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The
problem of youth in Mugabe's Zimbabwe
By Obert
Ronald Madondo
September 15, 2004
http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=6498
Zimbabwe has
been in the world news for some time over issues like farm take-overs,
threats of election violence and unfair and politicized food distribution.
An important factor in all of this has been President Robert Mugabe's
policies of using youth to implement his more violent actions. They
have been both victims and perpetrators of Mugabe's descent into
dictatorship. Obert Madondo, AfricaFiles' Zimbabwe editor, has had
first-hand experience and gives us an insider’s view. He was part
of the political opposition to Mugabe and lets us know how youth,
instead of being trained toward civil occupations, have become politicised
and brutalized. It is a problem that will remain for Zimbabweans
to resolve long after Mugabe is gone.
Green Bombers
They
terrorize innocent Zimbabweans, brutalize opposition supporters,
force people to buy ZANU PF party membership cards and have been
implicated in politically motivated murders over the last three
years. During the drought and food shortages of 2002 and 2003, they
played enforcers of government policy – attacking overcharging retailers,
arresting people in possession of scarce commodities, confiscating
goods and stopping opposition supporters from getting food aid.
They are the Green Bombers, Zimbabwe’s government controlled and
supported youth militia. In return for their services, they are
rewarded with immunity from prosecution and with jobs in the military
and police forces.
Domestic and
international calls for the disbanding of the Green Bombers have
gone unheeded. The militia is sworn to prop up Mugabe’s beleaguered
ZANU PF government. Mugabe insists agents of the imperialist West
– in particular Britain and the United States - are conspiring to
re-colonize Zimbabwe. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC), independent journalists and civic activists agitating for
the restoration of the rule of law are regarded as Zimbabwean agents
of this conspiracy. For the last five years, these domestic forces
have proved so threatening that the youth militia has become the
government’s tool of choice for subduing any form of dissent.
The militia
also serves ZANU PF’s need to control an increasingly restive population
fed up with an autocratic government which ignores their most basic
needs. Fueling that restiveness are the extreme levels of poverty
and hunger and an economy in freefall. Indeed, the Zimbabwean economy
has so sharply plummeted in the last five years that the current
level of unemployment is 70% while inflation soars at more than
600%.
Pre-independence
origins
The
Green Bombers, said to originate in 2001 when the government initiated
the National Youth Service (NYS), are actually the latest of many
political youth wings. During the 1960s' and 1970s' struggle for
independence from illegal white supremacist rule, the ZANU PF liberation
movement was already showing that it expected absolute cooperation
from the masses it sought to liberate. It was, historians have always
noted, extremely authoritarian, but since it was fighting a racist
government, its allies in Africa and the West turned a blind eye
to the killings, torture and cruelty of the ZANU PF leadership,
beginning with Mugabe. Cadres who opposed or questioned the leadership
were severely punished. The masses who strayed from the course were
branded sellouts and publicly punished and humiliated.
Indeed, ZANU
PF has always viewed political competition with suspicion and open
hostility. Its leadership has always been highly commandist, expecting
absolute conformity and accepting no challenge. It was in this context
that the first youth militia, the ZANU PF Youth League, was formed.
It was also during this time that the party began revealing its
very traditional approach to leadership -- for what was expected
of its newly created youth wing was not anything creative or liberating
for young people; it merely expected submission to the party and
loyalty to its leaders.
Culture of
obedience
Tragically,
Zimbabwe youth fell victim to a traditional leadership model found
in most, if not all, political parties in Zimbabwe before the MDC.
Traditional African culture dictates youth obedience. Young people
have little input in decision-making processes. They are expected
to comply without question. As a result, Zimbabwe youth are generally
disempowered and prone to exploitation.
But the approach
of ZANU PF from its founding in the late 1960s is an extreme example
of this traditional approach. The Secretary for Youth has always
been an older person. The most recent, retired Air Marshall Josiah
Tungamirai, is a military man in his fifties. Whatever input the
Youth League had in decisions concerning young people is derivative
of the attitudes and wishes of this older generation. For all its
rhetoric on youth empowerment, ZANU PF has an entrenched system
of reward and patronage which ensures youth remain dependent on
the party leadership. Jobs in the public service are channeled through
the party as rewards for hard work, mostly to youth leaders, who
in turn keep control over the rest through promises of similar rewards.
