Back to Index

A distant drum
Daniel Finkelstein, The Times (UK)
February 06, 2007

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article1336728.ece

Robert Mugabe has been sustained in power by a military and security apparatus that has successfully crushed the political opposition, and suppressed popular dissent by continual, overwhelming intimidation. People have become either too frightened to speak out against the ruin he has brought on Zimbabwe, or too exhausted by the daily battle for survival to protest. From the perspective of the ruling clique, military-style campaigns such as Murambatsvina, the forcible demolition of shantytowns two years ago that rendered some two million of the urban poor homeless, have been highly effective. Rootless, malnourished people make feeble opponents. An important part of Mr Mugabe’s own strategy for survival has been to convince Zimbabweans that opposition is futile. Up to four million have voted with their feet, fleeing to South Africa and other neighbouring countries.

But the catastrophic state of the Zimbabwean economy, where inflation is now 1,282 per cent, the dollar changes hands for 20 times the official exchange rate and an estimated 80 per cent are unemployed, is presenting Mr Mugabe with a new challenge, against which repression is less likely to be effective. In Zimbabwe, they call it "the politics of the stomach", a national upsurge of despair. The Mugabe regime, like that of North Korea, critically relies on keeping soldiers, police, security agents and militias happy. They are happy no longer. Mr Mugabe may not be too disturbed that doctors, nurses and teachers are on strike for pay rises of up to 8,000 per cent; the health services collapsed some time ago, and, in a country where education has traditionally been highly prized, many children no longer attend school anyway because their parents cannot afford school fees or uniforms. Discontent among the security services and the politically potent "veterans of the revolution" is a different matter.

The regime has insulated these groups from the worst effects of Zimbabwe’s economic collapse by raising their pay even faster than the spiralling inflation rate. But that, in turn, fed inflation, and the point has been reached where the State can no longer print money fast enough. Soldiers whose pay no longer feeds their families are failing to report for duty and even senior officers spend large amounts of time on the farms given to them after the expropriation of white-owned farms. As we report today, a confidential memorandum from the Zimbabwean police commissioner says that 14 per cent of the force is due to leave in March and that absenteeism is at unprecedented levels. Elderly veterans of the 1970s independence struggle are being recalled to the army and police to fill the gaps left by deserters — and were given a fourfold pay increase yesterday that can only magnify discontent in the regular security services. The army is in charge of the hugely unpopular new policy of forcing communal farms to grow maize which they must then sell to the military-run state marketing board. The police still savagely repress protests, even those by churchmen.

But the closer that the security services’ families come to sharing the common hardship, the greater the possibility that their men will disobey orders that make them hated. Mr Mugabe will not go willingly. No politician can push him out. Africa has a tradition of military coups. The classic conditions for a coup now exist.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP