Traps for Mozambique and Zimbabwe

In this case, Nasser in Egypt was placed at one end of the growth of socialist regimes and Zambia was at the other end. In between were Nimeiry’s Sudan, Apollo Milton Obote’s regime in Uganda and Nyerere’s government in Tanzania. Obote, Nyerere and Kaunda were already infecting Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire -with whom they […]

In this case, Nasser in Egypt was placed at one end of the growth of socialist regimes and Zambia was at the other end. In between were Nimeiry’s Sudan, Apollo Milton Obote’s regime in Uganda and Nyerere’s government in Tanzania. Obote, Nyerere and Kaunda were already infecting Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire -with whom they shared long borders- while undermining the capitalist road chosen by Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya – a sister member of the East African community. Both leaders were strongly behind Kenneth Kaunda’s support for liberation movements in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia and Angola. While Dr. Kamuzu Banda in Malawi had made peace with apartheid rulers in South Africa, Kaunda was a stubborn supporter of Liberation wars.
This was so despite Zambia’s dependence on a railway line that brought imports and took out exports through South Africa and Portuguese ruled Mozambique. Tanzania’s direct cross-border vulnerability to attacks by Portuguese troops and military bombers in Mozambique did not bar Nyerere from boldly fighting for the right to host the headquarters of the Liberation Committee set up in 1963 by the Organisation of African Unity. Accordingly, from the delta of River Nile to its source countries, had emerged governments hostile to South Africa and NATO’s colonies in Angola, Mozambique and Rhodesia. Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda provided training camps for liberation fighters.
It was easy to see the appeal of “domino theory” to military strategists in South Africa, Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv. While Nasser’s death was indirectly related to a military coup, it was nevertheless rooted in being humiliated by Israel’s bashing of his armed forces in the 1967 war. A good candidate for a military coup was Obote’s regime in Uganda. From 1965 when a military jolt shook his cabinet and political alliance with the royalist in Buganda Kingdom, his dependence on Idi Amin’s loyalty had become blatant while his officer-corps was bubbling from cracks between Acholi, Lugbara and Amin’s Kakwa and Nubian ethnic loyalists. Intensive research by scholars like Nelson Kasfir revealed rivalries among military officers which could be exploited.
Obote’s fall in January 1972 was celebrated in a British newspaper cartoon depicting Prime Minister Edward Heath mocking Obote’s struggle to keep afloat when an ocean storm hit his power- boat during a conference of Commonwealth leaders in Singapore.
Diplomatic memory claims that Nyerere’s impulsive response was to invade Uganda and quickly re-instate Obote in power .His rush was, however, stayed by warnings from Chairman Mao in China who laid out the outline of a NATO trap waiting for a gullible victim. The invasion would have turned Amin into an agent of democratization of Uganda’s politics who deserved support from friends of international freedom. Foreign troops would have landed in Kampala and pursued Tanzania’s invaders all the way into the Indian Ocean to the east and Zambia to the south-west. Amid the burning bushes would have been frightened and helpless liberation fighters from Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia and Angola hosted in the country.
It was a trap not harvested .Field Marshal Idi Amin would later recall this scenario and invade and occupy the Kagera section of Tanzania. He paid the price predicted in the original script; and would later die in exile.
It would appear as if a similar trap is being set in 2013 for Robert Mugabe in Mozambique. RENAMO has gone back to war against the government of Frelimo, the ruling party. The foreign media immediately floated the option of Zimbabwe charging to support government troops. The ploy would be to tap into Mozambique’s expected new wealth from selling vast gas exports to India and other markets, by forcing her to spend on importing weapons for a never ending war. Mugabe’s drive to extract new wealth from platinum, diamond, coal and gold mines would also be diverted into becoming a market for sellers of weapons of war. Soldiers who bleed may begin dreaming of toppling nationalistic regimes in Mozambique and Zimbabwe that are nationalistic economies and bent on building prosperous African middle classes. Such scenario would strengthen hands of pro-people politicians in the South African National Congress; much to the displeasure of conservative politicians among Afrikaners who dream of a return to power as part of a conservative multi-racial alliance following widespread popular disillusionment with the ANC.
The lesson in all this is for the African Union to give RENAMO a fair and frank hearing. Angola’s civil war was fuelled by “up-country” elites feeling looked down upon by “mulato”(Afro-Portuguese) elites in Luanda. I recall watching a World Cup football game between Cameroun and Poland inside a flat owned by a Malawian. A group of young women visiting from Zimbabwe were horrified that Cameroun’s players were more physical, more skilled and winning. “See how ugly that one is” was a constant refrain of exasperation. We were watching this game in Dakar, capital of ‘’black-is-beautiful’’ Senegal; far from Southern Africa’s racial colour war. Family pictures on the wall showed a black male, a white woman and a mulato child.
Jonas Savimbi’s neurotic resentment of power in the hands of Angola’s mulato elite cost millions of lives among Angolans following his long civil war. Creative social engineering should be invested by the African Union in building peace with and among RENAMO leaders and followers. They must be persuaded to climb above being tools for setting traps against progress.