‘The human rights groups will learn to embrace democracy’
In his first interview with a UK newspaper, Zimbabwe’s president-elect Emmerson Mnangagwa sends warning after poll win
He spent decades at the heart of Robert Mugabe’s violently repressive government, seized power in a military coup and is facing mounting criticism over a renewed crackdown on Zimbabwe’s political opposition.
But Emmerson Mnangagwa insists both he and the Zanu PF party he leads have changed – and says it is those levelling accusations of human rights abuses who are stuck in the past.
“Be wary of Zimbabwe human rights groups, they have an agenda,” the country’s president-elect told The
Daily Telegraph in his first newspaper interview since he was elected two weeks ago.
“They have always been against the government, they have not changed their minds, they have not shifted their mind to become democratic, but that will take time,” he added.
It is not easy to tell whether the comment is a veiled threat, an expression of genuine frustration, or both. Friendly, informal and at ease behind a massive desk in Harare’s State House, Mr Mnangagwa projects the confidence of a man who has achieved a long-held ambition.
Speaking without notes and monitoring his phone as he talks, he returns again and again to his set piece, that he campaigned on “peace, peace, unity, unity, love, love to our people”.
Mr Mnangagwa ran for office on a radical promise of economic renewal, democratic reform, and an end to dictatorship. But even before he has been inaugurated, Mr Mnangagwa is an embattled president. The July 30 election triumph was marred by bloodshed, allegations of vote rigging, and a skin-of-the teeth margin of victory that the opposition is seeking to overturn.
His presidential in-box includes the near impossible tasks of uniting Zimbabwe’s bitterly divided electorate, fixing its smashed economy, and allaying unease both at home and abroad about his past, his methods, and his intentions.
He is already facing criticism from Western governments and domestic human rights groups over the shooting of protesters and a crackdown on the opposition that threatens to unravel his credentials as a newly-minted democrat.
The US renewed financial and travel sanctions against most prominent Zimbabweans yesterday. US sanctions under the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Amendment Act are a major stumbling block for international investment and financial assistance.
Lawyers from Nelson Chamisa’s MDC Alliance, who say the vote was rigged to bring Mr Mnangagwa over the 50 per cent threshold for a first round win, filed a 250-page legal challenge against the outcome of the election in court yesterday. The complaint will put his inauguration – initially planned for Sunday – back by two weeks while judges consider it. If they uphold the complaint, it could force a re-run of the entire election.
Mr Mnangagwa says he is not bothered by the legal challenge. “I’m not privy to their thinking,” he said. “We are staying aloof, we allow the law to take its course. This is my attitude. There were 54 political parties participating in the elections and 22 were bidding for the office of president. Twenty two political parties, and I beat them all,” said Mr Mnangagwa, when asked to reflect on his victory. And I got 2.4million votes against 2.1million. So I am proud of that,” he said.
‘From when I was 17, I never worked for anybody but the people, the party, and I don’t regret I chose that life’
He gets more emotional when asked about the outburst of violence and harassment of opposition supporters that has damaged his carefully polished image as a democratic reformer. At least six people were killed on Aug 1 after troops were deployed onto the streets of Harare to respond to rioting by supporters of Mr Chamisa angry about what they claimed was election rigging.
Ambassadors of EU countries, Australia, Canada, and the US said in a joint statement on Thursday that they were “deeply disturbed” by reports of opposition supporters being targeted by security forces in the days since then. They also demanded that the government guarantee the safety of Tendai Biti, a senior MDC Alliance MP and former finance minister, who was arrested after being extradited from Zambia, where he had fled to avoid the police. Mr Biti, who is wanted on suspicion of inciting street violence, was released on bail almost as soon as he was arrested on Thursday.
Keeping the international community on side is a priority for Mr Mnangagwa, who has indicated that he wishes to rejoin the Commonwealth, a promise that the UK has made dependent on good governance. Yesterday, Harriett Baldwin, Britain’s minister for Africa, urged Mr Mnangagwa and the opposition to call for calm, and expressed concern over the violence and human rights violations.
