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Mugabe's Generals
Newsweek
Will Zimbabwe's strongman be allowed to
stay in office now that he's signed
an agreement with the opposition
leader?
By Rod Nordland | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 22, 2008 |
Updated: 6:31 p.m. ET Jul 22, 2008
Zimbabwe's self-declared
president Robert Gabriel Mugabe has long been a
lonely figure. He has no
known friends; his marriage to a wife half is age
is reported to be rocky;
he's a disappointment to the white priests who
raised him and an
embarrassment to British and American leaders who once
publicly admired him.
Now he has suffered another comedown: on Monday, he
finally agreed to
discuss a political settlement with Morgan Tsvangirai, the
opposition
candidate who bested him in the first round of a presidential
election and
then sat out the second. Mugabe even shook hands with the
bitter enemy he
had long dismissed as a "teaboy" for the British, before
they sat down to
sign an agreement to negotiate.
How much longer can the 84-year-old
Mugabe stay in office? And perhaps more
pertinently, will it be his own
generals who finally push him out? By some
accounts, Mugabe is ready to step
down. Diplomats and well-connected
observers in Harare say that he'd had
enough when it became clear that
Tsvangirai had won the most ballots in the
bitterly contested March 29 poll.
While his government delayed announcing
the results showing Tsvangirai as
the number one vote getter, on the Monday
after the vote Mugabe convened his
top aides, the five generals and two
civilians who make up the Joint
Operations Centre (JOC)-a military-style
command center that ran his
election campaign--and told them he planned to
retire to Malaysia, where he
maintains a second home. The diplomats'
accounts were confirmed by a
high-ranking ZANU-PF party official. "They
said, 'Hold on, you're not
leaving us, we're in this together,'" the
official related. "These people
said to him, No,' said a well-informed
diplomat in Harare, the capital,
'because we'll win the runoff for you.'
Mugabe is still the first among
equals, but he can no longer rule this
country without the army, the civil
service has collapsed. There has been a
coup by stealth."
These sources believe that Mugabe will remain in
power for a face-saving
interval, while negotiations for a government of
national unity go ahead
under the auspices of South Africa's president Thabo
Mbeki. After that,
Mugabe would hand over to one of the JOC members. Those
talks were due to
begin formally today, in South Africa, to be completed
within two weeks.
They promise a respite from the violence that has
continued to plague
Zimbabwe even after the June 27th runoff election, as
ZANU-PF militants
backed up by the security services continued to attack
opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) activists and party workers,
forcing most of
them to flee or go into hiding. That, in turn, strengthened
the regime's
bargaining power, potentially enabling Mugabe's ZANU-PF to take
control of
the parliament, where the MDC now has a slim
majority.
Under a constitutional change Mugabe forced through last year,
the
parliament can elect a successor if the president leaves office for any
reason. This allows the generals to choose one of their own, who some think
would most likely be the head of the JOC, Emmerson Mnangagwa. "As the JOC
head, Mnangagwa is actually in charge now," says Ray Matikinye, news editor
of the Financial Gazette, one of the few remaining independent papers in
Zimbabwe. "He has the respect and control of the police and military."
Matikinye, too, has heard the stories that the JOC refused to let Mugabe
step aside.
Since the run-off farce, Mugabe's bitterness has been on
abundant, if
somewhat incompetent, display. At an African Union summit in
Egypt last
month, he lashed out at a British reporter, at one point seeming
to lunge at
him when he asked how Mugabe claimed the right to represent
Zimbabwe as its
president. Flustered, he responded that he had "as much
right as [Britain's]
Gordon Brown does to be prime minister of
Zimbabwe."
But Mugabe left stung by criticism from fellow African
leaders, who were
unmoved by his finger-pointing accusations that many of
them had
less-than-stellar democratic credentials themselves. And while
Zimbabwe's
government mouthpiece, the Herald, reported that Mugabe was
relieved to have
Queen Elizabeth strip him of the knighthood she had given
him decades
earlier, the fact was he could have renounced it at any time. (A
spokesman
for the Foreign Office in London said he has still not complied
with an
official request to return the Grand Cross of the Illustrious Order
of the
Bath, which is the emblem of his knighthood).
