Reporters Without Borders condemns Thursday’s arrest of freelance journalist Precious Shumba in a police raid on the Harare office of the international aid NGO ActionAid, where Shumba works as a programmes officer. A reporter for The Daily News until it was forced to close, he is the 10th journalist to be arrested since the general elections.

An educational crisis has developed around the country with many schools suffering from a shortage of teachers, due to the current crackdown on suspected opposition supporters and officials. Our correspondent Simon Muchemwa said teachers are not returning to work because they are being hunted down and victimised for the role they played during the elections and because the ruling party considers them agents of the opposition.

Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission is due to start verifying the country's delayed presidential election results. Representatives from both the governing Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change will oversee the collating process in Harare.

It is interesting that there is very little comment in relation to the origins of the Zimbabwe crisis. Had the Lancaster House agreement been fulfilled, perhaps the land reform programme would have been more timely and orderly.

But where is the critism/analysis of the UK and US who turned their backs on the financial committments to pay the white farmers for the land that they had originally stolen from the Africans? It was not unexpected that mistakes were made in the resulting land reform programme given the absence of the financial guarantees originally committed the North.

But, where is the criticism of the World Bank, IMF, Commonwealth, European Union, US etc. which placed dranconian economic sanctions on Zimbabwe precisely because it took its land back? What developing country could survive such an economic attack which is the root cause of the economic crisis? Now we are supposed to join with the same villians who created the conditions for the crisis by condemning Mugabe in favour of a externally-created MDC whose leader was videotaped discussing assasination of the elected president?

When the dust clears, follow the land and see how quickly new schemes will be developed under this MDC to reverse the land reform, not in the interest of the Africans. After all, they must pay back their masters.

The Institute for a Democratic Alternative for Zimbabwe (IDAZIM) has formed a Truth and Justice Coalition to, amongst other things "identify perpetrators and seek legal redress for the victims of crimes against humanity and other serious crimes in Zimbabwe."

“The destruction of democracy begins when good people, just people or merely those who are well intentioned do nothing”, Gabriel Shumba, a torture victim, human rights lawyer, exile and spokesperson for the Truth and Justice Coalition announced. The Institute for a Democratic Alternative for Zimbabwe (IDAZIM) has initiated, with full support from civil society, labour and legal organizations, the Truth and Justice Coalition on Zimbabwe. Its objectives are to identify perpetrators and seek legal redress for the victims of crimes against humanity and other serious crimes in Zimbabwe.

Shumba announced yesterday that the coalition had now assembled over 200 names of ZANU (PF) military, militia, members of parliament and war veterans who in their personal and/or professional capacity have unleashed terror and tyranny against civilians in recent months. More importantly, their complicity with a cabal of high-ranking Zimbabwean politicians and military personnel with links to other countries is now documented for public release. Shumba said, “today we shall begin the rollout of disgrace for people driven by personal greed, who have defamed and destroyed democracy in our nation. These names are part of a criminal dossier being compiled to support prosecutions in South Africa and other jurisdictions.” He added, “we begin with names like Brigadier Nyikayaramba, who is based in Mudzi South and commanding the indiscriminate torture, rape and beating of innocent citizens.

“The Truth and Justice Coalition will not stop pursuing these perpetrators of crimes until they are brought to justice. In addition, the Coalition shall highlight their personal assets, illicit money laundering and collusion with some Asian and other African states in disclosing their criminal activity. Bright Matonga, MP for Mhondoro-Ngezi and former Deputy Information Minister has been identified for acts of property destruction, including farm looting and public transportation fraud. In addition the blood diamonds trail may lead us to the DRC, where senior government officials and their families have already been implicated.

The TJC believes that one of the most tragic betrayals of this once proud liberation movement in Zimbabwe is the subversion of institutions of government like the army, the police and the judiciary whose loyalty is now not to the citizenry but ruling clique. For example, the Commander of the Armed Forces, General Chiwenga, in his personal capacity is the architect of military madness and murder nationwide. He has personally lied to and advised the caretaker President to subvert the peoples’ will, due to his personal interest and those of his colleagues.

The General has personally accumulated an estimated US$3 million worth of minerals and assets including a palatial home at Borrowdale Brooke in Harare. His wife, Jocelyn Chiwenga, receives the Zimbabwe Defence Forces main supply contracts. He has personally rejected democracy and has also instructed a military roll out which includes the deployment of militia, soldiers, army brigadiers and war veterans into rural areas to torture at will, and in some instances kill mainly opposition MDC supporters.

In Mudzi North, General Chiwenga is working in cahoots with Assistant Commissioner Pfumvute assisted by war veteran Zvidzai Katsande, Councilor Nyakumba, Asst Commissioner Nikati and, as a particular shame of justice, Member of Parliament Newton Kachedza. These people were in positions of command and authority at the time of the tragic death of Murunde Tembo who was attacked in Mashonaland East on Tuesday the 15th of April. Tembo sustained serious injuries to his body including broken legs. He died on his way to hospital.

Davie Malungisa, Executive Director of IDAZIM explained “these profiles are real stories of ordinary people, not only tortured, but silenced forever because of their decision to exercise their right to vote. General Chiwenga, by virtue of the principle of command responsibility, in his personal capacity, will be charged under local and international laws for these crimes.”

One of the most shameful assaults on innocents to date ironically occurred on 18 April, Zimbabwe’s Independence Day. On this fateful day, five-year old, Brighton Mabwera from Manyika village in Uzumba was murdered in his sleep when the hut he was sleeping in was set on fire by ZANU (PF) thugs. After the discovery of his charred remains, his grieving parents were compelled to bury the body in the absence of a post-mortem so that evidence will be hidden. Little Brighton’s only crime is that his parents belong to a different party than the ruling one.

The Coalition’s legal coordinator, Nicole Fritz, Director of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), which was responsible for the court action that prevented the Chinese arms shipment from docking in South Africa, commented: “Mr Chiwenga in his personal and professional capacity attracts the same responsibility in international law as did the warlords of Bosnia Herzegovina, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. This course of action has legal precedent. This Coalition will seek legal representation in South Africa where, in terms of South African law, those responsible for crimes against humanity can be apprehended and prosecuted. We have been receiving unprecedented reports of widespread, state-sponsored killing, rape, assault, damage to property, and large-scale displacement.”

The Truth and Justice Coalition will shortly reveal names of other Zimbabwean officials– including their business, financial and possible political associations that are protecting or even perhaps preventing Mugabe from following democratic resolve.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/367/47799scale.jpgChido Makunike looks at the various competing interests in Zimbabwe, the MDC, ZANU PF, Mugabe and the West in relation to what the Zimbabwean are hoping to get out of democracy.

A month after Zimbabwe’s March 29 elections, the winner of the presidential poll remains unknown. The delay adds considerable additional complexity to the many undercurrents of the country’s problems.

By virtue of the suspicious, poorly explained delay in announcing who won the presidential poll, the authorities in Harare have ensured that the only outcome that will be widely believed by a sceptical world would be one in which main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai emerged the winner. Any other result would be widely dismissed as “fixed” by the authorities to produce a favourable outcome for President Robert Mugabe in the time since the election.

Even a close result requiring a run-off election between Mugabe and Tsvangirai would be seen by many as engineered to give the ruling party a second chance to mobilise the state machinery to do whatever it took to ensure the “right” result for him. The results delay and whatever other gambits the authorities are likely to serve up arguably can no longer serve to impart even the veneer of electoral legitimacy on Mugabe.

It would be one of many recent defeats in which Mugabe resorts to out rightly thwarting the electoral will of the people. But he does nevertheless need a façade of democracy. He has often responded to his Western criticism by saying they have no authority to chide him on the basis of his democratic credentials. “We brought democracy at independence in spite of Western support for the racist, anti-democratic government we replaced” has been his argument. He points out that by the measure of regularly held elections, Zimbabwe is far more democratic than many other countries that are in much better books with the Western world than it is.

Mugabe makes this point to bolster his argument that Western opposition to him is not because of any concern for the welfare of Zimbabweans, but is due to his stinging criticism of the double standards of the West, as well as his refusal to be compliant with Western expectations of how an African leader should conduct himself. It is precisely Mugabe’s fearlessly expressed, hard-to-fault arguments about the West’s relations with the rest of the world that makes him such a hero to many in Africa and beyond, even as Zimbabweans have suffered steep economic decline and increasing repression at home.

If the veneer of democratic legitimacy such as that imparted by regularly scheduled elections, no matter how flawed, has always been so important to Mugabe, why would he seem to risk throwing it all away now? Whatever the presidential results will show when released, the opposition MDC’s unprecedented win of a majority in the concurrently held parliamentary election is a convincing indication of the level of disaffection with the rule of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF. His actions since March 29 do not at all suggest a man who respects the right of the voters to choose their leaders.

For the three election cycles up to the mid 1990s, Mugabe’s desire for the perception of a strict adherence to at least the forms of electoral democracy, if not the substance, was relatively easy to achieve. Independence-era euphoria and “gratitude” may have been lifting with every election, but until about then, Mugabe could count on genuine popularity to make his party’s re-elections a foregone conclusion. Mugabe has now shown that his dedication to those electoral forms is not quite so strong after all, now that the evidence suggests a likely majority of the electorate want him gone.

Merely conducting an election cannot bestow democratic legitimacy when it is clear that the only results that will be respected are those in which the incumbent wins. By so awkwardly making this obvious, Mugabe’s government has trapped itself into the equally unhealthy situation in which much of the Zimbabwean electorate and the world would now only believe a result which showed Mugabe losing. This has made “the Zimbabwe crisis” take on a dimension far beyond what can be resolved by the much anticipated release of the results of the presidential poll.

The desire to hold on to power and privilege, and fear of prosecution for past crimes are the usually discussed reasons for Mugabe and ZANU-PF conducting themselves with so little dignity in the face of evidence of an electorate earthquake of rejection against them. But genuine revulsion at what Tsvangirai and the MDC are perceived to represent is no doubt also part of the intransigence of Mugabe & Company in conceding defeat.

There is a self-serving element to Mugabe’s painting of the MDC as stooges of the West who are bent on reversing the efforts to have Zimbabwe’s political independence also have economic teeth for its citizens. Yet Tsvangirai and the MDC have ineptly only fuelled these suspicions in their words and deeds over the years. Mugabe and ZANU-PF in turn have largely failed to convince a majority of Zimbabweans that the claimed slavishness of the MDC to their Western backers is the reason their country is in such poor shape. Mugabe & Co. may genuinely worry that Tsvangirai and the MDC wish to “sell out” the country to the West and “reverse the gains of the revolution” by restoring the economic dominance of whites in commercial agriculture and other sectors of the economy.

