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Freedom
in the World: Zimbabwe 2006
Freedomhouse.org
January 24, 2007
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=15&year=2006
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Overview
Zimbabwe's descent into the ranks of the world's most repressive
states continued unabated in 2005, the result of a significant decline
in both political rights and civil liberties for Zimbabweans. The
government of long-time president Robert Mugabe persisted in cracking
down on independent media, civil society, and political opponents.
Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front
(ZANUPF) won an overwhelming victory in a deeply flawed parliamentary
election held in March, allowing the passage of a heavy-handed Constitutional
Amendment Bill in September. Beginning in May 2005, the government
ordered the destruction of tens of thousands of shanty dwellings
and street stalls in urban townships across the country. The implementation
of this policy-labeled Operation Murambatsvina -left an estimated
700,000 people homeless, deprived of their livelihood, or both,
and adversely affected some 2.4 million additional people. Low voter
turnout and a severely fractured opposition marked elections to
a new Senate in November; ZANU-PF virtually swept the elections,
fortifying its control of the already pliant legislature. The country's
economic crisis worsened, with rampant inflation, massive unemployment,
near expulsion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and potentially
severe shortages of basic foodstuffs.
In 1965, a white-minority
regime led by Prime Minister Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence
from Britain in what was then South Rhodesia; the resultant state
of Rhodesia was considered illegal and was sanctioned extensively
by the United Nations. Sanctions, Anglo-American diplomatic pressure,
and a guerrilla war led by black nationalist groups contributed
to the end of white-minority rule in 1979 and an independent Zimbabwe
in 1980. Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic
Front (ZANU-PF), brought to power in a relatively democratic election,
have ruled the country since then.
For a few years, Zimbabwe
was relatively stable, although from 1983 to 1987, the government
violently suppressed resistance from the country's largest minority
group, the Ndebele, to dominance by Mugabe's majority ethnic Shona
group. Severe human rights abuses-including the deaths of between
10,000 and 20,000 civil-ians-accompanied the struggle, which ended
with an accord that brought Ndebele leaders into the government.
The 1990s saw widespread civil unrest spurred by opposition to Mugabe's
government; in 1999, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), an
alliance between trade unionists and other civil society groups,
was created to lead the political opposition.
In February
2000, the MDC helped defeat a referendum on a draft constitution
that would have greatly expanded executive power. Parliamentary
elections in June 2000 were deemed by observers to be fundamentally
flawed prior to balloting. Candidates and supporters of the MDC
faced violence and intimidation, including the use of rape as a
weapon. A constitutional provision empowering Mugabe and allied
traditional leaders to appoint one-fifth of the members of parliament
helped to further ensure ZANU-PF's majority in the legislature.
Voter registration, identification procedures, and tabulation of
results were judged highly irregular by independent observers. The
state-controlled media offered limited coverage of opposition viewpoints,
and ZANU-PF used substantial state resources in campaigning. After
the poll, Mugabe issued a pardon for thousands of people-most associated
with ZANU-PF-for crimes committed during the election campaign,
including assault, arson, forced evictions, kidnapping, torture,
rape, and attempted murder. According to the Zimbabwe
Human Rights Forum, the rights of more than 18,000 people were
violated.
In March 2002, after
months of political violence aimed at MDC supporters, Mugabe claimed
victory in a deeply flawed presidential election that failed to
meet minimum international standards for legitimacy. The election
pitted Mugabe against the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai, a popular trade
union leader. Following the election, the government was subjected
to travel and arms sales sanctions by the United States and the
European Union and was suspended from the Commonwealth. Mass protests
and strikes called by Tsvangirai in 2003 were crushed by security
forces.
Parliamentary by-elections
held in 2002 and 2003 were marred by violence and intimidation against
the MDC, which nonetheless won the polls in two districts near the
capital, Highfield and Kuwadzana. Party members were prevented from
undertaking normal campaign activities and were detained, beaten,
and harassed. The MDC announced in August 2004 that it would suspend
its participation in parliamentary and local elections because it
believed there was no hope of a fair poll. Partially as a result,
in September 2004, ZANU-PF increased its parliamentary majority
after the MDC boycotted a series of by-elections.
