The front pages of Zimbabwe’s two private dailies screamed news of the capture of deposed Ivorian leader Laurent Gbagbo. “Dictators Beware!” said NewsDay. The Daily News led with “Dictator Captured”.
The trick was obvious, and it worked; weary Zimbabweans picked up the papers and fantasised it was another name on the page.
Rumours about his health have never been this feverish, murmurs of dissent within the party continue, and the patience of his regional allies wears thin.
Yet it may be some time yet before local papers carry news of Mugabe’s fall.
Over the two years that he has been in coalition with Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe has carefully plotted a path towards what one of his top fixers, Jonathan Moyo, has described as Zanu-PF’s “Lazarus moment”.
Zanu-PF entered the unity government on the back foot. It had lost its majority in Parliament for the first time since it came to power in 1980, and the party was demoralised and riddled with division and suspicion.
The unity government gave Zimbabwe the chance to breath. There was a reduction in violence, while the economy ended a decade in free fall.
In that relative calm, Mugabe has crafted his comeback.
Zanu-PF’s youth militia, disbanded when the coalition was formed, is again on the move. In government, Mugabe’s propaganda machine has kept the focus away from the MDC’s reform agenda, while he has elbowed his opponents away from decision-making.
Zanu-PF ministers initially cooperated with Tsvangirai, who in terms of the agreement has some authority over policy. However, most of Mugabe’s ministers now openly defy Tsvangirai.
The MDC complains that more and more Zanu-PF ministers are ignoring meetings called by the Prime Minister. His spokesman, Luke Tamborinyoka, says this shows the increasing “dysfunctionality” of the unity government.
A worry for the MDC is disillusionment among voters. A recent independent survey by the Freedom House and the Mass Public Opinion Institute found support for the MDC had fallen from 55% before the unity government to 38%, while Zanu-PF support grew from 12% to 17%. The MDC dismissed the survey, saying it was conducted amid fear.
Tsvangirai had hoped the unity government would be a chance to patiently paint Mugabe out of the picture. Previous failed protests only damaged his credibility and hardened Mugabe’s resolve.
“People may want to see instant change, like instant coffee, but we have chosen the evolutionary path, not the revolutionary path, and evolution is sometimes disappointing because it is slow,” Tsvangirai said in a recent interview with the Financial Times.
It is an approach that he finds hard to sell to impatient supporters, many of whom feel Tsvangirai and his ministers have grown comfortable, silenced by government perks.
While Tsvangirai faces no threat to his position, factional fighting in the run-up to the MDC’s national congress showed division and frustration.
The divided leadership appeared unwilling to act. Organising secretary Elias Mudzuri, believed to lead an anti-Tsvangirai faction, said not “even God Himself has ever guaranteed peace in the world”.
Tsvangirai’s consolation is that Mugabe has survived this long at the helm of a divided party.
The election of the MDC’s Lovemore Moyo as speaker of Parliament laid bare dissent within Zanu-PF, as vote returns from the MPs showed that the MDC candidate had pulled at least three votes from the Zanu-PF benches.
At a recent funeral for the deputy head of intelligence, Mugabe warned party leaders who “raise fists and shout our slogans, but work for our enemies”.
However, there is no sign that the divisions are about to pose a real threat to Mugabe.
He maintains strong alliances with the top army brass, and his top allies continue to feed off big business deals.
His lieutenants are also constantly reminded of how those that dared break away — among them former heavyweights Dumiso Dabengwa, Simba Makoni and Edgar Tekere – have seen their political careers nosedive.
Tekere, who left Zanu-PF in 1988 over plans to create a one-party state, says that Mugabe is running a dictatorship and is unlikely to see opposition from within.
“When I look at what is happening, I just cry in my heart that my party (Zanu-PF) is disintegrating and there is nothing I can do,” Tekere says.
Despite division, Mugabe believes his party has recovered enough to mount a new election campaign.
Although anxious to be rid of the coalition, he has said elections will be held after a new constitution. But some of his senior lieutenants are impatient.
“The delay in the implementation and conclusion of the constitutional process is neither a necessary or sufficient reason to delay the election whose holding has become absolutely necessary in order to remove the gridlock,” Simon Khaya Moyo, Zanu-PF chairperson, has said.
This would anger regional leaders, including Jacob Zuma, who say Zimbabwe is not ready for a free poll. At a regional summit in Zambia, Zuma told leaders that it was time the region “impressed on all the parties concerned that the situation can no longer be tolerated”, according to a report that, much to Mugabe’s frustration, was kept from Zanu-PF at the meeting.
