Zimbabwe: the moral freedom to take a stand

In his first masterwork, Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre – the father of Existentialist philosophy — argues in neo-Kantian fashion that human beings don’t have a choice about being “free”. We are “doomed to be free”, according to him. In other words, even when someone ostensibly chooses NOT to be free – blaming his or her actions on other factors such as uncontrollable drives or irresistible societal influences (such as “respect” for someone who is higher up in the social hierarchy than yourself) – she or he does so freely. It is as impossible to escape from, or deny, our freedom as it is to jump over one’s own shoulder; it jumps with you.

Although it is a worthy subject, I do not here wish to focus primarily on Sartre’s thought or on its philosophical-historical roots in that of Immanuel Kant, however. My allusion to his bracing insight into the inescapability, as well as the “groundlessness” of freedom (the curious fact that there is nothing more “fundamental” than human freedom when it comes to ethical choice), is here intended to serve the purpose of prefacing what I wish to say about the reported situation in Zimbabwe.

As far as the latter is concerned, I believe that it would be a gross denial of one’s moral freedom (as understood by Sartre) NOT to take a stand in solidarity with one’s fellow human beings in that blighted country (the blight bearing the name of Robert Mugabe), who are truly in extremis as far as human suffering is concerned. If, a year ago, one had thought that the people of Zimbabwe could not sink any lower into the quagmire of economic collapse due to Mugabe’s paranoid clinging to power, then the present situation, where a preventable disease such as cholera has already claimed the lives of hundreds of people as a result of (yet another instance of) mismanagement, and hundreds of Zimbabweans are leaving, or trying to leave the country every day, must surely convince one that the nadir of suffering in our neighbouring country must be approaching. Or must this be the case?

Isn’t it true that things seem to be capable of getting even worse than they appear at a certain point, although one tends to cling, in typical human fashion, to the hope that “things can only get better” from here on?

I am assuming that the reporting on these things, available to one in various media, is comparatively accurate. And if this assumption is correct, then I believe that, while ordinary people like myself can do very little to remedy the situation – except to do the kind of thing that I am doing here, namely to speak out (or write) against Mugabe’s reign of terror, and the horror accompanying it – our political leaders, as well as those in other Southern African states (with the exception of Botswana, whose government has been exemplary in condemning Mugabe unreservedly), could do a whole lot to bring about a drastic change for the better in Zimbabwe. Not to have done so yet, despite many wasted opportunities, is to have reneged on their freedom to take a stand; Sartre might have said that they have in effect denied their own freedom by hiding behind all manner of “diplomatic” excuses not to exercise this inescapable moral freedom.

I have spoken to several Zimbabweans, who are weeping for their country, and would like nothing better than to go back there and be given the opportunity to live a life of comparative dignity, which is impossible for ordinary people under the present circumstances.

That ONE megalomaniac (little) man has been allowed to hold the fate of the whole country’s people in his grubby, selfish little hands, is beyond me (and I’m sure beyond most people with a smidgen of humanity in them). Not only should he be given an immediate ultimatum to step down (he never won the election legitimately, anyway), but he should also be held accountable for the death of thousands of people – followers of Joshua Nkomo – who were, according to widespread reports at the time, shortly after Zimbabwe’s independence, slaughtered by his troops. If this does not constitute a “crime against humanity”, I don’t know what does.

If our political “leaders” have the courage to draw on their inalienable moral freedom, they should not give Mugabe any further choice in the matter; he should be forced to step down so that a semblance of civilisation may return to Zimbabwe. Anything short of a concerted attempt to remove Mugabe would make Southern African states’ leaders complicit in the unspeakable suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans.