The farm invasions are having a negative effect on the economy of the entire region, exerting pressure on SAto act
Howard Barrell, Donna Block and Iden Wetherell
President Thabo Mbeki is to jet into Harare on Friday for an urgent meeting with Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe. As the situation in Zimbabwe threatens to spin completely out of control, the world is looking to Mbeki and South Africa, the one country with the power to bring Mugabe to heel peacefully, to rescue the situation.
Namibian President Sam Nujoma and his Mozambican counterpart, Joachim Chissano, will also be in Zimbabwe on Friday. They will be addressing the issue of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but the Zimbabwean crisis is likely to be high on their agenda.
International and financial pressures mounted through the week for Mbeki to toughen up considerably the tone of his behind-the-scenes attempts to bring some rationality to the Zimbabwean government. Foreign diplomats have begun casting doubt on the efficacy of the South African approach. One senior Western diplomat told the Mail & Guardian on Wednesday: “There has been a lot of talk about South Africa’s quiet diplomacy on Zimbabwe. But I don’t get the impression that there is any active South African work going on behind the scenes.”
South African-based oil companies and transport routes provide more than half of Zimbabwe’s petroleum needs and Eskom is a significant supplier of electricity to the country. This gives South Africa an ability to close down Zimbabwean industry in a relatively short space of time.
At the time of ging to press, South Africa was finalising a R800-million economic lifeline to Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, South African inertia has apparently allowed Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo to make the running in brokering talks between Zimbabwe and its former colonial power, Britain.
And the turbulent political situation in Zimbabwe is becoming a major factor in the flight of foreign capital from South Africa. The rand suffered a 20-month low earlier this week, and on Tuesday alone South African bonds suffered an outflow of R1,8-billion.
One bond analyst noted that South African bonds are fairly liquid, and in light of the situation facing the entire Southern African Development Community (SADC)region, he said, “it’s just easier to get out of South African bonds”.
Market watchers are concerned that the instability in Zimbabwe and problems facing the SADC region could have serious consequences for the economy. Some foreign investors are also troubled by South Africa’s refusal to take a definitive stand on the Zimbabwe issue.
Zimbabwe marked 20 years of independence on Tuesday with the murder of a farmer and the burning of his home by supporters of Mugabe, who has fuelled the violence to restore support for his Zanu-PF party ahead of a general election. Other farms were torched near Harare.
Nine people have now died at the hands of Zanu-PF supporters in the past two weeks. Police have not taken action to stop the crimes. Commercial farmers’ leaders in Matabeleland, where Martin Olds (42) was killed on Tuesday, say the war veterans who are leading the farm invasions have now been armed by the authorities.
Returning from a G77 meeting in Havana on Sunday, Mugabe moved quickly to reimpose his authority on the Cabinet majority who want the war veterans evicted in line with two court orders. He has at the same time renewed his invitation to the squatters to stay put. They have in effect become his private militia, receiving a daily stipend from Zanu-PF, which in turn receives an annual subvention from the public purse.
Mugabe’s refusal to condemn the violence has undoubtedly encouraged the squatters, who include Zanu-PF youths, to punish farmers and farm workers suspected of supporting the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Following his Independence Day address on Tuesday, Mugabe accused white farmers of being “enemies of the state”, a remark that further inflamed the passions of his followers, who are now selling plots on the occupied farms.
Dave Stevens, the farmer murdered last weekend at Murehwa, north-east of Harare, was a prominent MDC member. His family say that, contrary to statements by the police, he was not armed, nor was he involved in the move by his farm workers to drive squatters off his Macheke farm. Their eviction came after the rape of a farm worker’s daughter by one of the occupying horde and an assault on her brother.
A farmer was abducted from his home at Christon Bank near Harare on Tuesday and assaulted while, according to the MDC, the Central Intelligence Organisation, Mugabe’s secret police, raided homes in Chivhu, south of the capital, beating up MDC members.
Independence Day celebrations, normally accompanied by pomp and pageantry, were cancelled this year, ostensibly in recognition of the devastation caused in the south of the country by Cyclone Eline, but in reality because Mugabe is no longer able to attract large crowds.
The country is in no mood to celebrate. Figures from the Central Statistics Office show that 76% of Zimbabweans now live below the poverty line. Unemployment is at 55%. So is inflation.
Observers have been lining up to point out that Mugabe’s latest bout of violence is hardly unique. He dealt ruthlessly with his rivals in Zanu-PF in the 1970s, waged war on the Ndebele in the 1980s and threatened a pogrom against gay people in 1995. This month he claimed that tens of thousands of Harare township residents who support the MDC could not be classified as real Zimbabweans because they had no ancestral totems. The statement – implying they were descended from Malawians, Mozambicans and Zambians – led to questions about Mugabe’s own parentage. It also provided evidence that he has given up any hope of attracting the legions of urban poor to his tattered standard.
Rural terror seems to have become his election strategy. A campaign to sweep out the Augean stable within his own circle has come to an abrupt halt after a handful of token arrests and the possibility of embarrassing disclosures.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai this week accused Mugabe of inciting race war to distract attention from a crumbling economy. “By promoting the racist angle, he is hoping the whole nation will support him on this dangerous path,” Tsvangirai said in Washington. “Fortunately, the whole of Zimbabwe doesn’t see this as a race issue. They see it as political opportunism.”
Tsvangirai, who met British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook last week, has warned the British not to make a martyr of Mugabe.
British Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain this week traded further blows with Mugabe. “He has not been prepared to use his authority to stop the lawlessness,” Hain said. “It is no different from the old dictatorship of Ian Smith and the repression he was responsible for.”
Former commanders of the late Joshua Nkomo’s Zipra guerrillas issued a statement this week condemning the lawlessness and human rights abuses surrounding farm invasions.
“The credibility of the current farm invasions is compromised by those people who purport to be the leaders of the war veterans,” they said in a thinly veiled reference to Chenjerai Hunzvi, Mugabe’s point man in this wave of occupations. “There is no evidence that they played roles they claim to have in the liberation struggle.”
The former Zipra commanders, until recently senior national army officers, said they went to war for Zimbabwe’s freedom, so black people could own land. “What we are witnessing at the moment is not what we fought for,” they said.
But the violence is unlikely to subside, despite the intervention of African and Commonwealth diplomats. As long as Zimbabwe’s 76-year-old leader needs to beat up on somebody to prove his political virility, white farmers and opposition members remain at risk.