World affairs
Human rights violations increase in Zimbabwe.
At the age of 93 Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, has announced that he will lead his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) in elections next year. He would be 99 should he win and complete a five-year term.
Millions of people in his longsuffering country must shudder at the thought.
Two recently published books, Kingdom, Power, Glory: Mugabe, Zanu and the Quest for Supremacy, 1960–87, by Stuart Doran; and The Struggle Continues: 50 Years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe, by David Coltart, describe the culture of violence and corruption that Mugabe has fostered since he gained power, and which is now deeply embedded among the ruling elite. They have become accustomed to using methods of violence as a matter of routine and are able to act with impunity.
Corruption is found at every level. No road is built, no political or official appointment made, without opportunity to profit.
Ordinary Zimbabweans face shortages from electricity to water to fuel. Banks ration cash withdrawals. Poor service delivery and unemployment add to the despair. Economic growth is tepid, projected to slip to just 0.8 per cent in 2018. More than four million people – one-quarter of the population - are in need of food aid. Another third have fled the country.
Yet the president and his family have money to burn. His wife Grace’s recent purchases include a $5 million mansion in South Africa and a Rolls-Royce. Her son from an earlier marriage, Russell Goreraza, bought two Rolls Royces and airfreighted them to Zimbabwe.
Just to be on the safe side, she and her sons have also established homes in Dubai, and also own real estate in Hong Kong. The 52-year-old Grace, who was awarded a doctorate after only two months at the University of Zimbabwe, is secretary of Zanu-PF’s Women’s League and there is speculation that she might try to eventually succeed her husband. She is supported by a ZAPU-PF faction by the name of Generation 40.
Her main rival would be vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who leads a faction calling itself Team Lacoste. How did everything go so wrong?
The British government formally granted independence to Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980 and Robert Mugabe became its head. He had been the most prominent leader of the 1972-80 war of independence against the white minority that ruled what had been Rhodesia. Mugabe indicated that he was committed to a process of national reconciliation and reconstruction as well as moderate socio-economic change. These fine words, though, would soon prove empty. Mugabe’s ZANU movement represented the Shona people, some 75 per cent of the population, while rival Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) was the political home of the minority Ndebele people, about 19 per cent and concentrated in the western part of the country. Although both groups had united to defeat the white Rhodesian regime, they became rivals after independence, with ZANU soon seizing total control.
Nkomo’s supporters in Matabeleland were brutally repressed in a campaign of mass murder, torture, arson, rape and beatings. About 20,000 were murdered by Mugabe’s notorious counter insurgency unit, the Fifth Brigade, trained by North Korea.
Nkomo finally surrendered politically and the parties formally merged in December 1989.
Mugabe’s ruinous agricultural policies, which involved seizing established farms and distributing them to political cronies, meant that by October 2003, half of Zimbabwe’s population was considered “foodinsecure.” He also distributed stateowned grain only to his political followers and withheld it from supporters of a new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
The government’s urban slum demolition drive in 2005, which destroyed the homes of some 700,000 people, drew more international condemnation.
The president said it was an effort to boost law and order and development; critics accused him of destroying slums housing opposition supporters.
Mugabe has rigged elections, hamstrung the independent press and left his country bankrupt and impoverished. The economy has been reduced to 1953 performance levels. Life expectancy, at 55 years, is one of the lowest in the world.
For its first decades as a sovereign state, Zimbabwe was a prosperous country by African standards. How distant that all seems now.