Mbeki still propping up Bob

Nine years later, ‘quiet diplomacy’ remains a sham There has been a lot of talk by supporters, and even non-supporters, of President Thabo Mbeki about his alleged “success” in bringing the opposing factions in Zimbabwe to the negotiating table.

In their view, Mbeki’s “quiet diplomacy” has been vindicated. I have never heard such utter poppycock in my life.

The first time Mbeki mentioned his so-called quiet diplomacy on Zimbabwe was way back in 1999. Even then, we knew that the despot Robert Mugabe needed to go.

The mind boggles that after nine years of “quiet diplomacy”, Mbeki is only now apparently smelling success.

After nine years of Mbeki attacking those who took a moral stance in Zimbabwe and taking every conceivable opportunity to attend international forums to protect Mugabe against international censure, we are now asked to claim that he succeeded.

In the nine years since he started his quiet diplomacy, Zimbabwe has fallen into penury, its farmers have been obliterated and its people have been cast to other lands.

Zimbabwe is today not a country, but a failed state and a shell of its former self.

The truth of the matter is that even today, as we begin to know what is happening inside the negotiations, Mbeki seems to be doing what he has persistently done for nine solid years: ensuring that Mugabe stays in power.

These negotiations are not about ensuring that the will of the majority of the people of Zimbabwe is respected (that would have seen Mbeki respecting the results of the March 29 elections), but about co- opting Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC and ensuring that they fall into the same trap that Zapu leader Joshua Nkomo fell into in the 1980s.

Let us look at an alternative reality. Imagine that way back in 2000, when Nelson Mandela said that it was time for old rulers to make way for younger blood in a pointed reference to Mugabe, Mbeki had also condemned Mugabe.

At that time, when the Zimbabwe economy was still capable of a quick rescue, the world would have coalesced around South Africa’s position and Mugabe would have been out at least seven years ago.

Instead, at the SADC meeting in Johannesburg, Mugabe openly fell asleep while Zambia’s foreign minister lambasted his performance and his torture of opponents. The despot could afford to sleep: he knew that without a shadow of doubt, Mbeki would do everything in his power to protect him and his interests.

This is what Mbeki is about. Not the region’s interests, not the Zimbabweans whose starving children are encamped in South Africa and other places in this winter cold, but some deluded concept of African solidarity. It is not solidarity with Africans, but solidarity with the despots of Africa. Hence support for Mugabe.

So how should this play out? Morgan Tsvangirai has in the past wobbled when under pressure. But this past week he was courageous enough to stand up and refuse to be part of the charade that aims to legitimise a despot, by sitting him beside a man who represents the will of the people.

Tsvangirai must hold his ground, for he is on the side of truth and legitimacy. Mandela was again and again offered a place at the table of the Bantustan regimes by apartheid leaders. He refused to be co-opted.

Tsvangirai will need to dig deep to find the strength of character and the leadership skills to hold out for something that is meaningful and does not betray the trust and hope that Zimbabwe’s people put in him in March.

The Mbekis of this world will try to portray him as a spoiler. Well, that is what the ANC was called before 1990. Tsvangirai should insist that sticking by principle and standing for truth is not being a spoiler.

Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy was a sham and a cover for moral spinelessness from the beginning. It was wrong way back at the turn of the century and it remains wrong now. It was wrong when he stood by Mugabe after the theft and torture of the 2002 election and it is wrong today.

It is actually outrageous for Mbeki’s supporters to smugly claim victory for quiet diplomacy. What victory is it that has stood by stroking Mugabe’s grubby hand while he has tortured, killed and displaced his people over the past nine years?

Support for a comprehensive diplomatic isolation of Mugabe would have unseated him years ago. Mbeki did not do it. Instead, we are expected to applaud him when he scrapes in — morally compromised, tactically exposed and strategically out-manoeuvred by Mugabe — as the last in class.

I have said this before and I will say it again: Africans are not second-class beings. They deserve democracy, not a sham negotiated settlement that accommodates murderers and despots.

By Justice Malala