Article
from
Financial Times
Dictators eventually overreach themselves. Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, has been pushing his country and his neighbours towards the abyss for several years.
With a decisive presidential election looming, he has just forced legislation through parliament that is intended to make opposition campaigning impossible, destroy the last smidgin of accountability, prohibit objective poll-watching and encourage continued physical intimidation of voters. Pending is an attempt to emasculate the independent media.
Washington, London, Brussels and Pretoria have been wringing their hands over Zimbabwe''s descent into chaos, economic catastrophe and impending famine for many months.
President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa summoned the leaders of the Southern African Development Community to consider Zimbabwe''s case this week. The result was yet more hand-wringing.
Nothing short of action by South Africa and Zimbabwe''s other neighbours will save a denial of justice from becoming a broader tragedy. Mr Mbeki and the SADC need to intervene in Zimbabwe to help the country save itself from further economic and political strife and possible civil war.
Mr Mugabe''s intention is to control the election and the critical period before it with his own lackeys. That clearly will not do. The best alternative, and one that nearly all Zimbabweans would welcome, would be an election run by a team of experts from the SADC. Botswanans, Namibians, Malawians and South Africans (not Zambians) have all managed responsible, fair elections in the recent past.
If they were to organise the election, starting now, all Zimbabweans would believe the result. The role of Washington, London and Brussels would be to help pay for the SADC''s services.
Mr Mugabe would not welcome such interference. But South Africa controls the supply of electricity and petroleum to Zimbabwe and can also limit many of its imports and exports. If Mr Mbeki could rally SADC support for such a bold initiative, Mr Mugabe would have little room for manoeuvre and might accede to an SADC-run election.
The need for outside intervention extends to the campaign as well as to the conduct of the balloting itself. The SADC will need to ensure that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change is allowed to seek support freely throughout the country. Observers believe that it has backers everywhere and could win a fair poll.
That is precisely why Mr Mugabe has been - and is intent on - ensuring that potential MDC voters know that they will be attacked now and later by the president''s paramilitary legions (the so-called war veterans and newly armed sets of thugs) and, sometimes, by the police. That has been the pattern for more than a year. Without an impartial protecting force, many Zimbab-weans will fear showing support for the opposition, or will refuse to vote.
For that reason, South Africa and the SADC need to do more, with moral and political backing from Washington, London, Brussels and the United Nations. The SADC should send troops into Zimbabwe - preferably with Mr Mugabe''s acquiescence - to keep the pre-electoral peace. Most of those troops would be South African and Botswanan but others could be recruited as well. Small detachments of troops stationed throughout Zimbabwe could prevent high levels of local intimidation. They would also provide a degree of confidence for rural and urban voters.
This kind of intervention is normally unthinkable. But there are no limits to Mr Mugabe''s ruthlessness and no end to his preying on his own citizens for personal gain. As Mr Mbeki has said, Mr Mugabe has lost the moral authority to continue to lead. Indeed, from the perspectives of the European Union and parts of the British Commonwealth he has become a pariah and Zimbabwe is deserving of various kinds of sanctions.
The UN Security Council could declare Zimbabwe worthy of humanitarian intervention under the UN Charter, thus supporting any SADC initiative. The SADC charter also permits interventions to preserve peace, even within the sovereign borders of its members.
Zimbabwe is bankrupt. Its people are suffering from the power-hungry exactions of Mr Mugabe and his ilk. Everyone concerned pins their hopes on a fair election that will reflect the desires of most Zimbabweans. But everything that Mr Mugabe has done since early 2000 suggests the impossibility of such a test without SADC control and intervention.
If ending dictatorship is a worthy goal, and if ending the palpable harm that Mr Mugabe is doing to southern Africa is another objective, action is imperative. Sitting back and continuing to pray that Zimbabweans will somehow be able to vote according to their hearts and minds, whatever Mr Mugabe does, is an exercise of pious futility.