But if so, electoral democracy required that Mugabe sell that message to the electorate more convincingly than the MDC’s pitch much needed change and renewal. The MDC has arguably won that battle for the hearts and minds of Zimbabweans, helped considerably by the country’s desperate economic state under Mugabe.

Instead of accepting his failure to sell his message of “Things are bad because we are besieged by powerful external foes, stick with me while I work out a plan to thwart them and improve things,” Mugabe has instead arrogantly chosen to accuse the electorate of not fully understanding what is at stake. His stance is essentially that the electorate are mistaken to buy the Tsvangirai’s message and reject his. And if he can get away with it, he seems inclined to “correct” the misguided electorate by hanging on in power regardless of the popular will!

Yet the price one must pay for accepting a system of electoral democracy is to respect the will of the people even if one believes that will to be wrong. You then revert to opposition, sharpening your message for the next election. The current impasse is partly because of the refusal of Mugabe & Co. to respect this rule of the game because for the first time its result has been unfavourable to them.

The MDC had begun to make inroads into reversing the suspicion with which it was regarded in many African capitals by a belated diplomatic outreach to them. Those efforts have in recent weeks become compromised again by the over-the- top eagerness of the Western political establishment and media to take sides in the Zimbabwean election. In the days leading up to the election, and since then, the Western political and media establishment abandoned all pretence of merely being onlookers who were just interested in seeing that Zimbabweans were able to freely exercise their vote. Zimbabwe’s economic, political and humanitarian problems are severe enough, but the Western media, particularly that of ex-colonial master Britain, went into an absolute frenzy to depict the country as a virtual war zone.

Whether or not it was a coordinated campaign to give the Mugabe a decisive final push out of power, in their shrillness the Western political and media establishment only served to give credence to Mugabe’s long-held claim of a Western conspiracy to depose him for not being pliable in the mould of most African leaders. Britain had kept a relative distance in the months leading up to the election, correctly fearing that any unusual interest would be used by Mugabe as proof of its dishonourable neo-colonialist intentions. But at the time of the election and immediately after, Britain seemed to smell Mugabe’s blood and lost all self-restraint in the excitement of the prospect of seeing its old nemesis gone. It was almost as if Britain were so certain of Mugabe being deposed that it no long felt the need to maintain the façade of being a neutral observer.

Western shrillness has only grown since the election, with the Zimbabwean authorities also feeding it by the astonishing games over the election results, as well as the jailing of some Western journalists for slipping into the country to report on the election without getting accreditation - under the country’s tight media laws. But the effect of all this has been to justify the paranoia of the Zimbabwean authorities about a claimed coordinated Western “regime change” agenda.

Such an agenda could not justify the flouting of the popular electoral will, but it is not much of a stretch to guess that the unseemly eagerness of the West to interfere in and influence the election against him would only have made Mugabe and his whole political machinery feel inclined to dig in even in defiance of the voters. It is therefore quite plausible to speculate that the Western eagerness to “help” the MDC ensure Mugabe’s exit may in the short term have done the exact opposite.

In the immediate term the desire of the West to see the back of a troublesome-to-them-Mugabe probably overlaps with the wishes of many Zimbabweans who put the blame for the political repression and economic hardships in their country squarely at Mugabe’s door. But it is not at all certain that those similar desires perfectly coincide. Neither Britain nor the US have an honourable history in regards to Zimbabwe, so their posing as great champions of democracy and defenders of its peoples’ best interests have a hollow ring.

Mugabe has indeed degenerated into a despot who has refused to accept any responsibility for his country’s mess. But he is no worse a ruler than many others who dare not point out the West’s double standards and who are quite happy to have their countries be client states in return for being absolved of scrutiny over their governance records. Therefore the West and the Zimbabwean citizenry want a change from Mugabe for likely very different reasons.

If Mugabe somehow survives the electoral and diplomatic onslaughts against him and hangs on for several more years, the ill-advised Western intervention on behalf of the MDC would provide him considerable ammunition against the opposition party. This may make little difference to the voters’ feelings towards him if economic decline and hardship continue, as is likely to be the case in a situation where the Western world would be even more resolute in closing doors to Mugabe’s government. Yet if Mugabe were able to stem the slide, say by paying serious attention to improved agricultural productivity, he might well be able to say “you saw how the Westerners behaved during the 2008 election; their conspiracy against me was not a figment of my imagination.”

With the economy continuing on its present slide, few outside his immediate circle and the die-hards in his party would listen to this argument. But with even modest stabilization, his idea of radical land redistribution remains popular enough amongst even his opponents that the argument could gain political currency to his benefit and at the expense of the MDC.

Even if Tsvangirai and the MDC assume office, their doing so with such open support for it as the West has shown will be a double edged sword. If the expected massive Western financial support flows in a way that quickly results in a stabilization of the economy that is widely felt at the grassroots, the whiff of the suspicion of the MDC having agreed to be “stooges” in return for Western support would be neutralised, at least in the short term. The need for a return to economic stability is probably the one issue that unites people across the country’s criss-crossing political divides.

But in the absence of either quick or widely-felt economic recovery, the tag of “Western stooge” around the necks of Tsvangirai and the MDC could remain a potent political weapon in the hands of a ZANU-PF that no longer dominates parliament, but nevertheless has only a handful fewer seats than the MDC. This assumes that ZANU-PF adjusts to being a minority party without disintegrating, which in turn also depends on how successfully they can choose a leader to fill Mugabe’s very large shoes. Without dramatic economic recovery, ZANU-PF in opposition could remain a formidable thorn in an MDC government’s flesh, with its Western backing becoming more of an albatross to it than a blessing.

