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Economic deprivation and hardship - confusing elements in the battle for minds
International Bar Association (IBA)
IBA Weekly Column on Zimbabwe - No 048
September 06, 2004

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Zimbabwe's President Mugabe - the third most popular African? A 46 percent approval rating for his presidency? Standing ovations from African leaders?

For anyone following Zimbabwe's recent history of violence and repression the latest polls, surveys and responses to Mugabe would seem entirely implausible, crazy even. How could a man who has led his country into economic ruin, turned once well-functioning hospitals and schools into wrecks, shattered all tenets of human rights and good governance, and violently repressed as well as deliberately starved his own people possibly rank this highly among his peers and beleaguered citizens of his country?

The answers are as complex as Zimbabwe's crisis itself. But they contain important messages and lessons for Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF as well as for the main opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and civic groups determined to return Zimbabwe to the rule of law.

The recently published Afrobarometer report entitled 'The Power of Propaganda: Public Opinion in Zimbabwe 2004' has raised numerous eyebrows with its findings, particularly that 46 percent of polled Zimbabweans trust Mugabe - putting him ahead of the 37 percent of South Africans who trust their president, Thabo Mbeki, and the 18 percent of Nigerians who trust President Olusegun Obasanjo, the two African leaders who were part of the troika that suspended Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth (before Zimbabwe withdrew from the body).

The survey was conducted between 26 April and 17 May this year. Just over 1,100 people were interviewed in their home language. Questions asked during the 1999 Afrobarometer survey (which polled 1,200 people) were repeated for comparison. As Afrobarometer also conducts such surveys in 15 other African countries, many of the results are of particular interest when compared with each other. This survey was conducted with the assistance of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, the Centre for Democratic Development in Ghana and Michigan State University in the United States. Interviews in Zimbabwe were done by members of the non-partisan, non-governmental Mass Public Opinion Institute.
The survey showed that Zimbabweans are losing faith in democracy while feeling the hardships of Zimbabwe's economic deterioration sharply. Of those surveyed, 54 percent think that current living conditions are bad and 52 percent of today's generation think they are materially worse off than their parents. More than 80 percent said they went without food at least once during the previous year, compared to 65 percent of those surveyed in 1999. About 40 percent said they went without food always or on a constant basis.

One might think this dwindling standard of living would lead to a greater demand for democracy, particularly in a country where the majority of citizens place responsibility for their welfare on the government (more than any other of the 15 Afrobarometer countries). However, the economic deprivation and hardship have translated into confusion, resignation and wariness. The survey found that Zimbabweans are 'increasingly resigned to the dominance of the incumbent government' and seem to regard multiparty democracy as a cause of tension.

It is therefore not entirely surprising that support for democracy has dropped significantly in Zimbabwe since 1999. Afrobarometer notes that popular support for democracy has slipped across sub-Saharan Africa in recent years. 'But there is no country in the Afrobarometer in which support for democracy has plummeted as much as in Zimbabwe' where it dropped from 71 to 48 percent in the last five years. (At the same time, however, the number of those who chose the 'Don't know/don't understand' option rose from 5 percent in 1999 to 24 percent this year.)

The authors of the report interpret these findings in three ways: some Zimbabweans may be confused 'when trying to reconcile an observed gap between Zimbabwe's formal multiparty constitution and Zanu-PF practices of suppressing all viable opposition', while others may regard multipartyism as the road to 'divisiveness and chaos', while a third group seeks safety in neutrality and dodges such questions with noncommittal answers. Sixty percent declared themselves independent, undecided or apolitical, according to the survey.

This latter stance is demonstrated by the response to the question 'In your opinion, how much of a democracy is this country today?' Twenty-seven percent of Zimbabweans described their country as a 'democracy with minor problems' while a slightly larger percentage (28) said 'don't know/don't understand'. Only 9 percent answered that Zimbabwe is 'a full democracy'. (Of the 15 African countries surveyed the highest score for this question was 30 percent, given by Malians and Namibians.)

On the positive side, the survey did not find increasing support for military or one-man rule (where elections and parliament are abolished and everything is decided by the president). Disapproval of these forms of government have held steady around the 80 percent mark since 1999. This finding and the fact that 68 percent of those polled feel that 'problems in this country can only be solved if MDC and Zanu-PF sit down and talk with one another' confirm that Zimbabweans, above all, want reconciliation and peace and may one day again view democracy in a more favourable light.

