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Book review: What Happens After Mugabe?: Can Zimbabwe Rise From the Ashes? by Geoff Hill
ZW News
May 02, 2006

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=14281

Those who are being asked to pay for the bridges should consider the uncomfortable questions in this book - if they want those bridges to last, and before they sign the cheques

Consider this scenario: After six years of open conflict, a deeply unpopular administration, short of both cash and ideas and aided and abetted by the South African government, seeks an accommodation with the West. Power will shift, they say, and we will bring the opposition into government. In return, they demand, we need huge amounts of money to flow from the IMF, the World Bank, and your taxpayers, to rebuild the shattered economy. Not 1979. Not Smith, Muzorewa and the short-lived jurisdiction of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. Rather, Zimbabwe in 2006. The Mujurus replace Mugabe. Tsvangirai is offered a vice-presidency. Power appears to shift and balance-of-payments support and donor aid again begins to flow. In the last few weeks, there has been claim and counter-claim about "bridge building". The government, bankrupt and floundering, claims they are trying to build bridges. The US ambassador, the new British and Swedish ambassadors, the EU commissioner for Aid and Development, and the IMF have all in played down the possibility of any policy change. But, whatever the details of the negotiations, one can almost smell a Diplomatic Initiative on the move. The language we have heard from both sides is that of the relationship counsellor’s office, not the divorce court.

Those who are the targets of the government’s current advances could do a lot worse than read What happens after Mugabe?, by veteran southern African reporter Geoff Hill. A companion to his 2003 book, The Battle for Zimbabwe, this volume peers beyond the horizon, at what would be needed to rebuild the country once Mugabe’s reign ends. Hill is not as pessimistic as one might expect, considering the descriptions he gives of the extent of the damage wreaked by six years of what can only accurately be described as civil war. He enumerates, in detail, the complete hollowing out of the education and health systems, and the wholesale destruction of the agricultural sector. He sets out the process by which the justice system has been suborned and perverted. Yet, without being prescriptive, he finds examples from around the world that might serve as models for rebuilding these institutions.

But the real value of his book lies in its latter chapters. Firstly Hill raises the issue of the Zimbabwean diaspora. The huge emigration of Zimbabweans since 2000, by some reckonings as much as a quarter of the population, represents the accumulated investment in education and training of a quarter of a century. Each year these exiles stay abroad, they become less like exiles and more like immigrants. Each successive year they become less likely to return. Squaring this particular circle will require the wisdom of Solomon. Secondly, he discusses the need for justice for those who have been the victims of Mugabe’s rule since independence. Those with only passing contact with Matabeleland often find it difficult to believe how ingrained in the social fabric is the need for a public acknowledgement of what happened during Gukurahundi. To those thousands of families can now be added those who lost their livelihoods during the farm invasions (who by far out-number the beneficiaries of resettlement), the thousands of victims of political violence, as well as the 700 000 who lost their homes during Murambatsvina. Mugabe was able to make nefarious use of the lingering resentment over land in order to prop up his regime in 2000. How much future mischief lies in store if the grievances over Gukurahundi and Murambatsvina are not dealt with. An acceptable form of justice is not just morally desirable, but politically imperative.

Hill does not claim to provide the answers. But those who are being asked to pay for the bridges should consider the uncomfortable questions in this book - if they want those bridges to last, and before they sign the cheques.

*What Happens After Mugabe?: Can Zimbabwe Rise From the Ashes? by Geoff Hill is published by Zebra Press. ISBN: 1-77007-102-4

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