Without option of force, dialogue is the way

Without option of force, dialogue is the way

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By Joram Nyathi

"AH, personally I’m thinking that it would have a negative effect. The man would become even more stubborn to ex-communicate him. So, I’m extremely sceptical whether it would be effective…You see, sometimes the Church is very careful not to use its spiritual status as a weapon; as a pressure weapon; especially where someone might react even more stubbornly, causing even more suffering on the local people and become perhaps even more violent than he already is."

Readers would be forgiven for thinking that they were reading President Thabo Mbeki’s defence of his "quiet diplomacy" in his approach to the Zimbabwean political crisis. It was in fact Archbishop Pius Ncube.

In keeping with the radical approach which is now the fashionable gospel when talking about President Mugabe, Violet Gonda of SW Radio’s Hot Seat, asked Ncube if the Catholic Church would consider "ex-communicating" Mugabe since he is a Catholic. It is probably a question Ncube had never thought about as a starting point in the radicalisation of the Catholic Church into liberation theology in Zimbabwe.

I found his answer most interesting in its substantive defence of Mbeki’s so-called quiet diplomacy.

A question which Mbeki has often asked those who attack his approach is whether they expect South Africa to send its soldiers across the border. He has never been fully answered. One of the MDC leaders was asked the same question recently while in South Africa. There was no straight response. He said South Africa knew what it was supposed to do.

I don’t know what South Africa or Mbeki is supposed to do in practical terms if the opposition in Zimbabwe doesn’t know. But I found in Archbishop Ncube’s response one of the most eloquent defences of quiet diplomacy. To me the philosophy is simple: Unless we have the option of force, we cannot close the door to dialogue.

Those who have advocated gunboat diplomacy have been told to "go hang" and have in the process lost the leverage to influence events locally. Mbeki, like Ncube, is too close to the crisis to take that risk. The difference between the two is that Mugabe doesn’t care politically about what Ncube says. What I find particularly telling on the other hand is Archbishop Ncube’s fear of the implications of ex-communicating Mugabe.

It is a fear which has haunted Mbeki and informed his approach to the Zimbabwean crisis. I doubt that such fear has anything to do with his support for Mugabe personally or for Zanu PF in particular, or fear that the ANC might in turn become a victim of Cosatu in South Africa. These to me are peripheral compared to his fear of being told to "go hang" and being unable to respond in practical ways that end the crisis. It is being told to "keep your South Africa and I keep my Zimbabwe".

That would then put the solution to Zimbabwe’s crisis beyond South Africa’s influence although it is the country bearing the brunt of the economic collapse. It is a painful dilemma which Mbeki’s critics either don’t realise or choose to ignore because they are focused on personal short-term ends.

First, Mbeki is aware that he is dealing with a "stubborn" autocrat as Ncube points out. Mugabe is not swayed by international opinion or isolation as events of the past few years have demonstrated. He is not averse to taking drastic action against local opponents, including arbitrary arrests, beatings, detention and torture. What then stops him from telling Mbeki to shut up if he becomes too inconvenient and, as Archbishop Ncube fears, "reacting even more stubbornly, causing even more suffering on the local people and become perhaps even more violent than he already is"?

Second, military force is not an easy option for anybody, not even Tony Blair or George Bush or the African Union. It is unprecedented. Mugabe is not leading a settler "minority" regime in the conventional sense. It might be a minority only in political terms according to those who believe the past presidential and parliamentary elections were stolen. It is a hotly contested position to rally the international community towards an Iraq operation.

Third, Mugabe has played his anti-imperialist propaganda in a way which the opposition has dismally failed to counter. That is why Mugabe has eager listeners in the developing world and is winning converts in people like Hugo Chavez. We might want to dismiss all this as propaganda, but it is propaganda which dictators use to stay in power, to rally people, claiming that the country is under siege.

Fourth, Mugabe has been able to subvert claims of human rights abuses because they are being raised too late after they were accepted as a culture in Zanu PF. Cleverly, Mugabe talks about bringing independence and freedom to Zimbabwe and not human rights which strangely became only a major selling point with the formation of the MDC and the seizure of white commercial farms.

The early history of Zimbabwe’s independence when up to 20 000 civilians were massacred in Matabeleland and the Midlands didn’t have human rights. I am shocked that even local intellectuals who should know better often pretend that Mugabe only became a murderer after 15 years in power. Before 1995 he was everybody’s darling.

Until Zimbabweans themselves begin to face reality we are bound to keep stumbling on and engaging in sterile rhetoric about the way forward. Whether Mbeki makes progress in his current efforts at dialogue will depend largely on both Zanu PF and the MDC recognising their individual limitations and putting the interests of the country first. Attacking Mugabe may be fashionable, but it is not a solution to Zimbabwe’s crisis.

Joram Nyathi is the deputy editor of the Zimbabwe Independent

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