ONE CARELESS MOVE LOSES THE WHOLE GAME
Nkosana Zali
A rejoinder to “SA cannot afford a failing presidency at this time,” by Mike Trapido (Thought Leader, 31 May 2008)
The USA I know is led by George W. Bush, whose replacement we await in the November 2008 Election. Bush is serving a second term, into which he was voted by a majority thanks to an uninspiring Democrat campaign and a rejuvenated patriotism amongst a nation that was once screaming for his blood as he marched their heavily-armed sons and daughters onto the Iraqi soil, bombed it, maimed and killed countless Saddam Hussein loyalists as well as innocent civilians. The search for weapons of mass destruction would, like it had been reported before by UN bodies, prove to have been a hoax to rally the American people around a war whose mission they did not know. He defied the world and told her, short of speaking from a black stallion, that, “It’s either you are with us or against us.” Unlike the Oscar winning movies of their Hollywood, the American people could not see that the script was badly written (much like this rejoinder). They bit the bullet and hung on in there as GW Bush stuck like glue in the oval office. His troop could not stay the cause; Chirac, Blair, Howard etc. To think that he is uncomfortable now is to defy logic. He had already defied world logic, and the American logic continued to confuse because he survives to his last day in office. When it comes to Bush, what is has always been. In America what is has always been. They had done it before, impeaching their beloved Clinton but let him stay at the oval office. March their presidents out!?
Gordon Brown just came to peck as his predecessor had left him with six of a seven-roomed house on fire. He would not survive the public disdain that his countrymen had stored for the Labour Party for ganging up with Bush to fight a war that none could prove was for the reasons it was fought for. There were investigators of ‘this war thing’ that died or were suspected of having committed suicide? The British would not, like it is always said of them, stiffen the upper lip on this one. Labour was going to be punished one way or the other. Brown had signed the checks that bankrolled the troops and they even arranged a war adventure for their prince in one of these places of occupation (we thought colonialism is dead). John Major and his party had no ‘charm’ to woo the British with, giving Labour their strongest ever presence in decades. Major had been driven under by the overpowering shadow of his predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, whose economistic politics had come back to haunt the British years after she left office. Labour rose on the strength of their social democratic (some say, left-leaning) policies which appealed to a Britain reeling from Thatcherism whilst Major’s demise was on the back of policies that they had not conceived but had championed. The Iron Lady had done two parties in whilst in office and long after she had left it. Labour found Britain ungovernable, not in riotous terms but Thatcherism is now a world institution and governments of rich states are intuitively willed by it. (Her son now plays the puppet master on the African soil) For Gordon, things are just brown and soon nothing will ever convince the people of Britain that there will be green pastures for them in his Labour. It’s not Brown’s fault …it has always been just a fault!
My own position is that the premise of any argument, like those who fought struggles before us taught us and had observed of war, is that an understanding of a whole facilitates handling of a part because a part is subordinate to the whole. As in chess and so in war – today’s war against poverty, disease, landlessness and ignorance. And what counts above everything else more than the sentiment is the actual liquidation of these elements. The stripes are earned for fighting, not for seeing the necessity of, the war against poverty. The discomfort of leaders of Britain and the USA cannot be transplanted willy-nilly onto the South African situation. Secondly, the ANC government is, despite all odds, not failing- especially the presidency. Let me posit!
Food and petrol prices are, as economists say, influenced by exogenous factors. Rich nations subsidize their agricultural sector and tilt the market in their favour. No matter how hard-working any farmers in the developing world are, they stand no chance against their counterparts in the developed world. Demand is beginning to eat into supply, and (like the merchants they are) the richer nations tweak the prices higher to benefit from the squeeze they had built up for many moons ago. On the other hand, oil producers wash their hands of rising prices and blame the markets for the hikes. The world is not a fair place for the poor. The ANC government has arrayed a range of forces; Brazil-SA-India, Latin America and Africa, Africa and Asia-Pacific Nations to fight this world trade system that benefits only the rich.
The ANC government represents us in an SADC that is involved in delicate and strenuous but strategic talks that will reduce and remove uneven economic development and all barriers to trade between neighbours within the region and ensure free movement of people, goods and services; whilst engaged in a long-term mission to effect greater and fair trade between and amongst African countries.
