Zimbabwe: A Tragic Flaw

To summarize this article, I dared to enumerate the scenes that will most possibly play out in the world drama that is Zimbabwe today. After the voting day of the single-candidate sham of an election, these reality and possibilities are of the here and now:

Mugabe rules until 2014. He will be 90 years old by then and will have ruled his country for 34 years. That is a long time to pay for the heroic deed he did in the past.

State intimidation will continue in the months ahead. Authorities say that, after the poll, we will see a more cohesive control by the military junta of the organs of state – since, they have seized the state. The army, police, and government-sponsored militias continue to kill, beat, and displace opposition supporters, take control of the media, and suppress electoral bodies and the judiciary.

Of course, people will retaliate and a civil uprising ensues. All this junta control will not stop civil unrest. The ire of the people cannot be capped. The opposition MDC will also not fade away. It will surely fortify itself with the help of the West. The West will play a major role in this drama. With world outrage targeting Mugabe’s party and his junta, plus world sympathy for the Zimbabwean people, stringent economic and diplomatic sanctions will be leveled against the country’s government. This puts the situation on an even bigger world stage, with a more complicated plot and longer drawn efforts.

According to relief agencies, close to half the resident population now supplement their diets with food aid. This will not abate since the country’s economy has collapsed.

Latest figures from the Central Statistical Offices (CSO) show that annual inflation rose by 7 336 000 percentage points to 9 030 000% by June 20 2008, and is set to end the month at well above 10 500 000%. The Zimbabwean dollar now trades at US$1:$17 billion on the parallel market. On electronic transfers the rate was as high as US$1:$45 billion depending on volumes. Analysts said the Zimbabwean dollar is going to continue weakening.

With their current situation of hunger and violence, people of Zimbabwe might not even see another 6 years of harsh dictatorial rule, hyper-inflation, mass unemployment, and brutal repression. Millions more Zimbabweans are expected to flee their homeland. From an original population of 13 million, more than 3 million have already gone on exodus and are now refugees. Displacement offers an even more grim existence ahead.

In the meantime, Harare has the world’s second largest deposits of platinum, which bolsters Mugabe’s friendship with China.

Zimbabwe has enormous platinum reserves which, at the present rate of extraction, would take over 4,000 years to exhaust. The Chinese are widely reported to covet a stake in Zimbabwe’s platinum mines.

Mugabe’s 25-bedroom palace is covered with midnight-blue Chinese roof tiles. His air force trains on Chinese jets. His subjects wear Chinese shoes, ride Chinese buses, and zip around the country in Chinese propjets. He has even urged his countrymen to learn Mandarin and nurture a taste for Chinese cuisine.

Zimbabweans complain that their new Chinese buses break down regularly and that the Chinese goods that flood stores and roadside stalls are shoddy. They have coined a term for the phenomenon: zhing-zhong.

China and Zimbabwe signed a letter of intent to cooperate in law enforcement and the judiciary. Atop the list is a plan for China to train Zimbabweans in managing prisons.

As with tragic flaw, the disadvantaged hero must not deserve his misfortune, but he caused it by making a fatal mistake, an error of judgment, and a wrong decision at a moment of crisis that is the inevitable outcome of his character.

In Zimbabwe’s story today, there is a gallery of heroes that could have reversed the whims of fate: Movement for Democratic Change, the United Nations, Thabo Mbeki, other African leaders, Nelson Mandela, the reputedly-coercive West, the people of Zimbabwe themselves, even the entire world.

Zimbabwe’s tragic flaw is that it hoped for heroes, when there are none.

Darfur: When War Means Business

All Darfuris are Muslim and black. The “African” and “Arab” distinctions pertain more to lifestyle and livelihood categories. Comprising 35% of the population are the “Arabs” who are nomadic herders. The remaining 65% of the people in Darfur, the “Africans,” are farmers. These two groups used to have coexisted on the land, even under the conditions of environmental calamity, desertification, and high population growth. The approximately 6 million inhabitants of Darfur are among the poorest in Africa.

In 2003, the Sudanese government gave arms to some “Arab” clans and incited them to attack “African” villages. The government’s motivation was to control the diminishing land and water resources.

Five years later, the United Nations estimates that nearly 400,000 people have died from violence and disease, and over 2.5 million have been displaced. There have been countless aerial bombardments. Entire villages have been razed to the ground. Arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial summary executions have come wholesale. Torture, abductions, rape, and other forms of sexual violence have been commonplace. Livelihoods have been rendered nil.

Sudan persists in its scorched earth policy against the Darfur farmers. The trouble has crossed over into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic. The United States has dubbed it the Darfur Genocide, while other parties contend that it is nothing but ethnic wars among tribes.

International diplomacy has failed, with promises of conflict-resolution and threats against President al-Bashir in his Khartoum regime remaining unfulfilled. With the US Fiscal Year 2008 budget, there is a projected $186 million shortfall for Darfur peacekeeping, and a $6 billion shortfall for America's core humanitarian assistance. The monetary gap is seen to have grave impact on international peacekeeping and aid efforts, negatively affecting millions of Darfuris.

For now, China continues to remain as the Sudanese government’s primary supplier of weapons and fighter jets, in its attempt to obtain oil and gas in the country. China also happens to be Sudan's largest trade and foreign investment partner.

Some have raised their faces to heaven, asking if nightmare in Darfur is going to end – and what will it take for it to end.

So long as war is a business, there will always be reasons to go to war.

In the meantime, one of the more public faces of the advocacy to end the conflict in Darfur US actor George Clooney says in an interview published Saturday in Spain, “Boycotting the Beijing Olympic Games to try to pressure China into taking action to stop the violence in Sudan's war-torn region of Darfur would be "excessive."

Darfur Genocide

War in Darfur

Save Darfur

George Clooney: Save Darfur Poster Boy