United States of Africa? Only if...

The recently concluded African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, once again delved into the longstanding and controversial matter of the establishment of the United States of Africa (USAf) which will bring all African countries under a single governance structure. The concept of the USAf has been around for a very long time – in fact from the early days of African independence when the likes of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana were gallivanting around the continent trying to mobilise other newly independent African states to shun their colonial borders and come together to form a new stronger country which would more effectively compete on the global arena. That Nkrumah failed to achieve this unity and instead died in exile having been deposed in a coup is perhaps another small evidence of everything that is wrong with the continent.

I have a lot of sympathy and respect for the idea of a united African state. I have been fortunate and privileged to have either worked in or visited a large number of African countries. Just a few months back I was addressing a gathering of professional colleagues in West Africa and I remarked that we Africans were all one people who have been separated by artificial borders. Of course, we may have different languages and different cultures but beneath all that we are one people. I feel as comfortable and at home in Nigeria as I feel in Ethiopia or Rwanda or Zambia or Zimbabwe. There are far more similarities between our people than there are differences. I have friends and colleagues scattered across the continent and when we meet and interact, there is very little difference between us except the nationality tag which history imposed upon us and which we are obliged to carry with us.

My experiences in Africa have taught me that the importance of nationalism is as insignificant, if not harmful, as regionalism or tribalism is within a national context. I am more than convinced that Africa, especially south and west of the Sahara, is and should be one country. I do have, of course, reservations on whether the northern parts can still be classified as Africa given the predominance of the Euro-Arabic (or Mediterranean) influences. Even then I would be quite happy to give them the benefit of doubt and support their membership of USAf. So if it is such a good idea to establish the USAf, why is it proving so difficult to advance this idea forward and achieve the realisation of Nkrumah’s dream?

To be brutally frank, I don’t believe that the union will be achieved by the present crop of leadership. The present leadership in Africa is still dominated by despotic and dictatorial leaders whose only desire is to strengthen and expand their rule or to cling on to power even when they no longer command the support of their people. I cannot see for goodness sake see how Muammar Gaddafi can be a credible advocate of African unity when he lacks a democratic mandate even in his own country. It should be remembered that this man came to power through a military coup and has kept power in a tightly clenched fist for more than three decades through systematic repression and suppression of the opposition. I seriously doubt Gaddafi’s sincerity and suspect that he is more interested in expanding his empire and sphere of influence without the mess and pain of military conquest.

Many other current African leaders use their countries as sources for personal wealth and accumulation. A recent article on the internet (whose veracity I cannot vouch for) placed six of the present and past heads of state among the twenty richest people on the continent. And you have the likes of Mugabe baying to all and sundry that “Zimbabwe is mine” as if it is a t-shirt or a pair of sneakers! Such leaders are not interested in a united state of Africa because it would reduce the rent-seeking opportunities which they enjoy and threaten their ability to continue expropriating their countries’ wealth for themselves and their supporters. As long as leadership is synonymous with personal wealth accumulation, every leader will hold on to their small pieces of turf and damn the consequences for the ordinary citizens!

The other barrier to African unity is the different levels of democratic maturity on the continent. As I have already alluded to, there are far too many leaders who have no time or respect for democratic governance. Some achieved power through military coups and others inherited it from their dictator parents. And with very few notable exceptions, most leaders retain power through oppression and downright fraud in the few circumstances when elections are conducted. What this means is that the leaders lack the mandate to make any fundamental concessions or decisions and they lack the conviction that they would retain any measure of importance and influence if they allow their own countries to be “swallowed” by a larger entity.

While the African Union charter and the protocols of regional bodies like SADC prescribe the minimum standards of democracy which member countries must abide by, these are often ignored in practice. To exacerbate the situation, the continental bodies appear to have no authority or, indeed, the political will to enforce compliance. Two recent examples of this impotence are the rigged elections in Kenya and the refusal by Zanu-PF to accept the results of the free and fair March 2008 elections in Zimbabwe. In both instances, the AU could have read the riot act on the errant incumbent governments but they failed to do so promoting, instead, national unity governments which preserved the status of the sitting but electorally vanquished incumbent presidents.

In the circumstances it is very difficult to imagine or appreciate how the 47 odd countries on the African continent (and six other islands off the coast which are also considered as African) can be managed under a central administration. It will take much more than sober argument, political will and unity of purpose – it will take a miracle to get all the countries to agree to such arrangements. Unless of course, such unity is dictated and enforced through military conquest. This is something which I have previously advocated but which I doubt would be acceptable in today’s political and diplomatic environment.

Having said that, I should not sound too pessimistic about the prospects of success of the USAf. As I have already alluded to above, I am a strong proponent of a united Africa falling under a single statehood. I am convinced that a huge potential is lost due to duplication of effort, failure to synergise and national capacities which are limited by geographical and resource disparities and constraints. The latest figures show that approximately one billion people live in Africa. The continent is also endowed with immense natural resources and climatic conditions which are unsurpassed by any other region or continent on earth. If all these advantages and potentials were exploited in a cohesive and collaborative manner, this could catapult Africa to unimagined levels of economic and social development and dramatically reduce the current levels of poverty.

SADC must break Zanu-PF stranglehold on power

The SADC has one hell of a challenge to rescue the Mbeki negotiated Global Political Agreement (GPA) in Zimbabwe from almost certain collapse. After several failed efforts, yet another opportunity will arise on Monday in Pretoria to fashion out an acceptable implementation plan of sorts. However, after the failure of negotiations in Harare earlier this week there is no reason to believe that the outcome will be any more different this time around. There is one fundamental problem with the approach SADC has taken to resolve Zimbabwe’s problem and unless and until they sort this problem out, their efforts will result in almost certain failure.

SADC seems to have forgotten that the basic premise of power sharing is that the parties to the sharing bring the power with them to the table. They agree to add their own to the power which the other parties bring so that the sum total of the power is shared between the parties along an agreeable and workable formula. It is not like the power comes intact from some other independent source and the parties grab what they can in the sharing process. For some reasons best known to themselves, the SADC believe that power is in the hands of Zanu-PF and therefore it is enough for the later to offer bits of that power to the opposition MDC to achieve political settlement and everlasting peace. That is clearly an erroneous, misguided and unproductive approach.

Zanu-PF derives its power from its position as the sitting incumbent. There will some who will argue on the legitimacy or otherwise of this source of power but the fact remains that, through hook or crook, they still control the levers of power in the country. They have achieved this by subordinating and manipulating state institutions over a long period of time to serve their own ends and purposes. These institutions survive and subsist to further the ends of Zanu-PF. It must be remembered that the incumbency was initially achieved legitimately, when the people of Zimbabwe elected Mr Mugabe and his party to lead them in 1980. However the incumbency is now being sustained illegitimately especially now after the party lost the elections of March 2008. So while the party’s incumbency lacks legitimacy, the power which the incumbency confers on them is nevertheless real.

