Zimbabwe before and after the June 2000 elections: an assessment (continued)

President Mugabe's recent pronouncements on democracy, suggesting that there is an "African variant of democracy", is quite disconcerting. Throughout the 1990s there has been a disturbing phenomenon in international life: the rise of illiberal democracy, also in Africa. Clearly, the values inherent in democracy are universal: democracy is liberal because it draws on the Greek philosophical strain that emphasizes individual liberty; it is constitutional because it rests on the Roman tradition of the rule of law. As a political system, democracy is marked not only by "free and fair", multi-party elections - a rather "mechanistic" conception, so prevalent in the phoney, or sham, or pseudo democracies in Africa and elsewhere, and fuelled by the fad of election monitoring and observation - but also by what might be termed constitutional liberalism: the rule of law, a separation of powers, and protection of the basic civil liberties of freedom of speech, assembly and religion, as well as the right to property. Today, the two strands of liberal democracy are coming apart: democracy, seen in the context of multi-party elections and rule of the majority, is flourishing; constitutional liberalism is not - while the arduous task of inculcating democratic values in society is almost totally neglected. It is, perhaps, salutary to note that constitutional liberalism is about the limitation of power; democracy, in its over-simplified form, about the accumulation and use, or misuse, of power. One should be mindful of the Actonian dictum that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Therefore, democracy stripped of constitutional liberalism is not simply inadequate, but dangerous.

Finally, what does this all portend for the southern African region? First, the collective goods that nations in the southern African region are attempting to provide are security and economic development. However, the larger a regional grouping is, the more difficult collective action becomes. In this context, the admission of the DRC to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) might well prove to have been a monumental blunder, committed collectively by all SADC member states. Geographically, the DRC does not form part of the southern African region. Having become, in essence, a grouping of sub-equatorial states (whose northern boundary now extends north of the Equator), what logical argument can be advanced to deny admission to countries such as Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi? Politically, and socio-economically, the DRC is a "collapsed state": an ungovernable pseudo-entity, which has become a nightmarish liability for the rest of southern Africa. Regional integration theory suggests that a regional grouping should be kept as small as possible. It would have been much more prudent for the SADC to have consolidated its position (inter alia, by conclusively solving the Angolan imbroglio) and to have become functionally much more efficient before consideration was given to any extension of membership. Clearly, countries such as Madagascar and the Comoros would have had a more logical claim to membership of an enlarged SADC grouping.

Second, the need to stabilize Angola has been given fresh urgency by the anti-Kabila rebellion in the DRC. The threat of instability is being taken seriously because of Angola's aggressive military posture: Angolan troops assisted in toppling the Lissouba government in Congo-Brazzaville and played a key role in defeating the Mobutu Sese Seko regime in the former Zaïre. Since the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) government in Luanda apparently fears it cannot win the war against the União Nacional de Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) rebel movement on its own, is it not perhaps hoping that the SADC's sudden policy shift towards aggressive military intervention in support of so-called "established governments" (dramatically demonstrated in the DRC and in Lesotho) might one day benefit it? Ominously, the late-1998 meeting of the SADC's Inter-State Defence and Security Committee (ISDSC) declared that any threat to a member of the 14-nation community could justify intervention by its allies: an allusion to the backing for the DRC by Angolan, Zimbabwean and Namibian troops to help the Kabila regime against a Tutsi-led rebellion, and the deployment in Lesotho of soldiers from South Africa and Botswana (under a thinly disguised SADC mandate) to quell an anticipated army mutiny related to disputed general election results. This points to a move to transform the SADC, almost by stealth, into a "collective security" arrangement.

And, last, generally SADC member states had been reluctant to exercise regional leadership in issues related to preventive diplomacy and conflict management. One reason for this reluctance has been that certain heads of state have themselves been facing severe criticism for authoritarianism and intolerance in their own countries and, as a consequence, have been coming under intense pressure to allow a greater degree of accountability, freedom and democracy - for example, King Mswati III of Swaziland, Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili of Lesotho, President Frederick Chiluba of Zambia and, quite pointedly, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Small wonder, then, that the SADC's Organ on Politics, Defence and Security had not yet been operationalized for fear that it might be used against them. Therefore, the greatest deficiency within the SADC remains the absence of integrated systems, processes and methods to deal with human rights abuses, and the advancement of democracy and good governance. Naturally, these are contentious issues about which many SADC countries are very sensitive: Swaziland is regarded as non-democratic and is still frozen in time on the political dead-end road of a no-party, feudal monarchy; Lesotho, Zambia and Zimbabwe are accused of being undemocratic in election-related practices; Angola has descended into renewed civil war; the DRC is in a state of anarchy, its government facing an internal rebellion and incursions from foreign forces; Namibia has to deal with a secessionist movement in the Caprivi and the Sidudu-Kasikili border dispute with Botswana; and South Africa is seen to be drifting towards one-party ANC dominance.

The common thread running through these hiccups is a latent conflict potential that might suddenly erupt and spill over into neighbouring countries, with disastrous consequences for the region's security and stability. Obviously, this is an extremely unsatisfactory state of affairs: southern Africa cannot hope to escape from its current economic malaise where there is no democracy. After all, a fundamental relationship exists between good governance, foreign investment and economic growth.