Having won a majority, the MDC has not spent much time contesting the legitimacy of the parliamentary results. If they are considered to be a true reflection of the electoral will, it is astonishing that the ruling ZANU-PF did as well as it did, winning almost half of the popular vote and the number of parliamentary seats. With the rate of inflation said to be close to 200,000% and virtually every other economic index being strongly negative, one would have expected the ruling party to have been electorally wiped out.

Herein lie some of the nuances of the Zimbabwean crisis that much of the media we are exposed to is either oblivious of or simply not interested in relating. Mugabe has increasingly become repressive, he has been a brilliant ideologue but a very poor manager and he has simply stayed in power longer than was advisable for his own legacy. But his broad message of an unapologetic, assertively expressed desire for African empowerment retains its appeal and has led to a sea change in how black Zimbabweans think about what their independence should mean.

To say many and probably most Zimbabweans want Mugabe to step aside is not the same as saying his ideas have been largely rejected by them. For example, most would want his flawed land reform effort to be fixed to work, not for it to be reversed. The MDC was slow to understand this and other nuances of Mugabe’s complex legacy, losing it precious time and early support in Zimbabwe and elsewhere.

Now the opposition party is careful to say it would not return land to its previous white occupiers, but would make sure it was productively used by the new black landholders. It remains to be seen if the MDC’s Western backers understand these nuances and would let it negotiate the minefield of balancing the need for reviving the economy with the political imperative of a strong desire for African empowerment that will remain one of Mugabe’s strongest legacies despite his failure to translate that desire into concrete, practical reality.

There has been talk of a Kenya-like ‘government of national unity.’ Both sides naturally posture against it. It may still be emerge as the immediate way out of the present crisis. But as in Kenya, such a compromise solution robs whoever the winner is of the spoils of electoral victory. When the game is played, all the participants are fully aware that they could lose by a mere handful of votes.

Whether in Kenya or Zimbabwe, another potential flaw of a GNU is to rob the electorate of two or more competing visions of how their country should be ruled. It may avoid conflict in the short term, but it also effectively allows political parties to put aside their competition for power because the GNU allows all of them a chance at the feeding trough. There is also the potential of them collectively ganging up against the citizens they usually claim are their whole reason for being.

Resolving the current impasse is undoubtedly the most urgent order of business in Zimbabwe. But the country’s tortured and violent history, the cynical external interests seeking to exert their influence for their own ends, the huge ideological gulf between the two main political parties and the closeness of the results announced so far suggest that whichever way the immediate crisis is resolved, there are long term difficulties ahead in getting Zimbabwe back on the track of political stability, psychic healing and economic growth.

*Chido Makunike is a Zimbabwean social and political commentator.

**Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Four weeks to the day after Zimbabwe queued to vote in the 29 March 2008 elections, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission have finally confirmed their original results, and that was that Zanu PF has lost its majority in the House of Parliament for the first time in 28 years.

Reports from the rest of the provinces paint a bloodcurdling picture. Army barracks across the country are issuing war veterans and former military/police officers with weapons (AK 47 assault rifles). The official line is that they need to protect themselves against anticipated attacks by the MDC and its foreign supporters, particularly on former white-owned farms. But the real intention is to use the weapons against opposition supporters in the rural areas. The issuing of weapons began 24 April.

Mary Ndlovu argues that the MDC missed an opportunity to once and for all get rid of Mugabe and return democracy to the people. The likely outcome she argues is an agreement between Zimbabwean elites.

Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has done it again – won an election but failed to dislodge the incumbent from power.  Ever since 2000, when they first experienced the dismay of seeing a victory turn to defeat in the hands of authorities, the MDC has been wandering in the wilderness, looking for a policy that can bring success in the face of repression, open violence and electoral fraud.  They have vacillated between taking to the courts, calling people onto the streets to protest, and boycotting outright.  They have appealed to every international body, both legal and political, but  nothing has brought the desired displacement from power of the aged “liberation” leader, Robert Mugabe.

What is wrong?  Why has the MDC failed?  Could they have succeeded with a different strategy?  Should they have boycotted this election as they threatened to do? 

CONDITIONS THAT MADE AN MDC VICTORY POSSIBLE

Many commentators warned that MDC could not win the recent election. They said that in spite of the people’s desperation and anger caused by the imploded economy, in the repressive situation where ZANU PF controlled everything, this could not translate into an election victory. Some were insisting until the announcement of the election date that the opposition should boycott the election. But it turned out that no one, including those who had boycotted senate elections, wanted to boycott, at least no one in the MDC party structures.  They wanted to stand for office; maybe they would be “lucky” this time.  Furthermore, many of the people wanted to vote.

And this time was different.  The fated “mediation” by Thabo Mbeki established two important changes: there must be a minimum of visible pre-election violence perpetrated by ZANU PF; and the legislation which had been previously ignored must be adhered to – all results must be posted outside the stations when they had been counted -  including the presidential vote.  Probably Mbeki assured Mugabe that if these conditions were observed, then he would back the result.  All other shenanigans such as a partisan electoral commission, gerrymandering of constituencies, tampering with the voters’ roll, inadequacy of the “indelible” ink, complete manipulation of postal votes would be forgiven in the interests of obtaining another ZANU PF win.

