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, Part 1
Transcript
of 'Hot Seat' with Brian Kagoro and George Ayittey
(Part 2)
Violet
Gonda, SW Radio Africa
October 10, 2006
This programme was broadcast on
October 10, 2006
Violet Gonda
: Welcome to Part two of the three part teleconference with distinguished
Ghanaian economist Dr. George Ayittey and Zimbabwean human rights
lawyer Brian Kagoro. The discussion focuses on an article by Ayittey
where he says protest marches against Robert Mugabe are a waste
of time. We continue from last week discussion where it was generally
agreed that pro-democracy groups have to speak with one voice and
that there is a need for a strong alliance.
Zimbabwe has seen a few of these
alliances and coalitions like the National
Constitutional Assembly and Crisis
in Zimbabwe Coalition. As one of the NCA founders and former
chairperson of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, I asked Brian Kagoro
if these alliances that already exist are working and if not, what
is the problem or is it people don’t believe in them anymore?
Brian: I think
it would be unfair to say people haven’t believed in them. The NCA,
in its heyday captured national imagination; the grass roots coalition
also did. I think what the differences have been around is around
tactics. Let me concede a point, and, I’ve said it in discussing
the MDC earlier; that a lot of egotistic approaches to resolving
the national question, machoism and sometimes, downright foolishness,
so, I do accept that hope is not a method. You can’t do the same
thing over and over again and hope that you’ll get a different result
by some divine intervention. We need to be smart. And, clearly the
opposition leadership and most of the civic leadership has known
the possibilities of doing other strategic forms of engagement,
and, this is why lobby and advocacy, this is why creative forms
of mass action other than demonstrations are always urged and encouraged.
But, the question of leadership
has become fundamental. The formation of the MDC did two things.
It fundamentally weakened the civic leadership and the architecture
of civil society. In the euphoria of 1999 and 2000 and the belief
that MDC would sweep to power, what happened is that a lot of the
civic structures mortgaged themselves to the political process within
the MDC which was founded on a fairly weak ideological base and
also was a coalition that brought together people who did not necessarily
believe in the same things, that may have had the same agenda, which
was regime change. So part of what we are seeing are manifestations
of a weak foundation, and in my view these are things that are remedying
themselves in this process. By going back to define the social constituents
or social base of the struggle in Zimbabwe, that’s number one. Number
two, re-defining the agenda and saying that; phase one, constitutional
change is imperative but more importantly people’s daily lives are
affected, not by the document called the constitution but by human
agency. And, that human agency is in two places. One, we have seen
as a fairly predatory role play by the State, and sometimes it’s
a bunch of kleptomaniacs and political criminals who pretend to
be party activists; both in business and political parties. The
second is within the opposition itself.
The focus around capturing the
soul of the MDC itself; or the soul of the opposition. And, what
seems to be emerging and worryingly, an ethnic argument and factor
in it and fairly classical demarcations between classes. So what
has failed to happen is that, whereas the NCA was able to bring
people from different social strata, ethnic background and unite
them around a national agenda of re-constituting Zimbabwean society
and a new constitution. What the current agenda is not doing or
rather is doing is emphasising more of the differences between what
are being called elites, what are being called just workers - now
working people, Churches and all sorts of permutations that we are
seeing. This is the function of an exhausted leadership. And, I
have urged, in discussing the MDC, that what we now need is a succession
within the civil society or the oppositional forces. You need to
enthuse a new zeal, a new vision and even a new leadership to augment
what appears to be either fatigue or mere exhaustion. I think that
we are suffering from an impasse of perception and this is why many
of us have said; "yes, we’ve made a huge contribution to this
struggle, but the struggle must not be mortgaged and stand or fall
on account of our own weaknesses."
So the reason why you have no
singular voice is people are still living in the glory of 1999 and
2000 and 2001 that we almost supplanted the Dictator and yet, the
reality is that those gains have receded significantly. In fact,
if you were to account for our political worth, our inflation levels
within the pro-democracy movement are much higher than the national
inflation levels, if you are talking about value of our politics
and even our structures. But, is there good will to reconstruct?
Yes, there is. And, what will it take? Will it take just Morgan
and Arthur Mutambara sitting together across the table? No, it will
take much more. It will take, firstly, and this may sound like a
contradiction, it will take civil society defining itself as such
and its agenda and if it is collaborating with…
George: Brian,
how long will it take civil society to redefine itself? You know,
time is of the essence! The Economy is almost literally on the verge
of collapse!