That is what Zanu-PF is really bringing to the negotiating table. Zanu-PF is saying that as sitting incumbents they are not willing to relinquish their power regardless of the outcome of democratic processes. They have the might of the gun on their side – the same gun which they used to shoot down colonial oppression is what they are now using to suppress democratic will and expression. By imposing a solution which allows Zanu-PF to retain that substantial power, the SADC is in fact accepting that the power of incumbency is a bona fide element of Zimbabwe’s political equation. Well it is their choice, it is their decision and I am not going to argue with that.

What I find objectionable is the apparent unwillingness of the SADC to recognise the power which the MDC is bringing to the table – the power of democratic authority. The MDC won the March 2008 elections and, with that, claimed the mandate which is conferred by the democratic processes which the elections represent. The success of the MDC in the elections was as much a stamp of approval by the people of their (MDC’s) rightfulness to preside over the affairs of the Zimbabwe state as it was a repudiation of Zanu-PF’s rule. The people of Zimbabwe spoke loudly and clearly that it was time for a change and they anointed Mr Tsvangirai and his party as their preferred and rightful leaders.

In the circumstances any settlement that will fail to respect or give vent to the will of the people as expressed in March 2008, will be a nullity. This is the point which the MDC has been trying to make to all and sundry who care to listen and they should repeat this position until everyone hears and understands it clearly. MDC derives its power to sit on the negotiating table from the fact that in March 2008 the people of Zimbabwe declared that they wanted them (MDC) to preside over them and not Zanu-PF. If they agree to any settlement that leaves Zanu-PF is charge, no matter how cleverly disguised, they will have betrayed the people who voted for them and, thus, rendered themselves illegitimate and irrelevant.

That is the simple point which the SADC should recognise – any settlement that leaves Zanu-PF in full control is not a settlement at all. These negotiations are not about how the opposition can be accommodated in a Zanu-PF led government but they are about how the will of the people of Zimbabwe can be fulfilled in the face of Zanu-PF’s intransigence and unwillingness to respect democratic outcomes. The task and challenge of the SADC is to break Mugabe’s stranglehold on power and not to protect and sustain it. This requires that they stand up to him and tell him in no uncertain terms that his rule is illegitimate and that he must give way to those who have been chosen by the people.

They should tell him that if he is unwilling to give in peacefully then an AU-led international effort will be launched to forcibly remove him from power after which he will be taken to The Hague to face trial on crimes against humanity. They should tell him that he can avoid these consequences by respecting the spirit and letter of the GPA (which was designed as a safety net for him), by relinquishing meaningful and substantial power and authority to the opposition and by cooperating in all transitional arrangements to a fully democratic dispensation.

Too much time and effort has been wasted in diplomatic niceties (such as Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy) and constructive engagements. The issues which the MDC has demanded to be resolved before they enter into the unity government are valid and understandable but they are just symptoms of the single most significant issue that should be sorted out by SADC if Zimbabwe is ever going to emerge from the current doldrums – breaking Mugabe’s stranglehold on power. This whole initiate should be about telling Mugabe not just to go but showing him the door and holding it open for him to exit. SADC should realise that too much time has been spent in trying to appease a dictator whose time is long past gone. They should now hold the gun to his head and stop pussy-footing around him.

In the meantime, the MDC must hold fast and strong against the pressure being exerted on them by both Zanu-PF and the SADC to join the national unity government under unfavourable terms and conditions. It is all very well for MDC to continue to profess their commitment to the political agreement but they should equally make it clear that they are prepared to walk out of the deal if there is no acceptable and expeditious conclusion to the ongoing negotiations. They should ensure that every one of their concerns is fully resolved before they join their relatively clean hands to Zanu-PF’s blood-dripping hands.

They should insist on and secure sole and full responsibility for the key ministry of home affairs through which they can begin the serious task of restoring law and order in the country. Securing home affairs will also represent the single most important indicator of a break in the power of Zanu-PF. My experience is that life is all about compromise – give and take, some would say. However there are times and cases when it is neither wise nor desirable to compromise. Allowing Zanu-PF to retain all the powers which they are seeking to hold under the GPA is one such issue which cannot and should not be allowed nor be compromised on.

2009: The year of so much promise

The year 2009 has begun much as like the previous year did – showing so much promise. In many respects 2008 began with a lot of promise for Africa and for human kind generally. Elections were due to be held in Zimbabwe at the end of the first quarter and these elections were expected to resolve the long running political impasse which has seen the country regressing on all important fronts. An African American was beginning to prove that he was a serious contender for a presidential nomination in the United States of America. And I was going to turn fifty in the course of the year.

When the year ended some of the promises had been fulfilled but others remained unfulfilled. I turned fifty. Barack Obama, a forty-six year old man of mixed-race whose father grew up heading goats in Kenya, was elected president of the most powerful nation on earth. I had stayed up all night to follow the election results and when, in the wee hours of 5 November he was declared the winner of the most celebrated contest on the planet, I celebrated along with much of the world. I felt then as I feel now that there was a strong and positive message in this event for me and for the continent. If the sons of our sons can be become the leaders of the free world, why can Africa not rise from the doldrums of poverty and take its rightful place as an important partner in the community of the nations?

But even this momentous event could not musk my overall disappointment with the continent. The Zimbabwe elections were held as scheduled at the end of March in a process which was generally considered as free and fair. The opposition won the majority of the parliamentary seats and it seemed quite obvious that they had also won the main prize – the presidential contest. But it took more than a month for the presidential election results to be announced and when they finally came out the incumbent had clearly lost the contest. However the margin of loss necessitated that a run-off election be held. And so began an unprecedented orgy of violence to coerce the electorate to change their minds and reinstate the vanquished leader. The violence was so widespread and so vicious that the opposing candidate had to withdraw from the contest to save his followers from more harm.

This was a moment for Africa to stand up and say “No, this cannot be allowed!”. But after lengthy deliberations in the Egyptian resort town of Sham el Sheik, the wise leaders of the continent pronounced their verdict – a government of national unity should be established in Zimbabwe. The rest, as the oft employed cliché goes, is now history. Save that the people of Zimbabwe continue to suffer from all manner of natural and unnatural misfortunes – poverty, hunger, cholera, HIV aids, political repression, kidnappings, torture, etcetera, etcetera. If there was a bright spot in all this, it was the dismissal of the then president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki. As the long standing mediator in the Zimbabwean political conflict, Mr Mbeki had proved to be both partial and incompetent. The GNU which he cobbled up has yet to be implemented with the prospects for its success dimming with each passing day.

With the departure of Mbeki, there is hope again that the issue of Zimbabwe will be tackled with the appropriate level of vigour and seriousness. In Africa, there is hope that the year which has just started will be different and better than previous years. A number of very positive signs have emerged. For me the first good sign is the fabulous and heart-warming story of a six-year old German Mika and his one year older girlfriend Anna Bell who, in the early hours of New Year’s Day left their homes with a grand plan of eloping to Africa to get married and honeymoon there. Accompanied by Mika’s five year old sister Anna-Lena who was to witness the marriage ceremony the children packed their suitcases with all sorts of goodies and beach-wear and took a bus to the train station in Hanover where they would catch the train to the airport and from thence fly to the sunny skies of Africa for their wedding. Unfortunately the plan unravelled after a security guard became suspicious of their movements and alerted the police. (Read the full story here http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/05/german-children-elope-mika-annabel).