"I suspect that
under Mugabe's hatred for the British is a love for the
British," says Heidi
Holland, author of a recent biography, "Dinner with
Mugabe." "When he talked
to me about the British royal family he had tears
in his eyes."
The
trappings of British culture are easy to find in Zimbabwe, where school
children wear uniforms with short pants and knee socks, judges sport
powdered white wigs and cricket grounds abound. And despite his bitter
statements about Britain, Mugabe clearly admires many facets of his
country's former colonial rulers. Before he and his top officials were
banned by European sanctions from visiting Britain, Mugabe frequented
London's Savile Row for handmade suits and the finest accessories. And even
now, he takes a high tea in the State House, including crustless cucumber
sandwiches served on expensive china. "He's an Anglophile, profoundly so,"
says a Western diplomat. "His anger is the savagery of a child rejected, an
Anglophile rejected."
Whatever his psychological issues from the
past, Mugabe ran his last
election campaign by harking back to his days as a
liberation leader. His
bon mots were increasingly outrageous. "The gun is
more powerful than the
ball point," he said. And since God put him in
office, he said, "only God
can remove me." A life-long practicing Catholic,
Mugabe is also a committed
Marxist--though he could never persuade his
ZANU-PF party to institute a
Communist-style regime. Tsvangirai says the
entire campaign smacked of
Mugabe's formative period. "It's back to the
guerrilla war years," he said.
Central in Mugabe's campaign was the JOC,
an organization that had little
formal role in previous years but was geared
up into an efficient apparatus
for campaign terror. The JOC directly funded
ZANU-PF youth militias, 30,000
strong, coordinating their activities with
police and military and sending
them out on punitive expeditions against
opposition politicians --
especially in the second, run-off round. The MDC
says more than 100 of its
activists were killed in the violence and
thousands more savagely beaten; a
common tactic was to flail the skin off a
victim's buttocks and then pour
scalding water on the wounds. Tsvangirai
said he pulled out of the election
to stop the violence, and because it was
clear most voters were too
intimidated to vote for him. Mugabe won by a
landslide, even in areas that
were traditionally opposition
strongholds.
However, giving the JOC such centralized power may in the
end prove to have
been Mugabe's undoing. "Everyone should stop focusing so
much on Mugabe,
because it's the JOC, the JOC is the key," says John
Makumbe, a professor of
political science at the University of Zimbabwe, who
says he talks
frequently to high-ranking regime officials. "Instead of
Mugabe's face on
CNN and BBC, we should be seeing the faces of the [seven]
leaders of the
JOC. Mugabe is in fact a puppet of the security structures,
the creature of
the violence, as much a victim of their campaign as the
MDC. They hide
under his skirts and before long they'll dump him and get
another figure up
there." The ZANU-PF official also confirmed that the
leaders of the JOC
carefully orchestrated the political violence during the
campaign, but
disagrees whether Mugabe will stand aside for one of their
number. It is
also, this official says, unclear who the heir apparent would
be, with
jockeying among several officials.
A new leader from the
ranks of the JOC won't be a change for the better,
especially if Tsvangirai
isn't able to negotiate a significant share of
power. Mnangagwa, 61, is
reputedly the country's richest man, earning a
fortune on investments in
Congo when Zimbabwe intervened there on the side
of Laurent Kabila.
Mnangagwa also was director of the country's secret
police, the Central
Intelligence Organization, during the Matebeleland
massacres of the 1980s,
when thousands of supporters of Joshua Nkomo,
Mugabe's rival black
liberation leader, were killed. "Mnangagwa is more
ruthless than Mugabe, and
he's younger," says Shari Eppel, a Zimbabwean
human rights
activist.
The others aren't much more promising. The only other JOC
civilian is Gideon
Gono, 52, head of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, who has
presided over the
country's hyperinflation, printing money at such a furious
pace that the
Zimbabwe dollar--nearly on par with the U.S. dollar in the
1980s--now trades
at more than 20 billion to a single American greenback.
