Edgar Tsimane
11 December 2008
analysis
The worsening Zimbabwe crisis has reached a "complex political emergency" that warrants the intervention of the United Nations, a senior research fellow based in South Africa said Monday.
Dr. Wafula Okumu of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) based in Pretoria said this week that sending troops into Zimbabwe to oust President Robert Mugabe will not yield desirable results. In fact, he says, "that could bring disastrous" consequences.
He was responding to Mmegi enquiries following Kenyan Prime Minister, Raila Odinga's call for the deployment of troops into Zimbabwe to effect regime change. Mail & Guardian online reported Odinga as having said on Sunday, "Mugabe's case deserves no less than investigations by the International Criminal Court in The Hague".
"If the African Union (AU) allows a military take-over in Zimbabwe, would that set a precedent and contradict its policy against such means of changing governments? asks Dr Okumu.
The security expert says Zimbabwe is going through a "complex emergency" which, he says, according to the United Nations, is "a humanitarian crisis in a country, region or society where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response".
"What we are witnessing in Zimbabwe can in fact be described as a complex political emergency. The humanitarian and economic crises in Zimbabwe are linked to the disastrous politics and erratic governance of its leader (President Robert Mugabe)," Dr Okumu wrote in the ISS website yesterday.
He observed that when the AU was launched in 2002 to replace the ineffectual Organisation of African Unity (OAU), it was wildly acclaimed for adopting a radical "principle of non-indifference", as opposed to the"principle of non-interference" that had characterised its predecessor.
The OAU had been generally despised for turning a blind eye to egregious human rights violation by despicable dictators such as Uganda's Idi Amin, Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, Central Africa Republic's Jean-Bedel Bokassa, and Equatorial Guinea's Marcias Nguema on the pretext that it was barred by the "principle of non-interference" in the internal affairs of member states. Mordantly, it condemned President Julius Nyerere when he stood up against Amin's aggressive and brutal regime.
Dr Okumu has noted that there are grey areas in invoking the audacious "principle of non-indifference".
"Although one of the motivations that influenced the AU founding fathers was what happened in Rwanda in 1994 and never to let it happen again, the nascent organisation seems to have been caught off guard when the crisis in Darfur happened. Its reaction could provide us with pointers to how it will handle Zimbabwe," he says.
The security expert reflected that when the AU was called upon in September 2004 to stem genocide in Darfur, it hesitated to act on the grounds that it had yet to carry out research to determine that genocide was taking, or had taken, place.
He argues that this was a clever way, avoiding taking action as the AU lacked the capability and capacity to undertake such a highly technical process.
"The AU not only lacked the political will to make far-reaching decisions that would protect the civilian population in Darfur but also lacked the resources, both human and financial, to implement its feeble decisions.
In view of the stark realities facing the AU-particularly its convoluted decision-making process, lack of resources, and lack of political will-it is not likely that it will intervene to protect the livelihoods of Zimbabweans.
To further compound the problem of lack of resources, the capacity of the AU is currently exhausted due to its involvements in Darfur and Somalia.
It will be unrealistic to expect it to add on its plate another complex political emergency," Dr Okumu warns. While he suggests that intervention could come from the SADC region similar to the 1998 intervention in Lesotho, he is skeptical that going by that experience, countries of the region would be keen to do so, particularly if the Zimbabwean armed forces stand up to external aggression and fight back to defend their privileges.
That being the case, the research fellow suggests that another intervention could be made under the UN mandate by invoking Chapter VII and the principle of responsibility to protect. "All the criteria for such an intervention exists vis-à-vis Zimbabwe-it has lost its sovereignty by failing to protect its civilians from loss of lives and livelihoods; the calamity is rising; and all peaceful efforts to end the suffering of the Zimbabwean people seem to have been exhausted. Force will have to be used as a last resort, as long as it is proportional, and would lead to a restoration of human security in the country."
Dr Okumu says if this were to happen, the SADC and the AU must legitimise such an intervention but at the same time he observed that the likelihood of that happening is remote. "Both these organisations would be reluctant to set such a precedent and could insist on applying the cliché of "African solutions to African problems."
"This would unnecessarily postpone the suffering of Zimbabwean people and would by default prolong Mugabe's misrule," says the research fellow.
"Alternatively, either intervention could be pre-empted by Zimbabwean security forces that could take matters in their own hands and end a disastrous situation.
"But there is a complication in this solution-the AU ban on coups d'état on the continent.
At the moment, the AU is in a standoff with the Mauritanian military that in August took over from a democratically elected government.
"All things considered, and as the international community fudges and gets mired in indecision paralysis, it is upon the people of Zimbabwe to take to the streets, and to use other means, to end the nightmare they are experiencing"
The best that the international community can do is to support and supplement their noble "second liberation struggle," Dr Okumu wrote. Zimbabwe is faced by what Okumu describes as " the triple crises of humanitarian catastrophes" due to food shortages and an outbreak ofcholera which has claimed 600 hundred lives, a political stalemate due to the failure by President Robert Mugabe to implement a power-sharing agreement signed on September 15 and an economic meltdown with a record inflation rate exceeding 2million perfect.
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