Young Mika and Anna Bell showed that there is still some good to come out of Africa - the sunshine, the friendly and hospitable people and the breathtaking sights and sounds. These are what Africa has been about for many centuries. These were what attracted many adventurers and explorers to the continent and these are what triggered the partition of the continent more than a century ago by the colonial powers. As it did in the past centuries, Africa still holds a lot of mystic, exoticism and awe for many experienced and aspiring travellers, adventurers and tourists. The three young Germans once again reminded the world of this great potential that remains largely untapped and unfulfilled. And for this incident to have taken place on New Year’s Eve is, in my view, a very good omen for the rest of the year.

However the most serious and significant good omen for Africa is an event about to take place in the United States of America – the inauguration of the first African-American as the president. Obama is not just an African-American. He is an African by custom and heredity. He is a son of an African man from Kenya and he has made several visits to his father’s homeland. From his account in Dreams of My Father, Obama has experienced life as an African. He has travelled on overcrowded matatus (the Nairobi public transport), stayed in grass-thatched huts and drank umqomboti (the African beer). He knows Africa and understands what is at the root of the continent’s problems of poverty and underdevelopment. He is the first American president who is most likely to have a very influential and decisive say in what happens on the continent in the next four years at least. I have a lot of optimism and expectation in him and what he can achieve for the continent.

Some of this achievement will come out of direct and proactive effort on his part – redefining the terms of relationship between Africa and the US, promoting democracy and human rights on the continent, providing better trade terms and other economic incentives and support and increasing the aid levels to the poorer countries. Much more will be achieved indirectly – through providing exemplary leadership for African leaders to emulate and eliminating the often used accusation that any policy which challenges African malfeasance is motivated by racism and colonialist mentality. It is going to be extremely hard for African leaders to ignore or deflect criticism and unwanted attention from Obama.

Already there are indications that the Obama regime will take a more robust stand in some of Africa’s hotspots. They have promised to be more actively involved in Sudan to end the human suffering in Darfur. Obama has expressed concerns about the denial of electoral rights to the people of Zimbabwe. I am optimistic that he will deliver on his promises in these areas. There is a real sense that the old world order is about to change and nothing, not even the intransigence of African dictators and despots, will stand in the path of that change. The omens are very good indeed. Roll on 2009!

Removing Mugabe will not solve Zimbabwe’s problems

In the past few weeks there have been calls for Mr Mugabe to step down as president of Zimbabwe. The calls are not just coming from the usual Mugabe foes – Britain and America but some Africans are also making the call very forcefully. Much of the cacophony has been instigated by the cholera outbreak in the country which has so far claimed over a thousand lives and is threatening to devastate the whole Southern African region. The calls are not surprising in the least because they only confirm what the Zimbabwe people have already stated using their votes in the elections held last March.

What is surprising is that it has taken this long for some of the world leaders to begin to side with the oppressed people of Zimbabwe. What is also surprising is that the call has not received much support in Africa other than from those like Botswana and Kenya whose views are already known. However it is important to acknowledge that South Africa, long the defender of Mugabe’s rule, have started accepting the merits of the idea that Mr Mugabe needs to go, or more precisely, to be retired. This is a significant move which, no doubt, puts more pressure on the belligerent dictator.

While Mr Mugabe’s departure will be celebrated (when and not if it happens), I have my serious doubts that the event of his departure alone will resolve the many, many problems that now afflict the country. My own view is that the problems have morphed beyond Mugabe into something much bigger and more sinister. Whether Mugabe goes or not, the country is in a very deep hole from which it has to be dug out. My own assessment is that there are three big challenges which Zimbabweans have to tackle to reverse their misfortunes, turn the country around, prosper and once more become a respected member of the international community. These are how to handle the issue of immunity for human rights abuses, how to deal with Mugabe’s power structures and how to facilitate the return of those in Diaspora.

The issue of immunity from prosecution of Mugabe and his henchmen is likely to be the most difficult and controversial. There is a general feeling that Mugabe can be exonerated and allowed to serve the last few years of his life in peace somewhere. That position is also necessitated and influenced by the realisation that there is a need to provide some incentive to him to loosen his grip on and relinquish power. The acceptance of immunity for Mugabe is likely to be a hard-sell to and very bitter pill for the many victims of the abuses of his rule but, in the final analysis, they may just be prepared to swallow it.

However the same cannot be said of immunity for the rest of his henchman and foot-solders who perpetrated the hideous crimes and many of whom are known to the victims. The issue to consider here is how far down the line the immunity should go. It must be remembered that the actual physical commission of abuses took place at the lowest hierarchical levels occupied by youth militias and junior officers of the army, police and intelligence services such as Joseph Mwale. Should all these people be forgiven and allowed to “get away with murder” so to speak? This will not just be unpalatable, it will be unprecedented and undesirable. Historically, justice has been allowed to prevail even it is in some convoluted form such as truth and reconciliation commissions. Even now the perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda are still being tried for their crimes.

The second issue is how to deal with Mugabe’s power structures so that they do not pose a future risk to the country. It should be remembered that Mugabe is the visible element (or the face) of a military-civilian junta that are controlling the country. From many credible accounts, Mr Mugabe is no longer fully in charge of the country. The Joint Operations Command (JOC) is the de facto authority in the country. They are calling the shots and they are the ones who decided to overturn the mandate of the people following the March elections. They are also the ones who initiated and directed the savage brutality inflicted on the Zimbabwean people in the run up to the farcical June re-run elections.

The departure of Mugabe will not yield anything substantial unless it is accompanied by the disbandment of the JOC and the retirement of its members. Members of the JOC are a real and credible threat to the future of Zimbabwe – much more so than Mugabe has been and will ever be. But so far their blood-socked hand has been hidden behind the image of Mugabe. I recall someone saying to me, not so long ago, that there are powerful forces which are so desperate to keep Mugabe in power that he could be dead for months and they would still pretend he is still alive and in charge. These structures and institutions which have been the power behind the Mugabe throne will need to be neutralised and disbanded so that they do not pose a threat to any future dispensation.

It will also be necessary, in this vein, to address the issue of chiefs who have been so corrupted and compromised by the ruling party. The chiefs have always been manipulated by ruling elites to provide a cloak of legitimacy to unpopular regimes. During the Rhodesian era, Ian Smith used chiefs like Chirau and Ndiweni to try and subvert the Africans aspirations for freedom and independence. Mugabe continued with this policy and went much further. He subverted the chiefs to the extent that they had become integral elements of the ruling Zanu-PF party. In any future dispensation the role of the chiefs will need to be re-examined and there may very well be need to “de-frock” some of the more obnoxious characters.

