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by Mputhumi Ntabeni

G21 AFRICA Staff Writer

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a soft touch
for a hard planet

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Mputhumi
Ntabeni

QUEENSTOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - There is a rising tide of tension inside the Tripartite Alliance [COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions), SACP (South African Communist Party) and the ANC (African National Congress)] that has largely been brought on by the Zimbabwean and the BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) issues.

What is most interesting, and perhaps a credit to the South Africans, is that the arguments about Zimbabwe hardly touch the issue of the 3 million Zimbabwean economic refugees living in South Africa. Everybody is agreed that Zimbabweans themselves must find their own solutions and that South Africans -- government and civil -- need to play some undefined role of assistance. The devil is in the detail.

While the crisis in Zimbabwe has multiple dimensions, the critical blockage to a permanent solution is political in character. Though even a political resolution will not resolve all the other economic, social and moral problems, as such, it is the precondition for being able to make any serious headway. The first difficulty comes with the fact that the South African liberation movement has a long common history with the ruling ZANU-PF party in Harare. In the late 1960s and through the 70s, the ANC's alliance was rather more with ZAPU than with the now dominant ZANU component of the present ruling party. But after Zimbabwean independence in 1980, ZANU-PF played an absolutely critical role in standing up to the South African apartheid regime.

Zimbabwe paid a high price for their principled position in the fight. One example is the price it paid against Pretoria's Renamo contras in Mozambique. The Zimbabwean CIO was instrumental in uncovering apartheid hit-squad networks directed against ANC operatives, saving many lives. This is the history the present SA (South African) government has not forgotten. The ANC, as was clear from Mandela's treatment of Moammar Gadaffi and Fidel Castro, does not forget friends who were with them during the dark days of apartheid when, to most governments, especially Western, they were still regarded as terrorists. From an ANC-led alliance perspective, then, ZANU-PF presents a complex challenge.

The complexities of ANC-led alliance regarding ZANU-PF have not been helped by a wider domestic setting in our country, of which certain opposition parties [notably the DA (Democratic Alliance)] run a thinly disguised racist campaign around the Zimbabwean issue. This is complemented by a nauseating barrage of white voices on radio phone-in programmes seeking to use the Zimbabwean crisis as an example of what happens when "THEY" (a black majority) take over. Not that any of these callers give a hoot about Zimbabwean poor people.

The howling voices, notably from the UK but also featuring the saber-rattling of the present US government, have not done much to improve the situation. They're only now beginning to understand, from the Iraqi situation, that long-distance, externally-imposed changes inevitably lead to more disaster for the local people and the region in which they are located.

However, it is incontrovertible that much of the present crisis in Zimbabwe is centred on ZANU-PF itself, including internal stagnation, social distance from its historic mass base, factionalism, and serious policy mistakes.

For the first decade of independence, the ZANU-PF accommodated a capitalist growth path in the industrial and dominant commercial agriculture sectors, which encouraged some economic indigenisation. It did this while pursuing progressive welfarist redistributive policies for the majority. There were successes but by the mid-1990s the redistributive social programmes could no longer be sustained fiscally within the constraints of a dominant and largely untransformed capitalist economy (read capital still under the minority white domination).

Zimbabwe accumulated a burgeoning debt that made it increasingly vulnerable to externally enforced "structural adjustment" programmes from institutions like the IMF and World Bank. Most of these structural changes failed to solve Zimbabwe's economic woes. A feeling grew in the country, indeed on the continent, that these structural changes were instead designed to further the interests of Western trade and profit making schemes. It is this feeling and growing sense of revolution, the illegal land-grabbing of white farmers being part of that response, that Mugabe tapped and used to perpetuate his power-mongering schemes.

The ultimate results were soaring food prices and mass retrenchments, which deepened the divide between the party and the trade union movement. Social hardships also produced a groundswell of civil society protests in townships. These all resulted in an opposition electoral project that emerged in 2000 and which continues to be grouped around the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change).

President Mugabe himself has spoken several times about the grave dangers of corruption, factionalism and the abuse of state office by leading cadres from within the ruling party. He himself has raised concerns about illegal land-grabbing by some of his own senior officials in the recent "land reform" programme, but he puts the ultimate blame for that dire situation on Britain. Mugabe claims that Britain's refusal to provide funds for buying the farms on a willing-seller/willing-buyer basis, as promised, as led to this crisis. Opposition politicians in Zimbabwe argue that these critiques are themselves selective and factional. The opposition says that these arguments do not address the major problems inside the ruling ZANU PF party.

Another popular error within our country, indeed Africa in general, has often been knee-jerk backlashes against currents of Western domination, characterised by attitudes of "If Tony Blair or Tony Leon (president of the DA) insults Robert Mugabe, then Robert Mugabe must be a super-hero." All of this has muddied the waters concerning the Zimbabwean debate. It has somehow deflected us from a sober, thoughtful analysis and discussion the issue.

We've not succeeded in finding a common approach in order to help the Zimbabwean people.

It is against this general background that last month's heavy-handed expulsion of a COSATU fact-finding delegation to Zimbabwe occurred. The expulsion, defying a Zimbabwean court order, resulted in various reverberations back here in SA that serve to underline the need for deeper discussion and harmonising our strategies towards Zimbabwe.

Further stoking the crisis was the president of the ANC Youth League, who entered the fray on the pretext of chastising COSATU [See final article on linked page. -Ed.]for what the ANC obviously sees as its defiant stance towards the Zimbabwe. There is not much he contributed to the real argument except, perhaps, demonstrating that politics are a quicksand of shifting allegiances and self-interested scavenging and sewage collection.

The Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, renowned for having his foot in his mouth, upped the ante when, in his Nelson Mandela Memorial Lecture last month, he offered these criticisms:

1. The lack of proper debate within the echelons of the ANC organization.
2. The BEE [Black Economic Empowerment plan] seems to benefit only the few black elite.
3. The South African government has taken an evasive stance concerning Zimbabwe.

And called for a debate about the basic income grant for the poor and the AIDS issue.

This prompted a vitriolic reply from President Thabo Mbeki that implied that the Archbishop had no respect for truth and no understanding of the procedures of the ANC on the on-line journal of the ANC called ANC-Today. This is how President Mbeki's response started:

One of the fundamental requirements for the rational discussion suggested by the Archbishop is familiarity with the facts relevant to any matter under discussion, as well as respect for the truth. In this Letter, we will mention some of the facts relevant to some of the issues mentioned by the Archbishop.

Mbeki went on in his usual manner of practiced distance and with a tone of voice that turns easily to irony and deflects familiarity

Hurt and retreating, the Archbishop refused to be drawn to the argument but released a statement that ran:

Thank you Mr President for telling me what you think of me -- that I am a liar with scant regard for the truth and a charlatan posing with his concern for the poor, the hungry, the oppressed and the voiceless. I will continue to pray for you and your government by name daily as I have done and as I did even for the apartheid government. God bless you.

The ANC was quick to retort, through its national spokesperson and head Smuts Ngonyama, "Neither the African National Congress nor its president (President Mbeki) regards you as 'a liar with scant regard for the truth', but we do recognize that even someone like yourself has the capacity to err. Neither the ANC nor its president regards you as a 'charlatan posing with his concern for the poor, the hungry, the oppressed and the voiceless', but rather as one of many leaders in this country who have sought and continue to seek to further the interests of the poor and oppressed. We will continue to regard you as a respected leader within our society whose contribution to the life of this country is highly valued." And so went the political hoola-hoop.

Smuts Ngonyama, talking on the radio, has called for a code of conduct for the tripartite alliance, a move most people see as a first phase towards the muzzling of dissent. Further on, the Tripartite Alliance is to meet over this weekend to iron out its differences. It fe els like deja vu fo those who follow South African politics.

There shall be joint statements after the meeting, probably blaming a third force for wishing to break the alliance, and life will go on with the ANC continuing to be the dominant partner of the alliance.

COSATU, as the truant partner, will repent in words like "We as the trade union that is committed to this alliance refuse to be a stage army playing a part written for them by Western governments ... " and so forth and so forth.

To some, of cynical persuasion perhaps, it is not lost that the whole issue has been just masturbatory, the clash and feeding of egos.

What I detest about ANC politics, all politics, is the fact that when on the fix they do not come straight but rely on exploiting the weakness of perception among the general public. They know fully well that the increasingly cretinous and lazy populace would rather watch television, or go shopping instead, or to the sheeben, instead of listening to long arguments about the status quo.

Only the media -- traditional, white, liberal media like the Mail and Guardian -- ever raises real issues in this country anymore.

Only the media sections have been left as any meaningful form of opposition movement, a last resistance to "enlightened" political tyranny -- when it is not elevating the obsession with 'sleaze' or political cockfights.

There's a loss of nerve and a sense of personal enrichment at the top of the ruling party. The eminent Archbishop [Tutu] hit a mark during his specious, senile ranting during the Nelson Mandela Memorial lecture.

The problem with ANC politics is in its heritage of regarding criticism as disagreement, rather than evidence-based critique. The ANC promotes open debate in theory but wants real issues to be discussed behind the scenes. In fact, there isn't anywhere in the media or politics where people talk about the world in intelligent terms. Parliament is just MPs talking to themselves and hoping to get reselected.