South Africa: Let Us Ask the Pivotal Questions About Ourselves And Zimbabwe

OPINION Xolela Mangcu Johannesburg I HAVE asked three distinguished Zimbabweans to join a panel discussion at Wits University's Great Hall next Wednesday evening on the fate of their country. The panellists are Trevor Ncube, publisher of the Mail & Guardian newspaper; Elinor Sisulu, biographer of Walter and Albertina Sisulu and a leading member of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition; and Tawanda Mutasah, the executive director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. I have tried to get Zimbabwe's high commissioner in SA, SK Moyo, to join the panel but he is unavailable. I am not surprised when members of the Zimbabwean government declare their unavailability for anything these days. Just the other day they did not turn up for talks with the Movement for Democratic Change because they had more important things to do. Given my strong views on Zimbabwe, I have asked fellow analyst Khehla Shubane to chair the discussion. From our days at Wits University in the 1980s, Khehla was universally regarded as one of the more level-headed among us. He was one of the very few people who had no trouble talking to you even if you were from the other side of the political line. But why is it important to have such a public discussion, beyond the fact that Zimbabwe is now in free fall? First, it is vitally important to understand the broader political context and political culture of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. For far too long we have focused on the land grabs, making it possible to see Zimbabwe's problems as purely racial problems. And that is why someone like Ronald Suresh Roberts can write a book about President Thabo Mbeki's "native intelligence" on a lot of things, including Zimbabwe, without saying anything beyond "estimates of the Matebeleland dead run to 20000". In the book, Fit to Govern -- The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki, how and why and by whom those atrocities were perpetrated is conspicuously absent. For Roberts, these atrocities are insignificant in the greater scheme of things: "The regional villains of the self-styled west, from King Leopold and Cecil Rhodes, to PW Botha and Craig Williamson, through Jonas Savimbi, Mobutu Sese Seko and Teodoro Obiang Nguema, have perpetrated violent and kleptocratic horrors over longer periods than Mugabe has time for in what remains of his sad and violent present". Instead, he approvingly cites Mbeki's argument that the reason Zimbabwe is such a preoccupation of the west is because "white people died, and white people were deprived of their property". I would be embarrassed if I was the president. The problem, of course, is that the president himself is Roberts' s biggest endorser. Frankly, it would make very little sense to the victims whether 20000 people were killed in one massacre, and a million in another . In a brazen display of his lack of experience with repressive regimes, Roberts credits Mbeki for the fact that there has been no military coup in Zimbabwe. Has the guy read anything about Zimbabwe's political history under Mugabe? For that you have to read Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe, A Report on the Disturbances in Matebeleland and the Midlands 1980-1988. I certainly hope Elinor Sisulu, who has written a preface to the report, will speak about those atrocities and thus take us right into the belly of the beast. The second reason for a public discussion on Zimbabwe has to do with what I said a couple of weeks ago -- as black South Africans, we have a lot to answer for when it comes to Zimbabwe. A number of my friends were upset by that generalisation-- just like many white progressives get upset by my generalisations about white support for apartheid. And just as I have conceded that there are many white people who "bit the hand that fed them", I also concede there are many black people who are appalled by Mugabe. However, my generalisations seem to have worked very well, at least to the extent that they got people to say what they really think about Mugabe. How else could I have known, comrades, amid the applause and the ululations for Mugabe at all of our public gatherings? At least we now have the opportunity to support the people of Zimbabwe the old-fashioned way -- publicly. The third reason is about the exercise of democratic citizenship. We should stop relying on officials in the foreign affairs department for our political conscience. Besides, they may even be more confused than all of us. In other parts of the world, foreign policy is a function of the power and influence of domestic lobbies. The great historical question is: do we have a lobby for Zimbabwe among us black South Africans? n The panel discussion with Ncube, Sisulu and Mutasah will take place at the Wits University Great Hall on Wednesday August 1 at 6pm. Mangcu is executive chairman of the Platform for Public Deliberation, and a visiting scholar at the Public Intellectual Life Project at the University of the Witwatersrand.