But these two conditions proved fatal to Mugabe and ZANU PF.   By mid-morning of the day after the voting it was known that Mugabe had lost – not just the parliament but also the Presidential vote.  ZESN observers had the results, MDC had them through their polling agents and through photographs, and it would be next to impossible to deny.

The second condition loosened up the rural vote.  No longer intimidated, beaten tortured and burned out of their homes, the disaffected rural voters of Midlands, Mashonaland, Manicaland and Masvingo, who had previously voted for ZANU PF, took courage. Disappointed by the failure of the land reform and the deteriorating standards of living, they voted against Mugabe.  They voted out his Ministers, they voted out the old man as President.  Faced with a choice of opponents, they opted for Tsvangirai as the man they knew over Makoni, who had no structures on the ground and was tainted by his refusal to make a clean break with ZANU PF.

A ZIMBABWEAN HOUDINI

Since the 29 March elections Zimbabweans dared to hope that Mugabe would concede defeat.

And then what happened?  MDC did not count on the Houdini they confronted. Mugabe still had tricks up his sleeves.  He really didn’t care what the truth on the ground demonstrated or whether anyone believed the excuses and prevarications.  While still in a state of shock, and divided about how to respond to the losses, ZANU PF released the House of Assembly results in a carefully crafted slow drip to keep people in suspense.  But it was all a charade – the results were known by anyone who cared to ask. 

The MDC were taken in by the “negotiations for a solution” which proceeded parallel to the release of results.  Were they genuine or were they a deliberate delaying tactic? Or was it the agenda of one section of a divided ZANU PF?  Probably the latter, but Tsvangirai now admits he agreed to many compromises to achieve a negotiated transfer of power. Mugabe rallied his troops at a Politburo meeting on April 4, and then it became clear that no deal would be made.  ZANU PF would use all sorts of trickery, even dismantling the Electoral Commission command centre without releasing the presidential results.

The MDC then followed a double-barrelled strategy to get the results released:  appeal to the court, and appeal to the SADC Presidents. The court was owned by Mugabe and the statement wrung from a reluctant and divided SADC a week later on April 12 was too little and too late. By then Mugabe had time to muster his shock troops and the retribution was taking place in the villages – burnings of homes, torture, forced meetings to witness atrocities, and a few killings.  All of this would render both the results and a run-off second round of presidential voting irrelevant to MDC, as the people would this time be intimidated into either not voting or voting “correctly” to ensure the continuation of Mugabe’s Presidency.

THE INADEQUACY OF THE BALLOT BOX

The MDC have once again been taught a hard lesson:  the ballot box is necessary, but is not enough.  Where was the “Plan B”, the “defend your vote” campaign? Where is it now, as Tsvangirai shunts from one regional capital to another? Mugabe’s regime is tottering, even as they cling to power.  What was needed in order to make it collapse, to deprive it immediately of the support of the police, the army and the civil service, was popular action.  MDC had to show its people power outside the ballot box in order to dissolve the feet of sand. 
But it did not.  Why? Since at least 2002, the MDC has known it has been necessary to have a Plan B.  At each election they have insisted that they had one but it has never been implemented.

Were the MDC afraid to get the people out to visibly demonstrate that they had the power in their hands?  Were they incompetent to mobilise mass action?  Probably a little of both. In the first few days, while people were still waiting for the results, MDC was saying privately and publicly that they could not call for mass action because ZANU-PF wanted to provoke them so that they could declare a state of emergency. They did not want people to suffer. That position looked less and less tenable as Mugabe’s terror began to spread through the countryside, targeting supporters and lower level organisers.  It is a tough leadership decision to call the people to action which may put many in danger, but it has to be taken at critical moments. Tsvangirai has confirmed to his critics that he does not have the toughness to rise to the moment.  MDC had neither organised the people on the ground nor were they prepared to lead them into the final push.

That last push could not just be taken by elites behind closed doors; nor could it be forced by an international midwife; that last push had to come from a disciplined, organised, people acting together.  That action has to be understood by the people, it has to be worked for – it does not just happen.  It should have been an integral part of the election campaign strategy, that the people would know what to do when the moment to act came.  When the call finally did come, through foreign media, text messages, and some fliers in Harare, it barely reached a disheartened, frightened and confused people.  The moment to act was not when elite deal-making had failed, but the minute the result was known and ZANU PF was in shock.  The people could have spoken immediately, ZANU PF was divided, and might well have fallen.  But the MDC leadership was afraid to call for the required sacrifices, and the moment was missed.

Progress has of course in some way been made.  The world has seen, that Mugabe is not wanted by the people of this country; his hypocrisy, deceit and nakedness have been exposed; ZANU PF is further divided in spite of its façade of unity; the SADC establishment has been forced into an open split.  But the opportunity to bring a popular party to power through their own struggle using democratic processes has been missed.   The transition is now likely to come – and come it must – through the collapse by implosion of ZANU PF and its law enforcement agencies, possibly some open skirmishes and some type of negotiated agreement between elites.  It is doubtful whether we have moved much towards any genuine democracy or achievement of social justice for the people.  All we can hope is that lessons have been learned by the people and by their leaders and when the next opportunity knocks on the door they will be more ready.

*Mary Ndlovu is a Zimbabwean socialist. This article first appeared at

**Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Dale McKinley analyses the various routes resistance in Zimbabwe has taken, the limitations of the MDC and calls for a "a strategy of well-planned, participatory, inclusive, sustained and combined political and socio-economically-driven mass action".