Prior to the
March 2005 parliamentary elections, the government enacted two new
electoral laws-the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) Act and the
Electoral Act-in
order to adhere to Southern African Development Community (SADC)
protocols. However, the ostensibly independent ZEC was not only
highly partisan but also did not begin operating until two months
before the election, leaving much of the electoral process to already
discredited institutions. Furthermore, despite some improvements,
the Electoral Act granted the ZEC powers to employ security forces,
retained biased residency requirements for voters, denied most expatriates
the right to vote, and created an Electoral Court staffed by a deeply
compromised judiciary. The MDC did participate in the March 2005
parliamentary poll but won only 41 of 120 elected seats in the parliament;
ZANU-PF garnered 78 elected seats, which, along with the 30 seats
effectively appointed by Mugabe, gave the ruling party a two-thirds
majority and the ability to amend the constitution.
Despite the enactment
of new electoral laws designed to meet the democratic protocols
of the SADC and a decrease in political violence, the run-up to
and execution of the elections did not allow for a free and fair
contest. Reports by local and international human rights groups
asserted that MDC candidates and supporters were subjected to violent
intimidation and harassment-including arbitrary arrest- throughout
the country, and were restricted from campaigning openly in rural
areas dominated by ZANU-PF (particularly parts of Mashonaland and
Manicaland). Security forces and ZANU-PF youth militias also restricted
opposition assemblies and rallies in Harare and Bulawayo. As in
previous elections, access to government food stocks was used as
a political weapon, denied to some MDC supporters and promised to
citizens in exchange for votes. In addition, according to Human
Rights Watch, "the processes of registering voters, delimiting
electoral districts, and providing for inspection of voters' rolls
were conducted in a non-transparent and discriminatory way."
Though the opposition's access to the media had improved from that
of previous elections, equal and fair coverage was denied. Finally,
among international monitoring groups, only African monitors believed
to be sympathetic to ZANU-PF were allowed to observe the elections.
While observers
from the SADC, the African Union, and South Africa deemed the election
reflective of the will of the people, local observers such as the
Zimbabwe
Lawyers for Human Rights and the Zimbabwe
Election Support Network were very critical of the elections.
The MDC claimed to have discovered major discrepancies in vote tallies
in over 30 constituencies. Citing 11 of these constituencies and
claiming to have won 94 elected seats, the MDC challenged the ZEC's
results and threatened a court battle; however, no legal petition
was filed. According to the International Crisis Group, the government
escalated its crackdown on opposition supporters and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) after the election.
Mugabe and ZANU-PF
leveraged their two-thirds parliamentary majority to enact a 22-clause
Constitutional
Amendment Bill in September 2005. The bill is far-reach-ing
in both its scope and its potential to further undermine basic rights
in Zimbabwe. Among other restrictions, the bill abolishes freehold
property titles by nationalizing all land, denies landowners any
legal recourse regarding expropriated land, brings all schools under
state control, and empowers the government to seize the passports
or travel documents of people deemed a threat to national interests.
Furthermore, the bill reintroduced an upper legislative house, the
Senate; Mugabe had abolished the original Senate in 1987 along with
the post of prime minister. Elections to the new Senate-consisting
of 50 directly elected seats, 6 presidential appointees, and 10
traditional chiefs-were held in November 2005 and resulted in ZANU-PF's
securing 59 out of 66 seats; the MDC, deeply split over participating
in the election, fielded only 26 candidates and won 7 seats. Only
15 to 20 percent of voters turned out for the election; the Senate-estimated
to cost about $60 million annually-is widely considered to be a
superfluous body created to reward Mugabe's supporters within ZANU-PF.
The question of who will
succeed Mugabe, aged 81 and pledged to retire in 2008, has proven
to be a source of contention within ZANU-PF. In December 2004, Water
Minister Joyce Mujuru was named vice president, and Information
Minister Jonathan Moyo was sacked after campaigning against Mujuru
at a ZANU-PF congress. Moyo was allied with Parliamentary Speaker
Emmerson Mnangagwa, the pre-congress favorite for the vice president
position.
Operation
Murambatsvina (variously translated as "Operation Restore
Order" and "Operation Clear the Filth") began on
May 19, 2005, with unannounced police actions against informal vendors
in and around Harare, including the immediate arrest of some 10,000
people and the destruction of many street stalls and informal dwellings.
