April 19, 2007

INDEPENDENCE CELEBRATIONS: JUST A BLUFF

Week sixteen of 2007 started with preparations for Zimbabwe's Independence Day that falls on April 18. This marks twenty-seven years of independence from Britain. However, the question that boggles the mind is what celebrations can there be when Zimbabwe is engulfed in an economic meltdown described by the World Bank as the worst in the world outside a war zone?

When the country gained independence on April 18, 1980, it had one of the strongest economies in Africa second only to South Africa. In 1981, 72 Zimbabwean cents would buy one US dollar but today one needs Z$25,000 to buy US$1. Year-on-year inflation stood at 10.5% in 1980 and in March 2007 it was at 2,200.2%. On the labour market, the situation is not better. While the unemployment figure at independence was 20%, in 2007 it stands at 80%.

Zimbabwe is a country that used to export food to other countries in Southern Africa and yet today the country can not feed itself. Four million out of twelve million inhabitants are at risk of starvation. They have to depend on food handouts from the outside world. The ZANU (PF) government clearly has no resources at its disposal to feed the multitude of Zimbabweans in acute need. Zimbabwe needs about US$230 million to buy about 1.5 million metric tonnes of grain. Zimbabwe's treasury is bare. The scraps of foreign exchange on which the tattered country had been relying for derisory amounts of imported fuel, power and essential goods are now gone.

Everything seems at odds with the independence government; even the health system, once the pride of Southern Africa has virtually collapsed - as are other social services. Recent findings by the World Health Organisation (WHO) show the gravity of the staff situation in Zimbabwe's health institutions. The vacancy returns, compiled by the Health Service Board, showed that more than 50% of key posts within the public health system were vacant by December 2006.

The government's five major hospitals were operating with thirty-six senior doctors instead of 145, seventy-two specialist consultants instead of 189, and two specialist pathologists out of eight required, the state-controlled Sunday Mail reported in September 2006. By December 2005, there was up to 89% vacancies for laboratory technicians, 44% for senior nurses and 88.4% for primary care nurses. Apart from the problem of under-staffing, public hospitals in many cases can only prescribe ordinary pain killers to patients because essential medicines are in short supply due to a hard cash crisis.

Amid Zimbabwe's deepening economic and political crisis, the country's skills base is shrinking fast in the face of an exodus of hundreds of its nationals who leave the country each week in search of better working conditions. Economic analysts say the "Great Trek" to greener pastures is wrecking any chance of future economic recovery. The mass departure, mostly to the West and to South Africa, Botswana and now Namibia, has rendered ineffective efforts by both the government and the private sector to prop up the sick economy. There are an estimated four million Zimbabweans, or a quarter of the population, in exile. Some are political exiles - doctors and nurses, judges, journalists, lawyers driven out of the country for supporting the opposition or simply attempting to operate independent news media. Others are the so-called "economic refugees", although their exile has its roots in politics.

It should be recalled that political repression started early after the country attained independence. The coalition government that emerged as a result of the policy of reconciliation did not hold for very long. When in early 1982, ZANU (PF) called for an increasingly socialist economy for the country and stated that in future all government policies would first be approved by ZANU (PF), this was immediately denounced by PF-ZAPU's Joshua Nkomo. A new political crisis between the two long-time rival leaders was created. In September 1980, the government ordered police and army units to act against dissidents operating in Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands under the name 'Supper ZAPU'. In an operation code-named 'Gukurahundi', the government dispatched the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade. PF-ZAPU was accused for collaboration and banned. Gukurahundi sought to wipe out Joshua Nkomo's opposition in the most brutal manner. Nkomo was forced into exile to avoid the North Korean-trained brigade set on him and his followers by President Mugabe. At least 20,000 people were massacred during that operation.

During the 1985 general election, ZANU (PF) had created a youth brigade, which it used to unleash violence on those accused of being members of ZAPU and United African National Council (UANC) (Madzakutsaku). After the election, a short period of violence against supporters of non-ZANU (PF) parties occurred and some senior PF-ZAPU party officials and recently elected MPs were arrested. After Prime Minister Mugabe's "kugobora zvitsiga" (uprooting tree stumps) victory speech, the Youth Brigade roamed the high density areas evicting their "enemies" from their homes, looting and destroying their properties.

During the 1990 general election, Zimbabwe Unity Movement's candidate for Gweru, Patrick Kombayi, was short and wounded at the height of the elections' campaign. In Chinhoyi, several ZANU (PF) youths unleashed violence on suspected members of ZUM. As were the attackers of Kombayi, the marauding youths were arrested, prosecuted and convicted but immediately received presidential pardons. It is unfortunate that by granting presidential pardon to these "hooligans", President Robert Mugabe indirectly sanctioned the use of violence as a political and social tool of coercion.

