One of the most shameful events in modern African politics occurred on a weekend in March 2002 when President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe cheated his people of their most basic right — the right to choose who they want to be ruled by.
In the months leading up to the election, Mugabe’s political and security machine beat up thousands of Zimbabweans and disenfranchised hundreds of thousands more. And over the voting weekend, the Mugabe government, in a very blatant and unsophisticated manner, stole the election before the eyes of the world.
The majority of Zimbabweans, who were convinced that this election would mark the end of Mugabe’s 22-year rule, were incensed. They shouted their anger into TV cameras, at scribbling journalists and at the foreign observers who were standing powerless.
They complained loudly about South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, whose government they accused of not lifting a finger to help them. Some militantly declared that they would now cross the border to seek better opportunities in South Africa.
The following day they diligently went back to work, still cursing under their collective breath. Their bravest act of defiance was to snap up copies of the independent newspapers that were decrying the electoral fraud that had just been committed by the Mugabe government.
That event was shameful not only because the ageing despot stole an election from his people, but because his people allowed him to do so.
One would venture to say that the behaviour of the Zimbabwean people over the past few years is one of the most inexplicable reactions of an oppressed people in the modern era.
Zimbabwe today stands alone in Southern Africa as an island of instability, social decay and brutal human rights violations. The constitutional democracy, with its attendant freedoms and safeguards, exists only insofar as Zanu-PF will allow — which is not far. The only country that comes close to Zimbabwe when it comes to subverting democracy is that tiny kingdom run by a randy monarch.
Today’s Zimbabwe bears the classic hallmarks of the apartheid regime when it was on its last legs.
That is precisely why the seemingly don’t care attitude of the South African government and other regional governments to the plight of oppressed Zimbabweans is nothing short of despicable. Their mouthing about the land problem and insistence that the Zimbabwean crisis is merely an economic and not a human rights issue, is tantamount to saying that Zimbabweans are a lesser people, who do not deserve the rights enjoyed by most of Southern Africa’s citizens.
But the attitude of Zimbabweans to their own oppression and the gross mismanagement of their country is as inexplicable as that of the don’t care brigade.
South Africans have been where Zimbabweans are and certainly took their own oppression a lot more seriously than the people of the land north of the Limpopo.
Little more than a decade ago South Africans were facing up to a most morally hideous government that was bolstered by the most vicious and sophisticated security apparatus on the continent. During the states of emergency, a large section of the leadership of the internal resistance movement was jailed and forced underground. An acquiescent commercial press was aiding the state media in delegitimising the anti-apartheid effort and the bulk of the white population was prepared to give their all for the republiek. The conservative governments of the major Western powers — Britain, Germany and the United States — were intent on pursuing a “constructive engagement” akin to Mbeki’s quiet diplomacy.
South Africans who opposed the apartheid system clearly had the odds stacked against them. They could have sat back and hoped for some foreign deliverance.
Instead, through their own actions — and not empty pleadings — they turned world opinion against apartheid into world action against apartheid. When the world saw throngs of protesters on the streets, youthful combatants taking on the armed battalions of the apartheid government, humanity’s conscience was pricked.
South Africa’s struggle became an international cause célèbre rather than a passing interest. The world’s people took to their own streets, pressuring their respective government to crack down on the National Party government through sanctions, disinvestment and isolation.
Before the venom-spitting Professor Jonathan Moyo accuses this paper of motivating for insurrection, it must be stated that the only means of regime change we would ever countenance are those allowed by the norms of the United Nations and other multilateral bodies to which Zimbabwe subscribes. However, these organisations’ protocols allow for the recognition of national liberation struggles.
So why don’t Zimbabweans realise that it is their responsibility to liberate themselves?
We could surmise that because the country was liberated after a classical guerrilla war in which the exiled leadership and the rural peasantry played the major roles, the current anti-Mugabe leadership lacks the wherewithal to conduct a decent resistance campaign.
The urban working class and intelligentsia played a minimal role in that struggle and for the first two decades of independence hero-worshipped the country’s leadership.
Now that the liberation movement has gone rotten, the mainly urban-based resistance is at a loss as to how to mount a systematic campaign to remove Mugabe. And because those now leading the new liberation struggle do not wear the Chimurenga badge, it is very easy for Mugabe to discredit them in the eyes of the peasantry and the leaders of neighbouring states who come from same tradition as Zanu-PF.
There is a distinct lack of creativity about how to harness the anger and discontent among the country’s poor into mass action against the Mugabe government. The trade unions, civil society organisations and the political opposition are, at every turn, outmanoeuvred by the Mugabe government.
At the risk of sounding arrogant about the South African experience, one has to say that Zimbabweans need look no further than their southern neighbour for tips on how to mount a modern resistance campaign.
The reasons South Africans, many of whom were not even heavily politicised, readily joined in the struggle against apartheid was that their leadership was able to convince them of the illegitimacy of the government in power. They worked among the people, creating leadership structures at the most basic community level — leaders with whom villagers and township residents could identify.
Ordinary people were educated about the exact nature of the society they were struggling against and not just indoctrinated to oppose the existing order. There was regular contact between national leaders and the people on the ground, a factor that presented to grassroots activists the image of national leadership accountability.
Mass actions such as marches and stayaways were not an end in themselves but were used as vehicles to conscientise people and keep communities active. The people took up their leaders’ call to action instead of cowering in their homes and planning border-jumping expeditions.
The rootedness in communities ensured that even when the state removed a layer of leadership, the struggle was not immobilised.
All of this served not only to defeat apartheid but also to ensure that the post-apartheid South Africa was not one of leader-worshipping masses, as was the case in post-liberation Zimbabwe.
That culture of community involvement in the liberation effort is what today keeps South Africa’s premier liberation movement on its toes and will ensure that this country never follows the Zimbabwean route.
Zimbabweans should begin to build that culture now instead of blaming the world’s inaction for their woes.
Building sustainable mass movements is the only way they will be able to remove their despotic government. It is also the only guarantee against a future leader — be it Morgan Tsvangirai or one of Zanu-PF’s young turks — from turning into another Robert Mugabe once in power.
But the events of that March 2002 weekend do not suggest that Zimbabweans will ever get angry enough to guide their own country to its fate.