Actions speak louder

Robert Mugabe’s personal attachment to “hard power” seems to have borne fruit at last. Having spent weeks bludgeoning the people of Zimbabwe into submission following the presidential election in March, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai have finally agreed to enter talks with the Mugabe regime.

Amidst much fanfare Mugabe and Tsvangirai shook hands on an agreement to negotiate a settlement to the nation’s “constitutional crisis”. We are all expected to cheer an end to the violence and admire the mature way in which these two individuals and their respective parties will resolve their differences around a table.

The reality is rather different. At best, the MDC has surrendered. At worst, Morgan Tsvangirai may have been bought off. It is unreasonable to criticise the opposition leader too strongly, however. He and his followers have displayed considerable courage thus far, in a campaign for democracy which has been paid for with much blood. In order to succeed the Zimbabwean opposition needed the support of the international community, and in the end this support has not been forthcoming.

The veto by China and Russia on a motion condemning the Mugabe regime at the U.N. Security Council will have been a significant factor in the MDC’s thinking. The failure of the African Union to bring real pressure to bear will have been another. The pedestrian mediation efforts of South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki will have been a third. When push came to shove, there was no shove. Tsvangirai has no more cards to play and he knows it.

If this is an example of an “African solution”, then it is no solution at all. Recent indications from Kenya and now Zimbabwe are that Africa has a peculiar understanding of democracy. First of all there is an election. Then there is an extended period of violence. Then there is some kind of negotiated settlement which may or may not pay heed to the will of the people democratically expressed.

It won’t do and it has to stop.

We stop it firstly by declining to pay for it. It is time for western aid to be conditional on certain minimal standards of governance. This may not mean perfect democratic elections in all cases, but it certainly has to mean respect for human rights and the rule of law.

We stop it secondly by making clear that we take the “responsibility to protect” seriously. There is little point in the International Criminal Court bringing genocide charges against the President of Sudan if the Arab League chooses to support Sudan in defying the ICC.

Time to put aside the post-colonial guilt. The West is not responsible for atrocities in Darfur, or in Zimbabwe, or in Burma. The West needs to be clear that it will not be complicit in these crimes by subsidising the perpetrators of by failing to take preventative action. Where hard power is needed, we must be ready to use it. As Robert Mugabe well knows, actions speak louder than words.