Brian: I’d rather
have that than a false start because Zimbabwe cannot afford another
false start. So there’s a question of ‘do we bandage the bleeding
wound, or, do we take a much more long term approach? Zimbabwe has
had four false starts. 1979 we didn’t resolve certain structural
issues. 1982 we didn’t; 1987 we didn’t, and when we were going towards
1999 we didn’t. And so, this series of false starts I think requires
that as we think through the emergency mode that the country we
also think about what will finally take it out of this emergency
mode and do so on a, if not semi-permanent, on a permanent basis.
Whilst I agree that the major objective for us; the major consensus
has been that Mugabe has totally, totally failed and so has ZANU
PF. We are also agreed that what we need is not another ZANU PF
type. What we need is a genuine alternative, and this is why I think
its construction should take us a little bit more time. And, the
pain of course is something you can’t ask people to keep on suffering
in the hope that you construct this alternative.
Violet: That’s
what I wanted to ask Dr. Ayittey that does he agree with what Brian
is saying, that there is a need to re-define the struggle and what
chances do the progressive forces have if they were to do this and
do they really have an ideological basis to challenge Mugabe as
Brian Kagoro seems to ask?
George: You
know let me play the devils advocate and say that I am a common
Zimbabwean and I would say that all this talk is gibberish. You
know, look, re-defining the struggle; what do you mean by re-defining
the struggle? What I want as an average Zimbabwean is that I want
this man out! I want Mugabe out! I want my conditions to improve
OK? If you put people together, you know, these opposition leaders
of the opposition forces/civil society they will talk and talk and
talk about constitutional reform, constitutional this, constitutional
that. All this belongs to suffering. By now we should know that
with this Mugabe regime there, there is no way in hell, you are
going to have any genuine constitutional reform; no way! Mugabe
is the big obstacle, he must be out of the way. Now, everybody must
agree on this, alright?
Everybody must put aside their
political defences, they must put aside their regional differences,
they must put aside their tribal differences. Put everything aside
and focus; the key word here is focus. Focus on getting this regime
out of power. Once this regime is out of power then you can level
the political playing field. There’s no way you can have a free
and fair election with Mugabe there! This doesn’t need to be emphasised;
it’s a fact. And, so long as the regime is there you are not going
to have any general reform process going. Get him out of the way,
establish a level political playing field. This is the way they
did it in South Africa, this is the way they did it in Benin, to
remove the tiger before you point any other. You see, the moment
you say constitutional reform for example, the Mugabe people will
also be part of the process and guess what they are going to do?
They are going to stymie the process, they are going to throw a
monkey wrench in every constitutional process. You should know this,
that the tyrant will do this.
Brian: But the
South Africa process is totally the opposite of what you are describing.
We started off with negotiations and those negotiations were around
principles and the constitutional framework and we went through
transition. The South African process didn’t immediately remove
De Klerk; we had a transitional arrangement. And, this is why I
keep saying, the dominant forces within the region and by this I
also mean Thabo Mbeki and others have a type, a prototype of transition
that they agree that perhaps ZANU should go, that Mugabe should
go. But, one of the foundations upon which they want this to happen
is a stability that they can be assured of. This is a stability
informed by their own market interests, stability informed by the
interest of not having thousands of Zimbabweans at their doorstep,
should we not manage the stability. So, the Zimbabwean question
is more than just the resolution of the internal contradictions
in the movement. That’s point number one.
Point number two, for those of
us who have been in the struggle for a long while, I think, it is
not true that just by Mugabe going (yes, he must go, and should
have gone a long time ago), that by Mugabe going the long structural
crisis that our country has endured, will be resolved. Or even,
that if we don’t manage the question of the ideological frame of
the transition we are entering into, we will resolve the plight
of the ordinary person, because if what we are replacing ZANU PF
with is a system that believes that somehow benefits will trickle
to the poor, in eighty years time Zimbabwean poor will still be
poor and even poorer. Perhaps inflation won’t be as high, but the
condition of the poor – and, we have seen this in South Africa and
seen this in many other African countries where we are recording
tiny growth figures and yet the position of the common person that
you are playing devils advocate on behalf of, has not improved.
Violet: And
you know, Dr. Ayittey says people need to stop talking gibberish
and start focusing. Now, let’s just look at some of the options
that he suggested in his article. He said, if a strike must be called
to put pressure on the government, the most effective would be a
strike by Civil Servants. Now are the Civil Servants in Zimbabwe
the cornerstone and if so, shouldn’t the opposition forces be mobilising
them?
