The turmoil in Zimbabwe has been caused by Robert Mugabe’s opportunism
analysis
Jonathan Steele
It may be no accident that the latest outbursts of thuggery in Zimbabwe have flared up in Chinhoyi. The first fatal clashes in the black nationalist uprising after Zanu, Robert Mugabe’s liberation party, turned from civic protest to armed struggle against the Ian Smith regime took place in this rich farming region.
Chinhoyi (then called Sinoia) became an emotional symbol in the war against the settlers and so this was the spot that the president chose for his final rally in last year’s violence-ridden election campaign. In an act of calculated humiliation, he even summoned a group of white farmers to sit in the VIP tent as though they were his supporters. Now 21 of them are in prison, denied bail on flimsy-looking charges of assault. Others are on the run with their families, leaving a hard core to take out their guns and guard their beleaguered property. Mugabe, meanwhile, uses the crisis for new bombast against the foreign coverage of Zimbabwe: “What is our crime? Our crime is that we are black.”
Whether the latest crisis escalated by accident or has been deliberately orchestrated by Mugabe, it highlights the lawlessness that continues to be Zimbabwe’s biggest problem. The president is trying to turn it into an issue of racism but his case is thin. Most violence in last year’s election was “Shona-on-Shona”. It had little to do with whites and blacks, just as it had little to do with “war veterans”. Most of the thugs were not old enough in the 1970s to have held guns or helped as bush messengers for the liberation army.
The largest number of victims were either black farm workers of the type who lived on the white-owned farms of Chinhoyi or rural subsistence farmers in the so-called communal areas. The blunt message was that they should vote for Zanu-PF or face even more violence.
The tactic worked well in the constituencies of Mashonaland, but it was remarkably unsuccessful elsewhere. Almost half the electorate showed considerable courage in opting for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The fact that the MDC, the largest multi-racial party in Zimbabwe’s history, did well in Zimbabwe’s cities, with their large populations of rural migrants, shows ethnic identity has ceased to have much political relevance in most Zimbabweans’ minds.
The MDC’s white candidates got as much support in the largely black constituencies where they ran as did the party’s black candidates. In Bulawayo a tribally based party, Zapu 2000, failed miserably against the MDC’s David Coltart. In the welter of violence that pervaded Zimbabwe’s elections last summer, ethnic antagonism between Shona and Ndebele hardly ever emerged.
The problem in Zimbabwe is not racism but violation of the rule of law. In the latest incidents in Chinhoyi, it has been sadly clear again that the police are unwilling to take action against the so-called war veterans. This fits the pattern that Mugabe has also encouraged with his attack on the country’s independent judiciary. Using intimidation and other forms of threats, he has forced several judges to retire. Although he tries to present the issue in racial terms, there is no foundation for it. Some of the white judges he castigated were just as independent, and critical of the executive’s high-handedness, in the days of Smith.
Some of Mugabe’s foreign critics, particularly those on the right, like to portray Zimbabwe as a “typical African basketcase”. There is undoubtedly a strong racist core to this view. Others, at least in Britain, have never forgiven him for winning the first majority-rule election against the expectations of the Thatcher government.
In fact, Zimbabwe does not conform to easy stereotypes, as its leading historian, Terence Ranger, and two co-authors pointed out in an illuminating recent study, entitled Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the “Dark Forests” of Matabeleland. In contrast to the violence in other parts of post-colonial Africa, they say Zimbabwe’s problems after independence in 1980 were not the product of a disintegrating or failed state, or of a retraditionalisation of politics round the concept of a strong leader, the Big Man.
Rather, they were the consequence of an excessively strong state inherited from colonial Rhodesia. An already powerful security system became even more centralised and entrenched after Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 as the settler regime imposed unity in the battle against international sanctions and later against the guerrilla armies.
Ranger and his co-authors also point to the problems caused by the “commandist” ideology and the belief in a one-party state and a strong executive presidency that Zimbabwe’s African leaders took from European Leninism. These were shared by Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu as much as Mugabe’s Zanu-PF. This, they write, explains why “Zimbabwean nationalism turned out to be authoritarian rather than emancipatory, and we are under no illusions that had Zapu won the 1980 elections things would have been very different”.
The sad fact is that Mugabe has turned out to be Smith’s heir. Whether he uses racism for opportunistic reasons or whether he believes in it, he is making an issue where none ought to be. What Zimbabwe needs is rule of law, democracy and pragmatism.
Land reform is undoubtedly a high priority, but there are plenty of schemes on offer that would bring it about not least the one that foreign donors worked out with the Zimbabwean government in 1998.
Under that scheme the government agreed to accept a transparent and democratic distribution system in which the recipients of land would be chosen after community consultations. War veterans would not be the main beneficiaries so much as people with proven farming ability. The cooperative model would give way to individual tenure and the new African owners would get title to the land instead of being leaseholders of the state.
Unfortunately, that agreement withered because Britain and other donors were slow to put their cash promises on the table, and Mugabe turned the issue into a political batteringram by authorising war veterans to occupy farms.
The United Nations has tried to broker a compromise, but without a return to the rule of law it cannot begin. Now, with Mugabe in his present mood, it is probably too optimistic to expect any improvement until after next year’s election. He is desperate to stay in power, and next year’s campaign may be even worse.
Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the “Dark Forests” of Matabeleland by Jocelyn Alexander, Jo Ann McGregor and Terence Ranger (James Currey, Oxford)