Secret policeman
Didymus Mutasa, 73, is minister of state security. In 2006
he responded to
questions about the Zimbabwe's raging AIDS epidemic and the
growing flight
of Zimbabweans from their country with this comment: "We
would be better off
with only six million people [the population is 12
million], with our own
[ZANU-PF] people who supported the liberation
struggle," he said. "We don't
want all these extra people."
Air
Marshall Perence Shiri, 53, now the air force commander, previously had
been
in charge of the notorious North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade of the
Army
when it carried out the Matebeleland massacres. Paradzai Zimondi, 53,
the
prisons chief, publicly ordered all prison officers to vote for Mugabe.
Augustine Chihuri, 55, the commissioner-general of police, told the
government mouthpiece, the Herald, that "we will not allow any puppets to
take charge," even if they won the election. He was the architect of the
notorious 2005 Operation Murambatsvina ("Drive Out the Trash"), in which
squatter settlements and impoverished roadside vendors were forced off city
streets, to subsequent condemnation by a United Nations rapporteur. Finally,
there's armed forces commander General Constantine Chiwenga, 51, who
recently told a Zimbabwean newspaper, "the army will not support or salute
sell-outs and agents of the West before, during and after the presidential
elections." Chiwenga's wife, Jocelyn, is a key player in farm takeovers.
White farmer Roger Staunton says when she came to take his huge,
flower-producing farm, she called him a "white pig" and warned him to get
going because "she had not tasted white blood since 1980 and missed the
experience." All seven JOC members-already subject to European Union
sanctions--are among 14 Zimbabwe officials who would be subjected to
international financial and travel sanctions by the U.N. Security Council if
a Western-backed resolution passes.
The JOC "cabal", as the
ZANU-PF official referred to it, or "junta" in the
words of the diplomat, is
itself riven with internal disputes. Mnangagwa
and some of the other JOC
members were accused in an abortive coup plot last
year hatched by junior
officers, but were later absolved of involvement.
When the MDC's deputy
chairman, Tendai Biti, was arrested during the
election campaign, his
high-level interrogators had no interest in the
trumped up charges against
him, according to his lawyer, Lewis Uriri. Uriri
says instead they
questioned Biti on what kind of deal he had been
discussing with negotiators
from their own government. Biti and two lower
ranking Mugabe officials had
been talking about possible power sharing
arrangements in some sort of unity
government, through South Africa's
mediation. "Biti realized there were
powerful people in ZANU-PF who wanted
to find out what was going on, people
don't trust one another," Uriri said.
Whether Mugabe goes or stays after
Monday's agreement, there's little room
for optimism. The JOC's leaders are
hardly the sort to do anything about
the country's daunting problems. "You
can rig an election but you can't rig
the economy, which will say, ah ha,
the holes are still leaking," Makumbe
says. Four million Zimbabweans have
"already voted with their feet," in
U.S. ambassador James McGee's words, and
fled. Another five million face
possible starvation after a 90 percent drop
in this year's harvests. That
has not seemed to bother Mugabe and the
power-brokers around him; holding on
to control has been their overriding
goal, and one they're not likely to
give up on easily. The last of Africa's
Big Men may be on his way out, but,
unhappily for his countrymen, his spirit
is far from extinguished.
With Scott Johnson in Cape Town
Public downbeat about political agreement
HARARE , 22 July 2008 (IRIN) - An agreement
between Zimbabwe's political parties to pursue negotiations to establish a new
constitution and bring an end to political violence has been met with scepticism
by ordinary Zimbabweans trying to survive the country's 2.2 million percent
annual inflation rate.
On 21 July, Robert Mugabe, president of the
ruling ZANU-PF party, and opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur
Mutambara, signed a Memorandum of Understanding under the auspices of the
Southern African Development Community's appointed mediator, South African
president Thabo Mbeki.
As news spread of the deal, widely seen as a
ground-breaking initiative, people in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, responded to
the images of Tsvangirai and Mugabe shaking hands at signing ceremony with a
mixture of disgust, disbelief and indifference.
