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On
the increasing prospects for armed conflict in Zimbabwe: and the importance
of finding substantive ways to prevent this eventuality
John Stewart
July 19, 2005
1. A situation has
developed in Zimbabwe where an irresponsible regime has so governed by
monopoly and disregard of their own laws and constitution, that a massive
polarization has developed, a major proportion of the population displaced
internally and into exile, and an economy that used to be described as
the jewel of Africa is in ruins.
The recent (May 2005
-present day) military-style clearances of urban informal economic activity
and the informal or additional housing that people have created in the
absence of government or other housing development, has considerably increased
the anger and frustration in the vast majority of the population that
survives on the margins of the diminishing and dysfunctional formal sector.
Given the blockage
that exist in the political, legal, media, and social spaces, and the
increasing desperation facing most people, it appears as though - all
other channels for engagement seeming blocked - there is at least some
degree of exploration of the option of a military challenge to the government,
and at least some sense that this is being expected by the regime and
steps are being taken to forestall it. Indeed, it could be said that already
the Zimbabwean situation is one of armed conflict, though one in which
only one party is armed.
2. Zimbabwe is a country
that attained independence from colonial rule in 1980, through a process
in which an armed liberation movement (comprising two major separate elements)
increased the cost of isolation and the monopoly of power exercised by
the then ruling regime, forcing a negotiations that led to a 'peace agreement
and a transition.
3. The region of Southern
Africa provides a number of other examples 'proving' that the most effective
means of removing a repressive and illegitimate regime is by organizing
military resistance and opposition, and setting out to overthrow the illegitimate
regime by armed force. Governing parties that retain a significant pride
in their military and militant armed political history include those of
Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda (to not provide an exhaustive list).
4. Whether a regime
is repressive and illegitimate is an exceptionally complex question, not
least because of the problems associated with the normative standards
that may be used for such assessment. Nonetheless, the key element of
determining legitimacy of a governing process must rest on the acceptance
or consent of those governed. The 'normal' operating of a broad range
of institutions - legislative, judicial, executive; media, social and
political space, economy, social welfare and voluntary institutions -
are a sine qua non for a society to operate within the bounds of normal
conflicts and social tensions.
5. However, in Zimbabwe there is
- the closure of
political space - through de facto if not de jure impendiments to the
operation of any opposition, and the effective monopoly of institutions
by the ruling elite, perhaps now best characterized as the relic of
a former liberation movement
- a situation where
judicial institutions have been distorted by overtly partisan appointments,
and quasi-legal and extralegal pressures have been applied on judicial
officers of all kinds
- the media being
'regulated' and harassed by a partisan and 'overzealous' media Commission,
and the electronic media is monopolized by the ruling party through
its monopoly of the state
- an economy in
freefall, with inflation in the several hundreds of %, and the GDP contracting
by 10% or more per annum during the last five years, unemployment incalculable
but massive, shortages of basics a regular occurrence (fuel, cooking
oil, sugar, wheat flour, staple maize meal)
- more than 30%
of the population are living in exile, largely for economic and survival
purposes and largely self-exiled during this last five year period
- a necessary land
reform was carried out in great haste ('fast track') from 2000 onwards,
not for redistributive and production-oriented purposes, but for political
capital, in an attempt to shore up waning political popularity; and
has resulted in a catastrophic collapse in agricultural production,
and the displacement and social dislocation of hundreds of thousands
of farmworkers. Corrupt allocation of land to the ruling elite has served
to replace one racially determined elite of land owners with another
politically determined elite.
- a coercive and
feared security and policing apparatus, with a recently greatly expanded
security service (CIO) [partly enhanced by graduates of a notorious
partisan 'national youth training exercise' that produced ruling party
militants or 'youth militias' between 200 and 2004], and policing and
army institutions that were the targets of 'political cleansing' exercises
(to remove suspected sympathizers of the 'opposition') in the period
following 2000 (a process that also was carried out in the Civil Service
of the State)
- serious allegations
of extensive human rights abuse, notably reported by the Mission of
the African Commission on Peoples and Human Rights, a report adopted
by the African Heads of Government at their Abuja meeting of January
2005, complemented by numerous other reports from Zimbabwean and international
human rights organisations
- the 'application'
of urban bye laws is carried out by military and paramilitary units,
so that urban traders and long term urban residents are forced at gunpoint
to watch, or even to participate in, the arbitrary and non-legal destruction
of their shelters and their livelihoods. It is estimated that at least
200 000 households have been displaced by force in this current (still
ongoing) exercise, affecting possibly as many as a million people or
around 10% of the population. Some local resistance occurred, including
the firing of weapons at police units.
- a creeping but
extensive staffing of key posts by serving or nominally and recently
retired military officers or people with state security experience -
sectors affected include electoral machinery, fuel acquisition and distribution,
grain and agricultural produce marketing, and mining, as well as the
security, military, policing and telecommunications sectors
- the very existence
of systemic crisis is denied by the ruling elite, who try to assert
that the catastrophic food shortages are the result of drought
6. While elections
have been held with regularity, and the State has asserted its attempts
to comply with recent guidelines that were developed by the Southern Africa
Development Community to foster independence of electoral institutions,
it is clear at the very least that broad based acceptance of the fairness
of these institutions is absent, and that the fairness of (for example)
the parliamentary election of March 2005 is questioned and challenged
by all observers excepting known close 'friends' of the ruling party.
Elections held in 2000 for parliament, and 2002 for the Presidency were
equally contested; one particular feature indicating the absence of substantive
process was that none of the nearly 40 challenges in court to the June
2000 parliamentary elections results was fully determined by the time
of the March 2005 election!
7. Faced with the monopoly and manipulation of the vast majority of institutions
and processes by the ruling party, which seems unwilling to submit itself
to an independent assessment of its popularity, the search for other options
seems to be occurring. At a report back meeting in the eastern city of
Mutare, following the March elections, the chief whip of the opposition
MDC was explaining to the crowd why the party was challenging the election
results in court. From the floor, and despite the obvious presence of
uniformed police and the inevitable presence of security officials, he
was heckled with demands for weapons to be provided to opposition party
members.
8. A number of other
indicators point to the dangers of escalation towards violent conflict
and war:
- reports of an informal
kind exist about the beginnings of training of exiled young people in
military skills, at least in South Africa and Mozambique, and maybe
other countries within the region. No political claims have been made
connected wit these reports. Should there be any financing of these
activities it seems likely that it will be drawn from exile circles
- the police and
judicial officers of the State in Zimbabwe are charging a number of
people with having illegal training in military skills, While these
prosecutions may have in the main political connotations, it indicates
the perspective that the ruling elite fears and indeed expects such
a response
- recently the police
announced the cancellation of all firearms licences for privately held
rifles and automatic weapons, and demanded their surrender. [While it
is unclear what number is involved, the author was aware that - a decade
ago - about 5000 licenses for all firearms were being issued each year.]
- the political
cleansing exercise referred to above resulted in at least several hundred
police and army officers being induced, persuaded or forced to leave
the services. It is likely that a significant number of these people
found their way into exile.
- The top leadership
of the army and police clearly is a loyal part of the ruling elite.
However, there is certainly extensive discontent at lower levels of
the armed forces and the police, not least because of the fact that
many of them, and families of most of them, have been affected by the
recent 'tsunami' blitz on informal and allegedly illegal housing and
economic (trading or production) activities in the urban areas of Zimbabwe
- the war veteran
groups - essentially veterans from the liberation war that ended in
1980, but enhanced by the youth militia recruits of recent years - have
also been alienated and angered by political marginalisation, and by
not being exempted from targeting in the recent clearance exercises;
one leader recently asserted their capability and willingness to return
to war, and some reports allege that arms caches existing since the
1970s wars still exist and may be accessed by some groups of these veterans.
9. Militarily, the
Zimbabwe state remains strong, with a large and well equipped defence
force (with it appears new military advisers, and new equipment, from
China). It is unlikely that in the short term - given the internal and
the regional geopolitical situation - a serious military threat will be
posed to this regime. Nonetheless, the inflexibility, authoritarian and
monopolist style, and repressive and restrictive application of 'official
lawlessness' makes the likelihood that further exploration of the military
option will be carried out all the greater.
10. In order to prevent
the gradual but accelerating escalation of the armed conflict in Zimbabwe
(reiterating my starting point that armed conflict already exists) it
is urgent that internal efforts by civil society ,to confront the monopoly
of power, and to create genuinely open political space, be supported and
strengthened; and that civil society internationally, and the international
community, especially of the global south, puts increasing pressure, through
ostracism and isolation, persuasion and pressures of whatever kind come
to hand - through international institutions, diplomatic opportunities,
media and information, boycotts of relationships especially in the military
and security domains, and other creative responses including visits, high-level
delegations and other possible longer-term non-violent interventions.
11. A return to outright
and extensive war in Zimbabwe is a prospect too horrible to contemplate,
since its consequences internally and indeed regionally in Southern Africa,
and in terms of the struggles to redress and overcome the imbalances and
injustice in the global economic order, will be extremely negative. It
is for this reason that this appeal is being made, for an urgent and concerted
global effort - led from countries and civil society of the global south
- to work urgently with Zimbabwean civil society within the country and
in exile communities, to attempt to prevent a return to violent conflict
in that country.
John Stewart
Nonviolent
Action and Strategies for Social Change
(The author works with a number of human rights and civic organizations
in Zimbabwe, but this paper does not necessarily represent their views)
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