Kenny Kwaramba sells mobile phone accessories at a flea market in Zimbabwe, but Iraq — and the ouster of its dictator Saddam Hussein — is on his mind.
”When is Bush coming to save us?” he asks, echoing the sentiment of many others during a brutal crackdown here by the government of President Robert Mugabe on dissent and the opposition.
Kwaramba (28) catches glimpses of US President George Bush on the satellite television in a nearby electronics store. Coverage of the war in Iraq in the state media mainly vilifies the coalition, speaking of invaders with imperialist designs.
The state media has also called for the body of one black Zimbabwean serving in the British army who was killed in Basra, not to be allowed home for burial. He has been denounced as a traitor working for the former colonial power.
But Kwaramba says the images of jubilation among Iraqis at the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime have not been lost on his impoverished, hungry and demoralised friends and neighbours in this troubled southern African country.
There are no palaces or statues of Mugabe to wreck, his face is not on the money. His ubiquitous portrait, though, must be displayed in banks, main offices and public buildings.
Those would go first, says Kwaramba, and then there would probably be looting too, of shops and businesses and the luxury cars and mansions of government leaders.
”Ordinary people are poor. People are impatient. It is coming,” he said.
Analysts say most Zimbabweans don’t think US military intervention would ever happen hear, but rather see the coalition action as a powerful symbol of new world distaste for dictatorships.
”Dictators can no longer hide behind the smoke screen of sovereignty to commit all kinds of atrocities,” said Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, a political scientist at Zimbabwe University in Harare.
Mugabe, who led the nation to independence from Britain in 1980, narrowly won another six-year term in presidential elections last year that independent observers said were swayed by political violence, intimidation and vote rigging.
Zimbabwe has been wracked by a deepening political and economic crisis since Mugabe ordered the often violent confiscation of thousands of white-owned farms three years ago.
Independent human rights groups say at least 200 people have been killed since then and thousands of others, mostly opposition supporters, have been arrested, tortured and hounded from their homes.
Most recently, police arrested more than 500 opposition officials and activists after last month’s massive anti-government strike.
Independent human rights monitors said at least 250 people were treated for injuries from assaults and beatings in the days following the strike. The crackdown was strongly condemned by the US State Department for what it called unprecedented violence sponsored by the Zimbabwe government against domestic opponents.
Much of the violence was blamed on police, soldiers and uniformed ruling party militants.
Mukonoweshuro said destruction of homes and looting of properties by government supporters, along with burgeoning high level corruption in the government, have already accompanied the country’s economic meltdown. Acute shortages of food and gasoline have spurred black marketeering.
The opposition has vowed to hold more anti-government protests after Mugabe’s government ignored their demands for democratic reform.
Mukonoweshuro said the government has not openly reacted to the fall of Iraq’s Hussein, but the steady references to it by the state media indicated great discomfort within Mugabe’s ruling elite.
”It has been a major lesson for dictatorships the world over,” Mukonoweshuro said. – Sapa-AP