Partners in crime

The disastrous outcome of the presidential election in Zimbabwe - a clearly stolen election in which a brutal regime has decided to crush the Opposition which won rather than face the fact that it has brought this fecund country to the point of famine - puts South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki right on the line. South Africa is the only country with the leverage to bring Mugabe to heel - as Prime Minister John Vorster demonstrated in 1976 when he forced Ian Smith to accept majority rule. Yet Mbeki has utterly refused to use this leverage, has continued to supply Mugabe with electricity below cost, and has consistently defended Mugabe in all international gatherings, most recently at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) at Coolum.

There, against strong opposition from many Commonwealth members including Britain, Mbeki successfully insisted that Zimbabwe should not be suspended from the organisation and that any action should await the report of election observers - for, against all the evidence, Mbeki insisted that the election was still likely to be free and fair.

Mbeki is used to getting his own way and, in the ANC at least, to being the cleverest person in the room. He was clearly deeply shocked at the scathing reception his views met, particularly from Tony Blair, who made it quite clear that if Mbeki wants the West to pour money into his New Economic Programme for African Development (Nepad) he has to stand up for democracy in Africa, not least next door. He was outmanoeuvred when CHOGM cleverly left the issue before a committee of three - Australia's Premier Howard, Nigeria's President Obasanjo, and Mbeki, thus making it quite plain that the two Africans could choose: either Mugabe or Nepad but not both.

Mbeki's volcanic reaction on the ANC website is to rage against "white supremacists" within the Commonwealth who, he says, are trying to humiliate and insult blacks. Either the Commonwealth should be disbanded or the white supremacists should leave, he writes. His temper is hardly likely to be improved by Prince Charles's statement that the Commonwealth was "drinking in the last-chance saloon" by "failing the test" over Zimbabwe and that this "was causing long-term damage to its credibility", particularly since the Prince went on to say that the Commonwealth would deserve "contempt" if it didn't stand up for democracy and human rights.

Mbeki's response to the squeeze he is in has been exactly the same as during Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections in June 2000, when Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF just managed to bludgeon its way back to power after a campaign which left more than 30 dead and many thousands tortured, beaten, raped or homeless. Despite this, Mbeki dispatched election observers who were firmly instructed to come up with a "free and fair" verdict, come what may. This was the point when the EU - whose observers said the elections were neither free nor fair - should have adopted "smart sanctions" against the regime. But nobody did anything.

In all the African forums where Zimbabwe gets debated, Mbeki has loyally stuck to the Mugabe line that the Zimbabwe issue is all about land - though polls show that only two per cent of Zimbabweans think this is the most important issue. With American observers not allowed and the EU either being disallowed or leaving in disgust, South African observers form the bulk of all foreign observer missions. There is a South African official mission and a parliamentary observer group. South Africans are represented on the Commonwealth, the Southern African Development Community and African Union observer groups. Most of these observers belong to Mbeki's ruling ANC and have been firmly instructed to find the election free and fair. Even when South African observers have themselves been attacked by Mugabe's thugs, they have loyally had to pretend that perhaps they were Opposition supporters dressed up in wolf's clothes.

This time, having argued against Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth until the election observers have reported, Mbeki has then been seen trying to fix the observers' reports. He is unlikely to be trusted in the future. The really sad thing is that he has entirely squandered Mandela's inheritance of standing for democracy and human rights. Under Mbeki, South Africa no longer stands for these things.

Already South Africa is paying the price for this disastrous mishandling of the crisis next door: the rand has been in free fall all week because investors are horrified by the way Mbeki has failed to stand up for the rule of law and blames white racism whenever things go wrong.

Many have begun to believe that Mbeki is another Mugabe in the making - in which case, they argue, whites have no future in Africa. Yes and no.

On the one hand, nothing is more powerful in pushing out the whites than the collapse of the currency, which has happened both in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Any young skilled professional - white or black - looks at what he/she can earn here or in the West and, usually, emigrates. The market does the work long before it becomes a matter of policy. But Zimbabwe also shows how important even tiny white communities are: here, even after 22 years of Mugabe, they play a vital role in the churches, non-governmental organisations and the Opposition, and their liberal influence has been pervasive.

It will be the same in South Africa. Already one can see the percentage of black votes for the liberal Democratic Alliance creeping up - and for the same reason, that the ANC has, like Mugabe, failed to deliver on its promises of "a better life for all". Mbeki loves to rhapsodise about the African renaissance but it is clearer every day that the real renaissance comes only after the first generation of African nationalists has failed and gone. And the key question about what comes next may still be: how many whites will there be left to help pick up the pieces?

R.W. Johnson was until recently director of the Helen Suzman foundation in Johannesburg