Zimbabwe -- Mugabe has clearly gone a step further than Smith

I remember 23 September 1976 well. It was one of those occasions, like the assassination of John F Kennedy, where you can clearly remember where you were and what was going through your mind at the time.

On 23 September 1976 I was with a small group of friends in Mount Pleasant, Harare. The others were all academics of one kind or another at the then University of Rhodesia.

We sat in the study and watched a small television set as Ian Douglas Smith, prime minister for 17 years, came onto the screen to address the nation.

Three years before that evening, I had led a small group of 35 of the most outstanding young Rhodesians in an effort to persuade him that he was going to lose the war and would eventually have to give up power.

At the end of a three-hour discussion, he very pointedly said to the group I had put together with a colleague: “I could never live in the kind of Rhodesia that Cross here wants. We are not losing the war, we are going to win and I cannot see any sense in changing our course.”

All except eight of those young leaders left the country within six months. They could see little sense in continuing to fight for a lost cause. We lost in that way some of the very finest young future leaders we have ever produced.

That night in 1976, the country was on its last legs, exports were falling, emigration was draining away the talent we needed to go on, global opposition was intensifying and the bush war was clearly being lost at that stage. Military leaders said that what we were engaged in was a holding operation to give political leaders time to sort things out.

Every white male that could walk was spending half his time in uniform in one capacity or the other.

Smith came on television and with that poker face of his that seldom showed what he was really thinking, stated that he had just come back from a meeting in Pretoria where he had conceded a transfer of power to a new government elected under universal suffrage.

The rest of what he said was somewhat lost on us as we erupted with joy and relief that our long night of working and waiting was now over, there was something to look forward to, at last.

Today you have to pay tribute to that man for accepting the inevitable and then agreeing to oversee what for him was a complete anathema – a transfer of power to a majority elected government under international supervision.

He went on to tell the nation what he had agreed to and then staying in his post until it was done and then he retired from the scene.

In four years, Robert Mugabe was in power - taking over in a manner that was not to his liking any more than it had been Smith’s. All were forced to compromise by the events of 23 September 1976.

Now here we are - 26 years later - somehow back to where we started: the economy in free fall, the government at war with the people, the country in a state of complete isolation and even those friends on whom our very survival depends are now at the stage of active opposition. At the helm, a man very similar in many ways to Smith, very tough on his opponents, completely intolerant of any opposition in his own party, committed to a path that has run out of space on the edge of a precipice, with nowhere else to go. Those of us, who live under the regime, see no future for our children or ourselves if he does not go, but how, when?

We started the process of change three years ago when a “people’s convention” called for the establishment of a new political party that would fight Zanu PF and give the country a democratic alternative. The people who sponsored this initiative had tried everything else - to no avail. Mugabe would not listen, would not change course.

Instead of leaving the country - voting with our feet, as it is called - we stayed and fought back, using democratic activities where we found space to manoeuvre. A great deal has been achieved in those three years.

The MDC now controls half the elected seats in Parliament, six out of 25 of the towns and cities, including the two major cities of Harare and Bulawayo. We are accepted throughout the world as a potential alternative government, capable of turning the country around when we finally win power.

This ground has not been won without struggle or pain - 150 of our members and leadership has been killed in politically motivated activity, thousands have been beaten and tortured, raped and burnt. The government has had to attack all the pillars of democracy - the media, the judiciary, and the independent businessperson – to try and halt our advance.

Our acceptance as an alternative administration has also not come easily. We have been consistently bombarded with calls to join in a government of “national unity”.

We have been called all sorts of names, not only by the Zanu PF propaganda machine, but also by countries in Africa who saw us as a challenge to the hegemony over power of the former liberation movements.

And now? I have that same feeling as we had in September 1976: change is in the air.

He is losing the war with his people, he has lost the support of those in Africa on whom his future depends and the global community has decided that he simply cannot be allowed to continue to stand in the way of positive change in southern Africa.

There are two other elements in the situation today that also set the stage for a different outcome. Smith never starved his people. Mugabe has done so on a scale never before seen in Africa.

The other situation that is different is that Mugabe has failed his people – Smith never did, to the end he fought to defend the interests of the white minority. Mugabe has not defended the interests of the majority who elected him into power.

Smith never needed an armour-plated Mercedes Benz, even at the height of the civil war.

"Clive, who is the writer, Cross ? There is no other attribution."

As is increasingly the casee in Zimbabwe, the article has no by-line, but I am assuming that Cross is Eddie Cross.

Cross is an economist and a columnist and is the Secretary for Economic Affairs of the MDC party.

Here is a letter from Eddie Cross to the Presbyterian Record, a Canadian journal, printed in the June 2002 issue:

Meeting of G-8 group of nations
At the end of June, Canada will have the responsibility of hosting and chairing a meeting of the G-8 group of nations. The main topic of discussion will be the needs of Africa. Leaders have agreed in advance to consider a new program for the continent called NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development).
My mother came from British Columbia in the early part of the century and moved to what was then Rhodesia in 1938. I came along in 1940 and have lived in Zimbabwe ever since. My great- grandfather was a missionary to South Africa and arrived on the continent in 1867. My great- grandfather, grandfather and father are buried here, and my two children live here - my son is a pastor of a local church in Harare and my daughter is married and lives in Harare with her lawyer husband. We have two grandchildren.
I am an economist. I have spent my life in agriculture and am now the Secretary for Economic Affairs in the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe. Along with my associates in the party and the two million members we have in Zimbabwe, I am committed to peaceful democratic change here after 22 years of rule by a corrupt and despotic regime under Robert Mugabe.
As an African (that is what I am) and a citizen of Zimbabwe, I have watched my country go from a small, highly diversified, self-sufficient, middle income developing country, to what we are today: a poor, least developed state where every indicator of human welfare is negative. I believe I can make this judgment as I was one of the few white men who stood up to Ian Smith in his day and worked for majority democratic rule in the country and suffered for it during the Smith years.
This year, we will see our economy plunge 12 per cent, export earnings fall nearly 20 per cent, life expectancy for a women fall to 37 years from over 55 only 10 years ago, infant mortality approaching 50 per cent for under fives, and half our school-age children out of school. We have three million people on the edge of starvation and a nation-wide famine threatens from July onwards.
All of this is of human origin. We have a corrupt government that has violated almost every rule in the book on democracy, violates human and political rights every day and is denying bona fide citizens their right to passports and to freedom of association, speech and assembly.
Africa is the only continent where key indicators of human welfare are negative -- life expectancy, hunger, incomes, social systems are in decline across the continent. Corrupt and undemocratic governments still control half the countries in the Organization of African Unity. Western nations are blamed for this state of affairs and leaders are demanding huge inflows of foreign aid. They are now asking the leaders of the western world to support a new deal for the continent.
Canadians can do us a favour by demanding that any assistance to Africa will be totally dependent on us getting our affairs in order. Democratic states do not have famines. Free markets attract investment. Human rights, democracy and social justice are intertwined inextricably with any process of human development and economic progress.
The leaders of the NEPAD initiative are going to ask the leaders of the western world to fence off delinquent states like Zimbabwe (and many others) so that progress can be made with those countries that do meet the criteria set out above. The problems of Zimbabwe are influencing the peace and stability of countries as far away as Sudan as well as all countries in the southern part of Africa. The welfare and stability of the whole continent is dependent on sorting out those bad apples in the barrel before they infect the rest of the barrel.
Christians in Canada can join with us in praying for our leaders at this time. Especially for your prime minister who carries such a responsibility.
Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

I was contemplating posting the letter as a separate thread. How say you?

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