The third issue is how to attract back into the country the millions of people who have fled abroad. It should be remembered that many of these diasporians are skilled people who are desperately needed in many critical social and economic sectors such as health, education, agriculture, manufacturing, etc. Until the country is able to attract these people back in sufficient numbers there is little chance that the country will recover. It takes more than three years to train a competent nurse and a similar period to train a teacher. There is absolutely no chance that Zimbabwe can meet its skilled manpower needs through training and development and will thus have to put in place a mechanism for attracting them from abroad and retaining the skills that it desperately needs.

In the early 1980s the newly independent Zimbabwe was able to attract many of its progeny from abroad because the economy was generally sound, there were jobs to offer them and the health and education systems were strong. This time it is different. All the fundamentals are pointing the other way – there are no jobs, no medical facilities, a broken education system and no food. It is wrong to believe that just a sense of patriotism will be enough to encourage the people who have left to return. Many of them have now established alternative lifestyles where they have settled. They have started new professions and businesses, bought houses and other property, enrolled their children in new schools and have become full and important members of their new communities.

To attract these people back to Zimbabwe will take strategy, ingenuity and perseverance. They have to be convinced that there is a meaningful future for them in a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe. They need to be assured that what the country offers is much better than what they already have and this is always going to be a tough call. To expect that the people in Diaspora will return to the country simply because Mugabe has gone is either an act of self-deception or misplaced optimism. Of course, Mugabe’s departure will be a useful beginning but nothing more than a beginning.

The tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe

Celebrating his 90th birthday at a dinner in London in June this year Africa’s foremost and most famous son, Nelson Mandela, decried the tribulations which had befallen his northern neighbour and described the problem as a “tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe”. The words echoed a similar statement by another of Africa’s iconic figures Chinua Achebe who, in his famous treatise The Trouble with Nigeria (first published in 1983) concluded that “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership”.

While Nigeria is working hard at correcting its leadership failures in order to improve its society and achieve measured improvements in the welfare of its people, Zimbabwe has fallen into the deepest mire of failure with a leadership which is not only a failure but which is also discredited and illegitimate in the eyes of the world. The evidence of failure have been there for a long time now – from the late 1990s when Mr Mugabe dolled out billions of dollars in unplanned expenditure to pacify his increasingly restless former comrades-in-arms and then unilaterally led the country into an unpopular and un-winnable war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

By the time the illegal farm invasions escalated in 2000, the downward spiral had started in earnest. It has been one way to hell ever since with the only difference being the pace and scope of the decline which have accelerated and deepened with the passage of time. The present cholera disaster afflicting the nation has become the most damning and visible evidence of failure – not just because people are dying (many more died from political violence over the many years of Zanu-PF rule and many others have died from AIDS and other diseases which could have been easily treated) but because for the first time ever, the disease is threatening to engulf and emasculate the whole Southern African region.

The tragic failure of leadership which Mr Mandela refers to is manifest in an economy which has completely collapsed with unimaginable and incalculable inflation rates, empty store shelves, stratospheric rate of devaluation of local currency, chronic shortage of money and the complete collapse of economic infrastructure. The latest and most desperate, if not bizarre, attempt to address the shortage of money has been to issue yet another high denomination note printed on cotton. Maybe there is a message in this somewhere – that when the currency has once again become valueless, one can stitch the notes together and sew a dress. If it were not so tragic one would think this is one of the most innovative approaches to recycling ever devised.

Leadership has always been important for survival of society. Even in animal kingdoms and colonies, leadership plays an important role in the survival and thriving of the species. In insects, the queen mother provides critical leadership to her progeny and many animal colonies have defined and clearly identifiable leadership hierarchies which serve to guide and protect the colony. When these leaders fail or are killed, the colony becomes disoriented and vulnerable. If another leader does not emerge quickly to mobilise cohesion, the colony could disintegrate completely. If animals and other tiny creatures can recognise the importance of leadership, why is it difficult for us human beings, who are infinitely more intelligent than other animal species, to appreciate that without good leadership we are doomed?

The other day I was having a discussion with a colleague about what causes the sort of failures which we are experiencing in Zimbabwe. I suggested that there may be three reasons for this: the first is failure to recognise failure; second is failure to achieve consensus on whether there is failure or not; and third is failure to accept failure. Let me expand on these reasons a bit using the context of Zimbabwe.

Failure to recognise failure has occurred in Zimbabwe over the many years in which Mr Mugabe and the Zanu-PF leadership have simply not recognised that the main cause of the problems afflicting the country is their own incompetence and inability to lead the country. They have sought to attribute the country’s failures to every conceivable detractor – the British, the Americans, Tony Blair and George Bush, the opposition MDC, nature and God. The cholera epidemic which is currently raging in the country has now been blamed on the British who are allegedly engaged in chemical warfare against the poor citizens in order to precipitate a regime change.

The point is really not who or what has caused the cholera. The streams of putrid sewage gashing from blocked and overflowing sewers which traverse the urban areas and lack of clean and treated drinking water suggest themselves as more plausible causes of the outbreak than any subterfuge or machinations on the part of the British, but I am not about to engage in this futile blame apportionment exercise. The issue really is what are the leadership doing to protect their people from harm and relieve them of their suffering, notwithstanding the cause or source of the afflictions? The answer is nothing, almost. One may wish to be generous and credit government’s advice to people not to shake hands as an acceptable and appropriate endeavour.

As people lie dying in understaffed and under-equipped hospitals, as children are denied education because their schools have closed because there are no teachers and no food to feed them, as women die in delivery because the maternity hospitals have closed, the cry for urgent government intervention is loud and deafening. But the government is not responding or chooses to simply ignore them. In widely reported remarks Ms Graca Machel recently said that either Zimbabwe's leaders do not understand how deeply their people are suffering "or they don't care."

Failure of consensus on whether there is failure or not has happened at the international level. From the UN, to the AU, down to SADC, member states have failed to agree not only on the nature and extent of the failure of the leadership in Zimbabwe but also on ways to address the failure. What little acknowledgement and condemnation of failure there is by small surrounding states like Botswana and Zambia has been drowned out by the deafening silence and outright denial of wrongfulness by South Africa and other global powers like Russia and China. Even at this moment the debate on Zimbabwe at the UN is being stymied by a lack of consensus on how to censure Mr Mugabe and the leadership cabal in Harare.

Mr Mugabe has in turn sought ways and means to fully exploit any such dissentions to his advantage. To him the fact that there is no consensus on his wrongdoing is a seal of approval to continue to repress his people and to commit other despicable acts. In other words, he has managed to adroitly turn what is patent failure into something of a celebrated success. Consensus is sometimes very hard to achieve, even in the best of times. In more controversial circumstances, such as those obtaining in Zimbabwe, it is nearly impossible to achieve. Even if the situation deteriorated into the likeness of Rwanda, there will still be some states that will argue that there is nothing amiss in a sovereign state butchering its own people.

