Back to Index

This article participates on the following special index pages:

Echoes of Mao, Pol Pot in Mugabe's clean-up blitz
Dumisani Muleya, Business Day (SA)
June 22, 2005

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A59216

WHAT started as a civic clean-up campaign in Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe’s increasingly repressive government has degenerated into a man-made disaster, spawning a humanitarian crisis.

The nationwide demolition blitz which has caught the attention of the United Nations - has destroyed more than 200000 shantytown homes, as well as informal businesses and a sprawling black market economy. The ramifications are shocking. Human rights groups say up to a million people have been affected.

About 30000 people have been arrested during the campaign, which has been widely condemned by foreign governments, civil society organisations and churches.

Tens of thousands of people were thrown into the streets with no jobs, shelter, food, water or sanitation. The campaign has left thousands of pupils out of school. Women and children face hunger and disease. Some live in the open, while others were packed like sardines into trucks and driven to drought-stricken rural areas with no means of livelihood. The smouldering ruins of their houses and businesses bear testament to the campaign. A huge internal refugee population has been created.

Innocent civilians’ social and economic rights are being violated on a massive scale by security forces serving a discredited regime whose leadership and policy failures are rapidly turning Zimbabwe into a failed state.

Those banished to the impoverished rural areas in Mugabe’s own version of balkanisation, reminiscent of the apartheid bantustan model wallow in abject poverty. People living in rural areas survive largely on food aid due to the food crisis.

After the chaotic land seizures that began in 2000, when Mugabe’s rule was challenged by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Zimbabwe plunged into a cycle of hunger. The country has undergone an alarming regression in the past five years because of the political and economic crisis.

The scenario is almost like a theatrical revival of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge rampage. The political philosophy and motives are similar. There are several theories ranging from the absurd to the rational to explain Mugabe’s dangerous political stunt. Some say it is ethnic cleansing, others say it is a kind of social engineering, and yet others think it is simple tyranny and a cynical way to divert attention from the economic crisis.

Others say Mugabe has created a Frankenstein and that a third force is at work. The Zimbabwean government claims that the blitz is merely a clean-up campaign to get rid of the black market, criminals and illegal structures.

Whatever is happening, it is clear that this is not a public policy issue. There is nothing to be gained politically by destroying people’s homes, and no politician in their right mind would expect to consolidate power through such a move.

The deployment of security forces to execute the crackdown suggests the rise of a police state and a breakdown of social order. It looks like the centre can no longer hold and Mugabe might well be hostage to negative forces within his regime. Mugabe has become a prisoner of a situation of his own creation and is lashing out in all directions. He is surviving only due to the lack of organised opposition.

Mugabe has managed to survive electoral defeat by stealing the elections three times in a row. He obfuscates about his failures by waving the race card, pointing fingers at alleged foreign saboteurs and playing to the nationalist gallery. By legitimising terror, coercion and intimidation, Mugabe is desperately trying to maintain his faltering hegemony.

His ideology if he has any beyond profound political irrationality is a hodgepodge of authoritarian prescriptions, crude racism and propaganda, all wrapped up in a package labelled "sovereignty and nationalism".

*Muleya is Harare correspondent.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP