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intolerant political culture. Abel Muzorewa and Ndabaningi Sithole were tainted by their involvement in the “internal settlement” in 1978–79.⁷⁵ Some leaders, like Tekere, had autocratic tendencies and antagonized their own followers. Needless to say, ZANU-PF capitalized on these quarrels and would give maximum publicity to opposition “renegades” ostensibly (re)joining the ruling party. Most opposition parties at best enjoyed region-based support—or urban middle-class support in the case of the FORUM—and never succeeded to expand it (although ZUM in 1990 and FORUM in 1995 got a real share of the vote bigger than what the official results acknowledged; see below). In addition, they have never been able to put aside their differences and form a united front against ZANU-PF. They wasted money and energy competing with each other in supposedly winnable—mainly urban—constituencies while scores of rural ones were left to ZANU-PF candidates, who were elected unopposed. There was no electoral alliance again in 2000—except with ZANU (Ndonga) for the Chipinge South constituency—but the MDC succeeded in marginalizing every other opposition party.

      Another weakness was the lack of credible manifestos and policy proposals. For instance, ZUM initially articulated the people’s opposition to rampant corruption in the government and the one-party-state project, but it did not go beyond this populist stance to offer meaningful alternatives to government policies.⁷⁶ However, the FORUM and ZUD had more elaborate manifestos but limited means to disseminate them to the electorate. More important, perhaps, the opposition before 1999 lacked a clear political strategy as the episode of the partial boycott of the 1995 elections demonstrated.⁷⁷ Although the boycotting party grievances about the unfair electoral framework were valid and largely supported by civil society, their late decision to boycott was perceived as a petty maneuver. The fact that they did not actively campaign for the boycott and concentrated their attacks on political parties still contesting did nothing to dissipate this impression. Although the FORUM’s attitude—contesting against all the odds—appeared more consistent with the raison d’ être of a political party, its leaders had no post-election strategy. In particular, they had no contingency plans (or money) to systematically challenge the election results in court, like Margaret Dongo in Harare South, to expose the electoral fraud. This lesson was not lost on MDC leaders after the 2000 parliamentary elections.

      However, opposition party difficulties were primarily the result of a political environment deeply alien to pluralism. ZANU-PF’s political culture is built on imposed unanimity, ingrained intolerance to dissenting views, and some underlying violence.⁷⁸ This political culture crystallized during the liberation war, when dissenting voices among guerrillas or outside their ranks were systematically branded “traitors” and “sellouts.” During the liberation war, ZANLA guerrillas made an extensive use of the latter label to denigrate not only those suspected of having betrayed them to the Rhodesians but also supporters of other nationalist groups (Muzorewa’s UANC or ZAPU). Alleged sellouts were severely beaten and often summarily executed to teach other villagers a lesson. Suspicion was a method of political control. Therefore, when government called its opponents “sellouts” in the post-independence era it had some sinister implications and went beyond the ordinary political slander.

      The idea that those who do not fully support the regime set themselves automatically “outside the nation” remains a pillar of ZANU-PF political culture.⁷⁹ Like the FORUM and the MDC in later years, ZUM was lambasted in the government media and its members were dubbed agents of apartheid South Africa trying to return Zimbabwe to colonialism. For ZANU-PF any opposition party is by definition an enemy of the state and a lackey of the whites. In spite of the early years’ “reconciliation” policy, white farmers were held in suspicion, especially at election time when they were portrayed as a fifth column. White human rights activists were branded “racist” Rhodesians seeking revenge, even though most of them had opposed Ian Smith’s regime. This extremely intolerant atmosphere deterred many reasonable people from getting involved in politics. Sometimes retribution was not limited to words, and harassment could take the form of financial punishment, such as the problems Enoch Dumbutshena faced in 1995.⁸⁰ Genuine pluralism is something alien to this party because it never moved away from the war mentality of the 1970s. The one-party state was dropped as a constitutional project, but the mentality survived almost intact. ZANU-PF activists proclaimed during the election campaigns of 1985, 1990, and 1995 that various townships or neighborhoods were “one-party-state” or “no-go” areas. The infamous War Vets—members of ZNLWVA and ZANU-PF thugs—adopted exactly the same mantras to prevent the opposition from campaigning in the rural areas in 2000. Only this time the rhetoric was backed by widespread violence.