The above failings culminate in the final cause of failure – denial. Mr Mugabe and his cabal are simply denying that they have failed. They believe that they are still the heroes who liberated the country and who still attract admiration and reverence from their people – if only the damn British, Americans and the bad white farmers could stop negatively influencing them. They contend that their economic policies have been sound if it were not for economic saboteurs who needlessly raise prices to make goods unaffordable or the black marketers who hoard scarce goods for resale at extortionist prices. They even believe that the land reform programme has been an outstanding success where it not for God who has withheld the much needed rain.

In their minds and in their deeds, everyone and everything has failed accept themselves. They have done nothing wrong and they demand the right to continue doing whatever they have been doing under the misguided expectation that somehow the results will be different. Unless and until Mr Mugabe and company and those states that will not challenge him recognise that leadership failure is at the root of the country’s tribulations, the suffering of the people will continue. The extent of the tragedy will only become apparent when there is no one left in the country to lead.

Zimbabwe government should admit failure and step down

In 2002, soon after Mr Mugabe’s disputed win of the presidential elections in Zimbabwe, a professional friend sought my views on what the future held for the country. In response, I outlined to him two possible scenarios. The first, an optimistic one, was that the country would overcome the political setbacks and rise up to its former glory as the jewel of the region. I even dared to add that the difficult experiences would make the people stronger and more determined to succeed. The other and more pessimistic scenario was that Zimbabwe would degenerate further and become a failed state just like Somalia.

Six years later and much to my disappointment (but not perhaps too much surprise) the latter prediction appears to have been fulfilled. In almost every respect, Zimbabwe has become a failed state. The latest indications are the cholera that is decimating the nation fuelled by a collapse of state institutions and services including health, water provision, transportation, education, banking and whatever else you can think of. So dire is the situation that a few weeks ago three leading humanitarian personalities (former US president Jimmy Carter, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and Mr Mandela’s wife, Graca Machel) were denied entry into the country for fear of what they may witness. This week the South African government is sending in a high-powered delegation to assess the humanitarian situation in the country.

In denying Messrs Carter and company entry into the country, the foreign affairs minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi stated that the Zimbabwe government took exception to the notion that foreigners do care more about the livelihood of their people than the government itself. Well the South Africans are coming in and it will be surprising if they are similarly rebuffed. Somehow, I doubt that and in the event that the South Africans have their way, it will be an open admission that government has failed. It is tantamount to the social services department walking into your house to assess how you are looking after your own children.

In the normal scheme of things, when one fails they leave a position voluntarily or are forcibly relieved of their positions. In the case of Zimbabwe the failure is much too apparent. This failure is manifested into three main areas – governance failure, economic failure and social failure. Governance failure is manifested in the current lack of constitutional or legitimate government in the country. The previous government was dissolved prior to the March elections and, given what has transpired after the elections, there cannot be said to be any government which is ruling the country at this stage. Mr Mugabe is laying claims to the leadership of the country but the claims are being strongly resisted.

Progress of some sorts was achieved in September when an agreement was signed by the main contending parties to form a government of national unity but that was about the best that happened. Since then it’s been disappointment all the way with Mr Mugabe refusing to cede any meaningful power to the opposition. Consequently the agreement is now all but dead. It will take a miraculous change of heart from one of the contending parties to allow the GNU to become fully established and operational. In the meantime the country is drifting around directionless and leaderless.

Economic failure is the most evident, pronounced and irrefutable failure of the moment. Inflation is measured in billions of percentage points, the national currency is unavailable and valueless and the infrastructure has collapsed (there is no electricity and treated water in urban centres). People spend endless hours queuing up to withdraw their money and what they are allowed to withdraw is not enough to buy a loaf of bread. Less than ten percent of the people remain in formal employment and these very fortunate few are not earning enough to cover the costs of their transport to work. The situation has got so bad that transactions have been reduced to barter trading with many services being paid with fuel coupons and other negotiable instruments.

However it is in the social sphere that the failure is most acutely and painfully felt. Starting with the dispersion of over four million of its citizens who have sought refuge anywhere they could be received across the globe, to the millions more who have remained at home to endure the worst case of deprivation and misery – the Zimbabwean people have been brutalised like very few other people have in the modern era. Other places like Congo, Darfur and Somalia may have experienced similar hardship – but Zimbabwe is the only place where such hardship has not been caused by war. The people have remained peaceful and brave in the face of the most brutal and consistent onslaught of personal liberties and violation of human rights ever witnessed.

This massive migration of people has had a debilitating effect on the social fabric of Zimbabwe including the breakdown of many family ties. Husbands have been separated from wives, parents from children, brothers from sisters and friends from friends. Some of those who have left have been fortunate to find new opportunities in their lives but many more live in poverty, suffering and humiliating conditions. Other less fortunate ones have become victims of xenophobic attacks for which they have paid with their lives, with serious bodily injury and with psychological pain.

For those who have remained in the country, they have seen themselves reduced to paupers as their life savings and pensions have been wiped out by inflation, they are stalked with hunger as food has disappeared from the fields and from shop shelves, they are afflicted with preventable disease as hospitals have closed or run out of medicines and people to staff them, and their children have become illiterates as schools have closed down due to lack of teachers and teaching materials.

It is impossible to imagine any worse failure than what is being witnessed in Zimbabwe at the moment. Yet, very tragically, no one is owning up to the failure, much less acknowledging its existence. The failed leadership in the country have their heads firmly planted in the sand pretending that all is well or, at the very least, things are not as bad as being purported. The international community is paralysed by misplaced notions of Pan-African solidarity and by the restrictions of political and diplomatic correctness.

Under any normal circumstances, the Zimbabwean government would have admitted that they have failed and stepped down to allow others to try their hand on correcting the situation. What we have got instead is a group of megalomaniacs who believe they have the right to rule the country in perpetuity regardless of how much suffering and deprivation is caused by their rule. They do not have respect for human lives and see the suffering of their people as a necessary sacrifice for their own continued tenure in power. In the circumstances it appears both futile and overly optimistic to expect any good to come out of this bunch. It is now time to force a change.

If Zimbabwe was a business organisation, it would have been forced to close its business a long time ago. It would have been declared bankrupt and the doors would have been bolted shut for any operations and trade. Although the country may not be a business organisation, it is time that the principles applied when dealing with failed business organisations should be invoked at this stage to stop the rot and the suffering. The people of Zimbabwe cannot wait one minute longer.

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.

The end of an unlikely journey. Or is it the beginning?

In less than one week, the United States’ public go to the polls to elect their president for the coming four years and that event will bring to an end what has been the most reverting political contest in history. For as along as I can remember, I have been intrigued by US elections. Many of the elections have produced their iconic moments which remain etched in my memory and heighten my fascination with what must surely be the biggest political reality show on earth.

I recall that many, many years ago when Jimmy Carter secured victory over Gerald Ford one African-American walked to his inauguration carrying a placard emblazoned with the message “Jimmy Carter, here I come” to illustrate the black support for Carter’s candidature. I also followed very closely Bill Clinton’s surprise success against the incumbent president George H Bush. And four years ago I stayed up into the early hours of the night to follow the results of the contest between the younger Bush and Senator John Kerry.

