Yash Tandon
Presentation at a meeting of the National Constitutional Assembly
April 13, 2000

Friends, in the charged political atmosphere of contemporary Zimbabwe anything you say risks being used for partisan political interests, or being mis-quoted or quoted out of context. And so I have written down my speech, and I leave a few copies with the organizers of this important meeting on a matter of deep national concern.

I divide this question into two parts:

One, should the international community involve itself in the affairs of Zimbabwe?

Two, should the civil society in Zimbabwe invite the international community to be involved in Zimbabwe?

A. Should the international community involve itself in the affairs of Zimbabwe?

1. Generalized arguments on intervention in the sovereign affairs of another nation are not accepted either in international law or by any recognized ethical code.  Arguments such as “global society is interdependent” or that “human rights are universal” or that “Zimbabwe is an open economy anyway” are examples of such generalized arguments.  These statements are valid at a general level but none of these constitutes a reason for intervention by one state or a group of states in the sovereign affairs of another.  Let us be very clear about this.  For example, the UK or the USA cannot say that human rights, or for that matter rule of law, are being violated in Zimbabwe, and therefore it has a right to intervene in the affairs of Zimbabwe.  That argument is inadmissible in international law. 
2. The whole question of intervention in the sovereign affairs of a country is an extremely complex legal as well as political issue.  To simplify, it would be correct to say that intervention is admissible on the basis of certain agreed criteria and by or through certain legitimate institutions.  The General Assembly of the UN, for example, is a generally recognized legitimate institution, and it has a set of criteria and procedures by which it approves of intervention in the domestic affairs of another country. The Security Council is a less respected body of the UN, because it is dominated by five veto carrying big powers, but it too intervenes mostly when the affairs of a country constitute a threat to international security, under Chapter VII of the Charter. 
3. In recent years, there is an effort to expand the reasons for intervention beyond concerns of international security, for example, in situations of violations of human rights. But this is a highly contentious and politically-charged area. Present-day consensus recognizes only instances of genocide as good reason for intervention by international community. Short of that it would be difficult to make a case for intervention.  Even in the case of NATO intervention in Kosovo it is arguable if its intervention there was legitimate, even though NATO might feel it was justified.  Political justification is not the same thing as legitimate. Knowing this, and fearing the veto of countries like China and Russia in the Security Council of the UN, the Western countries did not take the matter to the UN but decided to take action through the agency of NATO.  The matter is contentious. NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia is challenged by even by some American international lawyers.  I state this case only because it is well known, and to show that intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state is not as simple a matter as popular opinion might be led to believe. 
4. This is as matters stand at the level of international law. At the political level, on the other hand, interventions by one state in the affairs of another are a routine matter of international relations. From slavery to colonialism and now great power interventions in the affairs of smaller ones are part of the regular discourse of international relations. This is power politics.
5. But people, civil society if you like, are not satisfied with purely power political reasons.  They demand that reasons for intervention in the affairs of another country must have a legal, or at least a moral, force, or the backing of a community of nations whose judgment is respected by the people. It is for this reason that Britain took the matter of forced occupation of white farms in Zimbabwe first to the ACP-EC meeting and then to the Africa-EU summit in Cairo early this month. Britain wanted to get a wider support in order to claim at least a moral basis for the sanctions that it is proposing against Zimbabwe.  Having failed to secure this in these two places, it took the matter to the EU Council of Ministers where it did get the support it wanted.  But then the EU is a European institution and has no global legitimacy.  In my view Britain made a mistake in taking the matter to the EU because it has turned the matter into a Europe-Africa issue, a North-South issue.

Conclusion: Let me conclude this part first before I come to the second.  I would say that irrespective of what you think of the present happenings in Zimbabwe (whether you think the Government is right or wrong about the occupation of the farms, or the manner in which it has run, or run down, the economy), short of genocide, or a complete breakdown of law and order, it would be practically impossible for the so-called “international community” (meaning usually the West) to legally or morally justify intervention in the affairs of Zimbabwe.  It can, and may be already has, intervened in one way or another – by financing opposition groups, for example, or by diplomatic activities.  But that is a political matter, and one can argue about the propriety Britain’s conduct . 

Having failed to get approval from any legitimate international body to justify intervention, the only other recourse Britain (or any other power) has is to say that it is the local population of Zimbabwe that has invited her, or international community, to intervene in Zimbabwe. Hence the importance of the second part of my question.

