A call by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for mass protests against President Robert Mugabe resonates among the majority of Zimbabweans and has dramatically raised the country’s political stakes, but could well fail if the opposition movement remains divided, analysts said.
Tsvangirai, who was re-elected president of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) last Sunday, warned Mugabe — Zimbabwe’s sole ruler since independence in 1980 — that his more than two-decade rule was nearing its end.
The former trade unionist’s call was endorsed by churches and student and civic groups on Wednesday but analysts said bringing all the anti-Mugabe forces together would be critical to launch a bold offensive on the 82-year old president, a cunning political fox in his heyday.
Mugabe, who labels Tsvangirai a puppet of the West, is increasingly relying on the country’s security forces to stifle opposition and dissent to his controversial rule, which analysts say has reduced the former breadbasket of the region into a begging nation.
“I assure you that 70% of Zimbabweans are grossly unhappy about the situation they are in and there is growing anger against the government and the ruling-party leadership,” Heneri Dzinotyiwei, a leading University of Zimbabwe (UZ) political commentator said.
“But the challenge is to [craft] an approach where we have a popular movement not identifiable with a certain party or individual,” he told ZimOnline.
Dzinotyiwei said there were many inside Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party who were fed up with the veteran president but did not necessarily support Tsvangirai. There were many others outside both Zanu-PF and the two MDC factions who equally wanted to see an end to Mugabe’s rule.
“The challenge is how to bring all these people together under a broad opposition movement. It can be done and I have no doubt the government will not have a response if this scenario were to happen,” said the respected Dzinotyiwei.
Economic analysts say that although Zimbabweans have largely been cowed by Mugabe’s tactics of routinely deploying riot police and the military to crush street protests, a crumbling economy has fanned public frustration with the government.
Zimbabwe is battling a six-year recession dramatised by acute shortages of foreign currency, fuel and food while the rate of joblessness is around 80%. Zimbabwe also has the world’s highest inflation rate of 782%, scaled in February.
The economy is seen as worsening over Mugabe’s controversial policies that started with the arbitrary seizure in 2000 of white-owned commercial farms to resettle blacks. Analysts say worsening food shortages and general economic hardships would continue to feed into the anger of the majority, who have been impoverished over the years.
“It is going to be a sudden explosion of mass anger because we are reaching the threshold of the people’s patience,” Eldred Masunungure, chairperson of the political science department at the UZ said.
“Without legitimate avenues of expressing discontent, it may be a basis of a groundswell of mass anger that may break into the open and becoming violent without necessarily being backed by any political force,” he added.
Civic groups that met in Mutare on Wednesday included the National Constitutional Assembly that campaigns for a new and democratic constitution for Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Zimbabwe Council of Churches, Zimbabwe National Students Union, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, Women Coalition and Bulawayo Agenda.
Analysts said Tsvangirai’s reputation is now on the line and will be judged on whether he will deliver on his call, but they added that the MDC chief looks completely focused on Mugabe and not on a rival MDC faction, which recently broke away and denounced his leadership in a bitter dispute over tactics on how to tackle Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.
“Such a programme will need good organisational skills, courage and self-drive. He has put his reputation on the line and it has to work because it could damage his standing,” Masunungure said.
But the government is not sitting idly, and analysts said it could have been rattled by Tsvangrai’s weekend support and is now raising the stakes against the 54-year old Tsvangirai by up lining ministers, ruling party officials and the police who have threatened to crush any dissent.
In a warning published on Wednesday, Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party warned Tsvangirai anti-government protests could lead to bloodshed and boasted that if it comes to war, only itself had the experience.
Calls in the past by Tsvangirai and his MDC for mass revolt have fizzled out with only a handful of people heeding such calls, while the army and police have always been more than ready to prevent people from taking to the streets against the government.
But Dzinotyiwei said: “In history nobody has been able to predict how anti-government protests end but people realise the conditions we are living in are not sustainable. Whether the bubble will burst will be seen in the days ahead.” – ZimOnline