Zimbabwe and The Elders

A few days ago, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan and Graca Machal held a news conference in South Africa regarding the refusal of Robert Mugabe to actually follow through on his power-sharing deal with Morgan Tsvangirai. They were quite critical of Thabo Mbeki, amongst others, to exert more pressure on Zimbabwe in general and Mugabe in particular to stop his rabid handlling of his country and its citizens.

Carter, Annan and Machal are part of a group called The Elders who consider themselves in a way beyond politics because they have been so involved in politics, but because of their age have transcended the regionalism inherent in nation-state-based politics. In other words, they no longer act in the interests of a particular region since that would undermine their credibility but instead can descend upon different regions of the world, as necessary, to exert pressure and share their wisdom.

The irony is that one of the members of The Elders, Bishop Tutu, was quite vociferous in the ouster of Thabo Mbeki, who was ousted as president in part because of his corruption by the African National Congress party of South Africa.

But one of the most glaring components of the passivity of Mbeki's presidency was his constant blocking of the Pan African Coalition to censure Mugabe. Mbeki's continued support of Mugabe, even during the particularly heinous period of killing of all opposition members--the description of the way these people were killed was particularly grisly--essentially allowed Mugabe to continue on in this way and refuse to first deal with Tsvangirai and then honor his deal with him.

It is understandable that Mugabe does not want the interference of The Elders, primarily because many of them have lost credibility by either hailing from Western Europe/America or having been leaders who dealt with them. Unless one has grown up in a colony as a colonized person, one cannot understand the insistence of former colonies to not have the interference of white people. However the passivity of Mbeki has legitimized reasoning about his dictatorship and genocide that should have been addressed long before now.