THE relationship between ANC and Zanu PF is mutually beneficial to the two parties gasping for survival, yet so hurtful to citizens in those countries.
On the one hand, Zimbabweans have been unsuccessful in all the avenues they have tried to seek democracy and its promise of prosperity.
On the other, South Africans find themselves with a migration problem in their faces. Both populations want better. In the end, both are victims of their collaborating regimes.
“Even if you bring armoured gunships with the back-up of fighter jets, we will still cross. Even if you pay crocodiles to patrol the river and lions the forests, we will still cross to South Africa, but if ANC stops supporting Zanu PF you will not see us there again”, one wrote on Facebook commenting in a discussion about xenophobia in South Africa.
His comment illustrates in a vivid way the multiple facets of the problem. The ANC is at worst complicit in perpetuating deterioration and autocracy in Zimbabwe, or at best indifferent. Either way, it has cushioned the Zanu PF government from collapsing on the weight of domestic opposition and internal pressure.
Union rooted in struggle immoral
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At first the Zanu PF-ANC alliance was useful to the people. Freedom fighters were collaborating, as they should, to fight subjugation, humiliation and inhumanity.
Now, despite Zanu PF’s misrule, electoral manipulation, economic ruin, and outright autocracy, ANC has been its biggest external support mechanism, endorsing the former freedom fighters’ ruinous overstay in power.
Some recent illustrations will illuminate the picture. Many will recall the 2002 Zimbabwe presidential election report produced by Judges Sisi Khampepe and Dikgang Moseneke, who constituted the Judicial Observer Mission appointed and deployed by South African President Thabo Mbeki.
This report was embargoed and never released until 2014, following 12 years of litigation in the South African courts.
The report concluded that “having regard to all the circumstances, and in particular the cumulative substantial departures from international standard of free and fair elections found in Zimbabwe during the pre-election period, these elections, in our view, cannot be considered free and fair”.
According to a Daily Maverick report, “for more than 12 years, the South African government fought to keep the contents of the Khampepe Report under wraps. They ultimately failed, and the details of a damning cover-up were revealed: Zimbabwe’s 2002 elections were rigged, and South Africa knew all about it. Zimbabwe has been paying the price for this ever since”.
Distinctively, the Khampepe Report entirely discredited that of the 50 person-strong South African Observer Mission, which reached a different conclusion in its report.
Later in 2008, following the disputed March 29 election when the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission took five weeks to announce the results, Mbeki was to cause controversy by stating that “there is no crisis in Zimbabwe”, a position that his then rival Jacob Zuma contested.
In response, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa called an emergency meeting of Sadc leaders on April 12, 2008 to discuss the post-election impasse, stating that Zimbabwe's "deepening problems" meant that the issue needed to be "dealt with at the presidential level".
Mbeki and the region’s prevarication over the initial results were contributory to the violence that took place in the run-off.
Mbeki pioneered the infamous so-called ‘quiet diplomacy’ approach to Zimbabwe, a euphemism for the proverbial Japanese mystic apes of hear, see and speak no evil.
Multiple times in the decade following the turn of the millennium, South Africa voted within the United Nations to block resolutions and action on Zimbabwe, including keeping Zimbabwe off the Security Council agenda when Pretoria assumed its presidency.
Even the Julius Malema who now speaks with clarity on Zanu PF’s trail of destruction, came to Zimbabwe in April 2010 as ANC Youth League president and praised Robert Mugabe, while criticising prime minster Morgan Tsvangirai, later citing Mugabe as his inspiration.
Zanu PF and state-aligned media hailed him as “firebrand”. Now they call him an Anglo-America stooge, a “pseudo-revolutionary” and a “cryptic intellectual” who must “keep (his) dirty hands out of Zimbabwe’s affairs”, per Zanu PF spokesperson Chris Mutsvangwa in a recent press briefing.