But nothing and I mean nothing had prepared me for the thrill and emotional rollercoaster of the present electoral contest. It is not just the historical context of the contest – the potential of the first non-Caucasian president of the world’s only superpower. It is not just the prospect of the improbable realisation of the previously unthinkable – that a predominantly white nation and white electorate will vote a black man into the presidency of their great nation. It is much more than that. It is a moment of such profound social and historical significance that it will be remembered with both awe and astonishment by future generations and for many decades and centuries to come.

It is too early to predict the outcome of the elections and, as they say, a week in politics is a very long time but the signs are looking good for Senator Barack Obama. He is enjoying a comfortable lead in the polls and the campaign of his rival appears to be in some state of disarray. Of course, anything can happen between now and Tuesday next week – like some crazy act of terrorism being perpetrated by some groups spoiling for a fight with America or, even more fearful, an assassination of Senator Obama by some extremists.

Assuming that none of this happens and that Obama proceeds to win the election as is now widely anticipated, what is going to happen? First there will be a huge and collective sigh of relief around the whole world. Obama appears to be the favourite candidate of the world, if the results of global polls are anything to go by, and his success against considerable odds will be received with much relief and elation. An Obama victory will, in one master stroke, transform perceptions of how America is viewed by both her enemies and her friends. It will have demonstrated that regardless of its demonisation by many, America can and will dare to be different and that she is well and truly the bastion of freedom and innovation on the planet.

For how else can one explain how a first generation African American born of an African father bearing an African name and a white American mother, who was brought up in Indonesia and the faraway island of Hawaii be elected the president of the most powerful nation on earth? That could never happen anywhere else in the world. Members of minority groups have little or no chance of being elected presidents unless they do so through force of arms, much less do those who are considered as foreigners – as no doubt Senator Obama would be considered in many parts of the world. In Africa, one must be exhibit a high degree of affiliation and affinity with the appropriate national, ethnic and tribal groupings before they can be elected into leadership positions.

I have said it before and I will say it again, the election of Obama in the US will be a good thing for Africa. It will make it that much more difficult for the despots on the continent to defend and deflect criticism of their repression as machinations of the racist West. For far too long the standard reaction to criticisms of African leaders for their undemocratic practices and abuse of human rights has been that Africa is being victimised by the West who have racist tendencies and a neo-colonialist agenda. This has somewhat tempered the appetite for a more robust confrontation by the West to many of the excesses of the dictators. But this is unlikely to remain the case.

A victory for Obama will precipitate a whole rethink on how democracy is practiced in Africa. Because of his much closer ties to Africa (the land of his father), Obama is likely to encourage a more aggressive engagement with the continent. That will mean getting closer to those nations that share the principles of good governance and, even more importantly, confronting those that disregard acceptable democratic behaviour. Leaders like Robert Mugabe are likely to face a much tougher scrutiny and challenge of their policies. It will not be as easy to dismiss President Obama’s criticism as it was with President George Bush’s protestations.

Obama will come into office with relatively clean hands. He opposed the Iraq war from the beginning and he has pledged to pull out the troops as soon as possible after he assumes office. If he follows through with that promise then it may mean that the US will be fighting one less war and may have the resources and the capacity to deploy its military to other troubled spots. I believe there are areas like Zimbabwe in which such intervention is long overdue and will be most welcomed. I doubt very much that Obama will be a soft touch on human rights issues and he may, in fact, seek to take America in an entirely new direction to assert America’s leadership on democracy and human rights.

A victory for Obama will also strengthen many people’s belief in democratic electoral processes and put new meaning to and emphasis on democratic means of resolving political conflicts. In Africa, in particular, there has been a loss of faith on elections as a democratic process. Recent elections held in Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe have left voters very disillusioned and frustrated by their inability to express their wishes though the ballot box. Incumbent ruling parties have ridden roughshod over the wishes of the electorate though blatant vote rigging, disenfranchisement of voters and manipulation of electoral results.

There are suspicions that Senator Obama will be denied victory next week through similar machinations. In the event that Obama wins (implying that no chicanery has taken place) people everywhere will feel that there is value in using one’s vote to achieve political objectives. This will, in the long term, discourage the use of violence and other undemocratic means to achieve political change. Peace and tranquillity will descend on many hotspots around the world and that will, in turn, usher in higher levels of prosperity and development in the world.

Maybe I am being too optimistic and fanciful. In any case the American people still have to complete the voting on November 4 and the votes still have to be tallied and the winner declared. Until that happens, everything remains as mere speculation and wishful thinking. But as Senator Obama has so eloquently suggested, there is merit in believing in “the audacity of hope”.

Desperation and cynicism stocking political impasse

There really must be something good in the political agreement signed on 15 September this year by the political antagonists in Zimbabwe. If it was such a bad deal why is Mr Mugabe and Zanu-PF working desperately to wreck the agreement? And why, indeed, is Mr Tsvangirai and the MDC pushing so hard to have the agreement implemented?

It does not require a lot of imagination to see that there is an element of desperation surrounding the agreement on both parties but for apparently different reasons and motives. To understand what is really happening, it is necessary to get back to the basics – to the justification and purpose of the political settlement.

The need for a negotiated settlement arose out of the reality that Mr Mugabe and his party lost the 29 March election to the opposition. After lengthy delays in announcing the results of presidential ballot (presumably to allow for the manipulation of the results) the contest was declared inconclusive necessitating a run-off contest to choose a winner. The victorious opposition initially acquiesced with this blatant subterfuge but soon realised that the contest was not going to be anyway near fair as their supporters were raped, maimed, murdered and otherwise brutalised. They withdrew from the run-off contest leaving Mr Mugabe to romp home alone in a “landslide victory”.

Unfortunately, the Pyrrhic victory was roundly condemned by all and sundry thus rendering Mr Mugabe’s presidency illegitimate. It is on this basis of illegitimacy that Mr Mugabe, at the prodding of his erstwhile colleagues in the African Union and the SADC, agreed to enter into mediated negotiations. In the circumstances, the negotiations were intended to serve one purpose only – to purge the illegitimacy that had befallen his rule and, by extension, the country.

The resultant agreement would become valid and relevant only to the extent to which it removes the illegitimacy. There were obviously a number of options for achieving this objective. The first would have been to negotiate the complete handover of power from the illegitimate government to a legitimate government based on the people’s will as expressed in the 29 March elections. This would have meant that Mugabe and Zanu-PF would be completely removed from power. This was my favoured option (and I suspect that of many others pundits and observers) but, unfortunately, it was not favoured by the mediator, Mr Mbeki former president of South Africa.

Another option would have been to call for a fresh election which is internationally monitored and supervised to ensure that the failings of the previous elections were not repeated. This would have been the best option because it would have laid to rest once and for all the argument of which leader has the true support and mandate of the people of Zimbabwe. However this option was not considered because the outcome had already been pronounced in the last “fair” election of 29 March. There was no prospect whatsoever that the outcome would be any more different to the “humiliating” defeat which Mr Mugabe had suffered in that earlier round. In fact the prospects were high for an even more humiliating defeat.