B. Should civil society in Zimbabwe invite international community to get involved in Zimbabwe’s affairs? 

In my opinion, it would be extremely unwise for civil society to invite the international community to intervene in the affairs of Zimbabwe. Why?

1. First, because it is a dangerous route to take.  Outside of well recognized principles of intervention (such as in cases of genocide, or human tragedies like famine, and national catastrophes like hurricanes) and outside of the decision of a legitimate rule-making body (such as the General Assembly of the UN, or within a regional setting such as SADC), it is dangerous to open ones country to intervention by the so-called “international community”.  In a national situation there are laws that allow a state to intervene in the affairs of even a family (for example, in situations of domestic violence), but international relations are characterized essentially by power politics.  Once big powers begin to meddle into your affairs you are totally helpless to neutralize their power. They are too strong. And once you open the door to external intervention outside of the rules of legitimate agencies, it may be difficult to get the wolf out of the house.
2. Two, the so-called “international community” consists essentially of Western nations. There is no democratic decision-making in institutions through which the West normally takes action, whether it is NATO, the European Commission, the OECD, the G7, the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO.  In none of these institutions do countries of the South have a democratic voice. The West has a record of interventions in the rest of the world going back to over three hundred years, and the record is that at the end of the day it is the West that has benefited from these interventions and not those in whose lands they have intervened.
3. Three, the so-called “international community” has never been genuine in their support for human rights.  In Uganda, throughout the period that Iddi Amin was in power Britain, among other Western countries, supplied vicious “small arms” to Uganda which the regime used to carry out its atrocities and tortures on the civilian population. Britain was not concerned about human rights, only about business. Immediately, Amin was overthrown by the combined efforts of Tanzania and the underground liberation forces, Britain came in to influence the course of events to protect and promote its commercial interests.  Same in South Africa.  Here the Western governments (as opposed to the ordinary people of the West) continued to support the apartheid regime (even while imposing partial sanctions) until action by the people of South Africa and South Africa’s military defeat in Angola made the regime untenable.  It is then that the “international community” came in essentially to safeguard their own interests.
4. Four, as far as Zimbabwe and Southern Africa are concerned, one must remember that Britain is not a neutral agent, or a benign benefactor of the people of the region. It has never been so.  Britain has its own interests in Zimbabwe and in the region.  Once invited into the country and the region, Britain would use its enormous power and resources to advance its own interests. It is naïve to think that Britain would come to protect human rights or democracy or to fight corruption, even if it seeks to justify its intervention by invoking these principles.   
5. Five, and this is the strongest argument against soliciting external intervention, namely that soliciting external intervention to solve national problems is an easy way out of an apparently difficult situation, but it is a very short-sighted strategy.  The more, courageous and responsible way would be to take up the challenge oneself and mobilize the population behind a cause in which one believes.  It is possible that there are big hurdles to mobilization (such as partisan laws, or partisan police, or one-sided access to the media), but these hurdles are the challenges that would strengthen civil society. Democracy, the creation of condition for the rule of law, the removal of corruption, all these are a NATIONAL  responsibility. Civil society must not shirk its responsibility by passing the buck to foreigners.   In fact, both Uganda under Amin and South Africa under apartheid presented far bigger hurdles than Zimbabwe.  Ask a foreign country to sort out the problems for you and you would lose the opportunity of doing things by your own efforts, and civil society in Zimbabwe would emerge weaker than before.

Conclusion: Let me conclude by saying that in my opinion it would be extremely unwise to invite the so-called “international community” to intervene in the affairs of Zimbabwe. The “international community” is not a neutral force, has never been. According to well-researched writings, when President Jacob Arbenz initiated land reforms for peasant ownership in Guatemala in 1954, a CIA-engineered coup overthrew the Arbenz regime.  The land reform was reversed and since then the peasants of Guatemala have been fighting a civil war for forty-three years, a war that only ended in 1997, and the negotiations are still going on.  

The NCA had taken a brave initiative in 1997/8 to start the movement for constitutional reform.  It was a correct decision. Above all, it was an indigenous effort, national effort.  In my view, the NCA must continue in the same track and provide NATIONAL solutions to problems without seeking foreign involvement.  These problems are not as big or as insurmountable as made out in an atmosphere poisoned by partisan politics. The NCA, in my opinion, should stand for national interests that are non-partisan, or bi-partisan, interests that have to be defended no matter what government comes to power.  One of the founding objectives of the NCA was to conscientise the population and to broaden the debate on national issues.  In my view it should continue to do so and refuse to allow itself to be dragged into divisive partisan politics.