In the aftermath of the nation-wide protests against government taxes in December 1997, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) Secretary General, Morgan Tsvangirai was savagely assaulted by intruders who raided his office. Since the Secretary General was credited for the successful protest, he may have been targeted as a political threat to the ruling party. Tsvangirai's assailants are still at large. Zimbabweans are amazed that in a country whose police reputation scared even the most notorious international criminals, the criminals who had perpetrated a crime against the state in broad daylight remained at large.

The establishment of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in September 1999 changed the complexion of Zimbabwe's political landscape. That the MDC posed potentially the biggest threat to the ruling party in Zimbabwe's June 2000 general elections was without doubt. The vitriolic counter-offensive by ZANU (PF) against the MDC should have been expected. Political observers hoped that the ruling party would not fight dirty. Unfortunately, the party has a culture of violence and intimidation against opposition parties. Therefore, the MDC faced a Herculean task in its bid to topple a corrupt and inept oligarchy which has entrenched itself by abusing public funds and the very electorate that voted it into power.

As the Shona say, "panoda mwoyo gwanzi harisviki" (if wishes were horses, beggars would ride). The opposition's wish to have a peaceful campaign was marred right from the start. On April 1 2000, riot police unleashed teargas in Harare's Central Business District to break up violent clashes when ZANU (PF) supporters descended on about 8,000 demonstrators participating in a peaceful march organised by the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA). The ZANU (PF) supporters, wielding iron bars and clubs, confronted the NCA marchers. Saturday shoppers, who were unaware of the impending confrontation, were caught in the crossfire as they unknowingly created a buffer zone between the two parties. Eight people, most of them Saturday shoppers were injured in the scuffle. What irked observers who were eyewitnesses and those who saw footage of the attacks on BBC was that the police watched as demonstrators, who were holding nothing but their placards, were being beaten up. As some of the members of the NCA were arrested, it was like a conspiracy that the police decided to arrest peaceful people and allow those carrying arms to walk free.

As if to emphasise its appetite for violence, ZANU (PF) gave Zimbabweans a new political vocabulary. The word jambanja emerged after the farm invations and was crowned during the June 2000 Parliamentary Election. This helped Zimbabweans to accept their dismay with an executive order directing the police to ignore crimes classified as "political". Jambanja means state-sponsored lawlessness. The police were not expected to intervene or arrest anyone in a jambanja scene because those instigating or taking part had prior state blessing and approval. Only war veterans and ZANU (PF) supporters were allowed to engage in a jambanja. Hundreds of people, mainly from the opposition and farm workers were either killed or disabled by jambanja. Some lost their homes others were swindled out of millions of dollars through company jambanja.

The pre-election violence either closed or disrupted schooling in at least 551 schools during March - June 2000. Over 9,000 teachers were forced to flee their schools and many were seeking job transfers to urban areas. The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) reported that 2,096 teachers had been assaulted. Despite blanket denials by the government that its supporters had initiated any violence, Amani Trust found that 85% of the perpetrators were ZANU (PF) supporters, 6.6% were government officials or Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and only 4.3% MDC.

The extent of violence also shocked the initially reticent international election observers who had underestimated the degree of terror. European Union observer group head, Pierre Schori, on 21 June 2000 said his team had never seen such violence. By then at least 33 people had been killed and hundreds injured.

The violence that occurred during April-May 2000 exposed the lie that the chaos on the commercial farms was about land or race. The vicious attacks on black farm workers and the destruction of their property on accusations of being members of the MDC were clear evidence that the violence was nothing more than crude political intimidation. This was part of ZANU (PF)'s election strategy as the party faced the grave danger of losing political turf to the opposition. With little to show for 20 years in political office, the land invasions were meant to portray President Robert Mugabe and his ruling party as revolutionaries. The attack on whites feeds the racial prejudices of the more gullible people within Zimbabwean society. The disorderly land distribution to more than 30,000 unemployed and ruling party supporters on the outskirts of Harare was a clear attempt to purchase political support ahead of the elections.

Every election campaign since independence has been marked by violence with the use of the youth. Coupled with well-documented violence and intimidation during the 2005 elections, the forced exclusion of the opposition polling agents from the majority of rural polling stations made it easy for the ruling party to rig the results in the given constituencies. Most observers acknowledged that the March 2005 election was not marred by the kind of violence witnessed both in the 2000 and 2002 parliamentary and presidential elections, respectively. Nonetheless, intimidation had taken a covert menacing characteristic and a refined subtlety. Poverty and food-for-votes were also being used to bring people round.

