Ethics Newsline®

Zimbabwe’s World-class Dilemma

Jun 30th, 2008 • Posted in: Commentary

by Rushworth M. Kidder

When presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of last week’s election in Zimbabwe, was it an act of integrity or a failure of moral courage?

By all accounts, Zimbabwe is a mess. The African nation’s aging strongman, former terrorist leader Robert Mugabe, came in second to Tsvangirai in the initial round of voting on March 29. With the run-off election approaching, Mugabe was so determined to hold onto power that he bragged that “only God” could remove him. So he unleashed his thugs in a campaign of violence and intimidation against supporters of Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Five days before the June 27 election, with an estimated 80 or more MDC supporters murdered, some 10,000 injured, and more than 200,000 people displaced, Tsvangirai withdrew from the race. His reasons were twofold. He could no longer ask Zimbabweans to go to the polls when, he said, “that vote could cost them their lives.” He added that the election had degenerated into “a one-man competition” that bore little relationship to democracy.

Yet there were plenty of reasons to remain in the battle. Staying the course could have inspired his followers and possibly brought an end to the economic disaster that Zimbabwe has become. That’s how reform often happens. Somebody stands in front of a Chinese tank in Tiananmen Square. Nelson Mandela risks assassination by assuming a high-profile role in apartheid South Africa. Boris Yeltsin leaps onto a Russian tank to bring an end to a coup.

As the world inches its way toward democratic governance and human rights, we’re rightly fascinated by revolutions and reforms. We study them from various angles — political power, constitutional law, tribal tensions, religious divides, economic incentives, military might — hoping to glean useful lessons. But we tend to overlook the ethics angle until, as in Zimbabwe last week, the moral issues rise so powerfully to the surface that they can’t be ignored.

In this case, those issues fell into two categories. The first, journalistically compelling but conceptually uninteresting, concerns questions of right versus wrong. How the world responds to what the Economist calls “the ogre that has shamed an entire continent” makes headlines. In the past week, Queen Elizabeth II stripped Mugabe of his honorary knighthood, President Bush ordered tougher sanctions in light of what he described as “a sham election” conducted by “an illegitimate government,” and the United Nations called for the first-round elections to be respected — a position that could leave Tsvangirai the winner. But nobody has debated whether murder, rape, threats, bribes, pillaging, self-dealing, nepotism, fraud, theft, and arson are anything but wrong. On that question, there’s nothing left to say.

The second ethics category concerns right versus right. As Tsvangirai decided whether or not to withdraw, the world-class dilemma he faced pitted his loyalty and responsibility to the MDC — he is, after all, their candidate — against the truth that his followers were being attacked and murdered. It found him in an individual-versus-community struggle about saving himself versus bringing his people to power. It forced him to ask whether a short-term retreat would create a long-term loss, or whether the only way to achieve long-term success would be through intense short-term suffering that could cost him his life. And it pitted the need to defend justice and democracy for his nation against the need to show mercy and compassion for his followers.

Which of those arguments is right? All of them. So how to decide? If Tsvangirai stood by the ethical precepts of the ends-based, utilitarian construct — “do the greatest good for the greatest number” — he could argue for estimating the consequences of his actions and backing away. If, on the other hand, he followed the leanings of rule-based, Kantian logic — “follow the principle you want to see become a universal law” — he could argue that the principles of democracy were worth more than any single life, even his own. Finally, if he honored the care-based ethic of the Golden Rule — “do to others what you would want them to do to you” — he might say, “I want leaders who know how to keep fighting” — though he might say instead, “I want leaders who know how to stay alive.”

There is, in other words, a moral case for staying in the race and a moral case for withdrawing. Tsvangirai couldn’t do both. He had to choose what for him seemed to be the higher right. Will history show that he did the right thing? If things turn out well, the ends-based thinkers who judge by outcomes will applaud — just as, if things go badly, they’ll chastise him. By contrast, the rule-based thinkers will care only about the principle, not the consequences. In their eyes, he’ll be right whatever happens, as long as he stood by his highest principles.

And that’s the tough judgment. There is a high principle in standing up to tyranny and fighting to the finish. It is also highly principled to care about the lives and well-being of your followers. Either way, for Tsvangirai, last week took courage.