Mugabe merits prosecution
By Admore Tshuma
THE unprecedented economic meltdown coupled with gross violation of human rights in Zimbabwe merit the prosecution of Robert Mugabe and his cronies. After clinging to power for nearly three decades, Mugabe has made sure that he wholly paralyses the economy of a country once regarded as the bread-basket, the beacon of hope in southern Africa.
Today, Zimbabwe has been relegated to a begging bowl of southern Africa and according to latest World Bank figures, Zimbabweans now have the shortest life-span the world over. This is not political rhetoric but a product of a reliable scientific measurement. The country is mired deep in poverty, and Mugabe is responsible for the severe deprivation of basic human needs such as food, safe drinking water, sanitation, health, shelter, education and information. This is the exact and universally agreed definition of absolute poverty -- a condition which is more prevalent in Zimbabwe today.
I wish to argue that Mugabe is prosecutable and chargeable with systematic violations of economic, social and cultural rights which rise to the level of serious crime under international law as understood by the Princeton Principles of Universal Jurisdiction, interpreted in light of Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. With half of Zimbabwe's population facing grinding poverty and millions more having emigrated to other countries where some live miserably as illegal immigrants, the systematic character of the violation of economic, social and cultural rights by Mugabe's regime have assumed a genocidal dimension. How Mugabe has created poverty in Zimbabwe is a question that does not need academic research. Mugabe is responsible for political repression, killing and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction. This is against the background that we now live in a globalised village - what a political leader says or does in Harare triggers a chain reaction all the way to Washington DC and beyond. It's the New World Order and it's unchangeable.
Some readers might need to be reminded, as human memory is very short, who the victims of Mugabe's murderous regime are. The answer is first they were the people of Matabeleland, then White Zimbabweans and today, anyone who opposes Zanu Pf. Mugabe has always assumed that people of Matabeleland were by definition enemies and opponents of his regime because they backed the opposition Pf -Zapu party. Remember, there was a time in the late 1980s when Mugabe tried to establish a one party state in Zimbabwe. He saw Zapu supporters as a hindrance to his plans of a one-party state, hence the attempt to exterminate them in an orgy of violence infamously known as Gukurahundi. The Gukurahundi genocide was both ideological and national in character, for in effect, it sought to annihilate an entire political spectrum from Zimbabwe's public life by persecuting members of the opposition Pf-Zapu party.
There is no doubt that Mugabe's regime should be held accountable for the crimes against humanity it has perpetrated ever since coming to power in 1980. Alongside the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland, it is my view that another of Mugabe's biggest crimes is that of social genocide. The unprecedented levels of poverty we are witnessing today in Zimbabwe stem from Zanu-Pf's deliberate policy of distributing and concentrating wealth among its cronies. Using this theory of social genocides, one can authoritatively conclude that Mugabe's enemies (and victims) are indeed the majority of Zimbabweans. In addition, Mugabe's regime can be pursued under the 1986 Limburg Principles on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economics, Social, and cultural Rights, echoed in part in the language quoted above from 1993 Vienna Declaration, the 1997 Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the evolving General Comments of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the findings of Special Rapporteurs on related topics. Such principles, guidelines and comments are all essential elements of the emerging normative framework of international poverty law.
In the Maastricht Guidelines (1997), this emphasis is further elaborated: "It is now undisputed that all human rights are indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. Therefore, states are as responsible for violations of economic, social, and cultural rights as they are for violations of civil and political rights. Violations of the Covenant occur when a state fails to satisfy what the committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has referred to as a minimum core obligation to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum levels of each of the rights, thus a state Party in which any significant number of individuals is deprived of essential foodstuffs, of essential primary health care, of basic shelter and housing, or of the most basic forms of education, is pram facie, violating the Covenant.
From independence, Mugabe's vampiric government lacked a basic attribute of all laws, and that is the simple ability to provide rational guidance for exemplary conduct. For Zimbabwe to flourish and move on as an egalitarian society we need our own version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), whose major task would be to investigate the Mugabe regime's crimes in order to reconcile and unite a now deeply divided society.
Perhaps leading British social scientist Prof Peter Townsend's definition of absolute poverty gives us a better insight of what is happening in Zimbabwe today. Prof Townsend argues in his celebrated work on poverty that individuals, families and groups in a population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged or approved, in the society to which they belong. Zimbabweans lack many more necessities that are needed for a human being to properly function and participate in his/her society. Individuals or families whose resources are so small as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life are living in poverty. In the study of poverty and inequality we find that both financial exclusion and debt are associated with low income. Moreover, debt is strongly associated with a range of psychiatric problems.
The purpose of my article is to argue that a leader such as Mugabe who has presided over the world's fastest shrinking economy, thereby condemning millions of people to poverty is guilty of social genocidal crimes and crimes against humanity which should be prosecutable in international courts of justice. There is no doubt that Mugabe and his government are guilty of crimes against humanity. To some extent, crimes against humanity overlap with genocide and war crimes. But crimes against humanity are distinguishable from genocide in that they do not require intent to "destroy in whole or in part" as cited in the Genocide Convention of 1948, but only target a given group and carry out a policy of widespread or systematic violations. Crimes against humanity apply in the context of war and in times of peace as well.
The good thing about it is that no one is immune to prosecution for crimes against humanity - this applies to those who acted on behalf of the state and even the head of the state himself is not immune. The Geneva Convention, states that if the head of state sends an army to a
troubled area or province, and that army happen to target civilians, the head of state is guilty of war crimes. The Convention goes on to state that, under such circumstances it is the duty of any nation or anyone else to prosecute or the International Criminal Court has a right to indict the head of state with his accomplices. Much of Mugabe's legislations are so capricious in their drafting as well as in their application. Above all, the whole battery of laws makes political dissent a crime. The normal functions of a responsible citizenry become the business of the country's jailers. Mugabe's government has increasingly conferred forms of lawless discretion on his functionaries in the civil service, the police and the military. There is massive deployment of state resources to inflict terror and assassination on citizens trying their best to survive in very difficult circumstances.
When a BBC reporter confronted Tony Blair in 2002 at the height of bloody farm invasions, and asked him why he was not engaging Mr Mugabe in talks Mr Blair simply said: "I will not sit in a round table conference with a leader guilty of mass murder. In fact, I will do everything for him to go." We must go a step further than just pushing for Mugabe's exit. He should be brought to account for his murderous reign that has divided our once beautiful land.
Admore Tshuma is PhD student in Transitional Justice and a former chief reporter for the Bulawayo Chronicle. Contact him at: atshuma@hotmail.com
