SELECTIVE JUSTICE Tough on Togo, Letting Zimbabwe Slide

JOHANNESBURG — Even the heads of state who were its members called the old Organization for African Unity a dictators' club, one reason why it was replaced three years ago by a new African Union that was modeled, in name and purpose, on Europe's own union. The old O.A.U. fulminated about colonialism and liberation, but was often silent on human rights and the consent of the governed. The new group, bowing to a democratic breeze blowing from Mali to Mauritius, stood for the premise that the rule of law is in, and despotism out.

Take it from Nigeria's president, Olusegun Obasanjo, a thoroughgoing democrat. "Anybody who comes to power unconstitutionally," he said at the union's first meeting in 2002, "cannot sit with us."

So when Robert G. Mugabe attends the next meeting of the African Union, will he have to stand?

Democratic Africa has lately stifled a coup in Togo, sent peacekeepers to Burundi and Darfur and ended civil war in the Ivory Coast, achievements that would have been unthinkable only a decade ago. Yet it is curiously dumbstruck when dealing with Mr. Mugabe's draconian rule in Zimbabwe.

The latest example is Zimbabwe's March 31 parliamentary elections, in which Mr. Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front Party thrashed its democratic opponents using electoral tactics that were less Queensbury Rules than those of professional wrestling.

Starving voters were told to support the Mugabe party or lose access to food. Village leaders warned that opposition supporters could lose their homes. In 30 races surveyed by the opposition, roughly 180,000 votes appeared after the polls had closed and the official turnout had been reported.

Nonpartisan election monitors and Western nations called the election grievously flawed. Not so the African Union: Zimbabwe's election was free and fair, it said. Far from declaring "This will not stand!," the group commended Zimbabwe's government for "making efforts towards creating an even playing field."

Why do African leaders who no longer tolerate a Togo coup blanch at denouncing Mr. Mugabe's strongman tactics? The question seems almost nonsensical, given that Zimbabwe's political and social implosion has flooded its neighbors with unwanted refugees and made the nation a potential vector for regional instability.

The answer, however, is deceptively complex. It begins with the overriding fact that Zimbabwe, once southern Africa's crown jewel, is not a backwater state like Togo. And that Mr. Mugabe, who, at 81, is the surviving patriarch of Africa's liberation struggle, cannot be criticized or made to submit as easily as some anonymous colonel behind a military putsch.

Political forces are at work behind the scenes as well. Mr. Mugabe's brand of race-baiting demagoguery plays well in parts of Africa's vast underclass, and to challenge him is to risk being branded a pawn of white colonialists.

Foremost, perhaps, African leaders fear that the defeat of a serious ruler like Mr. Mugabe may help spread the notion that any entrenched leadership can be unseated by a committed opposition. In Africa, where most democracies are effectively one-party affairs, such a notion can be dangerous.

Maybe that helps explain why South Africa endorsed the Zimbabwe vote even more warmly than did the African Union, and why its president, Thabo Mbeki, has emerged as Mr. Mugabe's most powerful ally.

Coincidentally, perhaps, Mr. Mugabe's opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, enjoys strong support from South Africa's labor movement and from its Communist Party. Both groups are part of Mr. Mbeki's ruling African National Congress, but are widely expected to split from it before the 2009 national election.

As Africa's most prominent politician, Mr. Mbeki provides his fellow leaders with cover to avoid addressing the Mugabe problem. A handful of democracies, including Nigeria, have been more outspoken in criticizing aspects of Mr. Mugabe's rule. But none have the gravitas of South Africa, itself the democratic victor in a liberation struggle not unlike the one that led to Mr. Mugabe's dictatorship.

If this sounds like a recipe for stalemate, there is an alternative, voiced in Harare last month by a political activist who demanded anonymity because he was afraid that his employers would be punished for his views.

The African Union can put down a coup in Togo, he said, because its charter explicitly permits intervention in a member nation's affairs in the case of a coup. But the charter is silent on whether the bloodless theft of political power by, say, stealing an election, is a coup in all but name.

"What could change that is if Zimbabwean groups themselves make the call to the A.U.," he said. "You could make quite a strong argument that rigging and manipulating elections is a kind of constitutional coup."

Which is precisely why Zimbabwe is such a thorny problem - and, viewed another way, an opportunity. The prospect that ordinary Zimbabweans might press for change is distinctly democratic in spirit. And it would offer a clear test of whether the continent's new commitment to democratic rule is more than just rhetorical.

***....Coincidentally, perhaps, Mr. Mugabe's opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, enjoys strong support from South Africa's labor movement and from its Communist Party. Both groups are part of Mr. Mbeki's ruling African National Congress, but are widely expected to split from it before the 2009 national election. ...***

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I've read the communist party doesn't like either. Or is it they're using the Movement for Democratic Change to help oust Mugabe so they'll have more power. I guess Mubabe's dictatorial ways don't include them. Do you have some insight on this?

As seen from a US, or even Canadian, perspective, teh MDC is clearly near the left end of the spectrum.

But I don't see it as communist or even left-wing socialist (although it verges on the latter). If I had to pin a label on it, I would call it social-democrat but ideological labels are never accurate.

But don't expect to soon see anything like the political spectrum of North America or even Europe in southern Africa.

Don't expect the kind of individual-oriented human rights advocacy to take root hard on the heels of the revolutionary regimes that replaced the colonial ones.

Thermidor will be slow to arrive in Africa.

Meanwhile the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That cuts both ways -- our support of the MDC and the MDC's acceptance of support from wherever it can get it.

And getting support for counter-revolutionary or democratic movements in Africa is hard to come by.

Africa resists any movement away from governance by the revolutionaries who replaced the colonial governments.

And as I have said before, while we see Mugabe as a thug and a tyrant, most Africans, including the educated elites, see Mugabe as some kind of latter day Chaka Zulu. They rather enjoy his antics and applaud his cocking a snook at Blair and Bush.

Including the toilet jokes play on Blair's name.

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