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Letter from America (TRANSCRIPT) by Dr Stanford Mukasa
SW Radio Africa
May 09, 2005

Dr. Stan Mukasa argues that Zimbabweans in urban areas should mobilize a massive protest movement similar to the Mass Democratic Movement in apartheid South Africa in order to make Zimbabwe ungovernable.

Last week some of the Zimbabweans living in the United Kingdom were allowed to vote in the British general elections. These Zimbabweans were pleasantly surprised to see how easy voting was.

You needed to provide proof that you were eligible to vote. You were given your ballot paper. You went into a ballot box and voted. According to one Zimbabwean who voted, the entire process took about three minutes.

There were no militia thugs, no ruling party officials, no chiefs or police intimidating people. People’s rights to vote in peace and security were adequately guaranteed.

The counting of votes was done without coercion from the ruling Labor Party government officials. There was no secret committee of Blair’s cronies miscounting votes in order to favor the ruling party. The process was smooth, uneventful, democratic, civilized, very routine, civil, peaceful and voter friendly. No one was killed or injured by members of the ruling party or marauding Chinotimbas. The entire election was overseen by the Electoral Commission which is an independent bureaucracy that favors no one.

In a remarkable contrast, these same Zimbabweans who voted in the United Kingdom had been denied their right to vote in the March 30 elections in Zimbabwe. The period leading to the elections in Zimbabwe was marked by threats and intimidation of voters by Mugabe’s thugs.

Vote counting was done in secret by the military and Mugabe’s cronies. What was officially announced was not the result of the elections but what the secret committee wanted.

After the elections ZANUPF thugs continue to hunt, harass, torture and even kill opposition supporters. Imagine that! Here is the so called winner of the election victimizing the losers!

If the elections in Zimbabwe had been, as Mugabe put it, an anti Blair campaign then Mugabe’s campaign was obviously anti democratic. Had Mugabe really been campaigning against Blair then the Zimbabweans who voted abroad would have been invited to vote at the Zimbabwe high commissions or embassies in London and elsewhere.

And Mugabe would have made it even easier to vote than the three minutes it took the Zimbabweans to vote in London. However, as everyone knows, it was much easier to vote in the British than in Zimbabwean elections. In other words, Blair is fighting for democracy and Mugabe is fighting against democracy.

But there is a much broader and bigger question to be addressed. Is real democracy in Zimbabwe possible? Is it possible to envision a day when people in Zimbabwe will be able to go to the elections in a very free and peaceful atmosphere such as in Britain? Or is Zimbabwe condemned to a half backed democracy, if any at all, that is not tolerant of people’s human rights?

The conduct of elections in Zimbabwe is characteristic of post colonial Africa. During the first 20 years or so of African independence there was no tolerance of opposition politics. The nationalist leaders who became the rulers of post colonial Africa ended up behaving like their colonial masters or overloads. In many cases the legislation used by colonial authorities to suppress indigenous people were not abolished but became the basis for establishing one party state systems. In some cases these repressive colonial laws were tightened as Africans began experience a new era of dictatorship and authoritarian rule.

A good example here is the Law and Order Maintenance Act a very repressive piece of legislation enacted during the Ian Smith regime. When independence came it was not abolished. And now it has been strengthened into the notorious Public Order and Security Act or POSA.

Here were nationalist leaders who had campaigned for the end of colonialism and for true democracy in which people’s rights and the rule of law would be observed and respected. Now the very same nationalist leaders, in a dramatic U -turn, were behaving exactly like, if not worse than, their colonial masters.

Apologists for such dictatorship in Africa have always argued that it took Europe hundreds of years to emerge from barbaric rule to a democracy. They have also argued that Africa’s independence was still young and needed to be given chance to grow and mature into full democracies.

An interesting point is that the same apologists are, for the most part, part and parcel of the ruling elite system from which they benefit materially. What these apologists fail to understand is that post colonial Africa now has models of democracy, not necessarily from Europe but from other African countries like Botswana and South Africa where the level of political tolerance is relatively high. Africa does not need hundreds of years to become a true democracy. Both Botswana and South Africa emerged from a colonial experience but they adopted the democratic culture right from the day of independence.

While the entire Europe was engulfed in hundreds of years of wars parts of post colonial Africa like Botswana and South Africa did not need hundreds of years to become truly democratic. Today South Africa has the most liberal Constitution in the whole world! And both Botswana and South Africa are geopolitical neighbors of Zimbabwe.

What was so peculiar about Zimbabwe’s colonial experience that it has followed a path to a dictatorship while its neighbors are basking in the bright sunshine of democracy and the rule of law?

I was once involved in a televised debate on the question of lack of democracy in Zimbabwe. My opponent in the debate argued that in South Africa far more people were killed in politically inspired violence than in Zimbabwe.

My immediate response to that was the violence in South Africa was politically inspired but not state sponsored. There was never a breakdown in the rule of law in post apartheid South Africa even in situations were the post apartheid police force had to be retrained in professional methods of combating crime. South African president, Thabo Mbeki ,never encouraged his supporters to attack opposition opponents during election campaign as Mugabe did.

