The effect of the decision to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth for a year should not be underestimated. It is too easy to dismiss the Commonwealth as impotent and irrelevant, particularly by people in Australia, Canada and Britain. Those rich, developed countries are members of many other powerful trade and political groupings which make the Commonwealth look less important. But from an African perspective the Commonwealth has greater significance. It is seen as one of the primary vehicles that brought democracy and black majority rule to Zimbabwe and South Africa in the first place. It is seen as an important vehicle for development aid, including aid in things like education, media, politics, medicine, law and so on. The Commonwealth has a greater comparative presence in Africa than the developed countries.
African nations have the United Nations – but they are less significant there. They have the Organisation of African states, but there are no developed nations there (with perhaps the exception of South Africa).
The suspension of Zimbabwe is ground-breaking. Hitherto, the view that once there was black-majority rule and a transition from colonial or white supremist rule, that was enough. It was a black brotherhood view. The fear at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Australia before the Zimbabwe election was that the black brotherhood view would prevail. It prevailed to some extent at the meeting when Zimbabwe was not suspended pending the carrying out of the election and the report of Commonwealth observers at it. Instead it was agreed that Zimbabwe would be suspended automatically if three chosen Commonwealth leaders agreed that the observers’ report meant the election was not free and fair.
Significantly two of those leaders were African – Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki – in addition to Australian Prime Minister John Howard. That they agreed to a suspension is important for Africa and Zimbabwe. There can no longer be any pretence among supporters of President Robert Mugabe that the election was legitimate. Mugabe’s message that all of Zimbabwe’s woes can be put down to white colonialism can be seen for the lie it is when two of Africa’s most significant black leaders have condemned the way he cheated at the election, through violence and vote-rigging.
The other significance is that it sets a new standard for Africa. Hitherto, the Organisation of African States had a rule that any nation being taken over by a military government would be expelled from that organisation. But the Zimbabwe expulsion goes further. It sets a standard of a free and fair election. Given that the expulsion move included the leaders of two of the most significant African nations, the message of the expulsion is that free and fair elections are a universal standard for Africans to enjoy, not some alien culture imposed by the West.
The expulsion will be a personal sting to Mugabe and his followers. Further it might act as a break on renewed political violence as it says that black Africa is watching.
On the practical side, targetted sanctions are essential. Europe, the US, the Commonwealth and as many non-Commonwealth African countries as possible should shun Mugabe and his cohorts; refuse them and their families travel outside the country; refuse them access to banks accounts and other methods of hiding wealth overseas. They should also impose and arms ban, a ban on anything that can be used in internal repression; and a ban on luxuries, so the privileged elite in the Mugabe regime realise they cannot have the material benefits of their abuse of power.