We have been very pleased with the manner in which the elections were conducted: The opposition had access to every part of the country, there was no violence, no one was beaten up; it has gone very well.” It may be difficult to believe, but it was the March 29 Zimbabwean elections that South African President Thabo Mbeki was talking about when he said this.
In some ways, Zimbabwe’s is a very African tale. By the end of the tumultuous 1980s, not a single head of state in the continent in three decades had allowed himself to be voted out of office. Africa was then brimming with “Big Men” — dictators who had milked their countries dry and built cults of personality around them.
Ebrahim Babangida in Nigeria, Omar Bongo in Gabon, Teodoro Obiang Nguema in Equatorial Guinea, Mobuto Sese Seko in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia — the list goes on.
They named airports and universities after themselves; their grim faces peered out of currency notes and massive street murals.
Having grabbed power after a coup in 1985, Babangida went about emptying Nigeria’s coffers before being forced out of power in 1993. No such bad luck for Bongo, though. After Cuba’s Fidel Castro left office this year, Bongo became the longest serving head of government in the world, having taken over small, oil-rich Gabon in 1967.
Oil-rich Equatorial Guinea’s dictator Nguema, who took office after executing his uncle in 1979, was the target of a failed foreign mercenary coup plot in 2004. He continues to rule the tiny nation like a personal fiefdom. The kleptocrat Mobutu plundered Zaire for 32 years between 1965 and 1997, enriching himself in the process.
And Mengistu’s communist rule, which started in 1974, came to an end in 1991 when he was driven from power. He was offered refuge by his good friend Robert Mugabe. The former Ethiopian strongman continues to live in Zimbabwe.
The infamous Scramble for Africa had left in its wake warring tribes and ethnic groups that were bundled together into nations by their European colonisers. The colonisers’ cartographers in London, Paris, Lisbon and other places preferred drawing straight lines on the map to divide territory, with little consideration given to the dynasties and tribal communities that existed on the ground.
Hence, the stage was set for future instability and conflict — when these countries got their independence. One-party states emerged in the name of ideology but, in reality, most were façades for domination and rule by one ethnic or tribal group over the others.
Political stand-off
When Mbeki made his comments on the Zimbabwean polls, it was as though he was telling the world the “sky is red, when all can see it is blue”, as one blogger put it. Zimbabwe held general elections on March 29, and after the torturous ballot “recount”, it was recently announced that Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had won 47.9 per cent of the vote and Mugabe 43.2 per cent — but neither candidate crossed the 50 per cent threshold needed for an outright win.
Hence, there will have to be a “run-off” pitting Tsvangirai directly against Mugabe. Of course, the opposition leader believes that he would have got more than 50 per cent of the vote had the elections not been rigged.
Speaking to Weekend Review from Durban, Dianne Kohler Barnard, a South African lawmaker from the opposition Democratic Alliance party, said: “There is no doubt in my mind that [the ballot] boxes were opened and that the government was going to attempt to insert thousands of the three million extra ballot papers they printed for the election.
But the meticulousness of the Zimbabwean people, coupled with the fact that there were observers at every counting station, scuppered that attempt.” Barnard, who served as a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) election monitoring mission in Zimbabwe, branded Mbeki’s statement as “utter rot”. “I interviewed, photographed and filmed people who had been beaten and gave those reports to SADC. But they were swept aside and then he [Mbeki] made this outrageous remark,” she said.
Mugabe is as much in control of the country today as he was when he first took over, 28 years ago.
He had been a hero then, full of promise. Indeed, Mugabe steered his country, which had emerged from a bitter civil war to end white minority rule, towards such prosperity that in the 1980s, Zimbabwe was known as the breadbasket of Africa. Even the late arch-racist Ian Smith, prime minister of white-ruled Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was then known), who had previously called Mugabe “the apostle of Satan”, said he found him “sober and responsible”.
By 1973, the number of whites in the country had risen to 273,000. Still, they accounted for less than 5 per cent of the population. But they were a coherent community, in total control of the country. Whites in the cities enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world. The white farmers had it even better.
Government regulations meant that the best land in this highly fertile country was reserved for whites. Many of the farmers were so well off that it was common to see airstrips and private aircraft in their very advanced farms.
All these privileges were maintained with the help of a ruthless but highly efficient security apparatus, which had the full support of the powerful apartheid regime in neighbouring South Africa.
Indeed, so confident was Smith of his government’s ability to retain white minority rule forever that shortly after assuming the post of prime minister in April 1964, he said: “I cannot see in my lifetime that the Africans will be sufficiently mature and reasonable to take over.”
The war for independence in the 1970s had pitted the white minority government of Smith — which was not recognised internationally — against guerillas of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu). Mugabe was one of the white regime’s most-wanted “terrorists”.
