Sun, Mar 10, 2002 page9

• Lessons for South Africa in Zimbabwe's poor race relations

  The violence that has accompanied the forced removal of white farmers from their land in Zimbabwe could easily be repeated in its volatile southern neighbor

  • By Jonathan Power
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  Only this weekend's election can save Zimbabwe -- once the star of black Africa -- from total ruin. And even that is uncertain. A country so mismanaged requires more than a new leader and governing party. It requires ten years of political calm and incorruptible government to get back on its feet.

  And Zimbabwe, for all the intimidating tactics of President Robert Mugabe, remains a democracy. Thus Mugabe, even if he loses the poll, will live to fight another day, able to mobilize the bitterness and resentment of the poor and unemployed to undermine a new government, as he has worked to undermine the opposition the past few years.

  The trouble with Robert Mugabe is that his single-minded, Marxist militancy that was a useful tool in driving to defeat the white, racist, government of Rhodesia (as it then was) and its British supporters in the Conservative party is the same blinkered earnestness that has destroyed the economy and undermined its one-time potential for becoming an oasis of racial reconciliation and economic and social progress. Instead of becoming an inspiration for its neighbor South Africa, it is now a fearful warning for what could become of South Africa itself if the spirit of Nelson Mandela, its first black president, is crushed by the growing number of serious policy mistakes of his successor, Thabo Mbeki.

  Already in Mbeki, with his peculiar inability to listen to his own medical advisors on the dangers of the AIDS epidemic and his spending of a scarce US$4 billion on new submarines for the navy to be used against a non-enemy, we see the early signs of the amalgam of economic incompetence and political paranoia mixed with defensive grandstanding that one could see starting to develop in Zimbabwe two decades ago, a few years after it won its independence.

  Mugabe argues that the political imperative today is to give the dispossessed land, taking from the white farmers who were first settled by the great British imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, 110 years ago. In this he is as correct as the Palestinians today as they rail against the imposed Israeli settlements on Arab soil. The difference is that having made such a fuss about the land issue during the war for majority rule Mugabe promptly forgot about it once he came to office, only resurrecting it three years ago when he realized how unpopular his incompetent and corrupt government had become.

  Believing he could play to the gallery of the landless and the poverty stricken, he has allowed the storm troopers of his political party to demoralize, intimidate and, on occasion, to kill white farmers while, in fact, during his 22 year term of office, doing little about providing viable agricultural holdings (with good agricultural advisors on call) to enable the poor to economically progress.

  Indeed, over the years it has been the better-off, politically well connected blacks that have done best from the government's land policies. While it is true that immediately after winning independence Zimbabwe would not have been able to raise the money to buy out white farmers from either Britain or the US (who did not deliver on what they had promised), it could have raised the money from the World Bank, the Scandinavians, the Dutch and other such countries that had more liberal constituencies

  It was a well-researched fact at the time that 20 percent of the white farmers were producing 80 percent of the output and the other 80 percent of the farms could be made more productive under African small-scale management. But once it had achieved power, the Mugabe government simply lost interest in the issue, as its black bourgeoisie comfortably inserted themselves into the slots left empty by departing whites. South Africa, it is to be profoundly hoped, will not go the same way. Yet the pressures on it are formidable. Like Zimbabwe before, it is finding its best efforts cannot deliver a growth rate sufficient to give jobs to everyone and to start to lift the masses out of poverty.

  The world economy has not been kind to South Africa. Moreover, its workforce is undereducated and under productive compared with its Asian competitors. Despite many impressive achievements in building better housing and extending the reach of basic health clinics and clean water supplies, rank-and-file blacks know well that the main beneficiaries of the end of white rule have been the highly educated or well-connected blacks who have taken plum jobs with conspicuous benefits. It is a country of such gross income inequalities that its extraordinarily high crime rate is one of the inevitable results.

  Another is a seething political volatility that underneath the seemingly dominating hand of the governing African National Congress could erupt into land grabs in emulation of Zimbabwe, encouraged by dissenting local leaders. It would take only a few fatal shots by old-school white farmers to upset the delicately balanced racial applecart. After that, new foreign investment would be even harder to attract than it is today.

  But there is a more positive end to the story still within reach. Mugabe may well lose the election. The new government of Zimbabwe may learn how to make good use of all the competent people, both black and white, just waiting for the right lead, to put the country back on its feet. And the South Africa government, watching the Zimbabwean crisis unfurl, may learn the price of its own skewed priorities before it is too late.

  Jonathan Power is a freelance columnist based in London.
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