President Robert Mugabe’s government declared this week’s general strike called by Zimbabwe’s trade unions illegal. That the vast majority of the country’s 1,2-million employed workers bravely chose to ignore the ban suggests that it is Zanu-PF’s choking grip on Zimbabwe that lacks legitimacy.
The intimidatory threats issued by the despised “war veterans”, who have turned their attention in recent months from white-owned farms to factories and businesses, were also ignored.
Mugabe’s thugs would no doubt like to provoke the sort of violence with which they have been associated in the past. And as before, the security forces have tried to prevent free and fair reporting. That very little violence has so far occurred is vastly to the credit of Zimbabwe’s citizens, not to a government that is now in a virtual state of war with its own people.
Mugabe was right about one thing this week: this mass action is not just about the recent 70% rises in fuel prices, or the resulting inflationary impact on the cost of basic foodstuffs. It is not simply about an economy broken almost beyond repair, about schools without resources and hospitals without medicines.
Nor is it only about corruption in high places, about the assaults on an independent judiciary, about the government’s contempt for the rule of law. Mugabe said the strike was, at heart, political. And he is correct. It represents an enormous challenge to his own continued tenure as president. And more than that, it challenges the power monopoly enjoyed by Zanu-PF since independence over 20 years ago.
If last year’s general elections had been properly conducted, the ruling
party might already be out of office. By his egregious conduct then and since, Mugabe has gone a long way to guaranteeing not only his own eventual downfall but also that of the movement he once honourably led in the battle against white minority rule.
At age 77, he cannot last forever. His neighbours know it. His smarter
associates and Zimbabwe’s many overseas friends know it. His people know it and would wish to be shot of him. Yet by clinging to power, against all reason, and trying to fiddle yet another term next year, Mugabe looks set to ensure that much that he painstakingly built up will be torn down with him.
A man who was one of Africa’s most respected revolutionaries is now on the wrong, losing side of a popular revolution. The clock is ticking. It is a great pity he cannot hear it.
The untouchables
Some South African’s are, indeed, more equal than others.
It seems that, if you manage to achieve a certain rank in the African National Congress or form part of its nomenklatura in government or industry, the chances of your being pursued for inept or improper behaviour are minimal. The rest of us would not merit such indulgence from our own families. But membership of the ANC aristocracy can evidently earn you a level of immunity that would be the envy of a fox in a hen house on the day the local farmer went to town.
As a member of the chosen, you can make a cock-up as manager of a state parastatal that costs the public hundreds of millions of rands yet escape censure. You can be a minister of evident incompetence and do-nothingness yet survive in the Cabinet. You can have participated in the kidnap of a young boy subsequently killed by thugs in your employ yet still be an ANC MP, president of the ANC Women’s League and a member of the ruling party’s highest organ between conferences, its national working committee. You can have been minister of defence during the drawing up of contracts for the largest arms deal in the country’s history, resign and, within a few months, be reincarnated as a businessman, multimillionaire and major beneficiary of those self-same contracts yet escape even a public hint of disquiet from senior colleagues for ethically questionable behaviour. You can be the head of the nation’s defence forces, of its air force, of the main national arms procurer or of Parliament’s main defence committee, and have an expensive luxury vehicle made available to you at a very substantial discount by one of the successful bidders for contracts under the arms deal yet not be required even to resign your post.
On the other hand, you can be an honourable member of the ANC such as Andrew Feinstein MP clearly is and be isolated and threatened behind your back with expulsion from the party if you demonstrate a willingness to defend during meetings of Parliament’s public accounts committee the principles of honesty and accountability to which your party continues to lay claim. The list goes on and on.
We on this newspaper have warned before that the ANC and this government are becoming synonymous in the eyes of many with sleaze and personal enrichment by their leading members. Our own and others’ appeals for exemplary action against those who, on the face of it, are abusing the party’s ethical principles or the standards of good state or corporate governance have had no effect on those with the power to act. The hostility and, sometimes, the f-u silence that has greeted these appeals demonstrates an arrogance at leadership level for which, we have no doubt, the party will at some time perhaps sooner than it thinks pay a heavy electoral price.
That alone should give the party leadership pause for thought, though we would prefer considerations of good governance and morality to be more persuasive.