But, as it turned out, Smith’s regime soon learnt that the situation was untenable and could not go on for long. Majority rule was the only way forward. Smith left the political stage a bitter man, feeling let down by Britain. May 31, 1979 was the last day of white minority rule.
When Mugabe returned from exile after fighting the war which led to the deaths of more than 25,000, mainly black Africans, he was given a hero’s welcome by the largest crowd ever seen in Zimbabwe.
He was remarkably conciliatory towards the white minority, encouraging them to stay on. Soon the whites too realised that their new president was not the Marxist ideologue they had suspected him to be. “Good old Bob”, they called him.
There is no doubt Mugabe and his regime are responsible to a great extent for the present state of the country. But, the Zimbabwean opposition, the white farmers and the former colonial power, Britain, must also share some of the blame.
Land redistribution was a keystone of Zanu-PF’s manifesto. According to one estimate, long after independence, about 70 per cent of the country’s most arable land was in the hands of the white community, which now accounts for about 3 per cent of the population. And Mugabe was pressing the UK to honour a commitment to pay for the process.
As UK’s international development secretary, Clare Short wrote a letter to Zimbabwean minister for agriculture and land Kumbirai Kangai in 1997, which could have sparked the present situation.
In it, Short said: “I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and, as you know, we were colonised, not colonisers.”
Besides, the stronger the denunciations of Mugabe — and support for the MDC — from Britain became, the easier it became for Mugabe to brand the opposition a toy in the hands of the former coloniser.
But there is no denying the fact that Zimbabwe is now on the verge of collapse and Mugabe bears ultimate responsibility for this. Inflation stands at a numbing 160,000 per cent — Zimbabweans pay Z$ 7 million for a loaf of bread, if they are lucky to find bread on the supermarket shelf — and unemployment is running at more than 80 per cent. But for the big cronies of the regime, life has never been this good.
At the official rate, one US dollar buys Z$30,000. But the exchange rate in the black market — on the streets — is Z$100 million for US$1. Only a handful of people, close to the regime, can avail the government exchange rate. The trick is simple: get in as many US dollars as possible from outside the country and exchange them for Zimbabwean dollars at the street price. Then use that money to buy US dollars at the official rate. And continue the cycle.
Fear rules the land to the extent that when we tried to approach a few of the hundred-odd Zimbabweans who live in Dubai for comments for this article, they refused, even when offered the choice of having their names changed to protect their identities. They fear reprisals against them or their relatives from the security police back home.
“I believe that the Zimbabwean people are weary to the bone of the scheming on the part of Mugabe, accompanied by threats and beatings,” Barnard, the South African lawmaker, told Weekend Review. “They, at last, have stood up to Zanu-PF and voted in spite of the difficulties.
"Violence erupted hours after the SADC team left Zimbabwe, with the invasion of the very hotel we had been staying in. But once the scent of victory was in the air, the people stood up to the security services. There have been beatings and death, but they seem to be standing firm.”
A disappointing aspect of the present situation in Zimbabwe has been the reaction of other African nations, especially South Africa, by far the most democratic and most advanced nation in the continent. It can do more than any other country in the world to persuade Mugabe to change course.
South Africa, with its own bitter history and the support it got from the international community to end apartheid, should have taken a stronger stance. Mbeki’s “quiet diplomacy” has been a total failure.
Speaking to Weekend Review, Eric Pelser, an analyst and the executive director of the Cape Town-based Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention, said Mbeki’s stance towards Zimbabwe was a “clear indication of how out of touch he is with popular opinion in South Africa and Zimbabwe”.
Pelser added: “It is clear he has put his personal relationship and that of a part of the ANC [African National Congress] with Mugabe in the forefront and put South Africa’s credibility in the background. Mbeki may be trying to cut a deal that sees a section within the Zanu-PF, and not the opposition, take over the country.”
But is there a chance that the ANC could split on the issue of Zimbabwe? “I don’t think so,” Pelser said. “The party itself has been a lot firmer in calling for early release of the election results in Zimbabwe and has generally taken a strong stand against Mugabe, unlike the government. I don’t think the ANC will formally split over the issue. But the government, I think, has lost the moral high ground.”
Asked if some of the three million Zimbabweans in South Africa were contributing to the horrific crime situation in the country, Pelser noted: “There is a popular xenophobia in South Africa today … it is easy to blame foreigners for our ills. Having said that, there is some evidence to suggest foreign involvement in crime.”
Even Barnard said she believed the ANC had “utterly lost” the moral high ground. “The fact that South Africa was the only coastal SADC country that would have allowed the arms off the ship from China to be transported through to Zimbabwe — arms meant to decimate the MDC — has left an indelible black mark on Mbeki’s presidency. That a labour union would take a stand where our government wouldn’t, said it all.”