Zimbabwean parties were in “electioneering mode” without having done the necessary “groundwork towards ensuring that the building blocks and institutions are firmly in place towards the holding of free, fair and democratic elections”, Zuma told the summit.
The long arm of the dictator
Bishop Ancelimo Magaya had just finished preaching a sermon against violence at the Church of the Nazarene in Harare’s Glen Norah township two weeks ago when tear gas filled the church.
Minutes later, 14 worshippers had been arrested, including three pastors, charged with holding a public meeting without clearance.
Police said those arrested were “a criminal nuisance in a public place”. Activists insist religious gatherings are exempt from security laws that require police permission for public meetings, but police claimed that the meeting was not a real religious assembly and that officers had fired tear gas only after being attacked.
Bishop Magaya said they were praying for the violence to stop. “Our prayers are for a stop to the rot of violence across all political affiliations,” he said. “We are saying ‘no’ to people being forced to do what they do not want to. The church is ready to suffer for what the people are suffering for: a peaceful nation.”
In the aftermath of the Arab revolution and as Zanu-PF presses for elections this year, public gatherings and free speech are being viewed with increased suspicion by President Robert Mugabe’s government.
Aleck Muchadehama, a lawyer who defends rights campaigners, said the church arrests showed that Zimbabweans still had a long way before they could attain freedom. “A peaceful prayer for a peaceful nation is dispersed violently and that can happen only where there is no rule of law.”
Movement for Democratic Change rallies are routinely banned and the MDC says it shows Zimbabwe has become a “police state”. Intellectual space is also under pressure, with public lectures and debates often shut down by police and their participants arrested.
‘Overwhelmed’
In the arts activists still use plays as a means of protest, but the members of a recent production, Rituals, which explores violence, were recently arrested while on tour. To people outside Zimbabwe reading the grim daily headlines, it may appear as if Zimbabweans live under a constant cloud of repression, unable to live any semblance of normal lives. But the repression is deliberately designed so that those stay clear of politics are left alone, while those that dare Mugabe are made an example of.
Still, even normal citizens have to be careful of what they say in public. In the days after mass protests drove Hosni Mubarak from power in Egypt, Vikas Mavhudzi posted on Morgan Tsvangirai’s Facebook wall: “I am overwhelmed. What happened in Egypt is sending shockwaves to dictators around the world. No weapon but unity of purpose worth emulating, hey.”
He was arrested for trying to incite an uprising, while a judge refused him bail because he “posed a threat to public safety”. He was released after spending a month in jail.
Arrests for “undermining the authority of or insulting Mugabe” are not uncommon. Newspapers frequently carry tales of people arrested in bars or seized from buses for ridiculing the president.
MDC MP Douglas Mwonzora was arrested recently after police claimed he had pointed at a portrait of Mugabe at a police station. Police say Mwonzora had, as if talking to Mugabe, asked after his health. Mwonzora denies the charge, but defiantly insists: “It is not an offence to inquire about the health of older people, let alone the head of state.”
Those in active politics face a constant battle against the security forces. Speaking at the memorial of supporters killed in 2008, Tsvangirai said his party was angered by a resurgence of the “culture of impunity and state-sponsored violence” that his party say killed up to 100 of his supporters in the last election.
Difficult jobs
“We are, however, heartened that our brothers in the SADC have now realised that violence as orchestrated by partisan state institutions is the single major threat to democracy in Zimbabwe and stability in the region,” Tsvangirai said. He was referring to the rebuke of Mugabe by regional leaders at a summit in Zambia. A report by Jacob Zuma to the summit warned of North African-style protests in the region and said the message had to be sent to Zimbabwe that the standoff “can no longer be tolerated”.
Zuma’s report, which angered Zanu-PF, said the “building blocks and institutions” needed for a free poll were not yet in place. While the newspaper space had been opened up, broadcasting had yet to be reformed.
Some progress has been made in media reform. A year ago there were no private daily newspapers on the streets. Today, with five dailies — including two state-owned titles — the debate is about which newspaper will survive in the crowded market.
Barnabas Thondhlana, editor of the Mail, the latest private daily to be launched, appears more focused on winning market share than on being shut down. Still, he cautions that the press remains under threat. “The environment has opened up, but we are constrained by a raft of laws that make our jobs difficult,” he said.