21 March is Human Rights Day in South Africa. 21 March also marks the anniversay of the Sharpeville Massacre, when, in 1960, between 5,000 and 7,000 protesters converged on the police station and offered themselves up for arrest. Their crime? Refusing to carry pass books. This description of the killings taken from Time in an article published in 1960:
When police tried to seize an African at the gate to the compound, there was a scuffle and the crowd advanced toward the fence. Police Commander G. D. Pienaar rapped out an order to his men to load. Within minutes, almost in a chain reaction, the police began firing with revolvers, rifles, Sten guns. A woman shopper patronizing a fruit stand at the edge of the crowd was shot dead. A ten-year-old boy toppled. Crazily, the unarmed crowd stampeded to safety as more shots rang out, leaving behind hundreds lying dead or wounded—many of them shot in the back. It was all over in two awful minutes.
This attack galvanised international reaction against the totalitarian apartheid regime. It’s hard not to draw comparisons between the South African experience and ours in Zimbabwe. The history of human rights abuses under Robert Mugabe is immense, beginning a mere couple of years after he took office with the Gukuruhundi, where an estimated 20,000 civilians were murdered.
Zimbabweans are well aware of Thabo Mbeki’s police of ‘Quiet Diplomacy’ on Zimbabwe. The world has learned that this absurd policy could easily be re-titled read ‘Say Nothing at all’. Zimbabweans experience it either as ‘I don’t give a damn’ or ‘Robert Mugabe, you’re my pal’. Sokwanele published a cartoon, drawn especially for the G8 meeting held in Scotland in 2005. I think this conveys our sentiments on the subject quite well:
I’ve written about this before, because the South African position of ‘Quiet Diplomacy’ rattles me almost more than anything else. Bizarre, you may think, given all we undergo in Zimbabwe. But a year ago I wrote about ‘hope’ - the name I choose to blog under - and how critical ‘hope’ is to the struggle for freedom in our country. Looking back on our elections in 2004 I wrote:
It wasn’t long before we [Zimbabweans] realised that the elections had already been stolen and that the theft had taken place long before people started to queue to vote on polling day. ‘Hope’ for me at that point could have been defined as faith in the possibility that the world would read those reports and say ‘no more’ to mugabe and his regime.
But that didn’t happen. The elections were stolen and the world did very little. South Africa and Thabo Mbeki went even further and tried to make out that the twisted lie of elections in Zimbabwe was an honest depiction of reality, and in so doing betrayed every single decent pro-democracy person in this country. Hope was shattered - bludgeoned and murdered - and the despair I experienced with the loss of hope was overwhelming.
That moment, when the realisation that the South African government would do nothing - NOTHING at all - to see justice and human rights restored in our country was the lowest point I’ve ever experienced in the years I’ve been doing my small bit for democracy and human rights in our country. Mugabe can’t bring me this low, because he is evil and I expect nothing from him. Up until that moment two years ago, I’d believed that South Africa, with its history of apartheid and the way it had embraced the principles of Human Rights (they have a Human Rights Bill), would not be able to stand by and watch Zimbabwean people lied to, brutalised and beaten. But they could, and they did. And it took me a long time to pick myself up after that.
I’m afraid to say that I expect nothing from the South African government anymore, and that’s about as damning a statement I could ever make of a government; in fact, the only other government I think I would say that about is our own. I expect nothing from Zanu PF either.
But those sentiments do not apply to the South African people. I wish them a ‘Happy Human Rights Day’ today. You deserve and earned this day with pain, suffering and a long hard struggle, and it’s a day that belongs to the people of South Africa. My sense of warmth towards South Africans today is partly because I’m learning that my own incomprehension and disgust with the South African government’s position is shared by South Africans themselves. And given that South Africa is a functioning democracy (use your votes!) that knowledge encourages me.
South African bloggers who don’t usually write about politics were so angry they took the time to post on Zimbabwe: like ChampagneHeathen:
Mugabe is a tyrant. He disgusts me. The end of him, and his cronies, and possible inhumane elite successors is something, if I were a religious person, I would pray for.
And this from The Granny Wrangler:
Truth be told, I am too angry to write. Too sickened and too repulsed. [...] No, i’m sickened by you South Africa. You who stands by with your quiet ***** diplomacy, your mouth closed for fear of opening it and losing the blood diamonds you are concealing between your clenched teeth. Yes, Nkosi Sikelele you cowering sycophant. You make me sick.