The operation soon spread to almost every urban area and rural business
center in Zimbabwe, resulting in the destruction (mostly via bulldozer)
of tens of thousands of informal businesses and dwellings-including
entire suburbs of Harare (for example, Hatcliff Extension, Mbare,
Joshua Nkomo, Porta Farm, and White Cliff Farm) and Bulawayo (Killarney
and Ngozi Mine).
Domestic and international
human rights groups accused the security forces of arresting and
fining people arbitrarily and using excessive force-at least three
people were directly killed. First moved into transit camps outside
of the cities, many displaced residents were forced to return to
the rural areas "from which they came," as designated
on national identity cards. According to the United Nations, approximately
700,000 people were made homeless by the operation, and another
2.4 million people have been affected directly or indirectly. Wintry
conditions, large transportation expenses, lack of medicines, and
national food shortages exacerbated the crises faced by the displaced,
particularly children, the old and infirm, and those suffering from
HIV/AIDS. In addition, the government actively inhibited civic groups
and aid agencies from gaining access to the displaced.
The motivation behind
Operation Murambatsvina is a topic of debate. The government defended
the action as necessary to restore law and order to the country's
cities by enforcing licensing requirements and city by-laws, and
by removing sources of "illegal activities." Government
officials announced ambitious (and as yet stalled) plans to build
new housing projects for the urban poor in place of the destroyed
dwellings. In addition, because only about 25 percent of Zimbabweans
are employed in the formal sector, and the informal sector and parallel
markets are estimated to account for some 60 percent of Zimbabwe's
gross domestic product (GDP), the operation deprived the formal
banking sector of a substantial amount of scarce foreign exchange.
However, many of the destroyed vendor stalls, flea markets, and
informal settlements had in fact been approved by government officials.
As a result, some analysts believe that the operation was intended
to exert control over urban areas that had proven to be MDC strongholds
during past elections and the source of antigovernment agitation.
However, many of the townships targeted by the operation were built
on land confiscated from evicted white landowners and populated
with ZANU-PF supporters.
The government's seizures
of white-owned farmland, which began in 2000, precipitated the collapse
of Zimbabwe's economy, particularly in the commercial farming sector
that accounted for the majority of the country's exports, foreign
exchange, and jobs. Much of the seized land has gone to ZANU-PF
officials, Mugabe loyalists, and war veterans without a farming
background. As a result, the country's GDP has fallen over 30 percent
since the land reform began, which has made Zimbabwe one of the
world's fastest shrinking economies. Unemployment exceeds 70 percent,
and in September 2005, inflation reached a peak of 360 percent,
one of the highest rates in the world. That same month, Zimbabwe
was nearly expelled from the IMF because it was $295 million in
arrears on a $4.5 billion loan; however, a last-minute payment of
$120 million-officially (and questionably) gleaned from export revenues
and foreign exchange purchases-staved off expulsion.
The government controls
the prices of many major commodities and food staples, and state-linked
companies dominate many sectors, which leads to shortages of key
imports, most notably fuel. In September 2004, Mugabe announced
that the government would seize half of the country's private mining
companies, and the 2005 Constitutional Amendment Bill nationalized
all land. The country's dire political and economic situation has
resulted in the recent emigration of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans.
In November
2005, the UN World Food Program warned that more than 4 million
of the country's 12 million people require emergency food aid; Zimbabwe-once
one of Africa's major sources of agricultural exports-began a massive
program to import 1.8 million tons of maize in July of that year.
While the government has historically blamed food shortages on droughts,
Deputy Agricultural Minister Sylvester Nguni told a November meeting
of the Zimbabwe Farmers' Union that distributing seized land to
incompetent farmers was also to blame. Party officials have manipulated
the dispersal of food aid, withholding relief from suspected opposition
supporters. Fears of food shortages have led many urban dwellers
to ignore a government prohibition on growing crops in urban areas.
Severe shortages of drugs and equipment have pushed hospitals and
clinics close to ruin. Infant mortality rates have risen, and the
resource-starved health system cannot cope with an HIV epi-demic-one
of the worst in the world-that has infected one in four adults.
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