Thursday, June 12, 2008
Mugabe & Friends
For probably the first time in his decades of ruling Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe and his supporters are facing a very real fear of not only being rejected by his country's voters, but being rejected so strongly that they would be incapable of stealing the election with any degree of plausibility.
This prospect has Mugabe & company getting increasingly antsy, and they are reacting in a predictable fashion - Mugabe has ordered international aid organizations to cease operations in a country already facing starvation - allowing him to use the hunger he created as a weapon - vote for me and my party, or starve. On a more personal note, his supporters are getting more brutal as well - the wife of a prominent opposition leader was beaten, mutilated, and burned alive.
African icon Bishop Desmond Tutu is now calling for Mugabe's resignation. As Christopher Hitchens points out, perhaps the largest voice in Africa, that of Nelson Mandela, is remaining inexplicably silent. When Westerners speak out, Mugabe and his supporters reflexively toss out accusations of colonialism, but someone like Mandela or Tutu would be almost impossible to tar with this brush. Still, the maxim remains:
President Barack Obama.
Sen. Obama is a superstar in Africa, and should he become President, his popularity in Africa will continue to skyrocket, and his first official visit to the continent will be huge. I wonder what effect it would have if he, while speaking to a stadium full of thousands of people, in a speech broadcast worldwide, called out dictators like Mugabe, Omar Al-Bashir of the Sudan, and lesser known but nearly as bad apples such as Eritrea's Isayas Afewerki or Equitorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema, and told them, and more importantly, told Africans and African leaders in no uncertain terms that they were hurting their nations and their continent, and that it was past time for them to go. Obama's used strong words when speaking about Mugabe before, but speaking as the President would go a lot farther than speaking as a Senator from Illinois.
What could such a speech provoke? Could it provoke open revolt? Maybe in Zimbabwe, which is getting close to that already, less likely in a place like Eritrea where the government has more of a stranglehold on the media. Hopefully it would first provoke leaders to finally tell Mugabe that the game was up, and his best option would be to hightail it out of Zimbabwe as fast as possible.
Whether or not Obama would make such a bold statement is, of course, an open question. As President, he might just use his first trip to Africa to offer praise to reformists and promise bucketloads of foreign aid - less controversial stances that wouldn't jeopardize his popularity. It is apparently asking a lot of a President to take such a stance - after all, nobody believes President Bush is terribly shy about confronting dictators, and he, despite being fairly well-liked in Africa, hasn't confronted Mugabe and his ilk the way one might expect. But regardless of how you feel about his stance on any other issue, the truth is Obama would start his Presidency with influence in Africa that John McCain (or even Bush, for that matter) will never be able to match.
And if you thought he'd really do it, you'd have to think a little harder about just maybe even voting for him.
Some links via Word of the People.
This prospect has Mugabe & company getting increasingly antsy, and they are reacting in a predictable fashion - Mugabe has ordered international aid organizations to cease operations in a country already facing starvation - allowing him to use the hunger he created as a weapon - vote for me and my party, or starve. On a more personal note, his supporters are getting more brutal as well - the wife of a prominent opposition leader was beaten, mutilated, and burned alive.
African icon Bishop Desmond Tutu is now calling for Mugabe's resignation. As Christopher Hitchens points out, perhaps the largest voice in Africa, that of Nelson Mandela, is remaining inexplicably silent. When Westerners speak out, Mugabe and his supporters reflexively toss out accusations of colonialism, but someone like Mandela or Tutu would be almost impossible to tar with this brush. Still, the maxim remains:
If the dictator is willing to paint the streets with blood, democracy is coming from outside, or it's not coming at all.That being said, there is, or perhaps more accurately, possibly going to be, one Westerner who might be able to have an impact on Zimbabwe just by giving a speech.
President Barack Obama.
Sen. Obama is a superstar in Africa, and should he become President, his popularity in Africa will continue to skyrocket, and his first official visit to the continent will be huge. I wonder what effect it would have if he, while speaking to a stadium full of thousands of people, in a speech broadcast worldwide, called out dictators like Mugabe, Omar Al-Bashir of the Sudan, and lesser known but nearly as bad apples such as Eritrea's Isayas Afewerki or Equitorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema, and told them, and more importantly, told Africans and African leaders in no uncertain terms that they were hurting their nations and their continent, and that it was past time for them to go. Obama's used strong words when speaking about Mugabe before, but speaking as the President would go a lot farther than speaking as a Senator from Illinois.
What could such a speech provoke? Could it provoke open revolt? Maybe in Zimbabwe, which is getting close to that already, less likely in a place like Eritrea where the government has more of a stranglehold on the media. Hopefully it would first provoke leaders to finally tell Mugabe that the game was up, and his best option would be to hightail it out of Zimbabwe as fast as possible.
Whether or not Obama would make such a bold statement is, of course, an open question. As President, he might just use his first trip to Africa to offer praise to reformists and promise bucketloads of foreign aid - less controversial stances that wouldn't jeopardize his popularity. It is apparently asking a lot of a President to take such a stance - after all, nobody believes President Bush is terribly shy about confronting dictators, and he, despite being fairly well-liked in Africa, hasn't confronted Mugabe and his ilk the way one might expect. But regardless of how you feel about his stance on any other issue, the truth is Obama would start his Presidency with influence in Africa that John McCain (or even Bush, for that matter) will never be able to match.
And if you thought he'd really do it, you'd have to think a little harder about just maybe even voting for him.
Some links via Word of the People.
