Mutambara needs rethink on outmoded foreign policy ideas

Mutambara needs rethink on outmoded foreign policy ideas

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By Dr Petina Gappah

ARTHUR Mutambara’s statements in response to questions from the media at the Gweru Press Club on 22 April cannot go unchallenged.

I have been an admirer of Arthur's since I met him when I was a first-year law student in June 1991, on the day before he graduated from the UZ. I congratulated him upon his recent entry into politics and told him that I wished him well.

And for the record, I have many good friends on both sides of the MDC divide; indeed, I was privileged to host Gibson Sibanda and Sekai Holland in my home when they came to Geneva in 2004, and arranged for them to have dinner and an animated discussion with a number of Zimbabweans in Geneva on that occasion.

I therefore write this not to jump on the anti-Mutambara wagon, but because I have been increasingly dismayed by Arthur's apparent lack of humility as well as by his and his supporters' apparent inability to take criticism. I have become particularly concerned about various statements that seem to be the result of shallow analysis and pseudo-intellectualism.

His statements that the MDC had in the past chosen the wrong allies, and that they should not have allied themselves with the West because our combatants were trained in China and Russia and Cuba, reveal a superficial understanding of recent history, and a failure to appreciate realpolitik. That the interests of Cuba, China and Russia, and, I would add, North Korea, coincided with ours at a particular point in time does not make them our natural allies for all time. Nor does it mean that the UK, the US, and others who did not contribute directly to the armed struggle are our natural enemies forever.

In any event, I am sure that there are many in government who could tell Arthur that even when not training combatants, those same countries that he now scorns provided political asylum to many of our exiled comrades. And if our foreign policy is to be determined on the basis of who provided direct support to our armed struggle, why then is Arthur supping with Mbeki, as South Africa supported Smith? And surely, it cannot be that the regime has changed, because that is equally true of the regimes of the countries that Arthur says the MDC should not be associated with.

I would encourage Arthur and his advisors to look beyond convenient sound-bites and cheap rhetoric. Intellectuals of the stature of Mutambara and his advisors must surely be aware of the extent to which Africa was used as a pawn in the fight for influence during the Cold War? Cuba, Russia, China and North Korea were unstinting in their largesse: they plied African nations with slogans and AK47s for the same reasons that the Western powers turned a blind eye to the excesses of dictators such as Mobutu, Sekou Toure, and Kamuzu Banda. And it is worth noting that even as the worthy allies that Arthur lauds were training our combatants, Russian medical students were being taught that Africans were genetically-inferior to other races, and their people were being told that communism was necessary to save Africans from their own savagery.

The challenge for small developing nations such as Zimbabwe in the aftermath of the Cold War is to ensure that our foreign policy reflects our national interest, which must be rooted in the imperative of development, and not in the outdated slogans that formed the preambles to Soviet-era Solidarity Pacts.

Arthur has also said that the leader for the people of Zimbabwe must be "respected" and by implication, approved, by regional African leaders. This is a depressing echo from the past. Africa has been working hard to jettison the "solidarity at all costs" mentality of the old OAU, and here it is again, the same old wine in a brand spanking new bottle.

Arthur may want to reflect further on this because this sounds dangerously like the kind of thing that Mugabe, Obiang Nguema, and King Mswati and the rest of that club tell each other as they embrace on their state visits and pose for photographs at meaningless conferences. These are their words of comfort to each other even as repression mounts in Equatorial Guinea and Swaziland, people are murdered and women are raped in Darfur, and the houses of the poor are destroyed in Zimbabwe.

Arthur may also want to reflect on whether it really is more acceptable to be a puppet if the one pulling the strings is black. Wole Soyinka has said eloquently that he does not care if the boot oppressing him covers a black foot; all he wants is that it is taken off his head. And on Arthur's continuing evocation of pan-Africanist principles and standing on the shoulders of Nikita Mangena, Josiah Tongogara and others, I would say to him, and again, quoting Soyinka, that a tiger does not proclaim its tigritude: it pounces. I encourage Arthur to pounce by dropping the rhetoric, and sharing with us the economic blueprint that he promised we would see within two weeks of his coming into office.

And finally, I wish to use this opportunity to encourage my fellow Zimbabweans, especially those who do not wish to push a particular political agenda, to assist the national discourse by looking critically at these men, Tsvangirayi, Mutambara, Mugabe; indeed at any man or woman who would be our leader. We should not allow ourselves to fall victim to the "we need a saviour" mentality. Zimbabwe was not meant for one person to own, however many thousands of people he addresses at rallies, however many degrees he has earned, or however many years that he spent in the bush.

The country is for all of us to build, and we are all entitled to make our contribution, regardless of our level of education, our station in life, or our lack of liberation war credentials.

We have already wasted twenty six years of our freedom. I, for one, refuse to waste any more.

(I have signed this with my academic title, which I use only when I want to overwhelm visa officials into stamping the necessary papers on my passport, because it seems that only PhDs are taken seriously in Zimbabwe these days)

Dr. Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean lawyer and writes from Geneva, Switzerland
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