In Time of Famine

Letters

Vol. 29 No. 5 · 8 March 2007

From Neal Hodge

Towards the end of his dismal account of what it’s currently like to travel through its famished landscape, R.W. Johnson writes: ‘A great deal depends on whether what is happening in Zimbabwe can be termed “genocide”, as many people believe it can, for in that case the UN is obliged to act’ (LRB, 22 February). Then, having deemed intervention of some kind to be ‘necessary’, in view of the widespread homelessness and starvation in the country that Mugabe’s bizarre and vicious policies have brought about, he asks which member state might actually raise the Zimbabwean issue at the UN. By the end of the article, we’re left with little or no expectation that any member state at all is going to show willing – and Johnson might have pointed out that, even if Zimbabwe did get onto the agenda in New York and the issue of intervention went as far as the Security Council, the Chinese, busy now, as he reports them to be, signing up the Mugabe regime in their own global economic interest, would use their veto to prevent any action being taken.

There’s a parallel to be drawn between the Zimbabwe case and that of Iraq. During the many years that Sadam Hussein remained all too successfully in power, he was open to the charge of acting genocidally, given that the victims of his violence were so predominantly members of a religious group opposed to the religious group he himself represented. I don’t recall that at any time during his foul dictatorship there was international agitation for his removal on those grounds by means of an armed UN intervention. By the time there was an armed intervention in Iraq, the worst of the genocide was long past, which makes the attempt to dress up the US invasion post hoc as a humanitarian act look pretty sick.

In the same way, given that genocide must be seen to be genocide right from the start, and not a label conveniently stuck on a regime later, once patience with it has become exhausted, it would be no good claiming that Mugabe’s behaviour has only gradually become genocidal and that it’s taken time to be recognised as such. His behaviour has surely got worse, but it hasn’t got different. The fact is that arguments over whether what is going on in Zimbabwe counts as a ‘genocide’ or not are just one more red herring, well fitted to swim with the populous shoal of those slithery creatures we’ve become so used to in the last years. It turns out to be a great pity that there is anything called a Convention on Genocide at all, given the endless possibilities for inaction, expediency and downright mendacity certain to attend on any debate on whether this case or that counts as an example of it. It’s not clear to most of us that those whom Mugabe wants to eliminate, if not physically then economically, are other than his political opponents – that’s to say, those who either already have voted against him or might do so in future. By no stretch of my imagination can I see that as constituting genocide, since the unfortunates in question aren’t a ‘national, ethnic, racial or religious group’, as per the Convention’s stipulation. Speculation as to whether or not the UN might be able legally to intervene in Zimbabwe is a blind, ensuring that nothing very much is being done from outside that country to bring a degree of political pressure on Mugabe which even someone as far gone in senile megalomania as he appears to be can’t stand up to. Johnson is right, alas, to suggest that our prime minister, who has done nothing useful at all in respect of sorting out Mugabe, will ‘end his term with a … self-serving expression of regret’; but then perhaps Blair can but feel admiration for a political leader who contrives to hold onto office way beyond the moment when he becomes patently unfit to exercise it.

Neal Hodge
London N1