Perhaps Zuma was less overt with his support of Zanu PF, at some point even being accused by Zanu PF of being biased in his Global Political Agreement (GPA) mediation role in 2012.
A year earlier in April 2011, State mouthpiece Sunday Mail carried an editorial labelling Zuma an “erratic” liability, “disaster-prone”, “primitive leader” with “disconcerting behaviour” and whose “duplicity is astounding”.
He had called on the government to end a crackdown on its political rival the MDC. Under “such leaders, Africa is in mortal danger”, said the editorial.
As then reported by Reuters, The Sunday Mail - Zimbabwe's main government mouthpiece, was unlikely to have published such comments, the strongest yet against Zuma, without official sanction.
In August 2023, ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula – these days the most vocal Zanu PF supporter within the ANC ranks - spoke at a party convening in Cape Town blaming Western powers for the existence of an opposition in Zimbabwe and said: “[Until] they get their puppet in power, they will never be satisfied … Mnangagwa brought some reforms, but they did not want those reforms because they want a man called (Nelson) Chamisa. They want him to be the leader of a new Zimbabwe”.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has led other Sadc presidents in falling for the sanctions narrative as the explanation to Zimbabwe’s fall from grace, including addressing the UN General Assembly in September 2023 on sanctions and choosing not to mention the botched August elections. Ramaphosa was the first foreign leader in August 2023 to legitimise Mnangagwa’s contested victory, which election was condemned by all the observer missions, including Sadc.
When the Zambia-led Sadc Election Observer Mission (SEOM) released a damning report which came short of nullifying the August 2023 elections in Zimbabwe, Ramaphosa went public and sought to lessen the impact of the report, saying the report did not nullify the elections and was yet to be discussed by Sadc Heads of State.
Mnangagwa and Ramaphosa are themselves reported to have a close relationship.
When Mnangagwa escaped Zimbabwe following the dramatic events of November 2017 when he was fired as Vice President by Mugabe, he landed in South Africa via Mozambique, where he was hosted by Ramaphosa.
In September 2023, ANC through Mbalula blocked a public lecture by Zimbabwean academic Ibbo Mandaza at the O.R. Tambo School of Leadership at Wits University, which was focused on the state of democracy in the Sadc region, with a particular emphasis on Zimbabwe’s elections. In an email to the university, Mbalula explained that Mandaza’s lecture would disrupt private discussions between the ANC and Zanu PF.
At that time Mbalula was in fact in Zimbabwe and had shared pictures on social media of himself and the latter’s top officials.
“We invite you to engage with us further on the detail of these matters, and the possibility of the lecture being held in future, in a different format, and on a different platform”, the email ended, effectively barring the lecture.
A month later, the ANC fired the principal of the school David Masondo who had initially complied with the email and postponed the September 7 lecture but proceeded to hold it on September 28.
Zanu PF obviously needs ANC support to keep other regional actors at bay.
It needs the biggest economy in Sadc and one of the biggest in Africa to stand by it, not least to supply political legitimacy.
Policies such as the Zimbabwe Special Dispensation Permit (ZSP) and the Zimbabwe Exemption Permits (ZEP) provide a much-needed pressure relief valve, giving Zanu PF breathing space and subsiding the anger and agitation of Zimbabweans against its government.
Other friends of Zanu PF are China and Russia (and these two are exploiting Zimbabwe), Belarus and Iran, but none of these are quite as useful to sustaining Zanu PF’s rule as South Africa’s ANC government.
What’s in it for the ANC?
The reality is that ANC is self-serving. Let us break it down.
Liberation brotherhood solidarity
The Sadc liberation movements solidarity is real, but for self-serving reasons.
ANC needs liberation movements’ support to remain in power. If liberation movements fall, the ANC will fall - it will just be a matter of time. But having liberation movements elsewhere also in power legitimises its reign.
The ones remaining in power are ANC, Zanu PF, Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) of Namibia, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) of Tanzania, Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo), and People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). These coordinate under the Former Liberation Movements of Southern Africa (FLMSA), a loosely organised grouping that still holds regular summits.
