The failure by Zimbabweans to rise up and deliver the final blow to President Robert Mugabe’s illegitimate regime has been a cause of disappointment and soul-searching for many people. Fear of the regime seems to outweigh the people’s desperate yearning for political and economic freedom. Zimbabweans are now prisoners of their own fears.
The fear is not without basis. This is perhaps one of the most brutal regimes the continent has ever produced. It is the same government that murdered more than 20 000 civilians in the Midlands and Matabeleland in the early 1980s for standing in the way of Zanu-PF’s desire for political hegemony and Mugabe’s quest for a one-party state.
Many people have been displaced, tortured or killed over the past three years as Zanu-PF fights for survival in the face of strong public opposition, particularly in the urban areas. Ignorance, fear and lack of political sophistication has kept the rural areas firmly under Mugabe’s grip.
Notwithstanding the danger that Mugabe poses to those who challenge him, the current political paralysis in the country raises a number of questions. Have Zimbabweans not suffered enough to realise that taking to the streets is necessary step towards their liberation from Mugabe’s regime?
Granted, last month’s stayaways organised by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) delivered a message, but was it loud enough?
Life in Zimbabwe under Zanu-PF has been reduced to a living hell and the most natural thing would be for Zimbabweans to rise up and unshackle themselves.
Ponder this: inflation is running at more than 300%, if you believe the official statistics. Private-sector economists see inflation hitting 1 000% by year-end. Unemployment is well over 70% and many businesses are teetering on the brink of collapse.
An acute fuel shortage threatens many businesses and has made the task of going to work and back home a nightmare for commuters. Electricity cuts caused by the country’s inability to import power have further eroded productivity.
People go for days without clean water but, when available, the water poses a health risk because authorities lack the currency to import water purification chemicals. Harare now carries a heavy stench as garbage goes uncollected for weeks because the city council has no fuel or vehicles. Other urban areas are equally affected.
As if this was not enough, Zimbabweans are in the grip of a cash crisis that has caused a major dislocation to business. Banks are buying cash from supermarkets and you can make 5% on money that you are holding as people desperately search for cash. On top of this Zimbabweans are subjected to political intimidation on a daily basis, state terror and a propaganda campaign that puts to shame Goebbels’s more sophisticated spin-doctoring. All these and more are factors that should have caused Zimbabweans to embrace the call by the MDC to take to streets a few weeks ago. But they didn’t. Why?
While fear was a major factor the MDC’s strategies carry most of the blame. People want change yesterday, but the MDC has no capacity to deliver that change yet. It was swept to where it is by people’s anger against the Zanu-PF government and not because it had a better political manifesto. And, of course, its leader Morgan Tsvangirai is no Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Joshua Nkomo or Herbert Chitepo.
His pedestrian style is insufficient to drive political passions even in the most downtrodden of townships. This explains in part the calm during his two weeks of imprisonment.
The MDC’s call for street protests was marked by confusion. First it gave the government three weeks’ notice of its impending mass action. This gave Zanu-PF ample time to prepare to quash the protests. The MDC leadership proceeded to give out street names, times and dates of where the action would take place. Of course, Zanu-PF activists and the state military machine were at the venues before them. The MDC top brass was nowhere to be seen when their leadership on the streets was most needed. To be fair, Tsvangirai was picked up by police before taking to the streets but most of the leadership played it safe.
The MDC’s use of the independent media to inform the public of the mass action also played into the government’s hands. If the MDC had been a grassroots-based organisation it would have used its structures, making it difficult for the government to keep abreast of events. But it takes hard work, planning and living with the people to put these structures in place.
It was also a tactical blunder to label the mass action the final push, which raised the stakes and put its credibility on the block. Unfortunately the very successful job stayaway was far from being the final push.
It achieved some things. It sent a message to Mugabe that he no longer enjoys the support of the urban electorate. It proved that only brute force will keep Mugabe in power. But it also demonstrated that Zimbabweans have not yet mustered the courage to confront the regime.
The key result of the stayaway is the current political stalemate. The MDC does not have what it takes to harness people’s power to drive Mugabe from office, while Zanu-PF’s monopoly on coercive power is not enough to crush the people’s desire for change. This stalemate should point both parties to the fact that they need each other to find a solution to the crisis.
Many in Zanu-PF will fight against the prospect of talks as a way of extending their political life. Among them is Information Minister Jona-than Moyo whose political life depends on Mugabe. Talks with the MDC pose a threat to him.
It is time for true statesmen to emerge from both parties and help find a durable solution to Zimbabwe’s crisis. And these negotiations must be informed by the fact that the current crisis is as a result of Zanu-PF’s corruption and mismanagement and that Mugabe’s government is illegitimate. The MDC can only stay away from the talks if it knows that it is able to mobilise public support to drive Mugabe from power. It can’t.
Issues to be negotiated include the exit of Mugabe and his cronies who have long passed their sell-by date.
The talks must also focus on the nature of constitutional amendments required to put a transitional administration in place and the form and composition of that administration. The talks should set out a time frame for a new Constitution and a date for elections under the auspices of the United Nations.
This will be the easy part. The more challenging task will be rebuilding this country, which has been devastated by 23 years of Zanu-PF rule. And in this Zimbabwe will need the support of its regional and international partners.
Mugabe’s rule is a seminal lesson on how African civil wars are made. For how else does one characterise his blocking of avenues to expression of political choice by Zimbabweans? How else does one describe his use of force and violence to frustrate a new political dispensation? Thank God Zimbabweans have declined Mugabe’s invitation to a civil war.
Mugabe must accept unconditional talks with the MDC to give Zimbabwe a chance to live again. Even the most heartless of politicians must be touched by the suffering of Zimbabweans. The world wonders whether Mugabe cares about anybody other than Robert Gabriel Mugabe?
Trevor Ncube is chairman and chief executive of the Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard newspapers, and CEO of M&G Media