“We must have a different image from the isolationist posture of the past,” Mr Mnangagwa said. “Zimbabwe must embrace the international community totally, and we are doing everything possible [in terms of ] political reforms for us again to relate and to cooperate with the international community and international business.”
The president says he “regrets” the bloodshed of Aug 1 but vigorously denies ordering troops onto the streets, even though he is commander in chief of the armed forces.
“The entire country was in a mood of joy, no one expected the violence that happened so suddenly,” he said.
“The small police unit left in Harare could not control what was happening: burning property, putting people in rooms to burn them. In terms of the law, police are allowed to summon assistance to bring order …. at that local level.” Protesters took to the streets in the aftermath of the vote, with some starting fires. There has been no evidence that people were deliberately trapped in fires, and Mr Mnangagwa provided no further information.
Mr Mnangagwa said he would launch a promised inquiry into the violence as soon as he was inaugurated, and said he was bringing in foreigners to lend it more credibility. But he said allegations by human rights groups of more than 150 cases of unconstitutional violence since Aug 1 – including well documented rampages by soldiers in opposition-supporting suburbs in following days – “fake news.”
“Our police and our army are very friendly,” he insists. “I have not received information from my party or from the general public, from any citizen saying I am fearful. Never, never.”
Critics say the cases are among a number of troubling contradictions between the new president’s rhetoric and the more “traditional” actions of his security services. And the challenges of breaking with the past will define his presidency in more ways than one.
Mr Mnangagwa’s victory was no landslide – he took just 50.8 per cent of the vote, avoiding a second round run-off by just a whisker. It is a result that underscores a growing gulf between young Zimbabweans and the ageing generation of liberation war veterans who have monopolised power in the country since 1980.
Mr Mnangagwa entered politics alongside Mr Mugabe as a young insurgent fighting against white minority rule in what was then Rhodesia in the Sixties.
During the brutal war he joined an insurgent group who called themselves the “crocodile gang” – today he is known in some quarters as The Crocodile for his political cunning – evaded hanging for the 1964 bombing of a train by lying about his age, was tortured by police, and spent eight years in a Rhodesian jail.
On independence in 1980 the younger man became Mugabe’s security chief, and quickly gained a reputation for dealing ruthlessly with perceived enemies. In the Eighties he was involved in what became known as the “Gukurahundi”, a neargenocidal massacre of thousands of predominantly ethnic Ndebele people suspected of backing ZAPU, a rival liberation movement. In the 2000s he was implicated in violent crackdowns of Mr Chamisa’s Movement for Democratic Change.
Suspicions about Mr Mnangagwa’s past will always dog his attempts to reinvent himself as the man to deliver democracy to Zimbabwe. But he is not inclined to apologise.
“I don’t think I regret anything, I have no other life I know except politics. From when I was 17, I never worked for anybody but the people, the party, and I don’t regret I chose that life.
“At the end of the day, I did what I did for my country,” he said.
In an extraordinary intervention on the day before election day, Mr Mugabe told international media that he had never trusted Mr Mnangagwa and insinuated that his former vice-president had been a Rhodesian spy during the liberation war.
For the generation of war veterans that both men belong to, that is about as mortal an insult as it is possible to make. But Mr Mnangagwa dismisses it as “rubbish and nonsense”.
“I trusted him to the end. If he didn’t trust me I didn’t know till the end. We shared the deepest issues together.” He added: “Why would he work with me for 54 years if I was a Rhodesian spy?”
He says no decision has been made about whether Mr Mugabe and Grace, his wife, will be allowed to keep the massive property portfolio, including former white owned farms, they amassed while in power.
Asked about the Zanu PF faction that sided with the Mugabes in the power struggle and openly attempted to sabotage his electoral chances last month, he returns to his set-piece message. “I am looking forward, there is no reason for living in the past we must all preach peace and unite our people,” he says.