International opinion about the unfolding catastrophe in Zimbabwe seems caught somewhere between dismay at what is happening and prevarication over what to do about it. The prevailing attitude reminds one a bit of the man who is appalled to see someone drowning in a lake, but who hesitates about jumping in and rescuing them for fear of ruining his favourite suit.
A leader in this week's Economist titled "How to get him out" began by stating that it is "hard to believe that the horrors inflicted by Zimbabwe's ruler on his own people could get worse. But even in the past week they have." But it concluded its recommendations by ruling out - in the short to medium term - the one sure way of effecting Mugabe's departure, namely military intervention. In between it rested its suggestions on the sands of hope and wishful thinking.
In analyzing the question of what is to be done, one should perhaps begin from a hardnosed analysis of the situation and progress from there. Isolating the Zanu-PF regime morally and politically and refusing to recognise its legitimacy is important, and recently great progress has been made in this regard. At some point the growing international pressure on the regime may precipitate its implosion. But running against this is the fact that the more criminal the ruling elite's behaviour becomes the greater its interest in clinging onto power.
Quite obviously, a reversal of the South African government's policy of quiet support for Mugabe would have a significant impact. In comments to reporters on Tuesday James McGee, the US ambassador to Zimbabwe, pointed out that "Zimbabwe's a landlocked country and it's surrounded by members of the SADC region. You know, there's a lot of pressure that can be brought on Zimbabwe, very simple pressure that can be brought upon Zimbabwe by the SADC countries."
The first reality one has to confront though is that South Africa and certain other SADC states can simply not be relied upon to do the right thing by Zimbabwe (in fact quite the opposite). Given the ties that bind Mbeki to Mugabe one should not expect his government to act against the Zanu-PF regime.
Indeed, it took little over a day before South African officials began back peddling from Monday's UN Security Council resolution on Zimbabwe. That statement had condemned the campaign of violence "against the political opposition" and described the possibility of holding a free and fair election on June 27 as "impossible."
However, on Wednesday morning the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aziz Pahad, refused to say whether South Africa would recognise the legitimacy of a Mugabe victory in Friday's poll. He also indicated that South Africa would persist with its current approach until the apocalypse eventually arrived. "We can only say the mediation has failed" he said, "if we reach a situation where Zimbabwe totally gets engulfed in a state of civil war."
That afternoon government spokesman Themba Maseko refused to apportion blame for the violence currently being perpetrated by the Zanu-PF regime against the political opposition. He told reporters, "It is not correct to suggest that government agrees with anybody that violence comes from only one particular quarter. Violence needs to be condemned, whether it's coming from the government's side or from the opposition side. Just violence is condemned in its totality."
The one thing that just might force a reversal in Mbeki's current approach would be the exposure of what actually lies behind it. But barring that for the international community to place any reliance at all upon our government behaving decently is akin to culpable negligence.
The second reality is that some kind of force (or at least a credible threat thereof) will probably have to be applied to push Mugabe from power. In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post Paul Collier addressed the question of how the "grossly excessive powers" of leaders like Robert Mugabe could be curtailed: "After Iraq," he noted, "there is no international appetite for using the threat of military force to pressure thugs. But only military pressure is likely to be effective; tyrants can almost always shield themselves from economic sanctions."
The system whereby the Zanu-PF super-elite is able to loot the country's foreign exchange earnings shields them from the effects of economic collapse, even as it hastens it. It also provides yet another pressing reason not to give up power.
The third reality concerns the issue of time, and the fact that there is not all that much of it left to spare. If some kind of force is indeed needed to effect change then this will apply as much in a year's time as it does now (and as it did at the start of the crisis in 2000). The equation then is quite simple: the sooner the international community acts the greater the suffering it will avert. Moreover, the MDC is in the process of being smashed - it may no longer exist in a meaningful sense in a few months time. (No doubt, once Mugabe is removed from power the international community will flagellate itself for not acting sooner.)
The other consideration that needs to be taken into account is the likely cost of any intervention. There is currently a democratically elected government-in-waiting in Zimbabwe. Against it stands a small elite which has a vested interest in Zanu-PF clinging onto power. It is very unlikely that the lower ranks of the security services will willingly lay down their lives in its defence. Unless the political aspect is hopelessly mishandled, as in Iraq, the cost of intervention should be relatively low. It could well be negligible if, as is likely, the threat of action is sufficient to induce the regime into negotiating some kind of exit strategy for itself.
The current unwillingness to at least give serious consideration to the use of force stems, I suspect, less from a cost-benefit analysis and more from a lack of will. Intervention is messy and it brings with it awkward moral and political costs and obligations. What should be remembered though is that inaction brings with it its own moral responsibilities.
If the politician sees a great evil looming, has the power to prevent it, but fails to act, he becomes co-responsible for its realisation. The proposition which holds for him is, as Max Weber wrote, "thou shalt resist evil by force" if necessary "or else you are responsible for the evil winning out." The other thing is that in politics, as in war, "action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight... What this feeble light leaves indistinct to the sight talent must discover, or must be left to chance. It is therefore again talent, or the favour of fortune, on which reliance must be placed, for want of objective knowledge." (Clausewitz).
This means that if one wants to prevent genocide - or a horror of a similar order of magnitude - one cannot wait for the situation to make itself obvious to everyone. By that point it will simply be too late to counter it effectively. It is not absolutely certain that the Zanu-PF regime will make the transition from pervasive violence, torture and the occasional killing to mass murder (if it has not done so already). There is though, as the Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has suggested, a reasonable prospect that it will.
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