Zimbabwe’s political crocodile is bluffing

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FIRST it was the unleashing of an instrument of war, the military, on protesting civilians only armed with stones and their voices.

Next it was the police’s announcement that they were looking for an MDC Alliance leader, Tendai Biti, for questioning. This is a man whose phone numbers and residential addresses are well known even here in South Africa.

Then Biti escaped to Zambia to seek political asylum, which the government denied in the belief that he was a fugitive from the law.

Boom! President-elect Emerson Mnangagwa, aka the Crocodile, announced that due to his intervention, Biti, who was deported back to Harare, had been released from jail on bail of $5000 (R70624).

Next, Biti’s lawyer and long-time legal defender of MDC activists, advocate Nqobizitha Mlilo, is said to have been detained for some reason.

To add to this mess, the decision by the US administration to tighten sanctions on the country without much explanation was questionable, at the same time as the US imposed new sanctions on Russia.

What is happening in Zimbabwe? You may wonder if this is the end of the post-robert Mugabe honeymoon and whether it marks the end of many Zimbabweans’ hopes for the post-mugabe transition.

Aspirations for the peaceful co-existence of civilians and the armed forces and between political enemies; an era of peace and development and a time of rebirth and reconstruction may have come to an end sooner than we expected.

Has Mnangagwa’s charm offensive that began in November 2017 gone to waste?

As an African proverb goes: “However long a crocodile stays still under murky waters, it does not become a log of wood.”

The reptile remains a dangerous beast even if it projects itself as a harmless piece of wood.

This suggests Mnangagwa’s charm offensive may have been revealed to be just that: a mere public relations exercise.

The ugly forces that carried out horrible acts under Mugabe cannot be hidden for long.

Mnangagwa has done a decent job of leading the new narrative on Zimbabwe over the past eight months, ushering in some optimism.

However, in the midst of last week’s election it was revealed that Zimbabwe has an unchanged government for which regime security dominates over the interests of all the people.

We are quickly reminded that it is the military that engineered the change in November, not civilians, or even those with a history of commitment to democratic popular change.

Mnangagwa has been a crocodile among the hyenas, vultures and hawks behind Zimbabwe’s governance crisis since the early 2000s. He has tried to present himself as a mere piece of wood carrying the hope of a better future in the past seven months. But the crocodile has been seen; it has also shown itself.

Mnangagwa was Mugabe’s right hand man for four decades. He became an alternative merely because he was fired at the instigation of the Grace Mugabeled G40 and the military panicked, fearing its leaders would be axed next. The army then launched a coup, putting him in front as its smiling face.

Because the Zimbabwean military has mastered the art of running operations from behind big civilian leaders, it would not conduct a fullyfledged coup, which would have seen military generals leading from the front. They don’t like over-exposing themselves. It engineered a coup without a full take-over.

As the saying goes: “The big tree tumbled down not because of the work of the big monkey on top of a branch, but due to near-invisible insects daily gnawing at its roots.”

Working behind others guarantees influence and power without having to take responsibility and accountability for actions.

Just as the monkey is seen as accountable for causing a tree to fall instead of the ants.

It is Mnangagwa rather than the military who is called to account for the soldiers who shot at civilians during a protest.

Of course, he is a willing accomplice; like a monkey he thought he would manage dynamics he did not have full control over.

He leads as the civilian face of a military-directed situation. His talk is sweet, his smiles assuring and his rhetoric reconciliatory, but he is leading a government in which a tough military has a huge influence.

Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder.

Even his assurance that he interfered with the criminal justice system to get Biti out conceals a concerning admission, namely: that the president can intervene with the rule of law.

Biti must face the law if there is a case against him, but he must not be subjected to intimidation and harassment.

At the World Economic Forum in January, Mnangagwa’s message was: “Zimbabwe is open for business.”

Even more daring were commitments to end the indigenisation policy and to reverse the land reforms of the past. Many were impressed.

But it is clear from recent events that a much more demonstrable commitment is needed to change anything significant about Zimbabwe.

And a serious commitment to democratic change in Zimbabwe is not about convincing investors, finding friendly countries to trade with or mere national prestige. It’s about redefining Zimbabwe as a home for all its people, and one that is committed to justice, inclusion, fairness and prosperity for all.

The largely peaceful atmosphere in which the elections were held was commendable, but it was all changed as the darker underbelly of the smiling new state was exposed in how it handled Biti and the protesters.

Now Mnagangwa might be sworn in under a cloud of questions with the energies recently mobilised sapped.

If he is to really turn the tide on Zimbabwe’s dismal fate, he must reveal himself because as it stands the crocodile is lying deep in the murky waters of change, trying to project itself as a harmless piece of wood.

Zondi is a professor at the Institute for Strategic and Political Affairs at the University of Pretoria.