And then there’s the time taken by Mark Forrester, Dale du Preez, Undefined and iScatterlings. Someamongus wrote an open letter to Thabo Mbeki. His prefatory note really touched me:
This letter has been a long time coming and in a way I’m ashamed that this small missive represents my only real effort to help my neighbors to the north. I take a bit of comfort in knowing my feelings of guilt and helplessness are not unique but are shared by many fellow South Africans. The majority of us have long realized that there are problems in Zimbabwe but have watched as people much more powerful than ourselves foundered against the rocks of seeming governmental cynicism and stubbornness.
This comes from Jonty, writing at The Fishbowl. A week ago he wrote:
I’m hoping against hope that the latest attack on Morgan Tsvangirai will be the straw that breaks the back of Thabo Mbeki’s proverbial quiet diplomacy camel. It’s simply inexplicable that after fighting so hard for human rights in this country, our government applies a head in the sand approach to some of the worst human rights offences Southern Africa has seen.
Jonty admits that he “used to give Thabo the benefit of the doubt on his quiet diplomacy policies”. Today, he said (in response to still more examples ANC complicity with Zanu PF):
The people of South Africa fought with blood and lives for freedom and its moral high ground. We are currently squashing the ability for Zimbabwe’s peoples to do the same. And that is surely shameful.
Wayne, writing at Commentary, also wrote about the ANC government’s latest utterances on Zimbabwe. In a post titled ‘The ANC Backs Mugabe‘ he said
There’s not much else to the statement beyond that, for as blindingly obvious to many as it already is I’m still surprised that others believe that the South African government would be prepared to intervene for the sake of morality. Especially since I’m tempted to believe they would be more quick to support Mugabe and Zanu-PF.
Steve at Almost Supernatural has also spotted the irony that this type of comment should appear on the eve of Human Rights Day in South Africa. What was it the SA government said on the eve of Human Rights day? It was a clear attempt to lay responsibility for this type of brutality (here, here, and here)at the feet of the Zimbabwean opposition. Talk about blaming the victim!
The serious conflict in Zimbabwe has arisen because of the perception by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that recent elections in Zimbabwe were not free and fair, said a South African government spokesperson, Themba Maseko, on Tuesday.
“It think it is now public record that there were elections in Zimbabwe… at the end of those elections, the MDC were of the view that those elections were not free and fair.
“Based on the view of the MDC, we then had a situation in Zimbabwe where there was serious conflict arising out of the premise taken by the MDC that the elections were not free and fair.” (via News 24)
Steve Hayes, blogging at Notes from Underground, makes some really interesting observations in his post today (please read it) where he reflects on Mugabe, Verwoerd and Human Rights Day. He reminds us that one of Verwoerd’s favourite mantras when criticised for human rights abuses in South Africa was “we will not tolerate any outside interference in our domestic affairs.”
Where have we heard that before?
The tragedy for Zimbabweans is that when Mugabe utters the words “we will not tolerate any outside interference in our domestic affairs”, African leaders hear them saying “we will not tolerate an imperlialist/colonialist/supremacist/western/racist interference in our domestic affairs”, and they rally around and ignore the atrocities and violence that provoke a justifiable response from every decent person in the world. To their detriment, some leaders like Mbeki seem unable or not prepared to accept the reality that Mugabe is a vicious dictator and a master manipulator of public opinion. Kameelah, who is not South African but was writing from Johannesburg, said it best for me:
let’s not pimp black solidarity until its so crippled that it’s meaningless. i love black folks, but mugabe is a demagogue, zimbabwe is a dystopia and my patience is quickly fading.
Back to Steve Hayes: Mugabe apparently shares something else with Verwoerd; namely, the way he cries out that Zimbabwe is clearly being victimised by the west because, paraphrasing Mugabe, ‘look at the atrocities everywhere around the world and yet the world constantly picks on Zimbabwe‘. (The world does not focus enough on Zimbabwe, but that’s another article for another day). Steve describes a cartoon that appeared in the Johannesburg Star of 2 April 1960 (shortly after the Sharpeville Massacres). It showed
Dr Verwoerd surrounded by a group of world leaders preparing to throw stones at Verwoerd, with a Sharpeville label round his neck. There is an anonymous USA figure, with a label of “Little Rock, negro lynchings, Ku Klux Klan”, Nehru of India with the label “Kashmir”, Krushchev of the USSR with the label “Hungary”, and Nkrumah of Ghana with the label “prison for political opponents”. And the caption is, “‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…’ St John, Chapter 8″
There were more parallels drawn with South African history on South African blogs this week. Farrel, for Politics.za links the brutal treatment of Morgan Tsvangirai with that of Steve Biko. The correlation is made here as well at The Corner Office.
An article that appeared on zwnews.com on 20 March described the circumstances of Biko’s death as follows:
During interrogation in September 1977, Siebert and four other murderous police officers are thought to have smashed Biko’s head against a wall, causing him brain damage, before driving him, naked and bleeding, 1100 km across the country in the back of a police van, to a prison in Pretoria where he died six days later.
