Zimbabwe
In need of strong medicine
Dec 11th 2008
From Economist.com
Pressure grows on Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, who says that the cholera epidemic is over
THE delusion of Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, appears to know no end. In a televised speech on Thursday December 11th he announced that a cholera epidemic, which continues to ravage Zimbabwe and to spread to neighbouring countries, is over. “I am happy to say…that there is no cholera” he claimed, just as the World Health Organisation had reported that 783 people have so far died of the disease and that over 16,400 people have been infected. As he spoke, officials in South Africa declared a disaster area in a part of the Limpopo region on the Zimbabwean border, as a result of desperate refugees spreading cholera.
Mr Mugabe’s denials are calculated to deflect international pressure as the United Nations Security Council prepares to call a special session on Zimbabwe, perhaps as early as Monday. The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, spoke this week of Zimbabwe’s suffering a “humanitarian emergency of colossal proportions”, and is expected to push for targeted UN sanctions against Zimbabwe’s government (in addition to existing European Union ones). Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and George Bush, America’s outgoing president, have both called for Mr Mugabe to step down. In July a UN Security Council resolution to impose targeted sanctions (travel bans and asset freezes) against Mr Mugabe and his acolytes was blocked by China and Russia, with South Africa also dissenting, on the ground that Zimbabwe posed no threat to international stability. The blocking duo can hardly still argue that case with a straight face as neighbouring countries are threatened by refugees and cholera.
A case could also be made for intervention in Zimbabwe on humanitarian grounds. Zimbabwe is close to meeting the criteria for invoking the declaration endorsed at the UN in 2005 that there is an international “responsibility to protect” people facing, among other things, crimes against humanity. Mass hunger looms: the UN’s World Food Programme reckons that, in the new year, it must provide food for 5.5m in a population that has shrunk, through disease and emigration, from about 12m probably to less than 9m. Government violence continues apace. Reports of abductions of political activists are rife.
Zimbabwe’s leader dismisses suggestions that his people are suffering as attempts by outsiders to make a case for military intervention. On Thursday he concluded that “Now that there is no cholera, there is no need for war.” But demands for action are growing in the rest of Africa. Talk in high places about removing Mr Mugabe, perhaps even by force, is no longer deemed outlandish. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an icon of the anti-apartheid movement, has called for just that. Voices elsewhere in Africa, such as those of Botswana’s president, Ian Khama, and Kenya’s prime minister, Raila Odinga, have become louder in calling for Mr Mugabe’s exit. Botswana’s foreign minister wants sanctions against Zimbabwe to include stopping oil supplies.
Mr Mugabe may face serious threats from within the country, too. Talks with the opposition on sharing power in government, following an apparent agreement in September, have in fact got nowhere. Mr Mugabe refuses to give up political control of either the police or the armed forces, leaving the opposition still vulnerable to arbitrary arrest, intimidation and physical attack. But the collapse of the economy is now hurting the lower ranks and helping to destroy discipline. Riots by unpaid junior soldiers have yet to spread to the middle ranks but may do so.
What happens next probably depends most on the South African government, where Jacob Zuma, the leader of the African National Congress is expected to become president next year. His predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, has been ineffective at best—craven at worst—in dealing with Mr Mugabe. Mr Zuma will be expected to take a tougher line against his neighbour, if only to protect his own country against Zimbabwe’s miserable exports of disease and despair.
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