The character and content of the past and ongoing political, economic, social/humanitarian and (progressive) organisational crisis in Zimbabwe has received huge amounts of analytical and empirical attention from the broad left in Southern Africa and, to a lesser extent, from the global left. Several books, numerous essays/articles, frequent seminars/workshops and countless blogs and emails have been offered on almost every aspect of the crisis. While these efforts have certainly provided much-needed intellectual stimulation/debate, important information, degrees of organisational impetus and knowledge-generation about the crisis, and have often catalysed practical efforts to assist, and be in solidarity with, progressive forces in Zimbabwe, the Achilles heel of the struggle for a new Zimbabwe - the strategy and tactics of resistance/opposition – has, for the most part, been treated as a ‘poor cousin’, forever condemned to sit on the margins of the main ‘conversation’ and struggle.

It is a serious weakness that is not specific to the Zimbabwean struggle (witness the general strategic and tactical disarray of left forces in South Africa in the early-mid 1990s), but it is one that is located within a very specific Zimbabwean context and which has had an adverse impact on the general trajectory of resistance/opposition struggles in Zimbabwe over the last several years. Thus, the main questions that need to be posed are: what have been the main reasons for such as weakness on the strategic-tactical front that have led the struggle in Zimbabwe to its present day strategic cul-de-sac? and, what needs to be done to change that?

IDEOLOGICAL DISCONSONANCE OF THE ZIMBABWEAN LEFT

There has never been any meaningful degree of ideological consonance amongst left forces/individual activists in Zimbabwe. For the first decade or so, the institutional existence and political dominance of a ‘socialist’ political party in the form of ZANU-PF, engendered a ‘civil society’ that was effectively confined to the margins of key political/ideological and social debate and contestation. While opposition to the negative effects of Structural Adjustment Programmes and a subsequent raft of neo-liberal policy prescriptions in the early-mid 1990s fostered union-based, student and other smaller-scale resistance, eventually leading to the formation of the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) and then the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the dominant strategy of this accumulated resistance was bounded within a dominant constitutional and legal framework – i.e. to seek, through existing societal and state institutions, an expression of growing popular demands for changing the character and content of those institutions. This strategic orientation, and the tactics employed to pursue it (e.g., the formation of a political party to contest representational power through the existing institutional and legal framework) was understandable given the existence of political-social space at the time, the fact that the MDC was the first, meaningful and mass-based political challenge to the post-independence hegemony of ZANU-PF and the subsequent ‘victory’ of the nascent opposition forces in the constitutional referendum.

However, the ‘spaghetti mix’ (as left Zimbabwean activists have called it) of the MDC meant that once Mugabe and ZANU-PF had connived to steal the 2000 parliamentary elections, and in the process begin to close down the institutional and legal space for political dissent and opposition, there was no dominant ideological foundation to act as the basis for strategic and tactical re-assessment. As a result, the strategic ‘line’ remained the same – to gear up for contestation of the presidential elections in 2002 and continue the demands for a new Constitution, using the MDC as the main driver/vehicle and allied ‘civil society’ formations as fellow passengers,. Tactically, the main emphasis was on using the available (but fast-closing) institutional and legal space to launch strikes and stay-aways (by a diminishing number of employed workers and an increasingly survivalist general population), mobilise international opinion and support and embark on a standard electoral campaign to influence and mobilise support amongst the Zimbabwean population. Under such a strategic rubric though, there was little the oppositional forces could do once Mugabe and ZANU-PF began to unleash their war veteran-driven ‘land reform programme’, youth militias and institutional/legal manipulation as a means of consolidating power (especially in the rural areas) and covering the creeping dictatorship in the cloak of an incomplete ‘national democratic revolution’.

It is testimony to the hope placed in such a strategic line of march by a majority of Zimbabweans, that the MDC’s presidential candidate – Morgan Tsvangirai - only narrowly ‘lost’ the 2002 presidential elections. But Mugabe and ZANU-PF were never going to allow ‘normal’ politics to frame, and decide, the struggle for institutional (state) and representational power and when this election was rigged/ stolen, the oppositional forces fell further into the quagmire of their own ideological and thus, strategic, contradictions. As one grassroots Zimbabwean left activist put it at the time: “It is important to reemphasize that the lack of ideological discipline in the civic movement at the moment subjects it to manipulation in many ways. It allows domination by foreign funding. It also paralyses internal discourse to counter ideological offences by enemies. It creates a base for manipulation for individual pursuits. It remains one of the reasons why penetration of the grassroots has been difficult.” Despite such contradictions, and combined with the intensification of Mugabe/ZANU-PF’s post-election closing down of institutional/legal space for ‘normal’ opposition politics, there remained a dominant belief amongst oppositional intellectuals and activists/leaders that there was no need to change the strategic framework, although there was one call for ‘civil society’ to “break the bond with the MDC” and focus on grassroots “bread and butter” struggles as means to build an independent mass base capable of mounting a “meaningful challenge to the Mugabe dictatorship and neo-liberalism”.