      Mugabe and the party hierarchy always made it clear that they would never relinquish power to another political party and lose their privileges. In 1995 (at a time the country was described by many as undergoing a democratic transition!), the governor of Masvingo Province, Josiah Hungwe, emphatically declared: “Our party enjoys immense popularity. That is why we will put up resistance if the opposition wins the election. There is no way we are going to accept that result.”⁸¹ For anyone who paid attention, Mugabe consistently adopted the same stance. For example, in 1995 he demanded “a massive 99.9 percent vote to frighten away the fringe opposition.”⁸² Threats of “another war” form one of the most consistent elements of discourse of the ruling party leaders and Mugabe himself since April 2000, in order to intimidate the opposition parties and the white farmers.⁸³ When the old autocrat insisted that “the MDC can never, ever be the government of this country” at a meeting in Bindura on 7 April 2000, he was basically reemphasizing his long-established stance. Nowadays nobody doubts that ZANU-PF leaders are prepared to kill to prevent such an outcome, but this has not been a sudden change of heart.

      Another leading factor often ignored by foreign observers was the CIO infiltration and its manipulation of potential divisions within the opposition. Many of the breakaway factions of the rising star of the moment (ZUM in 1990–91, FORUM in 1993–94) were in fact sponsored by the secret police. Margaret Dongo, a CIO operative herself until the late 1980s, confided that it was part of her assignment then to oversee trade unionists on the CIO payroll, and that she warned Morgan Tsvangirai in 1999 that the ZCTU was still seriously infiltrated by the CIO.⁸⁴ These fears were fully confirmed during the ZCTU congress in February 2001. According to Dongo, any new opposition party would be quickly infiltrated by several agents posing as opposition activists not only to spy on the party activities but with the aim of creating mayhem. The savagely violent anti-MDC campaign, led since February 2000 by the state apparatus (CIO, uniformed police, army, registrar general’s office), sheds new light on this controversial subject. For example, it is alleged that among the people who in the mid-1990s repeatedly migrated from ZUM to FORUM and from the latter to UP, there were some CIO agents who played an active part in the opposition’s internal quarrels.⁸⁵ The same maneuver was clearly at work in Margaret Dongo’s ZUD in 1999. She eventually exposed the late Kempton Makamure (a frustrated former leftist activist with an antiwhite prejudice) whom she had trusted, unfortunately, with executive functions in the party. The CIO also dissuaded disillusioned ZANU-PF middle-rank cadres from crossing the floor to ZUD.⁸⁶ More recently the CIO has certainly played a role in the rift within the MDC (especially the origin of the money paid to unruly youths to attack members of what became the so-called “pro-senate” faction remains a mystery).⁸⁷

      ZANU (Ndonga)’s narrow tribal base did not make it immune from infiltration. Mugabe’s security apparatus tried to destroy Ndabaningi Sithole’s reputation through the years with all sorts of ludicrous accusations even though the historic figure was no longer a political threat. Mugabe never forgave him for resuming his political career when he came back from exile instead of joining ZANU-PF as Joshua Nkomo had done. After the Churu farm saga in the mid-1990s,⁸⁸ blown out of proportion to ruin Sithole’s credit in the eyes of his own community, he was arrested in October 1995 for allegedly plotting to assassinate President Mugabe. A confession extracted from William Nhamakonda, a member of the so-called “Chimwenje” dissident group, formerly operating from areas held by the Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO) in Mozambique, was used to implicate Ndabaningi Sithole.⁸⁹ Although the latter denied any link with the Chimwenje, he was convicted for treason in early 1997 and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. The verdict relied on forged evidence, part of which was obtained

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