In all cases police in South Africa were proactively involved in trying to stop these fights or arresting the guilty parties regardless of what parties they belonged to. Now, compare that to Zimbabwe under Mugabe where the army, police, militia thugs and ZANUPF are collaboratively involved in harassing, killing, torturing and raping opposition opponents.

Zimbabwe’s police were historically part and parcel of the state terrorism against opposition supporters. They only briefly stopped molesting opposition supporters to give Mugabe a positive image toward the international observers in the country.

However in Africa countries that were undemocratic for years after they gained independence are now increasingly and in some situations enthusiastically embracing democracy. Thus, the type of peaceful voting that took place in Britain recently can also occur in many African countries, except of course Zimbabwe.

Harold McMillan’s Wind of Change speech in South Africa in 1963 signaling the end of colonialism in Africa. The same speech today also signals the end of one party state system and dictatorship in many countries in Africa.

The Zimbabwe’s case has become a peculiar exception. Where more African countries are embracing democracy, Zimbabwe is undermining democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Mugabe and ZANUPF are going full speed ahead in the opposite direction of many African countries.

The situation in Zimbabwe is deteriorating faster than anyone could have ever anticipated. The biggest problem will lie in the shortage of food. Reports indicate that Zimbabwe’s maize meal reserves have now reached rock bottom. Mugabe, having boasted last year that there was plenty of food in the country, and having halted food supplies from abroad was forced to eat his words when he admitted at an election rally that people were starving...

Now we hear Mugabe and ZANUPF have secretly approached whit farmers to persuade them to come back to their seized farms.

It is now very obvious that neither Mugabe nor ZANUPF have any idea about how to bring Zimbabwe out of the economic, social and moral morass. The only thing they have succeeded in doing is creating the environment for a revolution. And some Zimbabweans are now talking about how to bring about change through massive protests.

Many years ago Algerian writer, Frantz Fanon, wrote that a true revolution can only come from the peasants. His argument was that even the opposition groups to a dictatorship have been contaminated with the affluent life styles of the rich and influential. To that extent the opposition leadership will, on seizing power most likely, or in some ways, behave like the regime they overthrew.

In his book, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon argues that, putting peasants at the vanguard of the revolution will be the most effective means of overthrowing the oppressor class.

The real enemy is not just the colonialist but the entire elite class that has plundered the state resources for its own benefit but at the expense of the masses.

Fanon hoped, as the traditionalist Marxists predicted, that the peasant underclass would overthrow the greedy elite class. According to Fanon, the brand of nationalism espoused by the elite classes, and even by the urban proletariat, is insufficient for total revolution because such classes benefit from the economic structures of imperialism.

Fanon model’s partially helps us to understand better the nature of the problem in Zimbabwe. It is not a racial issue, or a political party issue. Neither is it an ethnic issue. The problem in Zimbabwe is a class issue. ZANUPF’s ruling and other elites come from a broad spectrum of the Zimbabwean demographic mosaic. Mugabe is using race and colonialism as flimsy excuses to mask the underlying class problems.

Seen in this perspective, the Zimbabwean dilemma is about, on one hand, the coalition of upper class ZANUPF, army and business elites, and, on the other hand, the vast masses of starving Zimbabweans. These cut across party and social lines. The vast majority of ZANUPF members, police, army, alongside with other masses are now living from hand to mouth. In other words, Zimbabweans regardless of their color, political affiliation have equally been reduced to scavengers while a select few elites from a cross section of the Zimbabwean elite are benefiting for the current situation.

Using Fanon’s model for the struggle for liberation an effective strategy would include forming a coalition of the oppressed and mobilizing the grassroots and peasant coalition against the rich and elite class.

Can the Zimbabweans form a new grassroots movement, similar to apartheid South Africa’s Mass Democratic Movement where masses were successfully mobilized to make South Africa ungovernable? Can a true Zimbabwean revolution emerge from such a peasant coalition?

The rural population in Zimbabwe as well as the urban poor has the capacity to stage a successful democratic revolution. They only need to gather in thousands and stage demonstrations against Mugabe and ZANUPF. But it would be unrealistic to expect that they will, in fact, do so. There is no history of a successful peasant revolution, with an exception of China under Mao Tse Tung or Algeria under the FNL.

Still there is a persistent belief that if people suffer long enough there will reach a point where they will start questioning their oppression. This is the point often referred to as proletarianization. Here the oppressed will feel they have nothing to lose but their chains of oppression. They will also become conscious of the fact that they are being systematically oppressed, but that they have the power and primary responsibility to free them. Do Zimbabweans know that they have the power in numbers to effectively rid themselves of Mugabe and end their oppression?

