Why invasion of Zimbabwe is a very real option

Here is the thing with Mbeki’s fabled “quiet diplomacy”: it has not, does not and will not work.

While Mbeki and his simpering entourage of struggle buddies have been donning their Armani suits and hopping north on their private jets for the last few years, Zimbabwe has steadily accelerated into anarchy under their entrusted watch. As a result of their cronyism and morally corrupt incompetence, we are now getting a small taste of what a failed state on our border is all about.

We have already been subjected to massive illegal immigration from Zimbabwe during the reign of the laughable, Hitleresque buffoon in Harare. It has placed massive strain on our already strained facilities from hospitals to police stations, schools to roads and jobs. While a manageable number of immigrants work hard and add to the economy, an unmanageable number of such immigrants form a desperate human tsunami, swamping the possible good that controlled immigration could offer, leaving destruction in its wake.

It is happening right now on our northern borders. Thousands of people are daily trying to join the millions already here. Massive illegal immigration is creating a refugee crisis that we South Africans can not hope to cope with on our own.

In addition, we now have to deal with a cholera epidemic that is almost certainly going to cross the Limpopo and start infecting and killing South African citizens. We have to deal with refugees that have no option but to turn to crime in order to feed themselves. We have to deal with an international perception that regionally groups us together with Zimbabwe and judges us by their actions. Those that know better have noted our inability to provoke change up north and lump us together anyway. Frankly, we deserve it.

Why are we in this position? We are here because nobody in charge of our country bothered to take the threat seriously when it was obvious what was coming. The media and opposition parties have been hammering on about this fairly obvious outcome for years now. So endless were the warnings and the horror stories that they have faded out into background noise. The ANC government’s response has been to respect the sovereignty of Zimbabwe, respect the leadership of Zimbabwe and respect the rights of those leaders to travel and visit our country and be greeted on the tarmac.

By mutual exclusion, their response has also been to disrespect the wishes of the people of Zimbabwe who did not vote these thugs into power, to disrespect the rules of law and democracy when the sham elections were hammered into shape by Zanu-PF militia and to disrespect the human rights of farmers, farm workers and millions of hungry Zimbabweans. People were beaten and murdered and had their generations of work, their jobs and lives destroyed and were doomed to starvation. We stood by and watched and then we sickeningly prevented the world from taking any kind of action in the UN and ratified their elections.

Seven hundred thousand people were bulldozed out of their homes. That makes Sophiatown and District Six look like a joke, yet how raw are those wounds? We stood by and did nothing and said nothing. Intimidation, beatings and killings are commonplace in Zimbabwe today. There is no free press. There is barely an economy. There is almost no food being produced. There are no viable hospitals. There is no free trade. Our leaders chose to ignore this whilst maintaining the respect for those who are in charge of this diabolical mess.

It is now obvious that without intervention, nothing concrete is going to change in Zimbabwe. Since quiet diplomacy has now thankfully died and gone to bunnyland where it belonged all along, what are the options?

There is, to be blunt, only one option: Zimbabwe needs to have the results of the last contested election enforced. The MDC needs to take power as per the election mandate given by Zimbabwe’s long-suffering people. The MDC will then have to get foreign support; an embarrassing necessity for yet another African disaster imposed on Africans by Africans.

Blaming the West’s actions a hundred years ago and hiding behind some colonial, racial excuse is simply bull. The country was more than viable when Mugabe took over. He had the hopes of the world with him. He killed those hopes along with his own people. It is his fault. It is Zanu-PF’s fault. It is not Tony Blair’s fault. It is not Britain’s fault. A Zimbabwean born, Zimbabwean bred, Zimbabwean megalomaniac has destroyed Zimbabwe. That is the hard, cold truth.

The stability of the region and the upholding of democratic principles and human rights demand change there in a voice so loud that it can now not be ignored.

It is also obvious that this will not happen without some kind of real pressure being imposed on the Mugabe regime to step down. It is also clear that any kind of power sharing deal is simply a joke and will be dominated by Mugabe. This will have dire consequences for Zimbabwe and for its neighbours. There would be no credibility; nothing would really change and quite frankly, Zimbabwe has spoken and they don’t want him any more.

So, since Zimbabweans and the vast majority of SADC’s people all want the same thing, why not implement the following:

One month from now, with the blessing of SADC and the UN, a repentant and suitably humbled South Africa should lead a coalition comprising a significant peace keeping force into Zimbabwe to stabilise the situation there. It should constitute representative troops from every SADC country and any AU country that can spare them. Negotiations should ensure as much prior compliance with the security apparatus and the military of Zimbabwe as possible to prevent open fighting. It is quite likely that under the current climate in Zimbabwe, the military leaders would be happy to make a deal to save their own complicit skins and abandon Mugabe completely at the threat of large-scale, unified military action from multiple states.

The peace keeping force should initially centre in Harare and Bulawayo, and offer protection to the MDC with a mandate to allow the party to take full governmental control of Zimbabwe, starting with those two cities. If Mugabe does not stand down, he should be captured, arrested and tried. If he does stand down, he should be arrested and tried. Why should he be afforded any kind of leniency? People with far shorter rap sheets are waiting in line at the International Criminal Court. He would fit in perfectly. His “struggle credentials” are now a joke. His motives for “struggling” were quite clearly for self-enrichment and the pursuit of absolute personal power. He is an embarrassment to actual struggle heroes and should be exposed as such.