The most recent such was in March 2024 in Victoria Falls. This group was fundamental in the establishment of Sadc, and arguably has a strong role in Sadc affairs.
“Give us an alternative”
Sometime in 2017, I sat down in Cape Town with an ANC cabinet member and I posed the question of South Africa and ANC’s foreign policy on Zimbabwe.
The explanation provided was that the ANC did not see any viable alternative in Zimbabwe. I understood that to mean exactly what Mbalula said in August 2023 at the ANC convening in Cape Town about opposition and Western puppets.
The message, it seems, is that the ANC will not for now entertain the thought of any party coming to power in Zimbabwe, which does not have liberation credentials, to use the term frequently abused.
Benefiting from a crippled economy
ANC perceives the benefits of a crippled Zimbabwean economy. Zimbabwe exports to it its talent, but South Africa is also Zimbabwe’s biggest trading partner. In 2022, South African exports to Zimbabwe were valued at US$3,3 billion while Zimbabwe’s exports to South African were pegged at US$1,47 billion. Zimbabwean talent populates South African corporate ranks, civil society and academia.
Corporate South Africa will instead want more work permits, for they know what an inflow in Zimbabwean talent and what the opposite means. ANC knows this. The missed irony through is that South Africa would clearly make much more money from a flourishing Zimbabwe economy than it currently does. Aversion to other flourishing economies Is it difficult to perceive that the ANC may be averse to other flourishing economies in the region, for self-serving reasons, of course? Likely not. An apt political analogy comes to mind: Mugabe’s dislike of Nelson Mandela when the latter came out of prison. Mugabe at that time was the posterchild of post-independence leadership, pursuing a policy of reconciliation and investing in education and building the economy, the statesman of Southern Africa. With Mandela’s coming, he felt his light was dimmed. As one report captures it, in a televised interview former French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008 asked Mandela how he judged what was happening in Zimbabwe, and Mandela responded: “Before I was released from prison, he was the most popular African leader, but when I was released the media said this is the end of Mugabe from the point of view of popularity. In fact he himself didn’t want
me to come out of jail”.
Also, ANC looks good if the South Africans compare it to Zanu PF, so ANC could use a terrible comparator next door. ANC the big brother South Africa is the big brother of Sadc. It is the biggest economy, population and landmass. Though Adam Habib has characterised South Africa (and the ANC) as a “reluctant hegemon”, the reality seems to suggest that the ANC wants to maintain that hegemony,
and to do so it needs weaker states around it.
It needs an autocratic, weak and dysfunctional Zimbabwe; small Namibia and Botswana; small and unstable Lesotho; small and despotic Eswatini; troubled Zambia and Malawi; aloof Seychelles and Madagascar; conflict-afflicted DRC, and so on. Being a big brother comes with perks: respect, deference, economic
dominance, and political king-making.
Migrants and scapegoats
So much has gone wrong with governance in South Africa. Corruption has taken its toll. Service delivery has deteriorated. Cities are visibly in decline. The good thing is that the ANC partly acknowledges this. Ramaphosa’s speeches post the May 2024 elections confirm this. Faced with that reality, the authoritarian playbook says you find a scapegoat. Foreigners are an easy target. ANC needs migrants, it needs the scapegoats. Without migrants, who do they blame? Illicit benefits One must not rule out illicit benefit to ANC and South Africa directly, through leakage of minerals into South Africa and outright corruption and exchange of money and other pecuniary benefits between politicians of the two outfits.