"This is a major
betrayal by Tsvangirai. Many people have died, been raped, tortured, and had
their homes set on fire for supporting him. He needed to consult widely with us
before hopping into bed with Mugabe," Matthews Shoko, a staunch supporter of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, told IRIN.
 This is a major betrayal by
Tsvangirai. Many people have died, been raped, tortured, and had their homes set
on fire for supporting him. He needed to consult widely with us before hopping
into bed with Mugabe |
"Tsvangirai himself withdrew from the
presidential run-off, saying the levels of violence were unacceptable; why is he
prepared to walk into office via a path littered with dead bodies and broken
limbs?" Shoko asked.
Mugabe has been in power since Zimbabwe won its
independence from Britain in 1980. The ruling ZANU-PF lost its majority in
parliament for the first time since independence in 29 March elections, but
Tsvangirai fell short of securing an outright presidential win by a couple of
percentage points, so a second round of voting was set down for 27 June.
In the lead-up to the presidential run-off more than 60 people died in
political violence, thousands were reported missing and tens of thousands were
displaced. Tsvangirai pulled out of the second round of voting in protest
against the violence, leaving Mugabe as the sole candidate. He claimed a
landslide victory.
Never trust a
politician
Caroline Mpofu, a sales executive at an electrical
company, was dismissive of the agreement. "I never trust politicians. I am sure
the discussions have more to do with sharing power than the interests of
Zimbabweans in general. It's more to do with power than addressing the food
shortages stalking the country," she said.
"More than a hundred people
have died because of these politicians. Suddenly the politicians are shaking
hands, but in the countryside there is very little information. People are being
told to beat up any MDC supporters. Torture bases continue to exist, while women
continue to be gang-raped."
According to a recent UN report, about five
million of Zimbabwe's 12 million people are expected to require food assistance
in the coming months, but the government has banned the activities of
humanitarian organisations, including food distribution, alleging that they have
a political agenda.
Tafara Shava, who lives in Mudzi, a remote district
in Mashonaland East Province, said the details of the agreement had yet to reach
this area, and even when it did it was unlikely that people would believe it,
and would probably beat up anybody who suggested that Mugabe and Tsvangirai had
shaken hands.
"What the politicians are doing is very unfair. In
Mashonaland East we are still chanting slogans like 'down with Morgan
Tsvangirai', and yet the main rivals are having lunch together in plush hotels.
People need to be told that there are new developments taking place."
| What the politicians are doing
is very unfair. In Mashonaland East we are still chanting slogans like 'down
with Morgan Tsvangirai', and yet the main rivals are having lunch together in
plush hotels. |
The Memorandum of Understanding calls for an
end to hate speech and political violence, the lifting of the ban on
humanitarian organisations to enable them to distribute relief, and setting the
objectives and priorities for a new government that will address the economic
decline and political malaise, among other things, all to be agreed within two
weeks.
"The dialogue commenced on 10 July 2008 and will continue until
parties have finalised all necessary matters, save for short breaks that may be
agreed upon. It is envisaged that the dialogue will be completed within a period
of two weeks from the date of signing [21 July] of this MoU," the agreement
said.
The talks will be held in Pretoria, South Africa.
One
clause suggests that the end result would be the formation of a coalition or
government of national unity. "The parties shall not, during the subsistence of
the dialogue, take any decisions or measures that have a bearing on the agenda
of the dialogue, save by consensus. Such decisions or measures include, but are
not limited to, the convening of parliament or the formation of a new
government."
The MoU also reflects Tsvangirai's demands that Mbeki's
role as a mediator should be diluted. "The dialogue shall be facilitated in
accordance with SADC and AU (African Union) resolutions," it reads.
More sanctions
Although the agreement is seen
as a breakthrough to resolving Zimbabwe's plight, it has not influenced the
European Union's (EU) decision to expand sanctions against the country's ruling
elite, including a travel ban to EU countries and freezing their assets. Mugabe
and other senior government officials are named.
At a meeting in
Brussels, EU foreign ministers added another 37 names to the list, bringing the
number of people to 168, and also added four "legal entities", or companies.
