and where the education system has completely collapsed; the country still has sufficient resources to pamper its judges with the latest models of cars from Bavaria, plasma television sets and other creature comforts. Plausible as Messrs Chabal and Daloz’s theory is, it still does not explain why and how the ruling elites in Africa are allowed to get away with this destructive buffoonery by their own people and by the international community which professes a different set of values.

More recently I have been reading Martin Meredith’s The State of Africa: A history of fifty years of independence in which he states that Africa’s per capita national income is one-third lower than the world’s next poorest region – South Asia, and in most countries the per capita incomes are lower than the levels of 1980. Meredith argues that Africa has generally suffered from weak political governance characterised by “bloated bureaucracies and systems of regulation… (providing) the means by which ruling elites provided jobs, contracts and other opportunities for gain for kinsmen and political supporters”. Again, that sounds quite familiar but again there are no suggestions on how these ills can be tackled.

The standard response of the international community, especially the developed countries, has been to apply diplomatic though regional institutions such as the SADC and AU. Given the predominance of similarly inclined colleagues in such institutions, the approach has not been successful giving rise to the notion that African leaders are not amenable to diplomatic influence. And when such pressure has not yielded the expected results, they have thrown in conditional-laden aid packages in an attempt to bribe or coerce the errant regimes to conform. All this humanitarian aid that is provided to distressed countries serves no useful purpose than to encourage the rogue leaders to disregard their obligations to look after the interests of their citizens and, instead, allows them to concentrate on strengthening their hold on power. They simply do not care about the suffering of their people.

When all such responses have failed, the next options has been to apply the so-called smart (or targeted) sanctions aimed purportedly on the leaders but, in reality, are general sanctions which hurt the ordinary citizens much more than they do the leaders. These smart sanctions generally include travel bans and freeze on personal assets which, unfortunately, also do have very limited impact on the targeted people who have many ways and means to circumvent the sanctions. More recently, the erring leaders have been threatened with prosecution at the International Court of Justice in the Hague however the effect of this is still to be fully assessed. Al least, this has elicited some welcome anxiety in the case of Omar al-Bashir of Sudan who has recently been indicted for crimes against humanity.

My view, however, is that any such measures are incremental and insufficient to drive the change which is so necessary in the governance systems in Africa. What may be required is external military intervention to depose obnoxious and weak regimes and replace them with stronger administrations. From time immemorial, weak and unpopular regimes have been overthrown by the citizens and, where this was not possible, where invaded by stronger neighbours. I do not have a quarrel with the doctrine of national sovereignty but I believe that it has its limits. National sovereignty should be respected only where the leaders also respect universally recognised and accepted democratic conventions and norms – such as the protection of their citizens and the respect of human rights.

In the case of the DRC, it is quite clear that the regime there is pathetically weak and is incapable of providing effective administration and protection to its citizens. The stationing of the largest peace keeping force in the world in that country has not brought any noticeable peace and tranquillity and is not sustainable in the long term. There may therefore merit in allowing stronger forces in the region to move in and take over administration of the country. I suspect that the likes of Rwanda would relish that prospect. It may initially be messy, I should admit, but it could provide long term stability to the country and provide its people with much needed relief from perennial suffering.