The not-so-diplomatic ambassador to Zimbabwe
James McGee eschews the low-key approach favored by most envoys. He has turned up the pressure on the government while exposing political violence. The regime has retaliated.
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA — To Zimbabwe's government, James McGee is the undiplomatic diplomat.
McGee, the U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe for the last six months, has eschewed the tactful, almost invisible role that envoys often take. With foreign journalists largely blocked from covering events in the African nation, McGee and other Western diplomats have adopted an outspoken posture, exposing political violence and ratcheting up international pressure on the regime.
In turn, McGee has been savagely scolded in the state media, reprimanded by the government, harassed by police during a fact-finding mission and had a staff member threatened with assault. Zimbabwean officials accuse him of breaking the Vienna Convention on diplomats, interfering in its internal affairs and making politically charged and inflammatory comments.
Not that the government's adversaries have been immune from McGee's blunt criticisms. As opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai stayed in neighboring South Africa while his supporters back home were being beaten and harassed, McGee said he should be in Zimbabwe despite reports of a plot to assassinate him.
McGee, a thrice-decorated Vietnam veteran, traveled with diplomats from Britain, the Netherlands, Japan and Tanzania last week to a suspected torture center in the countryside where government opponents are alleged to have been interrogated and beaten. The previous week he and others visited Avenues Clinic in the capital, Harare, crowded with victims of the regime's violence against opposition activists and supporters.
McGee appears to have gotten under President Robert Mugabe's skin as much as his predecessor, Christopher Dell, who so outraged the regime that the pro-government Herald ran a front-page headline, "Mugabe to Dell: Go to Hell," which the envoy later framed. Dell was put under 24-hour surveillance, according to the Herald.
The day after McGee's fact-finding mission to the detention facility, during which police blocked his convoy for an hour and threatened to beat a member of his staff, the Herald prominently ran a letter describing the diplomat as a "political activist for the wrong cause" sent to "do Washington's dirty work in Zimbabwe."
Several days later, another Herald article said of the ambassador, who is African American: "Contrary to his delusions, McGee is not fighting for the democratization of Zimbabwe but is just a big player in the Uncle Tom role long conceived by America."
