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Zimbabwe: A polarized society
Cosanna Preston
Extracted from Canadian Dimension: July/August 2005
July 28, 2005

http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/frame.htm

Roll into downtown Harare and what you see may surprise you. The newest Mercedes sit in front of five-star hotels and modern glass skyscrapers, while suited men rush from one doorway to another, cell phones to their ears. But look closer, and you might notice the commuters struggling through malfunctioning traffic lights, or the occasional blip in an office window as the power cuts, again. The success of sipping from a water fountain or washing your hands depends on the day and, if urban crops are in your possession, harvest them early or guard them well from the hungry.

Indeed, these polarizations are not exclusive to the capital city, but plague the entire country of Zimbabwe. Socially, politically and economically, the country is so divided that the often-clear division between fact and propaganda is almost invisible—everyone has something to gain and everything to lose.

At the heart of the debate, President Robert Mugabe and his anti-imperialist, nationalist supporters spar with the official opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the recently weakened civil societies. They fight for the right to cast blame, seeking an end to the economic chaos that has stricken the country.

A propaganda war
"There’s a propaganda war going on. There are forces on both sides playing up the confrontation and trying to out-do each other," says professor Sam Moyo, a native Zimbabwean and executive director of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies.

Though exact figures are impossible to find, the unemployment estimates average at about 50 per cent, while the World Bank states a poverty level of 75 per cent, and national data and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) rate inflation at 132 per cent. Hospitals are running out of medication, and recent droughts combined with contentious land policies have caused severe food shortages, resulting in chronic malnutrition and starvation.

"It’s impossible to live comfortably in Zimbabwe. Even if you are well qualified and well trained, the salary that you get in Zimbabwe will only last you two weeks," explains Pius Ncube, archbishop of Bulawayo and so-called "rebel priest," owing to his vocal opposition to Mugabe. For him and other vocal activists, Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) party—which recently won another majority in parliament amidst accusations of fraud—are responsible for the plight of the people.

Mugabe came to power at the dawn of Zimbabwe’s independence, in 1980. Since then, he has increasingly forced his people into a life of fear, silencing any contesting force. He’s shut down independent newspapers and radio stations; non-governmental organizations are forced to register with the government, effectively disallowing many from operating; and, under the Public Order and Security Act, people cannot hold a public gathering without police permission, but like nearly every other official, the police are partisan.

The role of the West
Moyo acknowledges intense political violence following the failed 2000 constitutional referendum and the following presidential elections in 2002, but stresses that political violence significantly decreased leading up to and during this year’s election. Unfortunately, he feels the West has not given the decrease as much weight as it gave the increase in violence years earlier.

The West plays a recurrent factor in the plight of Zimbabwe, the number-one scapegoat for Mugabe. Brian Kagoro, an activist constitutional lawyer in Zimbabwe also points to Western external policies as a reason for Zimbabwe’s decline. Though he says Mugabe has aggravated any sense of structure in the country, there are many other factors that play into Zimbabwe’s instability as well, such as Western antagonism of Mugabe and the United States/European Union sanctions regime.

However, the largest issue is the land redistribution from the whites to the blacks. When Zimbabwe gained independence, Britain made the land question untouchable for ten years. White farmers were permitted to stay on their land, only open to willing-buyer, willing-seller negotiations, hardly an attractive proposition for the poor and recently liberated blacks.

At the ten-year mark, the IMF arrived in Zimbabwe. Unable to influence the economy, Mugabe had supported the social systems already in place, boosting health care and creating a new generation of well educated blacks, who he hired into the civil service. But, as Kagoro explains, the IMF was unimpressed with Mugabe’s lack of fiscal management and imposed structural-adjustment programs, forcing him to "roll back" state involvement. This meant cutbacks in the civil service and, more importantly, it meant the state could not redistribute land.

In 2000, amidst a growing threat from the MDC, the situation degraded further when Mugabe orchestrated a series of violent land grabs from white farmers by war veterans and used the ZANU youth militia to quell the opposition’s supporters. Kagoro explains this came about in part because Zimbabwe’s constitution supplies Mugabe with virtually unlimited power.

An ineffective opposition
The largely ineffective opposition doesn’t help matters. Once so threatening that ZANU PF abandoned its more discreet day-to-day repression for outright political violence of the youth militias, the MDC is fading into the background, rapidly losing popular support and suffering from a loss of seats in parliament.

"People who took a risk by voting for the MDC in 2000 have seen themselves punished—directly, in some cases, or just penalized socially and politically—and haven’t seen that having an MDC opposition in parliament has made a difference in the political process," says Dr. Guy Thompson, who studies post-colonial Zimbabwean politics at the University of Alberta.

Luckily, Thompson notes, the MDC is the public and political face for a much larger simmering resistance of civil-society and action groups like Kagoro’s Crisis Coalition. But with the new NGO bill forcing them to register, many of these groups are being forced into neighbouring South Africa, unable to operate within Zimbabwe’s borders.

But Moyo says there is still hope. With a firm majority in the hands of ZANU PF, the party is looking to create a new constitution; something both the opposition and the government agree is necessary. If the two groups can focus on the content rather than on the political mileage to be gained from a constitution, there could be hope for a more stable future. Moyo notes the potential for the ZANU majority to push through the changes without proper consultation, but says there is no way of knowing what will actually happen.

Archbishop Ncube isn’t quite so optimistic. At the end of the day he says Mugabe will force what he wants. Recalling previous cases of harassment, Ncube says Mugabe will silence any challenger.

"Opposition MPs [have been] harassed and prosecuted, but they were not convicted. They were tortured. One member of parliament told us he was stripped naked, electro-shocked—he passed out and afterward he was ordered to drink his own urine from the floor," Ncube informs.

One refugee, now a member of the Edmonton Zimbabwean community, recalls receiving such threats before he fled the country in 2001. As a public prosecutor in Harare, he was faced with the difficult task of prosecuting the same politicians who made the laws. Concerned for his safety, he asked that his name not be used in this article.

The prosecutor’s job involved working hand-in-hand with the police. Those police were supposed to offer protection, but, as the threats mounted, the lawyer soon realized the police would not be a safeguard. "When we realized that, ‘Oh my God, we don’t have any protection,’ is when we started really fearing those aspects." He recalls leaving court many times and having to file through angry mobs protesting his case arguments. He experienced threats, continuous harassing phone calls and violent attacks, and was accused of trying to further the interests of the MDC.

Many refugees have similar stories. Another, who also asked not to be named, worked as an elections monitor during the 2002 presidential elections, widely believed to have been rigged. The monitor was constantly harassed. He was beaten, robbed and threatened in the middle of the night. The first time was the day before the election. He was going home after picking up his election I.D. for his polling station when he was jumped by six men, beaten with batons, kicked and slapped. The men stole his wallet and his polling I.D.—anything to prevent a fair election.

Moyo cautions against such stories. While he doesn’t doubt their individual legitimacy, he worries about their use in the propaganda war noting that both sides have a tendency to pick select events, and use them as generalities. "ZANU PF brings out the rosy things and [the opposition] focuses on the worst," he says.

Moyo argues that the human-rights issue is exaggerated. While he readily admits it is a problem in Zimbabwe, he questions the heavy amount of attention the alleged abuses have received in Western media, when much greater atrocities surround the country’s borders. The bigger concern, Moyo suggests, is the pending food crisis, though he quickly adds this has less to do with the government and more to do with the drought suffered during the production season.

Futures for Zimbabwe
Though Mugabe will request and accept food aid this year, and though constitutional consultation could occur, Ncube, Kagoro and Thompson don’t believe much can truly change with Mugabe at the helm. Zimbabweans are left with virtually no option but to wait for Mugabe, at 80 years of age, either to step down in 2008 as promised, or die.

"The problem is with Mugabe. He knows as soon as he’s out of power, he will be prosecuted. He has created too many enemies within ZANU PF and outside. Maybe what the people of Zimbabwe need to understand is that Mugabe is afraid to leave office. If the people of Zimbabwe address that, then maybe we can find a solution…. So this is where we’re at, and it sounds like a tall order, but it’s doable."

*Cosanna Preston is a freelance writer in Edmonton, and has just finished her terms as senior news editor with the Gateway at the University of Alberta and Alberta bureau chief with Canadian University Press. She has researched Zimbabwe over the past year through these positions and her academic studies in globalization and governance.

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