This led to the third option – a government of national unity. Under this option, Mr Mugabe would lose his power – not suddenly but in a gradual manner. The GNU was never intended to nor would it have been practically able to confer a stamp of approval (or legitimacy) to Mr Mugabe’s rule. It was only meant to allow the opposition to partly assume the power which they had legitimately won on March 29 while, at the same time, partly wresting from Mr Mugabe the powers which he had lost on March 29 and illegitimately acquired through the invalid June 28 elections.

In my view, the September 15 agreement clearly reflects this dynamic of one party gaining power and the other losing it. That is the only basis upon which this agreement works and, in consequence, will provide legitimacy to the continued tenure of Mr Mugabe on the political landscape in Zimbabwe. The problem is that Mr Mugabe has now come to realise, rather quite late in the process, that he is no longer in charge and that his time at the helm is now virtually over.

Mr Mugabe realises now that by sharing power with the opposition, this will deprive him and his party from manipulating the levers of the state to sustain their continued hold on power. This loss of control will result in his total demise in the not too distant future – whenever it is that the next elections will be held. That is now why he wants out of the deal. I really do not think the problem is about the sharing of cabinet positions. This is important but, in my view, largely symbolic. Governments operate on the principle of collective responsibility and it is never going to be easy for any party to dictate government policy solely on the basis that they hold a certain cabinet position.

Mr Mugabe’s problem is not that he does not want to share the cabinet portfolios equitably - he simply does not want to share anything at all. Sharing means losing something and the old man is not terribly keen to lose anything. But does that mean that he is willing to risk completely destroying the country (whatever is left of it, anyway!) by pursuing a course of complete isolation which his continued illegitimacy will no doubt bring? I doubt it very much. I don’t believe he is that foolish or that clever. He should surely know that retreating from his present position will only invite more attacks from his enemies at a time when his defences are weak and vulnerable.

What Mr Mugabe wants now is to gain as much concessions as he can possibly get away with from the MDC while, at the same time, buying some time to regroup and re-strategise for his future. He is never going to walk away from this agreement because there is nothing else out there that will serve him better. For this reason, it is folly for the opposition to either walk away from the agreement or to give any more ground to Mr Mugabe. They should hold their line and wait it out.

As the opposition holds out, Mr Mugabe’s actions are now clearly and increasingly fuelled by a deadly mixture of desperation and cynicism. Gazetting the allocation of cabinet posts when these had not been agreed by the negotiating parties was a desperate and reckless act of bravado. For Mr Mugabe and his “government” to continue to deny Mr Tsvangirai, the prime minister designate and the next head of government, a passport to enable him to freely travel is a cynical act of the worst kind.

Either of the cases reflect a total lack of seriousness, sincerity and maturity on the part of Mr Mugabe and his party at best and, at worst (and probably more appropriately), an unacceptable degree of recklessness in the face untold hardships. Whatever the case Mr Mugabe should not be allowed to delay the process of change and divert attention from the urgency of resolving the country’s political impasse in order to provide relief to the suffering masses.

Politics of power to politics of ideology

The ongoing presidential elections in the United States of America raise many important lessons for fledgling democracies around the world – especially in Africa. Of course one must appreciate and accept that the American experience in democratic process goes back some centuries unlike in much of Africa where it goes back only a few decades. If one discounts the many years wasted under military and civilian dictatorships, that experience is whittled even further down to not more than a dozen years in the best of circumstances.

That lack of experience should, however, not be an excuse for the sorry state the continent finds itself neither should it be justification for continued repression and the many undemocratic travesties perpetrated against the poor people on the continent. The whole point of history is to learn from the past in order to avoid similar pitfalls and to help make better decisions for the future. In Africa it seems quite in vogue to disregard past lessons and repeat the errors from history with the mistaken and misguided expectation that the results could be different. It is time our leaders and our people started learning the lessons from other countries’ experiences.

The first lesson for me is that politics is not just about power (raw and unbridled) but it is really and mostly about ideology. The contest between Senator McCain and Senator Obama is, at its centre, a contest of ideology – conservatism or liberalism as defined by their political parties – the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. With all his charisma and eloquence, Obama would not have progressed very far if he did not subscribe to or support the Democratic Party ideology and policies. With all his war heroism and extensive political experience, McCain would be nowhere if he was outside the umbrella of the Republican ideological framework.

While both candidates have trumpeted their bi-partisan inclinations they have been very careful not to alienate themselves from the core values and principles of their parties. In fact the candidates have had to temper their more extreme inclinations and preferences to retain their core supporters. In Africa, politics is about power and success usually accrues to the one who holds the best levers – those who control the strongest or most vicious militia, those who have the most money to buy supporters and the ruling incumbents who are able to manipulate the electoral processes in their favour. There is thus a sense of disbelief if, after leveraging all such advantages, some candidates still lose elections and refuse to concede to the victors.

The issue of ideology will also help to limit the number of parties that contest elections – or at the very least limit the number of real competitive parties. In my view, one of the problems faced in African politics is that there are too many contenders for political positions and this provides the electorates with too many options much of which are not really different. In the circumstances, the prospects of making wrong choices multiply quite significantly. Under the western democratic systems, there are few parties in contention and this enables voters to make considered and informed decisions on whom they wish to elect.


Another thing that strikes me as highly admirable about the US elections is the degree of civility with which the contestants deal with each other. I struggle to appreciate the complaints being traded between the presidential contestants about negative campaigning. Much of what I have heard is pretty mild if not downright polite when compared with the viciousness with which elections are conducted in Africa. While personal insults are traded in abundance, it’s the naked intimidation and physical violence that is the central modus operandi of African politicians. The use of state security agencies by the incumbent government is very common while there is also rampant use of private militia and vigilantes to advance one’s political goals.

The violence is systematic and those who engage in it do so with a degree of impunity as the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary have been compromised. So when people go and vote, they are likely to make their choices out of fear of the possible repercussions and usually out of self-preservation motives. One outgoing president famously remarked in a recent election in an African country “This election is a do or die affair”. Such statements provide the licence to the brutality and deviousness with which elections are conducted.

An unfortunate outcome of this kind of approach to electioneering is that the loss of political power usually heralds the end of the road for the loosing party. The successor party will employ the very same methods to entrench themselves in power until some other party emerges to dethrone them. And so it goes on and on. If loosing parties, especially ruling parties, had realistic options of coming back into power in future they would be less inclined to resist election results which are not in their favour. In the UK, for example, after many years of Conservative rule under Mrs Thatcher and Mr Major, the Conservatives lost the 1997 elections to the Labour Party. After more than ten years in power the Conservatives look like they are on their way back, if recent polls and results from local government lections are accurate indicators. In the US, the Democrats have a more than fair chance of winning against the Republicans who have been ruling for eight eventful years.

There may be some gamesmanship and a certain level of rhetorical viciousness in the election campaigns between the competing candidates and their parties in the US but there is no “do or die” nonsense characteristic of elections in Africa. As I see it, in Africa politicians have a serious disrespect of the electorate. They do not accept or recognise that the citizens can and should exercise their own free will in deciding whom they want to rule over them. Our politicians believe that they can cheat, coerce, bribe and lie to get into power. With very few exceptions, no one takes notice of these shenanigans and life goes on. One irregular election is followed by another irregular election and by another – all with unfailing regularity.

While this entire tussle for power is going on, the continent is regressing. The level of poverty on the continent is escalating, social services are collapsing, economic development has stagnated and corruption is running rampart. To tackle these evils will demand a real paradigm shift in the manner in which the business of politics is transacted in Africa. There should be a migration from the politics of power to the politics of ideology.

The global economic crises – Lessons from Zimbabwe

The global financial markets are in turmoil and the world is facing an economic meltdown of an unprecedented magnitude. The governments have stepped in to introduce a raft of measures to stabilise the situation and restore confidence in the markets. The responses have been as varied as they have been controversial – from bailout packages in the US, UK and Europe to guarantees of depositor funds in Ireland, Greece and Australia. These interventions notwithstanding, the outcomes, for the moment at least, have been disappointing. The markets are plummeting and institutions are failing at an alarming rate.

But if the truth should be told, the current events are not new and have been playing out in a small corner of the globe on which attention has been on entirely other matters. In the past few years I have been conducting a doctorate research on corporate governance in Africa with particular focus on Zimbabwe and Kenya. In Zimbabwe I conducted a case study research on the financial sector which collapsed due to corporate governance failures. Reflecting back on this research, the findings reflect astonishingly closely what is now happening in the global economy and I thought I should share some of these findings and conclusions in the hope that this will be useful in understanding what has happened and in shaping a way forward.

While my case study research focused on one particular institution the issues concerned the whole financial sector in Zimbabwe and, by extension, to the national economic performance of the country. Let me start with an obvious and necessary admission. Zimbabwe may not be such a good example given other well known exogenous factors. However the situation was not always like that. Until a few years ago Zimbabwe was a reasonably performing economy with world-class financial institutions and efficient public and private sectors. What led to its slide into its current economic abyss are, in part, events which are very similar to what is now happening on the global arena.

The most telling and decisive slide of the Zimbabwean economy can be traced to 2004 when many financial institutions in the country which had tied up funds in speculative activities began to experience liquidity constraints accelerating runs on the banks by agitated depositors and, in turn, triggering the banking sector crisis. At the height of the crisis in 2004, ten financial institutions including banks and building societies, collapsed due to insolvency and liquidity problems. This mirrors the present situation where global financial institutions are suffering the effects of their exposure to the sub-prime mortgage market amid growing accusations of malfeasance by the so-called corporate fat cats.

In my research I found that prevailing economic environment largely dictates the nature of business practices and transactions. In the case of Zimbabwe, it was the unstable macro-economic environment (soaring inflation and high interest rates) which encouraged financial institutions to engage in high risk investments which provided very high near-term benefits. The long term implications turned out to be quite adverse, as the financial institutions later painfully learnt.

What is important to remember is that financial institutions are cash rich but a greater proportion of that cash is constituted of depositors’ and equity funds. Operating margins (mostly interest and changes) represents a smaller component of their funds. In a business world which avers that “cash is king”, financial institutions find themselves in a unique position of trying to play around with a large amount of funds which they have not really earned. While there are regulations which guide their activities in this regard, there is, nevertheless, a great deal of flexibility and discretion. Today’s top performers are those institutions and individuals which are adept at executing the most unusual and highly profitable financial deals. This has given rise to the widespread use of instruments such as special purpose vehicles to conduct structured financial deals.

The prevailing level of discretion may suggest the need for stronger regulation and supervision of financial institutions. Evidence from my research suggests that regulatory interventions are not always the right answer. In Zimbabwe, for example, the regulatory authority, the Reserve Bank, responded to the banking crisis by issuing a raft of control and supervisory measures many of which failed to address the problems. In the end the central bank was criticised for lacking due consideration of the risk of regulatory failure with the consequence that where failure had occurred, regulatory measures had worse effect or consequences than the failings and potential dangers they sought to address.

There is also a need to strike a balance between regulation and supervision (which are socialistic in nature) and allowing for entrepreneurship and enterprise which form the bedrock of capitalism. An effective regulatory framework should ensure that business organisations are fully aware of what they can or cannot do and the consequences of departing from the straight and narrow path. In this context regulation is not seen as an external influence but more as an enabler, bearing in mind that the existence of regulation does not, on its own, enforce compliance in much the same way as the existence of criminal law does not stop criminals from committing crime. Good regulation therefore functions as a benchmark for accepted behaviour.

In the Zimbabwean banking crisis the issue of poor corporate governance relating, especially, to executive decision making and executive remuneration seems to have played a significant role in the events which unfolded. Another important issue was that the managers of the financial institutions were also significant shareholders. I will argue here that the prevailing practice in global corporations of partly remunerating executives with stock options makes them owner-managers. Evidence from my research suggests that owner-managed institutions tend to engage in higher risk behaviour to achieve higher stock returns from which the managers directly benefit. Owner-management undermines the foundations of the “principal-agent” model which has stronger prudential properties and promotes the high risk “myopic-market” (or “short-termistic”) tendencies in executive behaviour.

It must be conceded however that executive remuneration is largely defined and dictated by prevailing market conditions. The excessive compensation packages offered to financial executives may be a reflection of efforts to attract and retain competent skills within a constricted market. In this regard, it may not be entirely reasonable to fault financial institutions for the generous compensation packages which they offer their executives. Rather, efforts must be made to increase investments in training and human resources development in order to increase supply of skills and reduce demand levels. In parallel, it is necessary to devise and adopt alternative remuneration practices which do not involve stock options. Consideration should also be given to introducing executive remuneration caps in order to reduce or limit the growing remuneration gap between low and top earners.

When the liquidity crisis first hit the market in Zimbabwe in late 2003, the Reserve Bank established a Troubled Bank Fund as a temporary measure to support banking institutions which were experiencing liquidity constraints. The fund was intended to assist the troubled banks to re-align their asset portfolios and strengthen their balance sheets. When these efforts failed to successfully resolve liquidity problems, a further step was taken to acquire the failed banks to help avoid a severe loss of depositors’ and creditors’ funds and more serious destabilisation of the financial markets. If anything is to be learnt from this experience, it is that the governments in the US and Europe which are rushing in to shore up their sinking banking institutions will realise, much sooner rather than later, that they are faced with some real tough choices.

When governments decide to bail out financial institutions they may very well help to save depositors and creditors funds. However this invariably means that investors will loose out because of the dilution of their stocks. This undermines investor confidence and entrepreneurship and has adverse effects on long term economic growth. This appears to be what is happening with the financial stocks on the global markets.

Zimbabwe may now be better known for the notoriety of its political and humanitarian situation, but a deeper analysis of the financial crisis which it experienced four years ago and which accelerated the descent into its current economic abyss may provide useful insights and lessons for how the world should be responding to the current global financial crisis. In the event, that small wretched country may, after all, become a force for good. What a forlorn hope!