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Election Bulletin #2
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition
March 08, 2002

Falling from grace - a chronicle of a crisis

In 1996, President Mugabe runs for elections in a poll that is marked by the lowest voter turn out since post independence. With no convincing candidates to oppose him, he wins the poll, but there is a need to play down the fact that voters have so little faith in elections and leadership that they don’t feel that their vote will change anything.

Zimbabwe is under structural adjustment programmes and the strain on the social well being of the population is beginning to tell. The major economic question is government overspending fuelling inflation and high interest rates. Exorbitant lifestyles of those in high political office come increasingly under the spotlight, as corruption scandal after scandal emerges. The President’s extravagant wedding to his mistress emphasizes on the one hand, the double standards and moral decrepitude of the regime, and on the other the gap between the now established class of high fliers and the masses whose impoverishment intensifies each passing day with ESAP-associated retrenchments, declining social services, and a moribund land redistribution programme.

Meanwhile the government decides to send troops to the DRC to defend the regime of Laurent Kabila. The governments’ argument that it is acting in the context of regional cooperation and solidarity barely cuts ice with a general public where, amongst other things, HIV/AIDs is ravaging the population thanks to an underfunded health service.

A faction of war veterans normally affiliated to ZANU-PF, large numbers of whom are living in poverty despite their role in the liberation struggle mount vigorous anti-government demonstrations including a march on State House and a blockage of the OAU summit. They are awarded gratuities despite the alreadly bloated government deficit. Regardless of sympathies with the war veterans’ cause, there is also a sense that the liberation struggle was one that other groups contributed to, without having ever received recognition or compensation.  The cost of the government’s buy off of the war veterans is a crash of the Zimbabwe dollar.

Nonetheless, Zimbabwe is doing well internationally. It maintains a reputation as a peaceful, stable and pleasant country, developing into a leading tourist venue in Africa and a gateway to the Southern African region. Thanks to a relatively independent judicial system and a certain desire of the government to appear to respect the rule of law, democratic spaces remain somewhat open, even though, with an active internal security force, it is only the intrepid few who dare test the system to its limits.

However, civil society is becoming increasingly assertive and vocal, with the formation of pressure groups of different tendencies. Black entrepreneurs excluded from the formal economy with little government support to facilitate their entry, trade unions representing workers who are groaning under the weight of economic hardships and holding long standing grievances in relation to workes’ rights, human rights organisations with increasing popular membership campaigning against abuses of power by the state, the women’s movement who see the gains of their struggles frequently reversed. 1997 is a landmark when a large coalitions is formed as the National Constitutional Assembly having identified a common problem in terms of pushing their agendas – the Constitution.

No credible opposition has been able to challenge the hegemony of ZANU-PF. However, splits in the party are beginning to show through with the victory of Margaret Dongo a former ZANU-PF MP who breaks away from the party to run as an independent for her seat in the Harare Constituency of Sunningdale. She loses the election but challenges the result in court. The court rules that the election should be re-run and this time she wins and is the only opposition MP in Parliament. This incident is followed by a spate of similar cases where outspoken but popular members of the ZANU-PF hierarchy fall out with the leadership, decide to go it alone, and win their seats in elections.

There is also continued agitation around the land issue where government is seen to be dragging its feet, despite a year long Land Tenure Commission which consults country wide. In a number of locations, land hungry people conduct spontaneous but non-violent occupations of commercial farms demanding a faster pace of land redistribution. Government’s response is to evict these occupiers of the land, but nonetheless attempts are made to revitalize the land reform process, though still in a top-down way with the Land Resettlement Phase II programme. A major donor conference is held, but donors are reticent to put down money for the programme because of previous cases of corrupt allocation of farms to ministers ostensibly bought by the state for redistribution. However, the government has the high moral ground in some ways, given the inability of the British government to respect its commitments from the Lancaster House Conference which opened the way for Zimbabwean independence. The process continues therefore to be stuck between the British dodging of its commitments, government’s lack of transparency, the commercial farmers’ blinkered view of the issue and a large but voiceless majority in favour of redressing the ills of the past.