What are the challenges? A poor continent, an unstable and degenerating Zimbabwe, a restive South African population that awaits good hospitals, houses, schools and jobs. There is no convenient moment, because poverty cannot oblige; it is neither magnanimous nor judicious. What are the choices? To defect or stay the cause. Run to Australia and point fingers at that pariah that you left behind across the Indian Ocean, profit from it and gain new friends or get actively involved in building a caring society whilst criticizing it where it (you and society) goes wrong. It requires that we dispose of the notion that when we swear across the fence, the neighbour will die of the noise we make. We need to embrace and deploy the enduring abilities South Africans displayed at Tuynhuys, Kempton Park and all the venues where we – the once violently polarized- negotiated a truce which we now seek to break at the sign of umvumbi – the soft rains! We cry that a storm is coming when the state of affairs is otherwise.
In Ireland, the ANC government played a noble role in mediating agreements, almost similar to Kempton Park, within an Irish family that was threatening to bomb itself out of existence. In the DRC, Burundi and everywhere this ANC government was called to share (not remake) its experiences. We cannot remember that even when the DRC went for its election the patchwork that was the resolution of its political stalemate, had continued with a very belligerent force fighting in the east (but it sought a truce when the national tide and world opinion had turned against war)? What we see in Zimbabwe is a ruling party that has been complacent over its country’s political, social and economic situation and then got rudely rattled and awakened by an opposition party whose leader is best known for his sophistry more than what practical survival package he has for his country. If everything and everybody is told as it is or they are, then Morgan Tsvangirai has not been convincing about what rescue package he has for Zimbabwe except the removal of Robert Mugabe. Politics first, then all else will follow? But that does not mean the people of Zimbabwe cannot remove Mugabe and replace him with somebody they want, even if he has no plan. The choice will have been made by them.
Thabo Mbeki is not going to make of Zimbabwe what he pleases or of Mugabe what he is not. Any mediation he is charged with does not extend his rule over to the borders of the DRC, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique and so on. It would be an international relations disaster if he was expected to rule Zimbabwe by world opinion’s decree or proxy. To install Tsvangirai because the USA says he won would stretch it and even precipitate worse onslaughts against good Zimbabweans by Mugabe’s people. The choice, though unpalatable, is to wait (Tsvangirai’s missives to Mbeki notwithstanding). The first round of elections has proven that ZANU-PF is not invincible, after all. It is in a presidential run-off, anyway!
The proposition that the ANC government will release resources to tend to the needs of the masses after the Zimbabweans have left begs the question: Are we saying that government has stopped all its programmes to attend to the daily needs of Zimbabwean exiles? When this government (irony of ironies) hosted the 2001 UN Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, a speaker took a similar line of argument and subsequently had to explain what it was that they meant to say and less about what they actually did say. As a lawyer, Mr Trapido would agree that there is an undercurrent in this reasoning. Xenophobia rests on the devouring, yet often unfounded, fear that a non-resident uses up state resources when a national is in desperate need. You might just as well accuse ‘the exiles’ of pick-pocketing!
Who are the dictators of the SADC? Where are they? Lesotho, Botswana, South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zambia …? Give you Swaziland (and Zimbabwe if you like) but beyond that? Are we again saying more than what we just mention yet again?
I love the magical lyrics that conclude your input. It is almost guaranteed that the resolution of the Zimbabwean problem is a resolution of the South African problem. It is the right approach and it is (on a grand scale) where institutions of the PAP are directing Africa. But do you have to put a sock in it and support a resolution for Zimbabwe, and doubt successors to Mugabe before they take office. Cronyism, nepotism, self-interested dictators, and such things? It is either one is in it or is not. Despite his flaws, Mbeki is in it! He does not have one leg out of the heat, ready to jump. When we label African leaders in ways that our colonizers spoke, then it means that we have not moved. We call for progress half-heartedly. Which begs the last two questions: Why bother about change in Africa when you have concluded the worst about her leaders? Why praise that which cannot be praised (including heroic ANC leaders)?
People may have problems with the present government and our ruling party, the ANC. The ANC has a leader, Jacob Zuma, president of the ANC and working outside government and Thabo Mbeki (ex-officio NEC member of the ANC) doing business in government. If there was a crisis of leadership, the recent Polokwane Conference squashed it and placed whoever wherever. All of these other things will pass!! I am allowed to wave my magic wand, too?
ONE CARELESS MOVE LOSES THE WHOLE GAME