Those added to the list have not been named as yet, to prevent them from
moving any assets to a country outside the EU. The decision to intensify
sanctions against Zimbabwe's ruling elite was taken after the agreement between
Zimbabwe's opposing political parties was reached.
Finnish Foreign
Minister Alexander Stubb told reporters in Brussels: "If you look at
reconciliation, it takes probably 10 steps. To start the discussions between the
opposition and government is the step number one; way too early to start
discussing any lifting of the sanctions."
[ENDS]
|
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations] |
Party
and government must be separated
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com
July 23, 2008
By Blessing
Chimwanda
I WRITE this opinion in the hope that the disputes between the
MDC and
Zanu-PF are a thing of the past.
I also pray that the leaders
of both parties will abide by the promises that
they made in front of the
whole world during the signing of the MoU in
Harare and that they will
negotiate in good faith. Our political situation
is dire, and for this
reason we need resolutions that will benefit the
nation as a whole and are
not for the continued benefit of a few according
to their political
affiliation.
Because of the faith I have on the outcome of the current
negotiations, I am
going to outline suggestions that I hope will eventually
be implemented in
Zimbabwe to prevent the current situation from ever
reoccurring. Regardless
of the outcome of the negotiations the current
political situation has
failed us and it is mostly because of the structures
that have been set up
in the country by Zanu-PF.
They have caused
much grief and suffering. I have made a few observations
which I hope will
make a difference in peoples life's or will make other
people start thinking
or talking about what they expect in a future Zimbabwe
to be in the future.
Firstly, Zimbabwe can never ever be a one party state
again. Although the
MDC has established itself as a strong contender, they
are still many
Zimbabweans who still believe that Zanu-PF should govern
until the end of
time. That time has passed, and for Zimbabwe to succeed all
opinions have to
heard, even if we do not agree with some of them.
Secondly, regardless of
which party leads the new government there has to be
a separation between
the political party and the government to prevent
conflict of interests. One
of the reasons why the government failed was the
arrogance of some members
in the former ruling party who decided to run the
government as their own
personal shop. For this to work, although unlikely
in today's Zimbabwe due
to our leader's insecurities, who ever leads the
government should
relinquish their power as leader of their party. This
situation would divest
power from one man or one party and would enable all
views to be heard
equally. A situation like this would have prevented the
current problems we
are facing today.
Thirdly, the country can no longer be run by a party
politburo. The
politburo should revert to being an organ of Zanu-PF, and
what ever is
decided in the politburo should only be binding on Zanu-PF
since it will not
be the well of the entire Zimbabwean population. We can no
longer go back to
a situation where what is decided by the politburo on
behalf of Zanu-PF at
Zanu-PF headquarters becomes the final word for the
government. In that same
regard we do not want to see decisions of governing
the country being made
at Harvest house, that's why we have government
offices.
Fourthly, for a country of 12 million, Zimbabwe can better use
its resources
by eliminating some ministries. How can we justify having 26
ministries,
when countries five to ten times the size of Zimbabwe have half
the number
of ministries. The number of ministries can only be justified if
one is
establishing positions to enable his cronies to draw a salary from
the
government. I would not be against Zimbabwe having 26 ministries if they
all
did half the jobs they are suppose to be doing. With the situation in
Zimbabwe, I would say that every single one of those ministries has failed
and this would be a good time to start from scratch. A good start would be
to set up some ministries as commissions answerable to the Senate and/or
Parliament. The commissioners can come from politicians, business people,
academia who have expertise in special fields.
Fifth, I suggest that
city councils be independent entities run by elected
officials in those
cities. These representatives would be accountable to the
people who elected
them. For this reason if they fail to perform their tasks
they can be
removed by their own wards and not have a minister who sits in
Harare and
decides the fate of a city he has no connection to. I suggest
that the
budget allocations be made according to the population of the
respective
cities and the need of those funds. These budgets could be
approved by the
Senate and or Parliament as opposed to having one minister.
