Zimbabwe and China: a toxic legacy

As the electoral process in Zimbabwe collapses, we should reflect on who could have stopped this sorry chain of events. Much has been said about the ineffectualness of African leaders, who left it to the West to apply most of the pressure on the increasingly brutal Mugabe regime - with the predictable outcome that Mugabe fell back on the "fighting colonialism" line. But we should also not forget the role of China in this debacle; China is increasingly filling the gap left by the growing distaste in the West for dealing with tyrannies, except in the pursuit of its unslakable thirst for oil.

A shipload of Chinese armaments for Zimbabwe was turned away from South Africa on Friday, April 18, 2008, thanks to activist unions, an inquiring press and a strong human rights activist community. Despite claims that it was headed back to China, it has subsequently shown up in Zimbabwe.

The timing of this shipment led to the obvious question: was this the reason for the delays in counting the votes in the now not so recent first-round election?

Was the government waiting for fresh stocks of ammunition before embarking on all-out war on its own people?

Three million AK47 bullets would go a long way in a country of 12 million (minus whatever number are now refugees). Certainly, the savage violence which led the "opposition" (where else is the biggest party the opposition?) to call off participation in the presidential run-off could have been fuelled by these weapons.

This is not an isolated incident of Chinese complicity in violence in Africa. For example, the Rwanda government imported sufficient machetes from China to give one to every third male member of the population. Then there's Darfur - despite worldwide publicity of horrific crimes of violence, China remains the Sudan's biggest armaments supplier.

Throughout all this - and protests about Tibet and human rights violations generally in China itself - the continuing mantra has been "no interference in internal affairs".

If you check out the Chinese human rights policy in detail, you will see it's very carefully fudged to allow interference where activities "endanger world peace and security", which means "colonialism, racism, foreign aggression and occupation, as well as apartheid, racial discrimination, genocide, slave trade and serious violation of human rights by international terrorist organizations".

How, I wonder, is supplying weapons in Darfur, Rwanda and now Zimbabwe justified in this light? "Genocide" is listed in the categories where interference is allowed. Some might argue for that matter that annexing Tibet and destroying its culture is "colonialism".

The saddest thing of all though about this whole debacle is the way South Africa has repositioned itself as fudging human rights in its Zimbabwe policy.

The armaments shipment was not delayed by an intervention of the government. On the contrary, there is evidence that the South African Government was facilitating it all along, offering a government-owned logistics operation when others refused to handle the shipment in a South African port. Contrast this with how the ruling African National Congress in opposition did so much to change the inviolability of "non-interference in internal affairs" by making human rights a limiting factor on what governments could do.

If the Chinese Government can see no evil, it's sad but not surprising. If the South African Government can neither see nor hear any evil - let alone speak out against evil - it's pathetic.

You have to wonder what the whole anti-apartheid movement was actually about. It certainly has not resulted in the ANC perpetuating the legacy in international affairs that it fought for.

Thanks to a vigilant press, an activist civil society and a strong union movement, South African has been saved from absolutely total disgrace. But it's hard to see how Thabo Mbeki (a leading promoter of the ANC in exile) can't leave office as a total failure.

First there was the debacle of failing to deal with the HIV pandemic based on the remote possibility that the mainstream science was wrong, then there was backing incompetent ministers at all costs, and now this - the defence of a failed policy on Zimbabwe at all costs.

The collapse of the presidential run-off in Zimbabwe only further underlines his failure to intervene decisively. Quiet diplomacy, supposedly the only solution to the problem, has failed so comprehensively that you have to ask whether it was any better than doing nothing at all.

And China? I hope there will be a day not too far in the future when China will be a more open society, and its people will look back on China’s role in Africa with shame and embarrassment. But I am not holding my breath. The Belgians, for example, have battled to accept their role in the destruction of the Congo, including complicity in the murder of independence prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. And of course, for Chinese readers, there's the reluctance of the Japanese to admit their crimes in World War II.

Crimes against humanity are not only crimes against individuals, but crimes against us all: they violate the very concept of what it is to be human. Until this idea is widely accepted, we will have made no advance over the barbarity that was unleashed in Europe in 1914, when old-fashioned limits to the projection of power were overwhelmed by mechanised warfare. Until we develop limits not only on what we can do, but on what we should do, crimes of this kind will continue to be committed.