To the NYT Editor:
Re “2 Vetoes Quash U.N. Sanctions on Zimbabwe” (front page, July 12):
Now that efforts to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe and regional mediation have failed to topple the Mugabe regime, what are the alternatives?
Having lived and worked intermittently in southern Africa since 1971, I believe that there are lessons to be learned from the defeat of apartheid.
A divestment campaign in the United States pressured the minority regime. Eventually, in 1985, Gavin W. H. Relly, the chairman of the Anglo American Corporation, defied South Africa’s official policy and led a delegation of business leaders to meet privately with the banned African National Congress in Lusaka, Zambia, where they discussed the transition to a new order.
In Zimbabwe today, there are fissures within President Robert Mugabe’s cohort. The objective should be to hive off the elements ill served by a sham regime and collapsed economy. Absent the Mugabe clique, the prospects for democracy in Zimbabwe, a country with a vibrant civil society and highly skilled work force, are excellent.
James H. Mittelman
Bethesda, Md., July 12, 2008
The writer is a professor of international affairs at the School of International Service, American University.
Original: After the Vetoes on Zimbabwe: What’s the Next Step?