Why has it become necessary to take such radical action? Should we not keep talking? Is military intervention ethically justified? Is this simply an emotional reaction that upon closer scrutiny will prove to be a bad decision?

Contrary to popular belief, governments of countries do not invade other countries for humanitarian reasons. It is often sugarcoated in this way to appeal to the electorate, a fundamentally emotionally charged mass of voters with no real interest in the gritty details of rule or national strategy. There need to be some very real benefits to the invading countries to necessitate such action. The NATO bombing of Serbia, the US-led coalition invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the US backed invasion of South Ossetia are all recent examples of action taken purely for overwhelmingly strategic reasons. They were all coated in humanitarian sugar and in some cases there may have even been beneficial humanitarian spin-offs after the fighting and bombing stopped. Strategic gain, however, dominated the decision to invade in all cases.

Going to war is a huge decision and should not be taken lightly, but sometimes the options just run dry. As safe as talking is, it is has proven totally ineffective. SADC have a number of important strategic reasons to validate this action in addition to the compelling humanitarian necessity:

• Invasion for peace keeping reasons would almost certainly have overwhelming international and UN support should South Africa and SADC back the plan. The world is horrified by what is going on in Zimbabwe. The world is further horrified by the South African reaction and lack of condemnation. We are seen as complicit at best. We need to redeem our image in the eyes of the world with concrete action and earn back our respect.

• The regional stability of SADC is threatened. The worse things get in Zimbabwe, the worse things get for SADC countries. The quality of life of all SADC citizens is directly affected by the decline of Zimbabwe. Foreign investment in these lean times will be harder to come by as a result of Zimbabwean catalysed regional instability and the resulting poor image projected abroad. Refugees place enormous strain on the countries receiving them. Zimbabwe’s leadership is dragging us all down during difficult times. We need to stop the rot now.

• The physical well-being, safety and security of the citizens of South Africa is under direct threat from Zimbabwean refugees who are exporting cholera and crime into our country as a result of the collapse of their country. This poses a threat to our own domestic stability. Recent riots and killings are the tip of the potential xenophobic iceberg that will only become visible when the real tsunami hits. It is the mandate of government to protect our citizens from external and internal threat. Zimbabwe is now both. Action needs to be taken. Talking has clearly not worked.

• South Africa is funding the crisis in Zimbabwe directly with taxpayers’ money. We are paying for food aid for starving Zimbabweans. We are supporting millions of Zimbabwean refugees. We are exporting desperately needed electricity, providing urgent and expensive healthcare and we are allocating our resources to prop up an impotent mediation process. We have allowed Mugabe to destroy the economic benefits of a flourishing trading partner on our border. Zimbabwe’s ruin is costing us big money that we need for our own people. There is therefore a huge economic imperative for instituting regime change in Zimbabwe.

• Mugabe has begun to dismantle the working structure of the MDC, kidnapping activists and party figures. If he is successful, there will soon be no viable party to replace Zanu-PF. Removal of Mugabe under those conditions will either be impossible or create a power vacuum and almost certainly a civil war. Mugabe knows that invasion will be forced down the list of options if there is no viable replacement for his government. It is therefore critical to act quickly before he has more time to achieve this objective. The MDC is intact, has been voted into power, is ready to rule and can hardly do any worse than ZANU-PF. It is imperative that they get the chance before they are structurally incapable of doing so.

• It is in South Africa’s local and international interest to project our regional power in a globally acceptable and benevolent but firm way. If we do not do this and somebody else does, Nigeria for example, that country will become the conduit for international negotiation and the gateway to Africa. The benefits of being the portal country to a massive region cannot be underestimated in the context of our foreign policy strategy. We are in a unique position to project an image of a country that upholds universal human rights and democracy – good power. That image landed us 2010. We have not done much in recent years to improve this image, choosing rather to drag it through the filth and dump it in the trash. This is our chance to put things right and gain friends in high places.

• The timing of military action in Zimbabwe could not be better. The Zimbabwean military is unpaid and morale is therefore low. The crisis is getting major international media and condemnation of Mugabe and Zanu-PF is universal. Mbeki has been replaced in South Africa and would provide the ideal scapegoat for our previous indiscretions. Zuma needs a huge boost to his popularity and image both locally and internationally. It is a risk but should it pay off, he will instantly be known as the saviour of Zimbabwe and much less as the corruption king of South Africa.

• Regime change in Zimbabwe is as inevitable as the fall of apartheid was. The sooner it happens, the sooner the rebuilding will begin and the decline will end. The longer we wait, the longer it will take to rebuild Zimbabwe and the greater the problems that we will have to deal with here in South Africa. We have wasted enough time already.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the security of our country and the well being of our citizens are increasingly coming under threat from the north. As well as having serious humanitarian reasons for catalysing regime change in Zimbabwe, there are some very compelling strategic reasons to do so as well. Those compelling strategic reasons should result in concrete action.

The time for talking is over. The time to act is now.

Mugabe does not negotiate. He manipulates, murders, tortures, lies and steals. We have put up with him for long enough. We do not need any more proof. We need a new neighbour. We need a new neighbour now.