CONSEQUENCES OF STRATEGIC CONFUSION

The continued pursuit, after the 2002 election, by the vast majority of oppositional forces of a strategy of inclusion – i.e., participation in the institutional and representational framework under a Mugabe-ZANU-PF run state combined with occasional, short-lived and largely ineffective spurts of mass action designed to mobilise domestic and international opinion – only served to further splinter such forces and catalyse a growing political disillusionment amongst the general populace. In turn, this paved the way for Mugabe/ZANU-PF to not only survive, but to strengthen their hold on state power, provide new avenues of accumulation for the bureaucratic, managerial and military elite, intensify their onslaught against the remaining little institutional and legal space available for ‘normal’ democratic politics and manipulate racial and ethnic solidarities both internally and regionally. The few (politically and ideologically) left voices that were left in Zimbabwe recognised this. In a stinging 2004 ‘review’, the International Socialist Organisation stated that the opposition had sent, “confusing signals of the way forward and strategy by the leadership to the rank and file ... It was not clear what the decisive grand strategy was – mass action or talks? Where action was done it was done in a half-hearted, half-organized manner with unrealistic illusions of a one – off big bang action to overthrow Mugabe’s dictatorship. This reflected the now overwhelming influence of the party by the cowardly bourgeois and petite bourgeois sections … who were and still are hostile to serious mass action for fear of revolution.”

The impact of such confusion was evident in the late 2004 call by the NCA for a boycott of the upcoming 2005 parliamentary elections, where the stated purpose of the boycott was to pressure the Mugabe government into “meaningful” changes to the Constitution. The NCA claimed that it would, “employ various strategies and there are a number that we are mulling at the moment … boycotting the election is just one option. People can disturb the whole purpose by deliberately spoiling ballot papers or just disrupt the whole process so that it does not even take place… but it will be a matter of strategy”. Not only was strategy becoming confused with tactics, but it was clear that there really was no alternative strategy outside of the now well-worn path of knocking on the door of existent (but now extremely minimalist) institutional and legal space.

Not surprisingly then, the boycott tactic fell apart, the MDC contested the 2005 elections and Mugabe/ZANU-PF (for the third time) rigged and bullied their way to an electoral ‘victory’. And once again, the main voices of the opposition cried foul, threatened all sorts of ‘people’s power’ mass action to bring Mugabe to his knees and turned even further towards the pillar of regional/international opinion. That none of these tactical ‘measures’ effected any meaningful/sustained change in the political and/or socio-economic status quo – such change having now become the sole preserve, even if backward, of the ever-intensifying kleptocratic and dictatorial rule of Mugabe/ZANU-PF - was further confirmation (if ever that was needed) of the strategic bankruptcy of the main opposition forces. The subsequent leadership-dominated in-fighting and occurrence of factional violence within the MDC, eventually leading to a split, was nothing more than the logical outcome of such. Even while record amounts of donor funds found their way into the coffers of a plethora of ‘oppositional’ NGOs, the repressive toll of a rapacious state combined with a precipitous decline in the social and economic fabric of Zimbabwean society ensured that by 2007, over a third of the population resided outside Zimbabwe’s borders, the average life expectancy had nosedived to the late 30s and inflation was running close to 100 000%.

Such a state of affairs had led another grassroots activist to offer a belated, but crucial, riposte: “Whilst terms like legitimacy, governance, and constitution are legitimate the ordinary man and woman on the street interprets the crisis more in terms of its socio-economic havoc. Thus we must articulate our agenda in terms of questions of hunger, poverty, wages, availability of ARVs, affordable sanitary pads, student grants, water and electricity cut offs, collapse of municipal services, harassment of cross border traders and vendors, food shortages, transport costs, price increases, access to land and so on. This is the language that will resonate with people’s day-to-day lives.”

2008 ELECTIONS: TAKING DESTINY INTO ZIMBABWEANS’ HANDS

And yet, despite all of this the MDC (now in two parts) and its ‘civil society’ allies returned once again to their chosen strategy. Surely this time, the combination of socio-economic meltdown, changes to the electoral laws, international outrage, regional pressure and ‘mediation’ (despite misgivings about the key role of South African President Thabo Mbeki), factional battles within ZANU-PF as well as the ongoing and increasingly desperate fight for new avenues of accumulation amongst the elites would ‘deliver’ victory to the opposition in the 2008 elections (now combining both presidential and parliamentary voting). And sure enough, by the time the election was over, even the sceptics had been caught up in the euphoria of an expected MDC (Tsvangirai) victory … the long-suffering people of Zimbabwe had finally had their say. The numbers were there for all to see – ZANU-PF had been defeated in the parliamentary elections and Morgan Tsvangirai had either defeated Mugabe or had garnered enough votes to force a presidential run-off. But as the post-election days have gone by, the reality (for the fourth time) has bitten hard – the same reality that was not as clear at the very beginning of the opposition’s strategic sojourn – namely, that Mugabe and ZANU-PF were never going to allow ‘normal’ democratic politics to frame, and decide, the struggle for institutional (state) and representational power. And so it continues.
In a statement issued a few days ago, the MDC said it is time for Zimbabweans to take “destiny into their own hands”. They are right about that. But then they said that the way in which Zimbabweans should do so is to stay at home until the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission releases the presidential results. They are wrong.

The ‘story’ of Zimbabwe’s last decade is, in all respects, a tragic one despite the immense resilience and courage of ordinary Zimbabweans (wherever they are) and the commitment and bravery of innumerable peasants, workers and other activists from all walks of life. Yet, this tragedy is not immutable. Mugabe/ZANU-PF and all of their hangers-on have been on a downward spiral ever since they abandoned the only basis for democratic legitimacy in a capitalist world – the political will and socio-economic well-being of the mass of the workers and the poor. In Zimbabwe, as elsewhere in our world, it has always and forever been impossible to realise and affirm that will through a dominant strategy of struggling on a terrain not of the ongoing making of that mass. Inclusion can only have real and lasting meaning when it is those who are excluded who set the terms.

