COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
25 JUly 2008

• A selection of op-eds and editorials from the U.S. and around the world. Sign up for the email alert or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Obama In Berlin, U.S. Mideast Policy, and Zimbabwe’s National Unity
July 25, 2008

Australian
o National Unity: David Coltart of the opposition MDC in Zimbabwe writes that there should be no consideration of a permanent government of national unity in the country, with Robert Mugabe retaining the presidency indefinitely.

Business Daily (Kenya)
o Dead Doha: In an editorial, the paper considers the importance of the WTO talks in Geneva for the developing world, and says Doha may as well be dead; but developing nations should argue their case strongly at WTO, it says.

Business Day (South Africa)
o Unfair: Brenda Wardle, a legal consultant in Johannesburg, writes on why she believes the president of the ANC, Jacob Zuma, who faces charges of corruption, cannot get a fair trial.

Christian Science Monitor
o Pick Hillary: Madeleine Kunin, a former governor of Vermont, believes Hillary Clinton may be Barack Obama’s wisest choice as a vice-presidential running mate.

Daily Star (Lebanon)
o Welcome Changes: In an editorial, the paper notes changes in American foreign policy recently and says they are both welcome and overdue.

Daily Telegraph
o Swooning Europe: Toby Harnden, the paper’s U.S. editor, writes of Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin on Thursday that while his soaring rhetoric may inspire swoons in Europe, American swing states voters might be a tad more sceptical.

Economist
o Unhappy America: In an editorial, the Economist says nations, like people, occasionally get the blues; and right now the United States, normally the world’s most self-confident place, is glum.

o Troubled Region: In a further editorial, on American policy in the Middle East, the paper detects a change of course by President Bush and says he may bequeath a decent American policy for this troubled region.

o Force For Good: Also in an editorial, the paper says the arrest of Radovan Karadzic shows how much good the EU can do if it stays open to new members.

o Time To Go: The Economist also says, in an editorial, that Morgan Tsvangirai is right to be holding talks with Robert Mugabe – about the dictator’s exit.

Financial Times
o Raise Rates: In an editorial, the paper notes the rising inflation in East Asian economies and says the treatment is clear. Interest rates across Asia must start to rise, it says.

o Fannie Risk: Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz writes that the proposed bail-out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac entails the socialisation of risk from an administration supposedly committed to free-market principles.

o China Trade: Jack Ma of Alibaba Group writes that embracing freer trade – with China as an engine of global economic growth – is the best chance to jump-start economies and provide job opportunities in both developed and developing nations.

Guardian
o Different Reaction: Columnist Jonathan Steele contrasts what he calls the raving crowds that greeted Barack Obama in Berlin with the apprehension with which he is met in Israel.

o China’s Games: Columnist Simon Jenkins writes, as the Olympic Games approach, that the only vindication of giving the games to China will be if its rulers are taken to task. To date, he says, they’ve had it all their way.

Hindu
o Nepal Stability: The paper writes, in an editorial, of its disappointment at the way the Maoist candidate for president in Nepal was thwarted, and says this is likely to have serious consequences for the political stability of the young republic.

Independent (UK)
o Scramble For Oil: In an editorial, the paper says the news that the Arctic may contain about one-sixth of the world’s undiscovered oil is bound, at a time of high oil prices, to accelerate what could well be the world’s last great colonial scramble.

International Herald Tribune
o Ballot Problems: In an editorial, the paper says that despite the difficulties with ballots in Florida in the election of 2000 there is still a problem with badly-designed ballots which is likely to be particularly acute this fall.

o True Culprits: Henry Lee of the Harvard Kennedy School writes thatthe true culprits of high oil prices are unsustainable rates of consumption growth and a world oil supply that is unlikely to meet forecasted consumption levels.

Jerusalem Post
o Troubling: In an editorial on an interview the paper conducted with Barack Obama while he was in Israel this week, the Post says the candidate’s apparent sanguinity over an Israel shrunk into the 1949 Armistice Lines is troubling.
Jordan Times
o No Risks: Columnist George Hishmeh writes that Barack Obama is unlikely to take any risks and deviate much from his declared positions on most of the key foreign policy issues, especially the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and certainly not this early in the presidential race.

Mail and Guardian (South Africa)
o Zim Talks: In an editorial on talks between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai in Zimbabwe, the paper says power-sharing on its own will solve nothing — the first step must be to strip Mr Mugabe and his securocrats of executive power and place management of the economy in different hands.

New York Times
o Wounded Soldiers: In an editorial, the paper says after a flurry of apologies and investigations, the U.S. Army resolved to improve treatment of wounded soldiers. But, the paper contends,things are not getting better.

o Trade Obstacles: In a further editorial, on the WTO talks taking place in Geneva, the paper says the world’s leading trading nations seem ready to abandon the World Trade Organization’s seven-year effort to reduce some of the world’s obstacles to trade.
o Obama’s Rhetoric: Op-ed Columnist David Brooks writes of Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin that the golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more.

