Why pick on poor us?

In the early 1980s, when I was at university in England, an official of the South African apartheid government came to speak to students of the debating society. I went along to hear him, passing my communist friend on the way who was amongst those trying to picket and disrupt the event. OK, I should have been with them but I was politically naive in those days.

I can't remember anything of what the official said except that he questioned why so much negative attention was being focused on South Africa when there were much more pressing crises needing to be resolved in other parts of the world such as the Soviet Union. I thought he had made a good point and I told my communist friend as I left the event. He laughed and told me that it is common cause for brutal regimes to try and deflect attention from themselves by making unfair and pointless comparisons with trouble spots elsewhere in the world. For him, such comparisons were odious and dangerous. He then went off to hold hands with others and sing 'We Shall Overcome'.

In around 2002, I was in London at a meeting of the Britain-Zimbabwe Society. I attended a panel discussion which included speakers Georgina Godwin of SW Radio (who had just been declared an illegal immigrant by the Zimbabwean government) and Kevin Laue from Redress. During question time, a man from the audience (obviously a plant) asked why people were demonising Zimbabwe's government when there were far more serious human rights abuses being committed elsewhere in the world. Laue's response was swift: he said it was the very argument used by the apartheid regime in an attempt to ward off international criticism whilst quietly burying mention of the Sharpville Massacre and other appalling atrocities of the South African State.

Brett's recent posting 'Admiration of Mugabe shows contempt for ordinary Zimbabweans' (http://www.citizenjournalismafrica.org/blog/%5Buser%5D/12-may-2008/824) mentions other Mugabe apologists (this time journalists) who "question why such a fuss is made about Zimbabwe and not about other countries where there are undemocratic governments, such as Uganda, and Swaziland."

The answer this time is clear cut and simple. The crisis in Zimbabwe is a lot worse than those in Uganda and Swaziland. We have a national life expectancy which is less than Darfur. We have one of the highest inflation rates in recorded history. Millions have fled the country and thousands are being attacked and internally displaced - and what is more, Zimbabwe is on South Africa's doorstep and is having a severe negative impact on its southern neighbour. We were once South Africa's biggest trading partner but we now have nothing to export and no money with which to import. I was reading earlier today Michael Trapido,s article 'In search of an exit strategy for Mugabe and Mbeki' (http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/may13_2008.html) in which he refers to the burden on the South African state by the 3 million Zimbabwean exiles living there:

"How much do you think it costs South Africa every year to babysit three to four million exiles? R10-billion, R20-billion — you give me the figure. That is a direct cost to the state — medical care, policing and on and on. Now ask yourself how many homes could we have built or mouths could we have fed for South Africans with that same money. Please remember, the exiles are here because we are allowing their government to brutalise their people to the degree that they would rather live here illegaly than in the country of their birth."

Trapido later makes the point that the cost of Zimbabwean exiles probably exceeds the Eskom and arms deal corruption scandals combined. He could as well have said that these exiles further drain the South African economy by sending as much money home as they can to feed and house their struggling families. It may not amount to that much but it still has a negative impact on South Africa.

In the end it may not only be the simple proximity of Zimbabwe to South Africa that brings the turnaround. Zimbabwe, like South Africa during the apartheid years, has caught something of the public imagination. Remember how the anti-apartheid struggle gathered a momentum of its own. There were songs, protests outside South African embassies, boycotts, media pressure ... Just by boycotting South African goods in shops, ordinary people felt that they could contribute to doing something positive. Mmm, maybe let's not call for a boycott of Zimbabwean goods - they might be hard to find because we don't produce anything.