I was sufficiently interested in politics as a university student not only to become involved in demonstrations but also to change from my science subjects to Politics. It wasn't a sensible choice in view of my planned career - to be a secondary school teacher in Africa - though, to be honest, nor was the other subject I took as part of Keele's joint honours system: Geology. As a consequence I ended up teaching subjects I knew precious little about: Maths, which I'd always hated, Geography, because, to the timetabler, it sounded like Geology yet I didn't even have an O level in it, English, in which my sole qualification was O level, and anything else left over when the timetabler had almost finished allocating teachers to classes. In retrospect, that I taught subjects which I knew little about might have been a good thing: at least, when I took up my first teaching post in what is now Zimbabwe, I approached lessons from the same position as the student.
I've never regretted that decision all those years ago. Geology walks with me wherever I go. I see landscapes differently, and I've always had mineral and fossil collecting as hobbies. Nor have I ever regretted my Politics, perhaps for much the same reason: I have a deeper understanding of what is going on.
Most of us who live in a democracy accept that there is a contract between a citizen and his/her government, the basis of which is that the former will support those in power, even if he/she doesn't necessarily agree with everything they do, in return for the opportunity, at regular intervals, to remove them if and when they perform badly through a free, fair and peaceful electoral process which involves all eligible citizens. In the intervening period, while a citizen expects to be able to influence government, he/she also accepts the right of the government to govern, but on one condition: that what it does is evidently in the interests of the citizenry as a whole. To me, the big question has always been how a citizen judges when this contract has been broken, and what he/she has the right to do when it happens.
It is evident that the contract between citizens and government has been broken in Zimbabwe. No-one believes the recent elections were legitimate, not least because so many were coerced - the opposition party as well as the voters. Even Mugabe has shrugged aside any such pretense. Secondly, the government has long ceased to act on behalf of its citizens. It is now an elite that seeks power only to accrue individual wealth, even at the expense of its citizens: the inflation rate is 8.5 million percent, which means that the price of an item doubles every three days, social services such as schools and hospitals are in a state of collapse, considerable numbers of the population have been evicted from their homes and exposed to the elements (it is winter there), and large areas of the country face an almost biblical famine.
That Zimbabwe's government - if one can still call it that - has abrogated its contract does not seem to me a reason for other states to intervene. This should only happen if conditions in Zimbabwe directly affect another country: thus I have every sympathy with Botswana, which has moved troops to the border in case the chaos it fears in Zimbabwe threatens its good order, and I support the position of the British and other western governments which refuse to intervene militarily. The argument that the situation is, in some way, Britain's 'responsibility' because it handed over power to Mugabe at independence is fatuous. What all democratic countries and supra-national organisations such as the UN must do is clearly state that Mugabe's government is illigitimate. That is why the timing of the election was such a master-stroke by Mugabe, with the count declared quickly (compare the time to the first round) so he was able to fly straight off to Egypt to the conference of the African Union and bounce them into effectively recognising him by failing to throw him out.
I taught for some time in Zimbabwe, professionally some of the most fulfilling years of my life. I was last there when Ian Smith was in power running his UDI government, a regime elected largely on a racist vote. The citizenry at that time, quite justifiably, believed that the regime lacked a contract with the majority even though it was developing the economy, kept all its people fed and, to some level at least, educated, and could boast a national average life expectancy of about 60 whereas today it is about 35. The people's response to state repression, as was their absolute right, was to rebel against it in a successful battle led, in part, by Robert Mugabe.
There is only one solution to the problem in Zimbabwe and that is for its people to rise against the illegitimate regime that represses them. Those of us on the outside should do what we can to help - for example by putting pressure on those who are in a position to weaken Mugabe's clique, such as the South African government and big mining companies like Anglo-American - but, in the end, be it at an individual or at a government level, we must do what many did for Mugabe when, all those years ago, he fought on the side of justice: help Zimbabweans re-secure their rights by arming them for another struggle.
Jon
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