Sixth,
Zimbabwe has to retake its position as a pillar of the African
economy. In
that regard we have to be careful when we choose our friends. We
can only
succeed if we do this with Zimbabwe at heart and not the pockets of
the few
in power. Zimbabwe is an extremely wealthy country that should not
be
depending on handouts from other governments or NGOs. We live in a global
economy, and for this reason we should not avoid some countries merely
because they are critical of our policies.
One reason why the "Look
east" policy has failed Zimbabwe and benefited
eastern countries is that
they know that we have limited buyers for our
products and for this reason
they can dictate prices to us. But if Zimbabwe
was willing to have other
countries compete for our resources then we would
be in a position to
bargain for a fair price. Using China as an example,
their best economic
friends are western countries because they know that
Africa can never
sustain them. For that reason they do not care much about
Zimbabwe or other
African countries and they are only looking for their
future
needs.
We also have to take a cue from Venezuela and Iraq, these two
countries
continually fight with the USA but they know that they need the
American
market for their oil. Why can't we put our arrogance away and
negotiate with
other governments for the future of Zimbabwe?
Lastly,
and most importantly, the land issue has to be resolved once and for
all. We
can not have people continually using land as a scapegoat to blame
for the
economic situation of Zimbabwe on the white minority who own or
owned the
land. My main suggestion is that, since people were awarded farms
by the
ruling party under the pretext of land distribution, they can not
sell those
farms since they did not pay for that land. As the land was given
to them,
so it shall be taken away from them.
If people who now control the land
can not utilize that land then the
government should take it over and sell
it to people who are willing to
cultivate the land and pay a tax to the
government.
Zim talks shrouded in secrecy
The Times, SA
Moses Mudzwiti Published:Jul
23,
2008
Both
optimism and cynicism in Harare
A Blanket of secrecy has been thrown
around the talks intended to achieve a
negotiated settlement between
Zimbabwe's political rivals.
A day after signing a memorandum
of understanding, the three protagonists -
Zanu-PF and the two factions of
the MDC - stuck to the spirit of the
agreement, which bars any of the
parties from speaking to the media.
The talks began in earnest in
Pretoria late yesterday.
Though the venue is secret, it is understood
that Zanu-PF is represented by
justice minister Patrick Chinamasa and his
labour counterpart, Nicholas
Goche.
Morgan Tsvangirai's faction of
the MDC is represented by the party's general
secretary, Tendai Biti, and
its chairman, Lovemore Moyo.
Welshman Ncube and Priscilla
Misihairabwi-Mushonga represent the other MDC
faction, which is led by
Arthur Mutambara.
There has been mixed reaction to news of the talks in
Zimbabwe - many people
are celebrating but many others remain
sceptical.
State media trumpeted the talks as an African triumph that
could lead to the
end of Zimbabwe's economic and political
woes.
Mugabe, at the signing ceremony, for the first time in a decade,
shook hands
with and spoke to Tsvangirai. He said the talks were "a serious
matter".
Tsvangirai wrote an open letter to his supporters calling on all
Zimbabweans
to support the talks.
"In the spirit of a shared vision
to heal our nation, I call upon my fellow
signatories to join me in putting
aside our differences and acknowledging
that we have a responsibility to the
people of Zimbabwe to show true
leadership and to find an agreement that
will bring an end to the violence,
polarisation, poverty and fear in which
we have all been living for too
long," he said.
"Our fellow
countrymen and women look to us to find common ground that will
allow us, as
a nation, to chart a democratic path forward."
In Harare, ordinary
Zimbabweans were cautiously optimistic. Most of them
went about their daily
business as usual.
"If our leaders can unite and talk to each other .
maybe things can be
better," a Harare worker said.
Prices of food and
other basic commodities continue to rise and inflation is
estimated at 2.3
million percent. Bread yesterday shot up from Z100- billion
to double
that.
The news of a breakthrough has been widely welcomed, and President
Thabo
Mbeki, who was appointed by the African Union as the facilitator of
the
talks, has been praised for bringing the parties together. He has set a
strict two- weeks deadline for the talks.
Political parties in South
Africa, including the ANC, hailed the talks as a
step forward.
Watch: Mugabe looks grumpy as the MoU is
signed