Times of London
o Alternative Lifestyle: Igor Toronyi-Lalic writes that we shouldn’t be surprised by Radovan Karadzic’s double life as an alternative medicine guru.
o Admiring America: In an editorial, the Times is encouraged by the reaction to Barack Obama in Berlin, noting that Europeans are recovering their admiration for America.

Wall Street Journal
o Barack In Berlin: In an editorial, the paper says Barack Obama’s insistence in his Berlin speech on the importance of defeating terror squares oddly with a political campaign whose central premise is that losing in Iraq is a matter of little consequence to U.S. or European interests.
o Wobbly Germans: Matthew Kaminski, a member of the Journal’s editorial board, describes Germany’s foreign policy as inconsistent and confused and says any American president who seeks to build on the recent progress in forging a new partnership with Europe will have to contend with a wobbly Germany.
o Fannie Scandal: Dick Armey, a former House majority leader, describes the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac bailout as a scandal.
o No Action: In an editorial in the paper’s Asia edition, the Journal criticises ASEAN’s lack of action on Myanmar.

Washington Post
o Lucky Obama: Op-ed Columnist Eugene Robinson notes the role of luck in the election campaign, saying that while the fates had conspired to give Barack Obama a dream photo-op in Berlin, John McCain appears jinxed.
o Iraq Primary: Op-ed Columnist Charles Krauthammer jokes that in a stunning upset this week Barack Obama won the Iraq primary, when the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Al-Maliki expressed support for his troop withdrawal timetable.
o Political Honor: CFR Senior Fellow Michael Gerson writes about a new biography of the anti-slavery campaigner, William Wilberforce, and says it shows that feats of honor are possible, even in a very political life.

Washington Times
o Anti-American: In an editorial, the paper says the ascension to power of new president, Dmitry Medvedev, in Russia has done little to reverse the anti-American course established by his predecessor and current Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The Zimbabwe Independent
Opinion
By Constantine Chimakure
25 July 2008

TALKS to find a settlement to Zimbabwe’s decade-long crisis started in Pretoria this week with Zanu PF and the MDC still deeply divided over what the process should produce.

The negotiations followed Monday’s momentous occasion when President Robert Mugabe and leaders of the two MDC factions — Arthur Mutambara and Morgan Tsvangirai — signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) before mediator, South African President Thabo Mbeki.

The Tsvangirai-led MDC, the bigger of the two formations, is pushing for a transitional government (TG) headed by its president, while Mugabe’s Zanu PF insists on an inclusive government with the 84-year-old incumbent at the helm.

The African Union and United Nations have joined the consultative process, thus broadening it beyond Mbeki’s sole remit from Sadc.

Politicians and political analysts this week said what is desirable for Zimbabwe is a construction that is not blinded by the politics of the day, but rather the economics.

Zimbabwe-born South African businessman Mutumwa Mawere argued that the country was bleeding and the politics at play seems to focus on political matters to the exclusion of the fundamentals of the economic situation.

“Whether it will be a GNU or TG, the country needs a change of direction,” argued Mawere. “The policies have to change.”
He said the talks were likely to produce a GNU. “It seems that a GNU will be the preferred outcome. Both Zanu PF and MDC-Tsvangirai have largely the same number of parliamentary votes requiring a scheme of arrangement,” Mawere said. “This may take the form of a new interim constitution providing for the election of a prime minister by parliament. The prime minister will then come from the MDC factions. The president (Mugabe) will remain in situ presumably to ensure a stable transition.” He said the danger with this approach was that given the age of Mugabe, this may not work as it will favour the MDC in future elections.

“Zanu PF urgently needs a leadership renewal and I do not think this will materialise through a GNU,” Mawere argued. “Depending on the succession battle in Zanu PF, there may be strong forces that favour a transitional government that will still give Zanu PF a residual claim on power from the electorate. Either way, Zimbabwe is at the crossroads.”

A GNU is an arrangement that has often been used in post-conflict situations to provide transition from an autocratic to a democratic constitutional order.

The unity government is a construction that responds to a crisis that a purely electoral system cannot resolve. This type of government would not be unique to Zimbabwe. In South Africa it formed an integral part of the post-apartheid governing arrangement. Between April 1994 and February 1997 South Africa was governed under the terms of an Interim Constitution whose Clause 88 required that any party holding 20 or more seats in parliament could claim one or more cabinet positions and enter the government.

This arrangement was deemed necessary given the political, social and economic forces at play at the time. Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon and more recently Kenya have put in place similar governments.