As Zimbabwe sits on the edge of a precipice that continues to crumble under the weight of its various architects making, the time is ripe for a (re)making of another sort - a strategy of well-planned, participatory, inclusive, sustained and combined political and socio-economically-driven mass action to cut the remaining ground from underneath the shaky feet of the oppressors. After all, it is ground that is only, ultimately, being held up by the that mass. Now is not the time for sitting on the sidelines to wait and hope that the oppressors jump off the precipice. Now is not the time for recycling a tired and failed strategy. Now is not the time for quiet activism. It is time to inspire and lead.

*Dale McKinley is a socialist activist and researcher who is a member of the Anti-Privatisation Forum. He was born and raised in Zimbabwe and spent the first 18 years of his life in Zimbabwe. This article first appeared at

**Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Upon a critical review of the political crises emanating from the inordinate delay in the release of the results of March 29th, 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in the Republic of Zimbabwe, we the representatives of the West African Civil Society Forum (WACSOF), West African Bar Association (WABA) and the West African Human Rights Forum (WAHRF) in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) wish to observe the following:

1. For some time now, Zimbabwe has been embroiled in serious socio-economic and political crises, which have been compounded by the refusal of President Robert Mugabe to relinquish power.

2. The independence of the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) has been compromised by the unwholesome interference of government in its statutory functions.

3. The political climate has been charged and made unsuitable for popular participation in governance and development.

We hereby make the following declarations:

1. Demand for the immediate release of the results of the elections as held on 29th March 2008.

2. Urge the winner of the elections to form a government that expresses the will of the people.

3. Call on the government of Zimbabwe to stop State-sponsored hostilities against the people and the human rights community.

4. Demand the release of all those who have been arrested in the wake of post-election demonstrations.

5. Commend the Workers’ Unions in the Southern African region for their steadfastness in disallowing the importation of arms and ammunitions into Zimbabwe.

6. Commend the maturity of the people of Zimbabwe in ensuring that the situation has not degenerated into violent conflicts.

7. Call on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union to rise up and condemn the subversion of democracy and the rule of law by President Robert Mugabe.

8. Call on the peoples of West Africa to identify and stand with the people of Zimbabwe in defense of their democratic rights.

We have thus commenced a programme of activities to sensitize and mobilize popular support of West Africans to intervene constructively in establishing democracy in Zimbabwe.

Southern African gender activists have called on their leaders and the international community to "act decisively" in ending the Zimbabwean crisis which threatens all peace loving citizens, especially women and children. They have specifically urged Angolans to refuse entry to a shipment of arms headed for Zimbabwe from China after citizen action in South Africa led to the shipment being diverted from Durban harbour at the weekend.

Mutare public prosecutor Malvern Musarurwa has declined to prosecute freelance journalist Sydney Saize whose trial on allegations of contravening the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and Public Order and Security Act (POSA) was set to commence in the eastern border town on 22 April 2008. Saize, who was arrested on January 18, 2006 and spent three nights in police cells, was facing two separate charges under AIPPA and POSA.

President Robert Mugabe's government is challenging widespread reports of systematic beatings and assaults by the army, police and ZANU-PF militia as part of a campaign dubbed "Operation Mavhoterapapi" (Who did you vote for?). The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claim that since the 29 March poll, in which the ruling ZANU-PF lost their majority in parliament for the first time since independence from Britain in 1980, at least 10 of their supporters have been killed and hundreds assaulted.

Armed riot police raided the headquarters of Zimbabwe's main opposition party on Friday and detained scores of people in the biggest crackdown on the MDC since elections last month, officials said. The Movement for Democratic Change says it defeated President Robert Mugabe in the March 29 elections as well as ending his party's 28-year hold on parliament.

The Zimbabwean newspaper claims that Robert Mugabe’s regime has illegally sold US$1 million of ivory as part payment for a shipment of ammunition, grenades and mortars from China. The paper claims that Poly Technologies, a state owned arms manufacturer received payment for the arms on the 1st April, when information began filtering through that Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe had lost the elections. The controversial ‘An Yue Jiang’ ship is said to contain weapons purchased via that deal.

Civic groups in Zimbabwe have released a document detailing evidence of state-sponsored murder and violence against opposition supporters to southern Africa's chief elections observer. The document handed to Jose Marcos Barrica, Southern African Development Community (SADC) observer mission head, the factual evidence of post-election violence. The evidence included pictures of opposition supporters who were extensively tortured by the military, political activists and Zanu PF youth militias.

African National Congress (ANC) leader, Jacob Zuma has continued his calls for the immediate release of Zimbabwe's presidential results, saying the delays were now unacceptable. This position is far from president Thabo Mbeki's who keeps lenient regarding the crisis.

As the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang and its cargo of arms intended for the Mugabe regime heads for Namibia, the TUC has today (Wednesday) written to the President of the Southern African country urging him to turn the shipment away.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have today (April 24) issued a joint statement in support of the strong voice of fellow bishops in Zimbabwe. They have called for greater efforts on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe who are "left even more vulnerable to conflist heaped upon poverty amd the threat of national disintergration. It is therefore crucial that the international community act to bring a mediated settlement to this political crisis so that the social and economic and spiritual crisis of the country can be addressed."