In May 2005, following the March 2005 elections, ZANU (PF) unleashed Operation Murambatsvina/Restore Order or Drive Out Filth. The demolition of "illegal" homes and structures housing the informal sector brought the question of human rights under the full glare of the international community. While the government claimed that it framed Operation Murambatsvina solely in terms of urban regeneration, its critics insisted that its goal has been primarily political. Popularly known as "Operation Tsunami" because of its speed and ferocity, it resulted in the destruction of homes, business premises and vending sites in several parts of the country.

The MDC alleged that it was designed to destroy the party's urban support base, relocate people to the rural areas where they would be under the sway of ruling party-aligned chiefs, and forestall popular protest by the poor as the food crisis deepened. Opposition groups also contended Mugabe's government was trying to drive disaffected city voters into rural areas where they can be intimidated by denial of access to food.

The UN report released on July 22 2005, underlined that the government had indiscriminately violated the rights of its people. The United Nations envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, confirmed that Zimbabwe had disregarded several provisions of national and international legal frameworks and that it had done so in an unplanned and overzealous manner. The report says the Zimbabwe government rendered homeless up to 700,000 of its citizens and affected, in one way or the other, a further 2.4 million.

Events of March 11 2007 again showed the brutality of the Mugabe regime. The world watched with horror and outrage as the Zimbabwe Republic Police cracked down on legitimate opposition, detaining fifty Zimbabweans attending a peaceful prayer meeting in Highfield, a working class suburb in Harare, and brutalised opposition leaders and ordinary citizens alike. A protester, Gift Tandare, was shot and killed; Itai Manyeruke died after he was severely tortured while in police custody. Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC, was brutally tortured while in police custody and suffered severe head injuries. Lovemore Madhuku, the leader of the National Constitutional Assembly, was reported to have suffered a broken arm and numerous other wounds. Grace Kwinje, MDC Deputy Secretary for International Affairs was savagely assaulted and sustained a split right ear lobe. Many of their other colleagues in the Save Zimbabwe Campaign coalition were hospitalised.

There have been over 600 documented cases of torture and brutality following illegal abductions and arrests of hundreds of MDC members, officials and activists since the aftermath of March 11 2007. A former member of the National Youth Service training programme, otherwise known as the Green Bombers, who escaped to Namibia, told the press this April of orders to petrol bomb political opponents' homes, commit acts of sabotage and torture Mugabe's opponents. He related graphic and often stomach-turning details of secret prisons and torture camps, systematic rapes at the Border Gezi training camp and secret jails across the country.

That Zimbabwe has become a police state is underscored by the readiness of the trigger-happy law enforcement agents to resort to brutality similar to that unleashed by the Chinese army when massive protests paralysed Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. The Zimbabwean police force has shown itself in the past to be biased and to be ready only to serve the interests of the ruling party. This unprofessional conduct has resulted in the police interpreting and enforcing the law selectively and thus turning a blind eye to offences perpetrated by members of the ruling party. The police have never been known to use their clairvoyance to predict the imminence of violence ahead of rallies and other events organised by ZANU (PF). The result is that no ruling party rallies and gatherings are ever prohibited.

This biased conduct takes place even in the judicial system where rulings are made in favour of companies against the government. The result is that the country's reputation is hurt in respect to observance of the rule of law, and has the effect of destroying investor confidence in the country's legal system. In the absence of dialogue, political tension has remained high, which together with the air of uncertainty wrought largely by the flawed agrarian reform process, has scared away new investors and forced industrialists to close shop or scale down. The real losers are the country's 12 million people. About 600 people have died in political violence since 2000 and thousands of cases of politically motivated assaults, kidnapping, rape and torture have been reported by human rights groups.

In short, crucial human rights-related issues which have plunged the country into the current economic morass include the violent land invasions, violence that rocked the country's last three major elections, human rights violations resulting from the government's controversial Operation Murambatsvina, and the recent 17th Constitutional amendment, which virtually took away the right to private property and undermines the role of the judiciary.

The ZANU (PF) leadership needs to summon a whole new philosophy of living that is above party, class and faction; to learn to accept those who hold another point of view. There must be a new spirit in enhancing a capacity to fight against the causes of conflict - against selfishness, greed and hate. There is need for tolerance of diversity, good governance and economic development. Authoritarianism is a pathology against which humankind has a tendency to always rebel. Contemporary history has a long list of tyrants that succumbed to democratic forces: Adolf Hitler, Ferdinand Marcos, Emperor Jean Bokassa, Nicolae Ceausescu, Haile Miriam Mengistu, Samuel Doe, the Bolsheviks (through glasnost and perestroika), Mobutu Seseseko, Slobodan Milosevich, Charles Taylor, etcetera. Although democratic processes may take time to materialise, as opposed to a revolution, it is imminent that Zimbabwe might end up with viable political parties that are democratic, including ZANU (PF) itself.