Human security, ZDF blizzard: An encomium!

While military intervention is usually associated with the protection of national borders, the ZDF taught us crucial lessons on the significant role of security institutions in protecting human security.

IMPRINTED in the mind of every security-conscious Zimbabwean who witnessed the events between November 13 and 21, 2017 pan out is the simple reality - the constitutional role of the security institutions - particularly ZDF has been memorialised for the present and future generations.

As a lawyer and strategic studies expert, I have always loved emerging forms of security - human security included.

It must be stated at the very outset that ZDF’s timely intervention is not like a painful pinch which every Zimbabwean President should always seek to answer the attached question: What will the security institutions do to me today or tomorrow?

In contradistinction, it is an answer to the perennial question: what is the constitutional role of security institutions when it comes to promoting human security?

November 13, 2017 is an awardwinning book title which will always remind every Zimbabwean that human security needs a rapid and inclusive responsive approach to statecraft between the Government in power and the security institutions in a country. Any future President who ignores this simple truth does so at his own peril.

The United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security states that governments retain the primary role for ensuring the survival, livelihood and dignity of their populations.

If they fail to do this, those institutions which are close to, and familiar with the realities on the ground, become important in building responses that are proactive, preventive and sustainable, and they should be assisted by the international community.

By the time ZDF occupied the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), every ordinary citizen had seen enough of problems which threatened human survival and human dignity. In that swift moment of military brilliance, where ZDF’s military concerns had been ignored and would have not been published and known to the general populace had it not been for the influence of social media, ZDF saw the need to have the country’s political terrain changed by every citizen.

General Chiwenga and his forces were ready to roll.

The ZANU-PF government under the leadership of former president Cde Mugabe had regarded ZDF’s security concerns as “treasonous”. In essence, their concerns were thrown into the political dustbin. But this was only for a night. ZDF was proactive, prevented a national conflict that bordered on tribal discontent, and wooed support from the international community for staging a peaceful military operation.

Because the Trust Fund considers the critical role that regional and sub-regional organisations play in mobilising support and advancing collective action, ZDF got legitimacy from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) which emphasised the need not to threaten the constitutional order in Zimbabwe. To this extent, ZDF clearly indicated that it was not engaging in a coup. Subsequent negotiations between Cde Mugabe and the ZDF saw him admitting that the country was going through an economic crisis.

He ultimately resigned for “the good of the people” - itself a clear affirmation of the ZDF’s concerns on human security.

Further, the Trust Fund also shows that the political, social, economic, environmental, military and cultural systems must together give people the building blocks for achieving peace, development and human progress. All these systems must be prevention-oriented by focusing on structural issues such as external and internal realities as well as behavioural changes.

ZDF focuses on the need for ZANUPF to go through institutional checks but in a manner that did not lead to national crisis. The purges where party members were being dismissed en masse could have led to a national crisis because most of them were done on tribal or factional grounds. There is no doubt that ZANU-PF is the Government in power in Zimbabwe. The party events could also influence national events. As a result, the party crisis could also create a national crisis.

Human security demands that there be top-down norms, processes and institutions which provide early warning mechanisms, good governance, and social protection and enable the general populace to participate in the processes. There must be an improvement of local capacities, strengthening of social networks, and a coherent allocation of resources and policies.

With a situation of “party capture”, where the former president was being swayed in the direction of factional divisions, norms at party level were disregarded. For instance, former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa was fired without being afforded the right to be heard. Cde Mugabe, as a lawyer, ought to have appreciated this time-honoured principle that a person accused of an offence must always be given the right to be heard, including giving written representations.

Cde Mnangagwa indicated this need in his presser which he gave after being fired. He also indicated this in his legal challenge which was decided in his favour moments before he was inaugurated as the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe. No wonder why Zimbabweans from across the political and social divides welcomed his appointment and even anticipate that he will deliver on his promises for a better Zimbabwe where “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.

The ZDF intervention indeed strengthened social networks in Zimbabwe. Political parties were urged to advise their supporters to treat themselves decorously. Social movements and ordinary citizens peacefully expressed their desire for a change by supporting the veterans of the liberation struggle, and marching against former president Cde Mugabe.

Rooted in the Constitution of Zimbabwe, 2013, and driven by the need to protect human security, the non-violent but asymmetrical character of ZDF’s intervention was exceptionally executed. Because the malcontents in ZANU-PF had distorted the security arrangements at State level, there was need for ZDF to distort its mode of operations.

Swiftly, strategic State institutions were targeted simply because the party in Government had refused to publish the concerns of a key institution in the security matrix.

The Herald and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Service (ZBC), being State-run institutions, had to be the focus of the intervention. Those who read history can only equate this move to the storming of the Bastille in France, to symbolise the fall of monarchical absolutism.

Most importantly, ZDF’s intention was not to usurp power from Cde Mugabe through unconstitutional means. Rather, it was to remind him of the importance of effectively protecting human security for all Zimbabweans - arresting divisions based on tribal supremacy.

This security would cascade to key areas such as job and food security - something which President Mngangagwa has quickly come to understand and address in his broad security agenda.

With the intervention, an era where the ordinary civil servants and the private business owners or investors would feel protected as envisaged by the Constitution were ended and saw thousands of Zimbabweans marching in solidarity with the ZDF in what became another independent day - November 18, 2017.

The date 18/11 in Zimbabwe became a day when the veterans of the struggle vigorously asserted their constitutional rights as they are enshrined in Section 84 of the Constitution.

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