Most startling were the results around Zimbabweans' trust in political institutions. A full 46 percent said they trusted Mugabe 'a very great deal/a lot', up 26 percentage points since 1999. While 44 percent gave the same vote of confidence to the ruling party, more people (48 percent) said they trusted Zanu-PF only 'a little bit/not at all'. The MDC got a 14 percent approval rating with its leader Morgan Tsvangirai only garnering 18 percentage points. Seventy percent said 'a little bit/not at all' when asked how much they trust Tsvangirai. Afrobarometer argues 'while the electorate is far from fully trustful of the political status quo under Zanu-PF, they are apparently resigned to accept it when compared with an unknown and untested opposition alternative'.

Interestingly, 13 percent chose 'don't know/haven't heard enough' when rating Mugabe. This may be a signal, say the researchers, that those interviewed are hiding their true opinion and demonstrates the problems inherent in conducting a face-to-face poll in a tense political climate. Afrobarometer and its partners were very conscious of this problem and asked interviewees whether they thought the interviewers were sent by government. Despite the fact that interviewers explained to all of those polled that they were from an independent, non-governmental and non-partisan organisation, 46 percent thought they were sent by government. In addition, more than 80 percent said one 'always' or 'often' has to be careful about what one says about politics in Zimbabwe, putting it at the top of the list of the 15 countries surveyed in terms of political fear.

However, when accounting for this possible 'margin of terror', Afrobarometer found that political fear has the opposite effect. 'People who feel fearful are twice as likely to give a negative rating of the president... (D)espite their fear, people are willing to take the risk of speaking truth to power. The courage of ordinary people is confirmed by the lack of relationship between feelings of political fear and the frequency with which people actually engage in political discussion,' according to the authors.

When unpacking the findings on Mugabe's and Zanu-PF's popularity, a clearer picture emerges. Afrobarometer looked at the economic conditions of those surveyed, their levels of political fear (including whether or not they thought the interviewers were sent by government), their attitudes towards the opposition, and, finally, the kind of access to and trust in mass media those polled have. What the survey found is that political fear is the least significant factor in determining the president's popularity, followed by distrust in the opposition and economic conditions. Afrobarometer's analysis shows that 'political propaganda is by far the most important determinant of presidential approval'. Those who trust government media are almost four times as likely to rate the president positively as those who are distrustful, the survey found. Many of those in rural areas or who are too poor to afford a newspaper (state-owned or independent) are in this category.

'In a setting where the mass media have been strangled and the diet of public information is tightly controlled, many Zimbabweans have apparently succumbed to Zanu-PF's view of a country beset by internal and external enemies,' the survey found. 'This message has been so unrelenting that it has even induced many Zimbabweans to overlook their objective economic deprivation and to acquiesce in the consolidation of non-democratic rule by a dominant political party.'

There are some key lessons contained in this survey for the oppositional forces in Zimbabwe. At the launch of the Afrobarometer in Johannesburg, University of Zimbabwe Associate Professor Brian Raftopolous, a founding member of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, mentioned three:

1. Authoritarian regimes can also produce legitimacy. The survey has shown that there is no automatic connection between economic deprivation and an increase in support for the opposition. Mugabe has attempted, with a fair amount of success, to create a consensual basis for his regime.
2. The regime can delegitimise democratic struggles and push people to lose faith in the creation of alternatives.
These struggles are not isolated - they have a regional and international context. Mugabe has managed to use the 'pan-Africanist, anti-Imperialist trope' effectively, constructing his presidency with a strong national, regional, continental and international presence.

While the oppositional forces, including the MDC and civic groups, have battled to get their views heard in a country where the space for alternative voices has all but disappeared, Raftopoulos argues rightly that the opposition has not been able to stir or lead a nuanced debate in the region or on the continent around the question of human and civil rights. Mugabe, on the other hand, has 'managed to subordinate the rights question on the continent where he is seen to be doing the right things', for example redistributing the land that once was owned by the white minority. This message resonates on a continent where many countries faced the same issues under colonial rule but where leaders have been unable or too fearful to do what Mugabe has done and seize the land from the whites.

'We haven't taken the ideas and battle for ideas seriously enough,' Raftopoulos says, arguing that opposition parties and the civic movement assumed the economic crisis would deliver voters to the opposition. He regards it as a strategic problem and an area where civic groups have been weak. Internationally, the debate on Zimbabwe centres on human rights but it is not being led by the opposition. Regionally and on the continent, Mugabe's Government has been able to get leaders to buy into his message.

There is good and bad news for Zanu-PF and the MDC, he argues. In the short-term Zanu-PF has scored points by articulating its message on the continent but in the long-term its tactic is difficult to sustain. The MDC's lack of access to the media is 'a huge negative' but despite government repression, oppositional forces are still active. Many of those 60 percent of adult Zimbabweans who consider themselves politically neutral or undecided may harbour believers in democracy and human rights who may one day be persuaded to join the movement for a rights-based society.

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