After all, politicians in both units are given to corruption. Recent reports have unearthed massive corruption and cartel networks, including those operating across the Limpopo border. ANC is bullied and manipulated by Zanu PF This adds to the list above, save that it is not a benefit to the ANC. It is an abusive relationship between ANC and Zanu PF. Zanu PF raises sovereignty when it suits them and does not flinch to show the ANC the middle figure and the exit door when challenged. Whenever ANC says or does anything Zanu PF dislikes, it invokes sovereignty and calls ANC names. Mugabe called Desmond Tutu “devilish” and “little man” in a 2009 CNN interview. In April 2011, angered over Zuma’s role in the GPA mediation process when he spoke against ZANU PF’s abuse against the MDC, a scathing state media editorial went thus: “Zimbabwe is a sovereign state; the will of our people is supreme and absolute. President Zuma and Sadc — individually and collectively — have no legal or moral authority to meddle in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs”. Zuma was called all sorts of names in that editorial. In 2013 during the GPA mediation days Mugabe called then Zuma’s envoy Lindiwe Zulu a “street woman” with “stupid utterances”. In August 2020 ZANU PF spokesperson Patrick Chinamasa issued a
statement of behalf of his party castigating then ANC’s Secretary- General Ace Magashule on his statements during an interview on eNCA about human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Chinamasa labelled Magashule’s statements “deplorable utterances”. Twice in 2020, ANC sent delegations to Zimbabwe that were shown the exit: a government one consisting of President Ramaphosa’s envoys Baleka Mbete and Sydney Mufamadi, and another party one made up of Magashule, Lindiwe Zulu, Tony Yengeni and others. Mbete and Mufamadi met with Mnangagwa and were meant to meet non-state actors too. I was meant to join a delegation comprised of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches to meet these envoys at the South African Embassy in Harare, and the meeting was cancelled last minute when the team had to leave. Apparently, the envoys were told not to meet with non-state actors
and the opposition. That was that.
When the ANC sent the Magashule-led delegation in September 2020, Zanu PF officials took great exception, and press conferences and editorials labelled some members of the delegation as having an “abrasive attitude” and stating that Zimbabwe and South Africa are two independent countries with sovereign rights and some members of the ANC should not harbour notions of coming to Zimbabwe to meet with opposition parties. I could cite many other examples. But then, ANC keep playing hear, see and speak no evil, sucking up to the abuse and still enabling. A very useful instrument to Zanu PF indeed! But it is not just ANC that is bullied by Zanu PF; the region too. The Zanu PF government bullied the region into closing the Sadc Tribunal in 2010 following the land dispossession rulings. It bullied Sadc from acting on the Zambia-led 2023 Sadc EOM elections report. It is bullying Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema now over that report. Only a few leaders in the region have ever stood up to Zanu PF and refused to be bullied, among them Botswana’s Ian Khama and Zambia’s Levy Mwanawasa. Dissent within the ANC In truth, within the ANC ranks not everyone agrees with the party’s stance on Zimbabwe. There have been voices of dissent, some public. A few years back Blade Nzimande, now Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation and then Secretary General of the South African Communist Party (SACP), relayed feedback from a fact- finding mission the SACP had sent to Zimbabwe back in the early 2000s. He says when they were engaging with Zanu PF they heard Zanu PF labelling everybody the enemy: the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, professionals, academics, everybody, yet all these were part of the victorious forces at independence in 1980. So, what had changed, he asked. Their conclusion was that Zanu PF had lost the urban working class, the middle class, the professionals, and many urban based constituencies, rendering it a rural party because of the mistakes they were making. Now they were in denial, failing to acknowledge that there was a problem. And once liberation movements start sensing that they are losing power, says Nzimande, they start doing funny things. So, there was the radical land reform and unleashing of security forces on the people by Zanu PF. And he cautioned that South Africa should not think it is immune to that. In September 2020, he reiterated that “there is a crisis in Zimbabwe”. In August 2020, then International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor in a radio interview was explicit that Zimbabwe has a “political problem” and the crisis was affecting South Africa. “We all know that Zimbabwe has various economic challenges and that their