Colonial Rhetoric Diverts Attention from the Real Problems

Since last I wrote on this blog, things have taken a turn for the worse in Zimbabwe. Elections held last week were boycotted by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), with their leader Morgan Tsvangirai citing a campaign of violence (inc. murder, rape and torture) and intimidation against his party. Unopposed, President Robert Mugabe won a landslide victory. Scores are internally displaced, others have fled to neighbouring Zambia and South Africa. A once economically prosperous state has become a shell.

One would think that the many Africans who live under oppressive regimes might have seen this moment as an opportunity to rally behind their brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe. The continent, has however, remained eerily silent. Despite movements by the Kenyan prime minister (himself the victim of a stolen election) and the Botswanan vice-president to have Zimbabwe expelled from the African Union at its recent meeting in Egypt, the main heavyweights on the continent refused to be drawn. The African Union, and especially South Africa, merely shrugged at what has been called a "Munich Moment" for the continents fight against authoritarianism.

But how can this indifference be explained? It appears that Mugabe and many of his supporters have been brought together through the use of a post-colonial rhetoric. There is no love lost between Mugabe and the West (an adviser recently declared that the West could "go hang a thousand times"), and it appears that some African leaders would rather support an African dictator than be seen to be supporting the Western governments that have rejected his election. Mugabe knows this very well, and he draws upon his past as a leader of the colonial resistance movement, drawing in political support from other nations where his Zimbabwean "war veterans" helped to further the Marxist cause in the 1970s.

It's true that colonialism does have "legacy issues". The poverty, exploitation and structural violence found across the world so obviously highlights this. It was a blight to many nations across the world, and in neo-colonialist wars it continues to be a problem. But I think that there needs to be a moment of change in thinking regarding European colonialism in Africa if leaders like Mugabe are to be silenced. There is a sharp difference of opinion developing across the continent between the old-school revolutionaries who fought in the wars of independence, and a new generation. Unlike the previous generations of politicians, these new leaders see the "sovereignty" argument for what it really is: a legitimating discourse, that references racism and neo-colonialism to deflect attention away from the shortcomings of the political elites and the orgies of violence that usually follow.

When the electorate and leaders are whipped up into a political frenzy around the issue of colonialism, their attention is distracted from the real issues at hand. Why is it that food has become so scarce in a state that was once the bread-basket of South Africa? Why has inflation reached frankly laughable levels? The indignities endured by large sections of the Zimbabwean population, under black rule for more than 30 years, have little to do with Britain. Perhaps this is the moment that the continents leaders examine the real causes of their poverty today. Once freed of this obsession with small islands off the coast of Europe, Zimbabweans and Africans may have a greater opportunity to scrutinize their own leaders.