A TG refers to an arrangement where none of the contesting parties elect to remain outside the state waiting for a new election.
This will call for a government comprising new faces who are not part of the contest. They will then form a government typically composed of technocrats under an agreed framework and timetable to elections. The contesting parties would then agree to contest in an election.

Last week, civil society in Zimbabwe met and agreed that the talks should yield a TG born out of consultation with all stakeholders. “We believe that a transitional government would provide an appropriate vehicle for ushering in democratic reform,” a statement from the society said. “The transitional authority would have a specific limited mandate to oversee the drafting of a new, democratic and people-driven constitution and the installation of a legitimate government.”

The civics said they rejected the suggestion of a power-sharing agreement that fails to address the inadequacy of the current constitutional regime. They demanded that the TG be headed by an individual who is not a member of Zanu PF or MDC.

But Mawere argued that the civil society had no role to play in the current talks saying the electorate had spoken on March 29.
“Three parties dominate the lower and upper house of parliament. They can change the constitution because their legitimacy comes from the people,” he said.

“The legitimacy of civil society is something that would require to be tested. Unfortunately, there is no reliable mechanism for authenticating non-state actors as many of them are motivated and driven by funders.” Mawere added that if the March 29 results reflected the will of the people of Zimbabwe then it “cannot be wrong and just to engage the leadership of the parties that came from a process that everyone has come to accept as a largely true barometer for the change” agenda.

David Coltart, the legal affairs secretary of the Mutambara-led MDC, said a GNU would be viewed with extreme scepticism by most Zimbabweans who fear that it would draw in unscrupulous political leaders.

“During the transition, civil society will have to play a major role in certain aspects of the transitional authority’s mandate, especially regarding the process which should culminate in a new democratic constitution,” he suggested.

National Constitutional Assembly chairperson Lovemore Madhuku said the negotiations for a political settlement were illegitimate because they ignored key stakeholders.

“I think as civil society our reaction is very clear,” Madhuku said. “We believe that the approach taken by the political parties is illegitimate. It is illegitimate because they believe that as political parties on their own they have the responsibility to resolve the crisis and they are excluding the rest of society generally, and not just civil society.”

He said the MoU was simply for a power-sharing arrangement. “So if you just pick out the so-called agenda items you can be misled into believing that there is going to be a serious discussion of the issues there. There is no serious discussion,” he argued.
“You cannot say that you have a new government, which is what the subject matter is, and that the new government must look at the land question and the issue of sanctions.”

He said the land issue and sanctions were not related to the centre of the country’s problems — a governance crisis that must be resolved by Zimbabweans “agreeing to reform our political system, followed by free and fair elections and a legitimate government that has a clear mandate to govern”.

But in an open letter after signing the MoU, Tsvangirai said whatever decision the negotiations would produce, Zimbabweans must endorse it. “We must acknowledge that the outcome of these negotiations will not be acceptable until it has been endorsed by Zimbabwean civil society, the trade unions and the people themselves,” wrote Tsvangirai.

“We are not here to form an elitist pact, but rather to represent the hopes and aspirations of each citizen and every stakeholder. This is my commitment to our partners who have struggled with us for a more democratic form of government.”

The Independent
By Daniel Howden and Tom Armitage in Zurich
Thursday, 24 July 2008

The Mugabe regime’s final lifeline is a small Vienna-based software company that helps it to keep printing the money it relies on for its survival, The Independent can reveal.

Jura JSP, an Austro-Hungarian firm with just 50 employees, has been dealing with the pariah government in Harare, enabling it to keep ahead of its hyperinflation crisis. Officials at the company confirmed yesterday that it supplied the licences and software used to design and print the Zimbabwe dollar, but would review this position if required to do so by the EU.

Fresh EU sanctions announced yesterday do not cover all companies dealing with the Mugabe regime, but other firms named and shamed for profiting from the Zimbabwe crisis have cut all links. The software company enables the regime to print the money it uses to pay the army, police and security agents which keep Zanu PF in power. Without access to paper money, Mr Mugabe would face an immediate crisis.

Inflation is running at nearly three million per cent and the country issued a 100 billion dollar banknote this week, worth only about 7p. The economist say John Robertson said inflation was the greatest threat to the ruling party and the rate was likely to climb to 100 million per cent within the next month. “If the software is withdrawn there is no language to describe what would follow,” he said.

Paper is running out at the state-run mint Fidelity Printers and Refiners after the Bavarian company Giesecke and Devrient stopped deliveries last week following pressure from the German government. Now Austria and Hungary are expected to come under diplomatic pressure to follow Berlin’s lead.

After withstanding years of intense international criticism, targeted sanctions and domestic pressure, a move against the software supplier could be a decisive blow against Mr Mugabe, analysts said. And with crucial negotiations getting under way in South Africa today between the government and the opposition, the timing could be critical. David Coltart, an opposition senator, said: “If the company does stop supplying then that will show the regime that there is no place to hide and that the game is up… That may then even assist the negotiations.”

In Harare, supplies of paper money are already running out. The embattled Central Reserve Bank has capped daily withdrawals to 100 billion dollars per person, but this is barely enough to buy a bus ticket or a loaf of bread. Long queues appear from first light at banks throughout the country in a daily battle to survive.

The regime’s answer to economic meltdown – driven by its own looting of state and private assets – has been to print more and more worthless money, creating unprecedented hyperinflation and the prospect of trillion or quadrillion dollar notes in the coming months.

While Mr Mugabe and his circle of cronies have proven deaf to international calls to hold free and fair elections, his government continues to rely on its control of the central bank and the Fidelity money presses which until recently ran 24 hours a day to keep up with the crisis. Trades union leaders appealed to the government yesterday to lift the cap on withdrawals of Z$100bn, describing it as a “joke”. As recently as 2006 the central bank was still issuing a Z$50 note.

* A new list of Zimbabwean targets for sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, by the European Union includes the central bank governor, Gideon Gono, the attorney general Bharat Patel and the cricket chairman Peter Chingoka. Most of the 37 targets posted on the EU website are security officers, “directly involved in the terror campaign” waged around the disputed elections.

The Telegraph
By David Blair
23 July 2008

A Zimbabwean opposition leader, lauded for his brave struggle against Robert Mugabe, arrives in London on an official visit as the new prime minister.

Morgan Tsvangirai asks Britain to recognise his government and offer millions of pounds of aid. He urges the lifting of all sanctions and declares that Harare’s era of isolation is over. Mr Tsvangirai requests Gordon Brown’s help in releasing large sums from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

He returns to Harare and reports back to his boss – one Robert Mugabe. After they formed a “government of national unity”, Mr Mugabe stayed on as president and Mr Tsvangirai became his prime minister. Now Britain faces a cruel dilemma – recognise the government (led by Mr Mugabe) and pour aid into its coffers (controlled by Mr Mugabe), or face the blame for economic catastrophe.

At present, this scenario is pure imagination and fantasy. But events along these lines could unfold in the weeks ahead, confronting the Prime Minister and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, with a conundrum. Would they recognise and fund a new Zimbabwean government that includes Mr Tsvangirai in a senior position, but keeps Mr Mugabe as president?

The talks which opened yesterday between the opposition and Mr Mugabe’s Zanu PF party could have this outcome. President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa is still mediating between the two sides, despite Britain’s efforts to sideline him. Senior British sources believe the talks will probably fail. If so, London will avoid its dilemma.

But what if they do sign a deal? Aside from total failure, there are two possible outcomes. The MDC wants a shortlived “transitional government” leading to fresh elections, which Mr Tsvangirai would almost certainly win.

Exactly what role Mr Mugabe would play in this interim administration is undefined. Mr Tsvangirai has resisted pressure to recognise Mr Mugabe as rightful president. At his insistence, the two leaders conducted their handshake inside the neutral venue of a Harare hotel, not in the presidential office in State House, where Mr Mugabe wanted it.

Also, their “memorandum of understanding” deliberately describes Mr Mugabe as “president and first secretary of Zanu PF”, not of Zimbabwe. Mr Tsvangirai’s allies robustly declare that he will not serve as the dictator’s subordinate in any coalition government. Instead, Mr Mugabe’s role in a temporary administration before new elections would be as titular, ceremonial president, with real executive power transferring to Mr Tsvangirai. If this takes place, few would complain.

David Coltart, an opposition senator and one of Zimbabwe’s wisest and most humane politicians, has publicly favoured this option. For it to happen, however, would require Mr Mugabe to transform overnight from power-hungry despot to benign elder statesman. Having waged a ruthless struggle to hold power, inflicting untold suffering on thousands, Mr Mugabe would have to surrender everything at the negotiating table.

Because 84-year-old leopards rarely change their spots, this seems unlikely. Instead, Mr Mugabe will obviously press for the second possible outcome: a “government of national unity”. This would leave Mr Mugabe in command as president, with Mr Tsvangirai as a prime minister, able to travel the world, securing aid and diplomatic recognition. London would be his first stop – and Mr Brown and Mr Miliband would face their dilemma.

There is a precedent for this. When President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya lost an election last December, he announced a fake result and stayed in power, triggering bloodshed that claimed 1,500 lives. The killing only ended when Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, oversaw the birth of a unity government.

Mr Kibaki stayed on as president, despite having lost the election. Raila Odinga, his leading opponent who actually won the poll, became prime minister. Kenya’s cabinet was doubled, so all the politicians who had lost the election could keep their jobs – and all the winners could have jobs, too. Most senior politicians in Kenya now enjoy ministerial office.