Brian: OK, there’s
two functions there. Three years ago we were moving towards a unified
labour system that would have made it possible for Civil Servants
to actually go on strike. If you employ the Presidential Powers
Temporary Measures, if a Civil Service goes on strike and the President
invokes those powers the consequences for them which we saw in 1985,
’86 and which we saw again in 1992, the consequences are much more
dire than for ordinary workers in factories and elsewhere. So what
has happened is the demobilisation of the Civil Service is not based
simply on the fact that no overtures have been made to them. In
fact, they themselves have made serious overtures to join the ZCTU,
to be affiliated and to be part of the broader working people of
Zimbabwe who are advocating for change. But, clearly, their position
currently is such that it will be rare.
And the second point of course,
and we have written a lot on this and there are lots of articles
between myself, Makumbe and Brian Raftopoulos, on the politicisation
and the militarisation of the institutions of the Civil Service.
They are headed by military people and very few Civil Servants right
now irrespective of what sector they are in will be in a position;
if we are saying the regime is repressive within other contexts
like the use of violence against street protesters. The viciousness
with which we saw them deal with junior doctors for example, you
can refer to the (Farayi) Jiah and other cases, deal with nurses,
is not the same as what we have seen happen to workers that actually
stay at home. And, on stay away’s, frankly Violet, we tried eight
stay aways; only three of those worked. And, they worked wonderfully
in 1998 because the context was ripe for them and afterwards people
said; ‘how do we know we are protesting if all we are doing is staying
at home?’ Where is the moral outrage, how do we know we are having
an impact? We are staying at home, some people are going to work
and we’re being victimised’. So, even that strategy exhausted itself.
If someone comes up with another brilliant strategy I’m willing;
I’ll be the first one to take it up. We’ve tried it. We’ve tried
street marches, we’ve tried boycotts, we’ve tried staying at home.
If you tell me what we haven’t tried, any new stuff, we’ll be willing
to try. But, the fact of the matter is that we’re in a mode where
the apathy that you see, the disengagement that you see, is because
the opposition cannot build with naked violence by the State which
is pervasive. And, I’m not talking about just a few people being
picked up; we’re talking people in hundreds, thousands of people
that have been victims of this violence, and a lot sitting in London
in exile right now. Hundreds of thousands in South Africa.
Violet: So,
Dr. Ayittey would you agree that the biggest problem is not about
the lack of leadership, but apathy, because it seems the majority
of the people are simply unwilling to take responsibility for their
own action in Zimbabwe.
George: No,
no, no, no, don’t blame the people. The people are looking for leadership,
OK? And I’m sorry to say as I was listening to Brian I was getting
very exasperated because what I’m hearing from him are excuses.
You know -we have tried this before, it didn’t work - they’ve tried
this, they’ve tried this before. I’m not seeing any way, he’s not
suggesting any way in which we can move out of this particular conundrum
that we face in Zimbabwe. Look if certain stay aways haven’t worked;
if only three out of ten worked, OK fine. Have we been able to think
about new ways of moving the country forward? Now let me also say
that the negotiation that he is talking about comparing that to
South Africa, there’s a big difference. The big difference is look;
the opposition groups can get together and negotiate about constitutional
reform blah, blah, blah. But if the Mugabe people are not part of
it, it’s not going to be effective. In South Africa, the De Klerk
government and all the civil society groups, they all agreed to
have a convention for a democratic South Africa. That convention
was sovereign; meaning that whatever decisions that they came up
with was binding on everybody, including the De Klerk government.
It was exactly the same thing that happened in Benin when they organised
a sovereign national conference in 1991. Whatever decision that
the sovereign national conference reached was binding on the Kerekou
government.
That is not what’s happening
in Zimbabwe. I mean a few opposition groups or civil society groups
can get together and hold a conference and they can talk and talk
and talk and come up with a resolution, but that’s not binding on
the Mugabe government because the government is not part of it.
Mugabe has to be part of any negotiation and once the Mugabe regime
is part of any negotiations, the Mugabe regime must undertake to
implement whatever solutions that negotiation arrives at. That’s
how the South African model worked and the Benin model also worked.
Violet:
But still, on the issue of Civil Servants, how do you pass that
hurdle where conditions for Civil Servants are regulated by a totally
different system which includes a highly politicised Civil Service?
George:
Well, the Civil Service; Civil Servants will always be politicised
and they will always be militarised, and we should recognise this.
