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Enabling Mugabe
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Having returned from a tour of the United States and Europe to raise funds for his financially strapped country, Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangiri, has hit up the People's Republic of China for nearly a billion dollars in loans, and China has elected to provide them.
The relationship between China and Zimbabwe goes back to China having trained the guerrillas that ultimately were responsible for ending white minority rule in what was then known as Rhodesia. Zimbabwe's leader since majority rule began, Robert Mugabe, has kept good relations with China while he has managed to put off most of the rest of the world.
Indeed, Zimbabwe's financial crisis is largely one of Mugabe's making. When majority rule came in 1980, Mugabe had urged the country's white farmers, many of whom came from families that had been there for generations, to stay and continue to work the land. The country thrived for a decade, shining not only as a model of peaceful coexistence, but also as an example of how newly independent or emancipated African countries could overcome the burdens of colonialism and become prosperous.
Then Mugabe changed: An economic downturn in the early 1990s caused Mugabe to turn on the white farmers. Farmers had their land expropriated and were often violently attacked in the process. The farms were then handed over to untrained workers who failed to produce enough food to feed the population. White farmers became scapegoats for all the country's ills, including the country monumental inflation, as well as a shield against criticism of other Mugabe policies, including involvement in foreign wars.
Mugabe's latest display of dictatorial flourish came with last year's presidential election, when, as happened recently in Iran, the results were (by most people's accounts) tampered with. Despite violence since that election, in February of this year, the challenger, the aforemenioned Tsvangiri, has taken the seat of prime minister and Mugabe has remained president. This "compromise," however, has been tainted with further abuses of power by Mugabe, which, again, is why Tsvangiri's fundraising efforts were less than successful — until now.
If the thinking behind the U.S. and Europe's refusal to provide larger amounts of aid to Zimbabwe was that reform was still needed (and, while they don't say it out loud, the U.S. and Europe's leaders are all in almost universal agreement that Mugabe has to go), then it's possible that China's billion-dollar loan has given the régime in Zimbabwe as it is currently consisted a new lease on life.
And, frankly, that's a shame. While, on the one hand, ongoing humanitarian crises in Zimbabwe need to be addressed and financial aid is one of the only ways to do this, while Mugabe remains in power, it's likely that corruption will continue and any aid given to Zimbabwe will be misappropriated. The Obama administration's strategy seems to have been to keep pressure on Mugabe through sanctions while giving Zimbabwe's government enough money to prevent collapse but still keep the heat up. China has attached no such conditions — it would be foolish to think they would have. China's aid to Zimbabwe, in the end, is the extension of the people of Zimbabwe's sentence under the iron heel of Mugabe.
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