Britain endorsed this subversion of democracy and, astonishingly, senior officials cite Kenya as a recent success story. If the same unfolds in Zimbabwe, the Foreign Office will have no grounds for indignation. If prime minister Tsvangirai shows up at Downing Street, he will doubtless ask: “If this was good enough for Kenya, why not Zimbabwe too?”

The Washington Post
By Craig Timberg
Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai agreed Monday to start urgent negotiations toward forming a new government, a first but very tentative step toward ending that nation’s political stalemate.

The deal signed on national television was vague, leaving aside nearly every key question about Zimbabwe’s future after nearly a decade of ruinous decline.

But it included clear language vowing an end to state-sponsored political violence, and set a deadline requiring that the talks conclude within two weeks.

The ceremony – which included a handshake between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, who had not met face-to-face since Tsvangirai founded the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in 1999 – generated a rare surge of optimism among Zimbabweans. What remains unclear is whether Mugabe and his ruling clique are prepared to negotiate away a significant share of power after 28 years of nearly total control.

Mugabe, looking drained and glum, described the deal as amounting to an agreement to amend Zimbabwe’s constitution and some of its laws.

“Our constitution as it is should be amended variously and in a number of ways,” he said.

The opposition offered a more expansive vision, portraying the agreement as the framework for negotiating a new government that will resolve Zimbabwe’s long-standing political and economic problems, including annual inflation rates that have run into the millions of percent.

“If we put our heads together, I’m sure we can find a solution. Not finding a solution is not an option,” Tsvangirai said.

The deal came together under heavy pressure from the African Union, the Southern African Development Community and its appointed mediator, South African President Thabo Mbeki, who flew to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, for the signing ceremony.

The negotiations are planned for Pretoria, the capital of South Africa.

Debate in recent days turned on whether the document would make explicit reference to a transitional authority or a government of national unity, according to two opposition officials familiar with the negotiations. The government, isolated and broke, was eager to re-establish its international legitimacy by signing some kind of deal with the opposition but rejected any references to a “transition” away from Mugabe’s rule.

The compromise signed Monday avoided the issue, saying only that the two sides agreed “to a dialogue with each other with a view to creating a genuine, viable, permanent and sustainable solution to the Zimbabwean situation.”

Negotiations are nothing new to this troubled southern African nation, once one of the continent’s most bountiful and prosperous. Months of talks followed the arrest and beating of Tsvangirai in March 2007, and those negotiations reached several important agreements while also bringing the two sides to the verge of implementing a new constitution.

But the March 29 election, in which Mugabe lost to Tsvangirai but by a margin that election officials said required a second round of voting, prompted the government to ignore its concessions as it battled to win the runoff. What followed was months of rising repression, in which Mugabe’s regime loosed militias led by army officers onto the opposition. More than 120 activists died in the resulting violence. Tsvangirai boycotted the second vote, on June 27, allowing Mugabe to win easily.

For some opposition activists, the pattern appeared to resemble Mugabe’s approach to an earlier challenger to power. A party led by nationalist leader Joshua Nkomo was all but destroyed by massacres in its stronghold, the southwestern Matabeleland region, in the mid-1980s, prompting it to merge with the ruling party in a desperate bid for peace in 1987. Nkomo became a vice president, and several of his deputies took positions in the new government, but power remained firmly in the hands of Mugabe and his security officials.

Tsvangirai’s party is attempting to avoid the same fate. Opposition officials say privately that they will agree to join the government only if some key levers of power – rather than just a few Cabinet posts – are transferred to their control.

They also won an important concession in having the role of Mbeki diminished. Opposition officials contended that he favored Mugabe. Though Mbeki was highly visible Monday, mediation will now be overseen by a group that includes Jean Ping, a top African Union official, and United Nations envoy, Haile Menkerios.

The talks also will include Arthur Mutambara, head of an opposition splinter faction based mainly in the Matabeleland region. Mutambara also signed the agreement Monday.

“This is the beginning of the end of Mugabe’s rule and influence,” said Dumisani Muleya, news editor of the Zimbabwe Independent. “The political and economic fundamentals dictate some transfer of the power.”

Yet Mugabe, 84, has long demonstrated formidable survival instincts, first in rising to the top of the 1970s guerrilla movement that forced the white-supremacist regime of Rhodesia from power and, more recently, in holding off repeated challenges to his authority – including from within his own party.

In each phase so far, he has outmaneuvered or simply outlasted rivals. Among the elements encouraging opposition leaders Monday was the two-week timeline for talks.

“There’s a real sense of urgency,” said opposition lawmaker David Coltart, who is part of the Mutambara faction of the opposition and is not allied with Tsvangirai. “It’s good. It’s positive, but there’s a long way to go.”