Indoctrination
is the only kind of education in the party. Opposition is regarded
as an enemy of the state, to be crushed. The onus is on the Youth
League to help the party win elections at all costs. On the campaign
trail, youth engage in Toyi-Toyi, an intimidating military-style
war march, chanting party slogans, denouncing and threatening the
opposition.
Independence
and the Youth Brigades
Following
Independence in 1980, it was clear that Mugabe intended to create
a one-party state in Zimbabwe. Machinery was required to bring the
population, which had no experience with democratic institutions,
into line, and it became the Youth League’s job to enforce support
and stifle opposition. However, the party leadership decided that
the Youth League, while a vital tool in the party arsenal, was not
enough. A few months after Independence, therefore, the Youth Brigades
movement was launched.
The stated purpose
of the Youth Brigades was to create "politically conscious
youth" who wished to participate in developing their newly
independent country without necessarily joining the party. In reality,
however, the Youth Brigades were simply a duplication of the party’s
Youth League. Both participated in state violence against the opposition.
Thus, whether young Zimbabweans were part of the Youth Brigades
or ZANU PF Youth League, they were doing the same thing – and, if
one was a member of one, one was likely a member of both.
During these
years, I myself was a target of the miseducation of youth embedded
in Zimbabwean society. Just after independence, my father, then
an insignificant party official at the district level, fervently
spoke about my duty when I grew up to "crush" Zimbabwe’s
enemies. The last couple of years have given potent meaning to the
words "enemy" and "crush".
Killing the
opposition
In
1982, two years after Independence, a brutal civil war erupted in
the country’s southwestern Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.
The government blamed followers of its former liberation partner,
the opposition Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), led by Joshua
Nkomo, and launched a double-pronged attack. The army, police and
Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) went after the dissidents.
The ZANU PF Youth League and Youth Brigades, augmented by special
units of the army, police and CIO, were unleashed on ZAPU and its
unarmed civilian supporters. Some 10,000 innocent civilians were
massacred and as many as 30,000 injured and displaced up until 1988,
according to a credible investigation, Breaking the Silence: Building
True Peace, undertaken by the Catholic Commission for Justice and
Peace and the Legal Resources Commission and made public in 1997.
The government has never responded to this report.
The repression
in Matabeleland and Midlands generated and institutionalized a culture
of fear and consolidated the youth militias’ violent role. Although
the Youth Brigades were disbanded in the mid-1980s due to a shortage
of funding, the Youth League continued as the party’s enforcers.
Preceding the 1985 general elections, ZANU PF party officials made
inflammatory speeches encouraging violence. Mugabe himself then
said: "The ZANU PF axe must continue to fall upon the necks
of rebels when we find it no longer possible to persuade them into
the harmony that binds us all." ZAPU was branded a "snake
in the house", whose head had to be chopped off, and its members
were "weeds in the garden" that had to be removed. Not
surprisingly, the election saw more organized violence and destruction
of property, perpetrated by the Youth League. Mugabe also began
playing the role of benevolent protector, pardoning the killers
in his party, the perpetrators of the civil war and election violence
– mostly youth. The 1990 general elections saw even more violence
by the Youth League, whose members, once again, were pardoned.
Lost
decade
The
1980s were a tragic decade for the political development of Zimbabwe’s
youth. Independence and the multi-party elections of 1980 had failed
to usher in a culture of pluralism. Because of the violent repression
in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces, opposition politics
had become the equivalent of a death wish. Indeed, the 1987 Unity
Accord dealt a decisive blow to what was left of opposition politics
when Mugabe dragged ZAPU, the only viable opposition, into a merger.
The remaining opposition parties lacked national character, and
so had little appeal for young people.
Buoyed by its
new status, ZANU PF challenged the population to participate in
the consolidation of national unity and peace. But youth who were
eager to participate had only one avenue open to them – the Youth
League. To be a politically active young person in Zimbabwe in the
1980s required one to have a ZANU PF party card and to participate
in party-directed activities. Abstaining meant losing out on government
loans and economic empowerment programs, which were often dispensed
through the Youth League.
Youth enlightenment
The
1990s was the decade of disillusionment -- and enlightenment --
for Zimbabwean youth. Lack of opposition had temporarily thrown
the Youth League out of business. The worsening economic situation
affected youth more than any other group. Open disgruntlement replaced
the fear of the eighties. University students became a source of
inspiration for the young people who opposed the government. The
students’ struggle – often over poor housing, lack of loans, high
tuition, crumbling infrastructure and demoralized teaching staff
– was far removed from national politics, but they boldly confronted
police brutality when they went on strike. By demanding democratic
reforms and speaking out against human rights abuses, the students
filled in for an opposition and kept the democratic spirit alight.
Civic organizations mushroomed and provided ordinary youth with
democratic leadership training and platforms for human rights and
democracy activism.
This was when
my own activism began – and when I revealed through my own participation
how easily the attitudes cultivated in the ZANU PF Youth League
trickled down to other Zimbabwean youth. In 1995, I led youth supporters
of former outspoken Member of Parliament Margaret Dongo when she
stood as an independent candidate against a ZANU PF candidate during
a by-election in Harare South constituency. We defended ourselves
from the violence of marauding ZANU PF Youth Leaguers with violence
of our own. To guarantee that our mothers would make the trip to
the polls on election day, we ‘neutralized’ the ZANU PF Youth League
in the constituency. Our modus operandi, attitude and goal -- to
win the election at all costs -- was the same as that of the ZANU
PF Youth League. And we succeeded. After Dongo’s victory, Harare
South became a no-go area for ZANU PF. They had to join us or shut
up.
In 1996, another
government attempt to maintain control of Zimbabwe’s youth was launched.
The 21st February Movement, an organization commemorating Mugabe’s
birthday, was given the prominence befitting a national holiday.
Although it achieves little by way of youth empowerment, no expense
is spared in bussing and feasting youth between the ages of 10 and
30, who exult and glorify Mugabe with cult-like fervour. But the
further Zimbabwe sank into the political and economic quagmire,
the less young people identified with the "Great Leader".
2000 elections
and the National Youth Service
In
the run-up to the 2000 parliamentary elections, the ZANU PF Youth
League joined with another party-sponsored organization, the Zimbabwe
Liberation War Veterans’ Association, allies of Mugabe and avid
supporters of his skewed land reform policy. These two groups went
on a rampage – killing opposition supporters and white farmers,
destroying property and invading commercial farms. Their thuggery
filled the country with violence, helping Mugabe to beat Morgan
Tsvangirai of the MDC by just over 400 000 votes in the 2002 presidential
election.
However, the
2000 parliamentary elections revived an increasingly militant youth.
The opposition MDC, launched in 1999, already had in its top leadership
a sizeable number of young people, most of whom had been student
activists. A strong youth presence in the MDC did not just provide
a counterbalance to the ZANU PF Youth League but also meant the
beginning of the end of the ruling party’s stranglehold on Zimbabwean
youth. It exposed the failure of the Youth League and its hirelings
as viable youth movements.
But the government
was not about to give up its cheapest resource without a fight.
This time its counter-strategy was the National Youth Service program
(NYS). In proposing the NYS in late 2000 -- barely six months after
the election (MDC taking 57 of the 120 contested seats) -- the government
deliberately sought once again to hijack Zimbabwe’s youth. Ominously,
the creation of "politically conscious youth", the catch-phrase
of the Youth Brigades, was again put forward as the main argument
for the new programme by the then Minister of Youth, Gender and
Employment Creation, Border Gezi.
The NYS also
aimed to instill a "sense of responsible citizenship among
the youth" and to prepare them for "the world and for
work in their country". It proposed to inculcate youth with
a sense of national duty, patriotism and responsibility to uphold
Zimbabwean and African culture and values. The syllabus proposed
to "integrate youth in all government policies", "provide
opportunities for youth employment and participation in development"
and "develop vocational skills". It also proposed to "reduce
teenage pregnancies, the spread of HIV/AIDS, alcohol and substance
abuse… (and) promote gender equality".
In reality,
however, the programme was used to punish opposition youth. An NYS
certificate of attendance became a pre-requisite for joining the
army or police or for enrolling in government vocational training
institutions. HIV/AIDS, drug and alcohol abuse, unwanted pregnancies,
rape and poor health from lack of food were what the NYS really
got, according to press conferences held by those who ran away to
South Africa.
Furthermore,
it soon became obvious that the NYS was a guise to create a ready
human bank for militia recruitment. By July 2003, weapons training
had been included in the curriculum and the programme had become
indisputable recruitment turf for the Green Bombers. Indeed, perhaps
the most frightening aspect of the program is its militarism. The
program is run by retired Zimbabwe National Army Brigadier General
Boniface Hurungudu. Instruction during training is provided by military
personnel, war veterans and ex-dissidents, linking the programme
to the liberation war and to the atrocities committed in Matabeleland
and Midlands provinces by both the military and dissidents.
New levels
of violence
Until
five years ago, youth violence in Zimbabwe had been confined mostly
to the electoral season. After elections, youth ceased their violent
ways and dissolved back into mainstream society. Even during elections,
youth rarely had access to the kind of conventional weapons that
the Green Bombers use today. Nor was their training so militaristic.
Today, the violence
of the Green Bombers is always in season. "Traitors" pay
dearly. Traitors are people who want democracy, who demand their
rights and freedoms. No one should question the Third Chimurenga,
the war of liberation by which the land previously expropriated
by white colonialists is being seized. Zimbabweans should be grateful.
They owe ZANU PF an eternal debt of gratitude for their liberation.
Indeed, the party has not really changed from the guerilla movement
it was 25 years ago. It still sounds and acts like an uncompromising,
undemocratic guerilla force. In a speech President Mugabe gave on
August 11, 2003, during the commemoration of heroes of the liberation
struggle, he said: "Those who seek unity must not be our enemies.
No, we say to them they must repent… They must first be together
with us, speak the same language with us, walk alike and dream alike."
And of course, failure to do so may well merit a visit from the
Green Bombers.
"The
B-team" and the future
The
creation and arming of the Green Bombers along with the war veterans
was a desperate but well-calculated ploy by Mugabe to arrest the
current winds of change and sabotage the opposition and any successive
government. This militia for a long time to come will fight to retain
ZANU PF in power as a continuing guarantee for immunity from punishment
under the law. The militia acts with absolute impunity. In an interview
with the Solidarity Peace Trust, Zimbabwe and South Africa, in late
2003, a militia member said: "We got a lot of power. Our source
of power is the encouragement we’re getting, particularly from the
police and others. It was instilled in us that whenever we go out,
we’re free to do whatever we want and nobody was going to question
that."
Recently, a
Green Bomber was quoted in the local papers as saying, "We’re
ZANU PF’s ‘B’ team. The army is the ‘A’ team, and we do the things
government does not want the ‘A’ team to do."
Alarm bells
should sound loudly, for a more lethal, better trained and equipped
militia awaits the opposition in the next parliamentary elections
due in March, 2005. Should ZANU PF lose the next election, the new
government would have to confront a section of society blindly dedicated
to an ideology defined by narrow nationalism, hatred and vengeance.
These youth have been indoctrinated and, in a future democratic
Zimbabwe, they will require "constructive engagement"
-- a re-education in human rights and civic responsibilities. Counselling
and rehabilitation will be imperative. The aggrieved Zimbabwean
population will have to show a willingness to forgive the youth,
accept them back into society and do all it can to re-orient them
to the time-tested African ideal of respect for fellow human beings.
In short, the
current Zimbabwe opposition will have the weighty responsibility
of giving back to youth that which Mugabe and ZANU PF robbed them
of – dignity.
AfricaFiles
select bibliography and links:
- AfricaFiles:
Zimbabwe page – www.africafiles.org/zimbabwe.asp.
(Many articles on our website.)
- Behind
the Smokescreen: The politics of Zimbabwe’s general elections
by John MW Makumbe and Daniel Compagnon. (Harare: University of
Zimbabwe Publications, 2000).
- Breaking
the Silence, Building True Peace: A report on the disturbances
in Matabeleland and the Midlands 1980-1988. (Harare:
The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe and
The Legal Resources Foundation of Zimbabwe, 1997, two volumes.)
- Degrees
in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the struggle for power in Zimbabwe
by David Blair. (London and New York: Continuum, 2003.)
- National
Youth Service Training: An overview of youth militia training
and activities in Zimbabwe, October 2000 – August 2003.
(Johannesburg: The Solidarity Peace Trust, September, 2003.)
- Our
Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the tragedy of Zimbabwe
by Martin Meredith. (New York: Public Affairs Books, 2002.)
- The
Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War by David Martin
and Phyllis Johnson. (London: Faber and Faber, 1981.)
- Where
We Have Hope by Andrew Meldrum. (John Murray, 2004.)
- Zimbabwe:
The politics of national liberation and internal division.
(Harare and Brussels: International Crisis Group, October 2002.)
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