This is a link to a transcript of testimony from a pathologist into the death of Steve Biko. Pay attention to the bold bits (my emphasis):
Death was brought about by complications following on brain injury. Biko suffered at least three brain lesions occasioned by the application of force to his head; the injury was suffered between the night of 6 September and 7.30 a. m. on the 7 September.
It also established that such brain injury is always followed by a period of unconsciousness of between 10 minutes and one hour.
Keep that in mind, and now read Morgan Tsvangirai’s own description of what what the police did to him (again, note the bold bits):
I was pulled out of my car by heavily built men in police gear and they began smashing my head against the wall while pushing me inside the station.
[...]
The orgy of heavy beatings continued once we were all inside the station. They were mostly targeting my head and my face.
[...]
I felt like my head had been smashed open or I had been partially decapitated. I passed out three times, I was later told by eyewitnesses. I lost a lot of blood and was later injected with two pints. After passing out the last time, I can’t remember many things. Later I found myself in a crowded, hot, filthy and cockroach-infested police cell. I was told I was at Borrowdale Police Station.
There is another parallel with the South African experience: the transcript I cite above contains expert testimony from Professor Neville Proctor, Professor of Anatomical Pathology, who said that “Treatment might have prevented Mr. Biko’s possible death from oedema”. Like Biko, Morgan Tsvangirai and the others who were beaten and tortured by the Zimbabwean police were also denied access to their lawyers or to medical treatment for a long period of time following the beatings. Watch our video here again, and look at how slurred and dazed Morgan appears in the BBC footage. And listen to how Mike Davies describes how incredibly ill one of the other torture victims was -so ill, that Kerry Kay thought he might die in court.
How is it that South African bloggers immediately hear and see things that chime with their history of oppression, but Thabo Mbeki appears deaf to it all? Of all the people in the world, you would think his position and family’s activist background would mean the details of these atrocities would be ingrained in his memory.
Someamongus at South Africa explores what he sees as Thabo Mbeki’s unhealthy obsession with race, pointing to quotes where Thabo Mbeki has used ‘race’ as a denial and an argument to hide behind when confronted with some of the thorniest issues facing South Africa today. Someamongus says:
Although I don’t have a good quote for Zimbabwe you can almost feel Mbeki’s back bristle when Western countries criticise Bob.
There is another position taken, expressed very well by Thabo Mbeki’s own brother and discussed here on Cry Beloved Zimbabwe
[Moeletsi Mbeki] then points out what he conceives as the primary reason for the neighbours for not exerting pressure on Zimbabwe is mostly because they fear that their support for MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai would send a wrong message for Africa’s most industrialised region. Southern Africa being the most industrialised has more people working and this has given rise to trade unionism, the trade unions using their sheer size are becoming more and more political. He cites the case of Zambia where Kenneth Kaunda was ousted by a trade union leader after 27 years in power. Therefore African leaders are reluctant to be drawn into the issue of Zimbabwe for fear that they own labour movement might oust them from power one day.
In other words, Morgan Tsvangirai is a threat to Thabo Mbeki because he emerged from the trade union movement in Zimbabwe. Thabo isn’t too keen for him to succeed or to give COSATU any ideas.
This brings me to my final point. Wayne at Commentary sent Zimbabwean bloggers a message:
Zimbabwean bloggers please do not waste your time appealing to the South African government; they support your foes.
Well, you may be right Wayne; in fact, I suspect you are. But maybe we can appeal to all you South African bloggers to keep doing what you showed us this week.
Keep telling the truth, supporting us, and letting South Africans know what’s up north of your border.
Help us get our message out. Ask South African radios and newspapers to start featuring blog discussion in the mainstream media, and bring the ordinary South African voice out into the open.
You have the right to write freely where you are; we don’t. You can speak out from the rooftops; we can’t. You have come through fire to achieve your freedom; we’re still burning in hell.
If Moeletsi is right, then its power that his brother is concerned with. You have the right to vote; we don’t. Use your votes to demand a government that honours human right principles all over the world, and not one that talks about them for the sake of political expediency. If you get that government, then you’ll be helping us to get the freedom and justice we deserve too.
Happy Human Rights day to all of you, and thank you for your support. If you’re a South African blogger and I’ve missed your Zimbabwe posts, please us leave a comment and a link!
Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, Mugabe, 21 March, Sharpeville, Steve Biko, Morgan Tsvangirai, Moeletsi Mbeki, Human Rights, Human Rights Day, Thabo Mbeki, ANC, blogging
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