Inthenews.co.uk
By Alex Stevenson
22 July 2008

Lauren St John has first-hand experience of politically inspired violence in Zimbabwe. But she still loved living in the country, where awe at its natural beauty sat side by side with an all-pervasive fear of violence and retribution. Oppression still lingers today, as Ms St John knows only too well.

I found her in reflective mood. Ms St John has just finished a memoir of her experience growing up as the daughter of a white farmer during Rhodesia’s tumultuous years of independence. Her fond memories at the farm which became the title of her book began with a tragedy, however, when her 11-year-old classmate was shot dead by guerrillas. Bruce Campbell and his family were killed by a volley of machinegun fire bursting through the walls of the Rainbow’s End farmhouse which Ms St John’s family subsequently moved into. When she moved into the house where he had lived, red blood stains were still evident on the cupboard in her bedroom.

The Campbells were victims of racist violence against the perceived colonial oppressors, but Ms St John remembers never sensing any bad feeling in the house afterwards. “My mum asked Camilla [Campbell, the surviving mother] why there’d been no bad feeling… she said it’s because there’d been so much love in the house,” she explained.

That love transferred itself to her own experiences growing up at Rainbow’s End, a thousand-acre farm which was also part game reserve. From the age of 11 to 17 she enjoyed the stunning wildlife, Jenny the giraffe and herds of wildebeest and impala. But over this experience lay the constant threat of a repeat attack. Ms St John is hugely sympathetic to opposition supporters in Zimbabwe today as a result.

“It has been so gut-wrenching to see what has happened,” she says of the recent sham runoff vote held by Zanu-PF leader Robert Mugabe.

“It’s a heartbreaking thing and what’s disturbing is that the same people that were fighting for freedom and for justice and for equality are now the same people that are destroying, have no truck for quality and seem intent in reducing the country to famine.

“It’s hard to credit what would make people who once held those kind of idealistic views now resort to such depravity.”

Violence has been an everyday occurrence in Zimbabwe, even after the June 27th second round election. Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters found themselves systematically targeted in an attempt, Ms St John alleges, at obliterating all opposition. “Operation Red Dye, it’s called,” she explained. Those who did not vote in the runoff have been targeted, many of them finished off for good.

Youth militia and Zanu-PF party officials have been confronting all those who abstained. Ms St John’s father, Errol, still works in agriculture in Zimbabwe and was himself approached by a war veteran. “He told them, legitimately thank God, that his authorised polling station was more than an hour’s journey away and he didn’t have the petrol to get to the polling station.” A lucky escape. The wife of one MDC supporter had her limbs removed before being roasted alive, she says.

MDC senator David Coltart told inthenews before the runoff vote that the persecution seen against MDC matched the horrors of the Gukuruhundi, the campaign of violence seen in 1983. The name comes from a Shona term with several definitions, along the lines of ‘the storm that sweeps away the chaff before the spring rains’ – an apt comparison, as Ms St John’s adolescence mixed wonder at the beauties of African natural life with the horrors of war. Her father returned to Zimbabwe to participate in the struggle. “Fear and elation” were her feelings on first arriving at Rainbow’s End. That dichotomy is just as valid for today’s Zimbabwe.

Ms St John says the country’s mood has changed rapidly since the aftermath of the original first-round vote. “People are so beaten and cowed,” she said. “People simply do not have the spirit or the strength to do anything.”

Agreement on talks between Mr Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai is a positive step forward, but Ms St John remains deeply concerned about the current situation in the country.

“The tragedy of Zimbabwe is not just the horror of what’s happening – we’re in completely uncharted economic territory,” she explained.

Hyperinflation is the problem. Last year prices rose by a ridiculous 100,000 per cent. Could things possibly get any worse? Apparently, yes. Ms St John says eight billion per cent is expected to be this year’s figure. A week ago a single egg cost Z$6 billion. Six potatoes cost Z£80 billion. “Somebody standing there with nothing – how do they begin to find that kind of money, even supposing with the empty supermarket shelves that they could find those items in the first place?”

“People are incredibly desperate, I can’t tell you. Given that a minimum of 80 per cent of people are out of a job, anyone that can get work by helping Zanu-PF probably will.”

Ms St John’s worries about the concerns of ordinary people are piercing. It is the ordinary people, with ordinary problems, who she believes often get left out beyond the headlines. What about diabetics? People with cancer? Even the dead are problematic as Zimbabwe’s mortuaries continue to fill.

“Where do they get the money to help themselves? To have a single filling costs Z$3 trillion. The country must be filled with people with just ordinary conditions.”

International condemnation is hardly helpful, she believes: “The rhetoric of the outside world is not going to be any help to somebody who has no idea where to get tonight’s food.”

The parallels continue. Optimists are hoping the MDC’s deal with Mr Mugabe over further talks could be the beginning of the end for the regime. Will those current supporters of Zanu-PF be forced to acknowledge their failed mindframe, in the same way Ms St John was forced to do over the white cause in the war of independence? Having thought she was a liberal, she was forced to confront a new truth where by definition she was a racist.

“How could I never have questioned the fact that blacks went to separate schools?” she asks. “My father loved the war and because of him I loved the war too. To me we were fighting communism.”

It is more probable, however, that the repression brought about by the “criminal cabal” running the country, as Gordon Brown puts it, will remain. Certainly there is no immediate solution to the economic crisis it faces. But even today it is that climate of fear that lingers.

“As long as I remember people have been so petrified to speak out. Even your trusted friend, you’re petrified to speak to. The walls literally have ears – it’s so terrifying.”

Lauren St John was speaking to Alex Stevenson. Rainbow’s End: An African Memoir, published by Penguin, is out now in paperback priced £8.99.

The Independent
By Daniel Howden, Deputy Foreign Editor
Monday, 14 July 2008

Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, sought to toughen European Union sanctions against the Mugabe regime yesterday after a bruising diplomatic failure in New York, where China and Russia vetoed action on the Zimbabwe crisis from the UN Security Council.
Britain will submit 36 additional names to the list of people already targeted by EU sanctions because of their links to the junta in Harare, said Mr Brown after holding talks with European leaders in Paris.

“We should not lessen the pressure on this regime,” the Prime Minister said. “I believe we need to make a transition to democracy as soon as possible.”

The 25-nation bloc has already imposed travel and financial sanctions on 131 individuals connected to Mugabe’s regime, under measures drafted in 2002. The US has similar sanctions in place.

Fresh from his UN triumph, Mr Mugabe signalled his intent to travel to New York exploiting a diplomatic loophole which allows him to attend UN gatherings as a head of state. Asked if his boss would be travelling to the annual general assembly meeting in September, Zimbabwe’s UN ambassador, Boniface Chidyausiku, said: “Yes, definitely he will come.”

The 84-year-old has proved adept at side-stepping the measures of his Western critics designed to isolate him, and has rejoiced in opportunities to confront his opponents on the international stage. The failure of the US-UK bid for UN sanctions was greeted with glee by the government in Harare and relief by South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, who has been defending the regime from international pressure.

The UN resolution would have imposed an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and clamped a worldwide asset freeze and travel ban on Mr Mugabe and 13 of his inner circle accused of orchestrating the campaign of political terror in the run-up to the 27 June run-off election. The outline of the measures was backed unanimously by the leaders at the G8 group of rich nations in Japan last week, but Russia shifted its position within 48 hours of signing the statement.

The package of measures also called on the UN to name a special representative to act as a mediator in Zimbabwe, and hopes remain that this will still go ahead. The former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who played a similar role in mediating a resolution to the crisis in Kenya, has made clear his availability to fulfil this task.

South Africa’s Mr Mbeki strongly opposes such a move, as it would undermine his role as the regionally appointed mediator.
Concerns were mounting that the failed sanctions bid would harden Mr Mugabe’s stance of in talks with the opposition, as he now faces an international community clearly divided on how to move against him.

Mr Brown said it was “very important” that talks “lead to a legitimate outcome”. Should they fail, he said, there is a case to go back to the United Nations.

The crisis in Zimbabwe remains Mr Mugabe’s main problem as hyperinflation has pushed the Zimbabwean dollar to 350 billion to the pound and the economy has totally collapsed.

“The defeat of the UN resolution is a pyrrhic victory for Mugabe,” said opposition Senator David Coltart. “The ball is now firmly in Mbeki’s court to deal with this crisis, because he was the one that argued most effectively against the UN resolution and he must now deliver before the situation deteriorates further.

Chicago Tribune
By Paul Salopek | Chicago Tribune correspondent
June 29, 2008

To a nation living on its knees, violence-plagued polls seem a death knell

JOHANNESBURG — Zimbabwe’s shattered opposition released its roll call of dead last week.

The list, e-mailed to the international media, was clearly prepared in haste. It contains the kind of typographical errors that arise, one imagines, from taking fast dictation. The language is as flat and terse as a small-town police report. Still, for the first time, people who died in Zimbabwe’s recent political agonies now have the dignity of being named.

The chilling details of these largely invisible murders—in which all but four of the 85 victims were members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, while most of the accused killers belong to President Robert Mugabe’s youth militias—are as good an elegy as any for the death of a democracy.

But the brief recountings of other political killings—a man assaulted while sitting down to dinner, others attacked while tending their shop, working in a flour mill, or puttering in a garden—hint at the strangely workaday, domestic quality of life in Zimbabwe even as it morphs into what now more than ever resembles a bald-faced dictatorship.

The final blow to democratic hopes came Friday, when a widely condemned runoff election promised to reinstall Mugabe in power. Diplomats now predict that up to a million new refugees, hungry and desperate, may flood out of the free-falling wreck called Zimbabwe in the coming year. On the death list are some who won’t get that chance.

