Uncertainty in winds of change

The end of the Mugabe era may not mean an end to dictatorship for Zimbabwe, says Alastair McKenzie

WHEN I bumped into John Makumbe in Murray St, Hobart, in early 1985, he was surprised I’d spotted him in the crowd.

“I’m practically white!” he said, referring to his albinism. Yet, I suspect many will remember the Zimbabwean PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania whose loud opinions did not overshadow his open mind.

On John’s death in Harare in January 2013, a fellow human rights activist described him as the most courageous man he’d ever met. I can believe that.

Talking politics over dinner in a busy Harare restaurant in 2006, John erupted. He was seemingly oblivious to the law making it a criminal offence to criticise President Robert Mugabe in public. Drawing on his own experience he shouted: “It’s an honour to be beaten by the regime! Down with the dictator! The dictator must go!”

As Tasmanians watch current events in Zimbabwe on their television screens, they can be proud of their state’s association with John Makumbe and reflect on his values.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop did not make a substantive statement on Zimbabwe until Wednesday, a week after the military takeover and once Robert Mugabe had resigned the presidency.

Her early reserve was appropriate. In the wake of the military coup, outsiders could not be seen to be making gestures to direct Zimbabwe’s affairs. As Zimbabweans circulated a petition for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to stop interfering with the country’s political transition, some renamed the organisation the South African Dictators’ Club. They felt abandoned by a South Africa that chose many times over the years not to use its economic leverage against Mugabe. Similarly, they felt SADC had endorsed flawed elections to keep him in power.

External partners were well advised to wait until Zimbabweans themselves began to resolve the bizarre contradictions of recent days — a coup declared by the army not to be a coup and an arranged resignation speech by the 93-year-old Mugabe that in the first instance was not a resignation speech.

Now Mugabe has resigned and been replaced by Emmerson Mnangagwa, there appear to be three possible scenarios for Zimbabwe.

ONE: continued repression by a military-backed dictatorship, after what turns out to have been a mere changing of the guard in the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) ZANU PF party.

TWO: a transition to multiparty democracy with the full involvement of the political opposition and civil society.

THREE: a fake transition, whereby Zimbabwe’s new rulers rely on the semblance of a restored democracy being enough to extract foreign aid for essential services while the military’s control over politics remains intact.

The first scenario can be easily envisaged under 75year-old Mnangagwa, a ZANU PF hard man and Mugabe’s former henchman.

The second, most optimistic scenario, is less plausible. But while it would mean ZANU PF leaders engaging sincerely with people they have always despised, a countervailing factor may be the dire state of Zimbabwe’s economy, which Mnangagwa knows is barely functioning day-to-day; industrial areas are lying dormant and the country has run out of hard currency. Mnangagwa also knows aid donors will want to see a democratic dispensation before stumping up financial support for economic recovery.

The third scenario — an unhappy amalgam of the other two — poses a manageable but discernible risk that Australian aid could reward bad behaviour and it holds barely less disappointment for democracy’s advocates than the first scenario. There is a good chance it is what the world will see in the coming months.

From 2009 to 2013, during a power-sharing Government of National Unity between ZANU PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Australia showed it could provide targeted humanitarian support to ordinary Zimbabweans without undermining efforts to achieve political change. But, it is reasonable to ask if scarce aid resources should be put into what is shaping up as Zimbabwe’s third liberation — the first being independence in 1980 and the second the inception of the Government of National Unity in 2009. Far removed from the depredations of Mugabe and his clique, Australian