The Trouble Makers

Among the edifying spectacles of the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development were the speeches and public pronouncements of political leaders from three of the major mineral-producing countries in Africa: Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia. And depending on how you hold the lens, what they said was powerful evidence of what a mess Africans have made, or what a mess colonialism left, or what a mess the new Green colonialism may yet make, in the southern third of Africa.

Let us start with Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa. His country faces a severe food shortage, the product of drought and failed agricultural policies. Canada and the United States have offered shipments of corn, the Zambian staple. Mwanawasa had rejected the food aid because the corn was genetically modified to be disease- and pest-resistant.

“Simply because my people are hungry, that is no justification to give them poison, to give them food that is intrinsically dangerous to their health,” the President told reporters at the summit. The Minister of Agriculture, Mundia Sikatana, postulating nonexistent allergic reactions to genetically modified foodstuffs, also insisted that the corn was unsafe.

In this, of course, the Zambian politicians echoed Greenpeace, who have gone as far as to say that people are now “guinea pigs in a food experiment.” Years of “frankenfood” propaganda by well-heeled activist groups in the industrialized West have won the day in Zambia. Mission accomplished: now people can starve as a result.

Immediately to the south, Zimbabwe is facing similar food shortages, on top of an almost complete economic collapse. Its president, Robert Mugabe, travelled to the summit and spoke without prepared notes: we infer that only because his speech had nothing to do with sustainable development.

Instead, Mugabe tried to counter the international criticism that has been levelled at his racist and tribalist land “reform” program — one that has destroyed commercial farming in the country, and with it the last hope that the present southern African drought will not lead to dangerous and destructive famine.

In response to the criticisms of government-supported land invasions on Zimbabwean farms, he said “we have not asked for any inch of Europe.”

Is it too much to suggest he may have missed the point here? Political supporters of the governing party in Zimbabwe are seizing land from the government’s opponents. Ceding parts of Europe had not so far entered the discussion, Mr. Mugabe.

Namibian president Sam Nujoma said African countries would “develop our Africa without your [Western] money.” And Nujoma joined Mugabe’s defence, charging that Britain was the author of southern Africa’s problems, because of sanctions against the Mugabe regime and its attempts to “impose European culture” in Africa.

That gives us an idea.

In 1215, King John signed the Magna Carta, which says in part, “no free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed, or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

In 1999, the government of Zimbabwe embarked on a campaign to destroy commercial farms in the country, by encouraging gangs (ostensibly made up of veterans of the independence struggle of the 1970s) to take over farms by violent means, while the police looked on with a blind eye.

By 1541, the practices of Parliament recognized absolute privilege and complete free speech; a freedom that broadened over the years to take in every citizen.

In 1998, security agents in the employ of the government of Zimbabwe arrested and tortured Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto, of Harare’s Sunday Standard newspaper. In 2000, government agents conspired to assassinate Geoffrey Nyarota, the editor of another paper, the Daily News. (The attempt did not succeed.) In 2001, the Minister of Information, Jonathan Moyo, said the Daily News would be silenced forever; the following day, the paper’s printing room was bombed.

In 1688, the Bill of Rights provided “that Election of Members of Parliament ought to be free.”

In 2001 and 2002, the Zimbabwe African National Union intimidated voters and election officials and contrived a result at the polls in March 2002 sustaining the party in power.

In 1701, the Act of Settlement provided that judges should hold office during good behavior and should be removable only by an Address of both houses of Parliament.

Between 2000 and 2001, the Mugabe government drove all the country’s independent-minded judges from office, culminating in the resignation of Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay. Thus it freed itself to rig the March 2002 election and continue with the seizure of property.

It seems Nujoma has a point: most of Robert Mugabe’s problems were evidently caused by the trouble-making British.

Mining companies and investors looking at resource projects in these three countries would be wise to reflect on the thinking of men like Mwanawasa, Mugabe, and Nujoma. There is some reason to believe they mean what they say: and what they say is foolish at least and pernicious at worst. He who pretends it is mere rhetoric is only fooling himself.