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Opposing Mugabe 'no easy task'
John Simpson, World Affairs Editor, BBC
June 13, 2005

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4087186.stm

It seemed almost inevitable that last week's strike in protest against the bulldozing of illegal housing in Harare and elsewhere would be a flop. Opposing President Robert Mugabe is not easy. The media in Zimbabwe, now entirely under the strictest of controls, carried no mention of the strikes. The main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, joined in only the day before they were due to take place. The police warned that they would attack any street protests ruthlessly. That meant they would shoot people down in the streets if necessary. So coming out in protest required serious courage. And in any society - let alone a quiet, essentially gentle one like Zimbabwe - not many people are prepared to become martyrs. Even those who are, know that their efforts will often be vitiated. President Mugabe's men have infiltrated every opposition group inside Zimbabwe. The police know what they are planning as soon as they have reached agreement. This infiltration has now spread to Britain, where government supporters appear at opposition meetings and sometimes openly threaten the people there.

Mr Mugabe, sensing his opponents' weakness, attacked them last week in the only places where they matter: the capital, Harare, and two or three other centres of population. By bulldozing the ramshackle huts which illegal street-traders have built for themselves, he was striking a blow at the people who hate him most. The police forced some people at gunpoint to pull down their own houses. Thirty thousand people are thought to have been arrested. The traders have often drifted to the cities because of the collapse of the rural economy. They deal in black market goods, especially sugar, and act as illegal money-changers, where people can turn the rands and pounds and dollars which their friends abroad send them into Zimbabwean currency. And they usually provide the foot-soldiers for any anti-government demonstrations which may be going. Now, they have to live rough in the cold of the southern hemisphere winter. Eventually, many will start drifting back home. It is another victory for Mr Mugabe.

As ever, he has an impressive explanation: "The current chaotic state of affairs where small- to medium-scale enterprises operated outside the regulatory framework and in undesignated and crime-ridden areas could not be countenanced much longer," he declared. I have met and interviewed Robert Mugabe on various occasions over the years. He likes giving his opinions, but you sense as he listens to your questions that he has little but contempt for you. He is used to feeling cleverer and more articulate than anyone he comes into contact with - and he despises those he thinks are less intelligent than he is. Which happens to be most people. As a result he has done as he likes with Zimbabwe, wrecking the lives of most of its inhabitants. So far he has got away with it. His ministers and his security chiefs are not necessarily evil people, though many of them have become corrupt through serving him. If it were not for him, most would probably be reasonable enough public servants. He dominates them utterly. They find themselves, one of his former ministers told me, tongue-tied and stupid in his presence. It is impossible to argue with him, even if anyone dared to do so.

So what can the outside world do about a man who ruins his own country and murders his own people, yet cannot apparently be dislodged from within? No-one is going to invade Zimbabwe, that is for sure. After all, it does not possess oil. South Africa, which could bring down Mr Mugabe through economic pressure if it chose, has clearly decided to do nothing of the sort. In any decent, free society, the Mugabe government's actions would be regarded as a serious crime against human rights. The entire resources of a once wealthy state have been used to enslave it and make it destitute. Robert Mugabe has not done all this on his own. Without his ministers, his civil servants, his policemen and soldiers, his regime would collapse. The outside world shows little serious interest in Zimbabwe, beyond indulging in occasional ritual condemnation of him. France has moderately friendly relations with him still. And although the Catholic hierarchy in Zimbabwe has been among his bravest opponents, the Vatican still managed to give him international recognition by inviting him to the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

If the international community cared about Zimbabwe, it would try the president and his senior officials in absentia for their crimes. This would be a salutary reminder that serving an octogenarian with no clear successor is a short-term and dangerous thing to do. The day of reckoning is coming closer. There would be no shortage of evidence, from President Mugabe's appalling massacres in Matabeleland in the 1980s right down to the present day. Short of a national uprising, there is probably no stopping Robert Mugabe, who has slaughtered so many of his people and ruined the lives of the rest. But if his closest supporters understood that they would have to pay the price for his crimes, they might be less willing to serve him so slavishly.

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