current situation impacts on South Africa because many Zimbabweans come to seek a livelihood in South Africa. We have to work with Zimbabwe in order to address that economic situation and find a way of helping to reverse the current situation so that the citizens of Zimbabwe can happily return to their country”, she stated. The now Limpopo Premier Phophi Ramathuba, then the province’s Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Health, made headlines in August 2022 for publicly voicing concern about Zimbabwe pushing its citizens across the border for treatment, burdening her province and South Africa’s healthcare system. Recently in August 2024, South African Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi speaking at an event of the ANC’s National Executive Committee expressed discontentment over how Zimbabwe’s collapsed health system is putting a strain on South Africa’s, with Zimbabwean patients clogging its medical facilities yet the Zimbabwean government was not paying for the service. “It’s like a father of a hungry household sending their kids to the neighbours during lunch time, instead of telling the neighbour of the hunger in the household and asking for help,” Motsoaledi said. These are just a sample. Actors like Motsoaledi and Ramathuba, of course, see daily firsthand the social service and social protection heat South Africa is taking. Other actors like Desmond Tutu had long seen this and had said of Zanu PF’s Mugabe: “He has destroyed a wonderful country which used to be a [bread basket], which has now become a basket case itself. He is responsible for gross violations”. One can only hope that these truth-speakers within the ANC will get a determinant voice. South Africa has a Government of National Unity (GNU) now. The Democratic Alliance (DA) has long voiced
displeasure over ANC’s stance on Zimbabwe. Other actors like Build One South Africa’s Mmusi Maimane too. DA even issued a statement on 2 August 2024 advocating for a change of the Sadc Summit venue on account of the clampdown on democracy activists in the run-up to the Summit. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is also raising concern. All these voices, one hopes, should not be prevailed over by a small ANC elite. One hopes they realise the sense and benefits of taking collective and decisive action over the long-standing and exhausting Zimbabwe question. A Zimbabwean struggle made harder by the ANC All things being equal, Zimbabweans would much rather be home. Generally, people prefer to be in their own country, so long as it is working. That is why with open borders in Europe, they do not have an internal migration problem. People cross the border for holidays and go back to their countries. They marry and work across the borders and leave peacefully. East Africa is also showing how this is possible. The solution, therefore, is not border and visa control; it is ensuring that Zimbabwe and other countries in the region are functional. Botswana too has a stake in making sure Zimbabwe in functional. Zambia too; Zimbabweans are now moving into Zambia in numbers. In the case of Zambia, it is perhaps the apt illustration: only a few decades ago, Zambians and Malawians moved into Zimbabwe in search of economic prosperity. Of course, they had to contend with xenophobia. Now, the tables have turned and Zimbabweans are going to Zambia simply because
Zambia is now in a better economic state.
So long as the ANC supports autocracy in Zimbabwe, South Africans
will continue to pay the price in taking care of Zimbabweans and
shouldering the social protection gap. No amount of visa and border
control enforcement would stop the influx. It is human nature to
seek survival, and to the long-suffering Zimbabweans there is survival
in South Africa.
Of course, agency requires Zimbabweans to change their
circumstances, but their case and cause is made harder and
complicated by a political kingmaker that supports an oppressive and
destructive regime.
Should that support continue, the ANC should be prepared to face
the consequences, and South Africans who are genuinely concerned
about the migration problem deserve to know the truth of the
effects of their government’s enabler and complicit behaviour across
the border.
Even though hegemonic within Sadc, the probability is that South
Africa will continue to hide behind the region, at least until the
inevitable explosion within Zimbabwe occurs and there is no running
away from the problem.
However, perhaps there is a shift within South Africa: when
spokesperson for DIRCO, Clayson Monyela, says that dialogue is the
best way forward for Zimbabwe, is this just a reference to what
Zimbabweans must do, or does it indicate new thinking within the
ANC about its foreign policy on Zimbabwe? Time will tell.
Kika is a Zimbabwean human rights and constitutional lawyer. He
received his LLB summa cum laude from the University of KwaZulu-
Natal, an LLM from Harvard Law School and a PhD from the
University of Cape Town.