The push for constitutional reform gains ground. With the strong participation of churches and trade unions, and grassroots NGOs, there is increased awareness of the fact that the institutional set up for governing Zimbabwe lends itself to abuses of power by the executive. Issues such as the DRC war, cronyism masquerading as South-South cooperation or indigenisation which are draining the countries already meager fiscus, are pointed to as examples. Within ZANU_PF itself, there are also calls for change, with younger members of the party calling for reform, particularly demanding that Parliament should be reformed to have more powers. Government dismisses these calls, stating that the Constitution is fine, but finally has to give in with the ZANU-PF congress itself votes a resolution for constitutional reform. Rather than work with the National Constitutional Assembly, the government sets up its own Constitutional Commission which is given a 6 month target to conduct a popular consultation for a new constitution which will be put to popular referendum.

An overwhelming demand from the people during this process is for presidential and executive powers to be whittled down, and for greater powers to be given to Parliament. This includes for example the powers of the President to declare war without consulting Parliament, given that the DRC war is still highly unpopular. In the final drafting, these particular demands are not taken into account, and overnight, the government doctors the Draft agreed by its own Commission. As predicted by the NCA, which refused to be part of the the Constitutional Commission, pointing to the problems in the laws regarding Commissions of enquiry, the final document fails to reflect some of the most critical elements of the governance issues put forward by the people.

Government’s strategy to deal with those groups that bring forward complaints is either cooption – as in the case of the war veterans and the black affirmative action groups – or opposition. Government still controls the state media and refuses to liberalise the airwaves. However, the ghosts of the past still continue to haunt it, such as the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland. The extent to which governments sensitivity over the DRC issue is revealed when two journalists are arrested, detained and tortured by the military and court orders to release them are ignored. 

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions manages the unprecedented, staging two successful mass stayaways in protest at tax and price hikes, making its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai (also chair of the NCA) a popular hero. This comes on top of a number of food riots which the army has to be called in to quell.

With each incident, life returns to normal, but  clearly the tensions are mounting, the possibilities for dialogue and negotiation are being closed off and the demands for greater accountability are falling on deaf and defiant ears. The problem is that the country has no alternative political force, and it seems that the only option is to continue to try to negotiate and put pressure on government, appealing to some of the more progressive thinking elements in ZANU-PF.

The ZCTU decides at a historical worker’s congress to set up a new party – the Movement for Democratic Change, which is launched at a 10,000 strong rally at Rufaro Stadium. Meanwhile, the NCA decides that even though the odds are stacked against it, it will campaign against the new consitution at the referendum with a “no” vote. The referendum takes place in February 2000 by which time the government pulls its joker card, which has always been the land issue at each election. The new Constitution - it claims - provides for the government to acquire land compulsorily and allow it to forge ahead with land redistribution which has been thwarted by in the courts by commercial farmers and the conditions imposed by the British government on any disbursement of funds to back a willing-buyer-willing seller process.

But the governance issue still sticks foremost in the minds of voters who give a resounding “no” vote. Government understands well that this is to a large extent a protest vote and with the legislative elections due in June 2002, it can see the writing on the wall. The war veterans are remobilized and the campaign song which the government continues to hammer forth in the present Presidential campaign takes root. This is the Third Chimurenga, the battle for land, and against the neo-imperialist powers whose puppets, the MDC and the NCA, are working for their white masters  to ensure that Zimbabweans lose their land. The argument is that the draft constitution refused by the people in the referendum contained provisions for compulsory land acquisition. By campaigning for a “no” vote, the NCA have clearly shown their lack of sympathy with the popular cause and their alliance with the former colonialists.

The campaign also appeals to the dissatisfaction with the government’s inability to get the economy back on track, claiming that “land is the economy, the economy is land.” The land occupations, which were previously frowned upon are launched, lead by brigades and “war veterans” and ZANU PF youths. The government abandons its Phase II resettlement programme, going for a fast-track programme in which thousands of farms of mostly white-owned but also black owned commercial farmland is designated for compulsory acquisition. The process is accompanied by a well organized campaign of violence to regain control of the rural vote during the June elections, which the government narrowly wins.

Over the two years that have followed, the government has made sure that it has stopped all the gaps that allowed its opponents to gain victories in the referendum and general elections. The strategies have been deployed in all directions including restructuring the party, dealing with the judiciary and the media, changing the law and constitution. Alongside this has been the harassment and violence which has earned Zimbabwe a permanent place in international news headlines.

If all this is about how to stay in power, then the government can take credit for having played the game internationally and domestically very well. The government strategy has succeeded in creating a stalemate at the international level, where the voice of the African governments is critical. Locally, the government has been able to shape and control the debate, closing off the space for issues like the war in the DRC, the Constitution and the economy to come to the fore in the debate. The question is whether the gains from the government’s creativity and cunning will win the day over the damage done to its image through brutality and indifference.

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