It takes leadership in terms to recognise this. One of the reasons
why the Civil Service was quite effective in Ghana and also in Benin
was that they went on strike to demand higher pay for their own
members. And, then what happened was that it paralysed the governments.
The governments in both countries were very, very unpopular and
in so doing, sort of allowed the opposition forces to take over
and also to join in the strike to paralyse the government and to
force political change. Now, I am casting about and saying OK, certain
strategies work in certain countries, certain strategies may not
work in certain countries but we have to be imaginative enough to
be always thinking and always to remain one step ahead of the regime.
For far too long we have been playing catch-up, in other words,
we have been reacting to what Mugabe does. We should be ahead of
him in terms of planning the strategies accordingly. If a Civil
Service strike wouldn’t help, how about the Trade Union for example,
we can organise the Trade Union.
But, you
see, the important thing right now what we need in Zimbabwe is a
small group of people, small group of people that you can call a
coterie for change. People, who are above politics, people who have
the credibility. People, who can look at all this and say, alright
look, we’ve tried this before, we’ve tried this before, we’ve tried
this before, now this is the new strategy that we need to adopt.
Right now and I perfectly agree with Brian, that some of the opposition
leaders are exhausted and nothing new is coming out of them. People
have lost hope with them so I wouldn’t say we need a new leadership
per se, but, you see, we have to move out of this hum drum sort
of hopelessness and move. Now people look at the opposition and
they’re not seeing anything and that’s where apathy sets in. So
it becomes something like a vicious circle. You can’t mobilise the
people because they are apathetic but then again they are apathetic
because they don’t see any new vision coming from the opposition
leaders.
Violet:
Brian, do you agree?
Brian:
Well, Violet, I’ve said this point, let me repeat it. Rawlings was
violent, not as violent as Mugabe. Mugabe has resisted not only
the internal opposition but the international community and SADC.
All attempts to put pressure on him have failed, right? And the
reason why the opposition agenda and strategies didn’t work was
not simply because the State was a step ahead. It was because the
South Africans intervened to maintain the status quo. Number three,
have the opposition been thinking about alternatives? Yes, of course,
every day people are thinking about alternatives. What are these
alternatives? The first one is containment of the adverse interference
by South Africa, which is rampant. Number two, dealing with the
mobilisation of social forces around their daily bread issues; the
politics of the belly. This is why the mobilisation was around taxation
which is a grievance; lack of access to quality health services
which has become a grievance. Now, this may look like a whole long
wish list but if you are looking at the constituency that is Zimbabwe
right now and say ‘what is it that an average Zimbabwean wants?’
They’re talking about very exorbitant transport fees; you have to
work to Chitungwiza. So these may, if you are sitting outside look
like a whole load of nonsense and say why are they not just coming
up with one clear thing. Clearly, the one clear thing for us all
is a new constitution and a new government, but before we get to
that, people are starving, before we get to that, the average person
has to walk to work, before we get to that, people can’t afford
to pay school fees, some are eating only one meal a day; and this
is what mobilises people. Things that are of interest to them and
this is…
George:
I agree with you, I agree with you in terms of mobilising
the people. Stay aways, demonstrations, it worked in a lot of places
in the 1990’s, but, the strategy is worn-out, you know, it’s no
longer effective, alright? And, I also agree with you, the international
community, also South Africa hasn’t done much to help the people
of Zimbabwe. We know all these things.
Brian:
It has interfered adversely, if South Africa had not done
nothing, it had just sat in South Africa and concerned itself with
governing itself, that would have been a blessing for us. The fact
that South Africa adversely interfered, took positions, positions
that actually tipped the balance of forces in favour of ZANU PF
is what we are complaining about. Whether or not South Africa had
not acted would not have been of concern to us. What is a concern
to us is that South Africa actually interfered to maintain the status
quo.
Violet:
It’s agreed that no single opposition group by itself can remove
entrenched tyranny from power and that it takes an alliance of opposition
forces, but what exactly are we asking the pro-democracy forces
to do. Join us next Tuesday for the final segment where Dr. Ayittey
and Brian Kagoro both issue a passionate plea to leaders Morgan
Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and others.
Audio interview
can be heard on SW Radio Africa’s Hot Seat programme broadcast on
Tues 10 Oct. 2006 - click link for audio archives
http://www.swradioafrica.com/pages/archives.php
*Comments
and feedback can be emailed to violet@swradioafrica.com
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