MBEKI AND MUGABE ARE BIRDS OF A FEATHER!

By Rebecca Mwaimbotinyi

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THE controversies currently swirling around South African president Thabo Mbeki’s head serve to confirm the long-standing suspicions of many skeptics that he has been so spectacularly impotent in handling the Zimbabwean crisis because he and Robert Mugabe are kindred spirits committed to the same ruthless principles and modus operandi.

Observers have suggested in the past that Mbeki’s lacklustre performance as troubleshooter vis-à-vis the Zimbabwean problem, first in an informal capacity under his dubious "quiet diplomacy" from 2001 to 2004, and now under the aegis of the Southern Africa Development Community, is due to his having a soft spot for Mugabe. The reason for, this, skeptics have suggested, is that the South African leader sees nothing wrong with his northern peer’s despotic rule because he believes in the same forms of bad governance to maintain his grip on power.

In all the years that Mbeki has been touted as Africa’s point-man on Zimbabwe, he has never spoken out publicly against human rights abuses, lawlessness, attacks on the independence of the judiciary and intolerance for divergent and opposing views that the Mugabe regime is notorious for. Instead, Mbeki has often been accused of belligerence towards the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) some of whose founding leaders are former trade union leaders because he does not want to give the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) any ideas that it could one day pose a similar challenge to his leadership.

The current furor over Mbeki’s firing of National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli in order to protect Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi from prosecution, is a ploy straight from the Mugabe book of tricks and subterfuge. In Zimbabwe many cases of corruption in high places have been swept under the carpet through similar blatant interference when "orders from the top" have resulted in forced transfers of key investigating officers or attacks on members of the judiciary who have shown determination to deal with such cases without fear or favour. There is an on-going example as I write this. The press has reported that on "orders from above" Selina Mumbengegwi, wife of Zimbabwe’s finance minister, who is accused of involvement in the death of a worker on her farm, is to be left to go scot-free.

The Mugabe government has resorted to similar arbitrary decrees to protect corrupt officials involved in scandals such as the multiple farm ownership racket, the pillaging of equipment from Kondozi Farm in Manicaland , the looting of the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company (ZISCO) and the abuse of government facilities such as subsidized fuel and farm inputs. Mbeki has shown himself to be a dedicated student and imitator of the Mugabe autocracy, which punishes the efficient bureaucrat for his diligence and rewards corrupt officials and cronies.

Mbeki’s reason for firing Pikoli after the Director of National Prosecutions had secured a warrant for Selebi’s arrest for corruption is that relations between Pikoli and Justice Minister Bridgette Mabandla had broken down irretrievably. What kind of coincidence that Mbeki should decide to act on this at the precise moment when he should not have interfered. No wonder Mbeki has been accused of "misleading and undermining the intelligence of the nation." The leader of the Democratic Alliance, Helen Zille has been quoted as saying, "In fact all the circumstantial evidence suggests he is actually protecting Selebi and not trying to get the truth of the Selebi matter."

Mbeki aped another Mugabe trait, protecting the corrupt and inefficient, which has allowed him to keep some of the same deadwood in his cabinet over the last 27 years. In an earlier controversy involving his unpopular Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Mbeki showed himself to be a good disciple of his older counterpart. He stood staunchly by Tshabala-Msimang after a newspaper expose that showed she had previously been prosecuted for theft and was an alcoholic, whose excessive drinking had damaged her liver, necessitating a life-saving liver transplant. In the unmistakable "shoot the messenger" Mugabe tradition in such situations, Mbeki’s government mounted a sustained attack on the newspaper that broke the story and on the judge who ruled in its favour when Tshabalala-Msimang took the matter to court.

Mbeki and Mugabe also have an almost identical way of dealing with anyone who poses a potential challenge to their positions. Mugabe has been ruthless in the way he has maintained his iron grip on power over the last 27 years as shown by the way he treated the late Joshua Nkomo and the late Ndabaningi Sithole, who were like him, pioneers of the nationalist movement. More recently, Mugabe has turned against one of his vice presidents, Joice Mujuru because of his detestation of the idea that she could successfully challenge him for the leadership of the ruling party and government. She initially gained favour because he needed to use her to fend off a serious challenge from another presidential aspirant, Emmerson Mnangagwa. Despite discarding Mnangagwa in the heat of the moment in 2004, Mugabe is now wooing him both to spite Mujuru and for his own survival ahead of crucial elections next year.

In similar underhand antics, Mbeki has been accused of sacking his former deputy, Jacob Zuma and accusing Tokyo Sexwale and Cyril Ramaphosa of involvement in a conspiracy to oust him from power illegally because of the same motivation - self preservation. Mbeki’s paranoid moves against Sexwale and Ramaphosa echoed Mugabe’s claim in 2004 that a number of Zanu-PF officials, including former propaganda minister Jonathan Moyo, had met in Matabeleland to plot a palace coup against him.

Mbeki and Mugabe apparently both appointed women vice presidents that they had no intention of allowing to advance any further to succeed them as stop-gap measures to soothe tensions within their parties while buying themselves time to figure out how to out-manoeuvre any other political rivals. As indicated above, Joice Mujuru no longer features in Mugabe’s plans ahead of next year’s polls. Similarly, Phumzile Mlambo-Nqcuka whom Mbeki appointed to the position of vice-president after Zuma’s dismissal is rarely mentioned these days as Mbeki concentrates on securing a third term for himself. So much for gender balance and adherence to the SADC Protocols, which both men exploited to maximum advantage to gain women’s support when they made the appointments.

The similarities between the two men are endless. They are birds of a feather and like peas from the same pod. No wonder Mbeki has stubbornly refused to condemn the human rights abuses and other repressive acts of the Mugabe regime. He has been hamstrung by the fact that he believes in the same undemocratic and non-transparent methods and may want to resort to more of them himself the more his bid to cling to power is opposed.