Nobody knows what will happen next in moribund Zimbabwe.

Some analysts say that if Mugabe’s record holds, the wily 84-year-old president may throw a bone to the opposition, perhaps by offering to share power or recognizing its gains in Parliament, as he has done in previous rigged elections. Then he’ll quietly renege.

Fear and loathing

Whether such old tactics can work today, in the face of growing international outrage at Mugabe’s brutality, remains to be seen.

“I think he’ll try and hold on for a year, then handpick a successor inside ZANU-PF,” said David Coltart, an opposition senator, using the acronym for Mugabe’s ruling party. “He’ll pretty much do anything to keep real power out of the hands of Morgan [Tsvangirai], whom he loathes.”

Tsvangirai, the opposition leader who withdrew from Friday’s runoff after thousands of his followers were beaten and hundreds of thousands more were driven from their homes, appears to be counting solely on foreign intervention to force a political dialogue. In an Election Day message to his demoralized supporters, most of whom sat out the voting, he was reduced to biblical exhortations: “Be not afraid, the Lord is with you.”

“I don’t know what we made our sacrifices for,” said a bitter MDC activist, speaking by telephone from Zimbabwe’s rural Masvingo province, where Tsvangirai’s campaigners have been shot, burned and beaten to death. “It’s all over here. Zimbabwe’s finished.”

He choked back tears of fury. Agents from the Central Intelligence Organization, Mugabe’s feared secret police, were outside his business office, he said, stripping the inventory from his farm supply store in retaliation for his opposition sympathies.
Unfortunately for 12 million Zimbabweans — citizens of one of the prettiest nations in Africa, a place once known more for its safari lodges and thundering waterfalls than for corpses abandoned at roadsides — there is more than political terror to survive in the days ahead.

With erratic rains this year expected to shrink crop harvests by at least a third, humanitarian experts warn that the fertile country, which once fed the rest of the continent, faces mass starvation.

“As of August, we’ll have a major food crisis,” said Clever Maputseni, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian affairs office in Harare, the capital. “This country has a crop deficit of millions of metric tons of grain. Where are we going to get that food on short notice?”

Maputseni noted that 2 million to 4 million Zimbabweans depend on UN food aid, according to the seasons. More than 200,000 are HIV-positive, requiring supplemental food packets just to stay alive.

But no food is being distributed. Mugabe banned all foreign humanitarian operations in Zimbabwe two weeks ago, after accusing aid groups of meddling in politics.
Asking not to be named for fear of government retaliation, one aid worker in Harare said the ban would likely last for weeks, in order to prevent outsiders from witnessing an expected new wave of revenge attacks on communities that sat out Friday’s elections.

In the end, many experts believe it will be hunger and economic devastation that bring a defiant Mugabe to the negotiating table—not pressure from the West, the UN, or the African Union.

Zimbabwe’s shelves are bare. With inflation now orbiting almost meaninglessly at over 2 million percent, the country has become a surreal land of 16-billion-Zimbabwe-dollar chicken legs. Whole chickens aren’t available. And Mugabe exhausted his meager treasury by handing out a last few mini-buses and farming tools to sway his cowed and slat-ribbed electorate.

Staggering on

The United States has promised to lobby for yet more sanctions against Zimbabwe in the UN Security Council, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday. How this will affect a country that cannot even issue passports to those who want to flee—there isn’t any paper to print them on—is debatable.

“I guess that’s one way of being positive,” joked Marco Ndlovu, an orphanage manager in Zimbabwe’s second-largest city of Bulawayo. “Things cannot stay this way. And they cannot possibly get worse. They absolutely cannot. So something must change.”

Ndlovu’s orphanage was shut down two weeks ago by a gang of ZANU-PF toughs, even though it was government funded. The militants targeted him, he said, for being a social worker. More than 230 children at his orphanage have lost their means of support, he said.

And so, only the skeleton of Zimbabwe staggers on.

Five new names were added to the casualty roster Saturday. All were beaten to death.

The toll will likely grow, human-rights experts fear, as Mugabe attempts to consolidate his power and as political vendettas are settled in the weeks ahead. Further violence is expected to burn hottest in the country’s east — once a bastion of government support — that did not line up loyally behind Mugabe in March’s first-round election.

“Our people are our hope,” said Coltart, the opposition lawmaker. “There are no braver, or more patient, or finer people than Zimbabweans.”

Such statements may sound pat coming from most politicians.

Yet they are frequently borne out in Zimbabwe, where empty-bellied bystanders—unemployed men, weary grandmothers and underweight children—have been known to start dancing on the dusty roadside when a passing car radio pumps out African music.

There is no recourse in hapless Zimbabwe. So its people dance.

psalopek@tribune.com