It is quite possible that Zimbabweans are aware that they can overwhelm Mugabe if they are mobilized to throng the streets in thousands. However, Zimbabweans have also internalized the culture of fear and oppression. They now subconsciously accept oppression and lack of democracy as a routine part of life. There is thus a contradiction in the mindset of Zimbabweans. Because of this contradiction Zimbabweans are more likely to restrain themselves from openly confronting Mugabe than go out in a full street demonstration.

The culture of fear makes Zimbabweans fear that if they engage in civil protest Mugabe and ZANUPF will respond with the full force of the military. But no Zimbabweans have questioned their belief that protests by thousands of people can be effectively and ruthlessly suppressed by Mugabe’s military machinery. There are many examples where masses have confronted regimes with some success. In 1976 unarmed school children staged a daring protest against the police in Soweto. It was suppressed but things were never the same again for the Botha regime.

There are many other examples around the world where people have successfully protested against their oppressive governments. And it is very tempting to argue that Zimbabweans should follow the examples from other countries.

However, Zimbabweans tend to look at their oppression and what they can possibly do to resist Mugabe from their own historical experience. And history tells us that even under Ian Smith Zimbabweans did not stage mass protests, except for the handful that fled to start the freedom struggle from Mozambique and Zambia.

But the fact is a few Zimbabweans broke out of this mindset of complacence of not doing anything.

They formed the liberation movements that became very instrumental in the process towards what was supposed to be independence from Britain.

Based on the Zimbabwean experience it is highly unlikely as I said earlier that there will be a peasant led mass protest against Mugabe. However the rising number of urban poor and the unemployed could be a basis for mass protest. It is from these communities that mass protests in other countries recently have been drawn. Harare and Bulawayo, for example, offer the best constituencies where popular protest can evolve.

Last week I gave an example of the Barborfields riots which took police seven hours to put down as an example of how the urban areas, specifically the large cities are fertile grounds for mass protests.

The strategy for mass protest would therefore focus on these large cities and develop a grassroots network to coordinate carefully planned protests. Who will lead such mass pretests? It cannot be MDC because their leadership is very visible and easily prone to instant retribution from the Mugabe regime.

What is needed now is a new community based leadership in the high density areas of Harare and Bulawayo. Just like the Mass Democratic Movement in South Africa the new leadership must maintain a low profile. That way the Mugabe regime will not target them. This is why the MDM in apartheid South Africa was able to make parts of South Africa ungovernable.

Former MDC MP Munyaradzi Gwisai may have had a point in his call for a people driven protest that is true to the Socialist ideals, At the time he made this statement Gwisai was expelled from MDC on the grounds he was undermining MDC strategies for dealing with Mugabe.

It has, however, now emerged that MDC really does not have a plan or strategy for confronting Mugabe and ZANUPF. Moreover, MDC information secretary Paul Themba’s statement that MDC is now ready to meet with Mugabe is likely to put MDC on a slippery slope politically.

If such a meeting was to take place, and this is by no means guaranteed, Mugabe would totally dominate and dictate not only the agenda but the direction and substance of the talks. Mugabe does not see MDC as a threat because MDC leadership is unwilling so far to mobilize popular protests.

This would not be a meeting of two equals and this could lead to MDC being swallowed up by ZANUPF just like what happened to PFZAPU. Many people have been at pains to say there is a big difference between PFZAPU and MDC in terms of its interaction with ZANUPF to the extent MDC is too big for ZANUPF to swallow.

Yes. MDC won big in urban centers. ZANUPF has, in fact, been reduced to a rural party. But winning big does not translate into an influential force in Zimbabwean politics. In the past five years MDC held a balance of political power in Parliament. But ZANUPF was able to do most of the things it wanted to do anyway by simply bypassing Parliament or reducing the number of days Parliament met.

This in essence reduced Parliament to an insignificant institution. MDC was reduced to window dressing by Mugabe who wanted to deceive the world into thinking that Zimbabwe is a multiparty democracy with the largest opposition party in Africa.

If Mugabe invites MDC to talks you can be sure that Mugabe will be pulling another from his bags of tricks. With Zimbabwe’s economy in a free fall and shortages of basic commodities now taking a bite Mugabe will invite MDC to talks in order to draw sympathetic attention and financial support from the international community. If Mugabe had really wanted to talk to MDC seriously he would have done so by now. The fact that he is taking his time means Mugabe wants to use the talks to promote his personal agenda in which MDC will be further reduced to a puppet of ZANUPF.

MDC has no power base from which to negotiate with Mugabe and ZANUPF. If MDC could show Mugabe and ZANUPF that it can mobilize hundreds of thousands of people into a massive protest Mugabe will obviously take MDC seriously. But as things stand now Mugabe feels he has nothing to offer MDC except breadcrumbs of concessions which could spell the end MDC as a credible force in Zimbabwe’s politics just like PFZAPU reached its demise in 1987.

Thank you for listening Let us meet again next week.

*Letter from America is a weekly analysis broadcast every Tuesday evening on SW Radio Africa with Dr Stanford Mukasa. He is an Associate Professor in the Journalism Department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the USA.

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