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A Predictable Tragedy. Daniel Compagnon
Читать онлайн.Название A Predictable Tragedy
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isbn 9780812200041
Автор произведения Daniel Compagnon
Издательство Ingram
The same threats were renewed, more aggressively this time, during the 2000 and 2002 electoral campaigns. Didymus Mutasa’s public admission that party leaders “would be better off with only 6 million people, with [their] own people who support the liberation struggle“23—the current government—betrays the extent to which ZANU-PF hard-liners are prepared to go eventually to get rid of the opposition. The then ruling party secretary for administration alluded not only to farm workers, many of whom are of Malawian, Mozambican, or Zambian descent, but also to opposition supporters in the rural areas who have been deprived of food aid repeatedly by party militias from 2002 to 2005. Food as a weapon had already been used against alleged dissidents in Matabeleland during the Gukurahundi.24
Even after the Unity Accord and the end of the alleged Matabeleland dissidence, the 1990 general elections were marred by several incidents of violence. The worst was an attempt to murder Patrick Kombayi, then a ZUM candidate in Gweru, who was widely expected to win the constituency held by Vice President Muzenda.25 Two of the culprits, the Midlands CIO chief who was in charge of the vice president’s security and a ZANU-PF youth leader, were eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in jail. Although the Supreme Court upheld their conviction, President Mugabe, using his presidential prerogative for mercy, pardoned both in 1993. Incidents of violence were less prominent in the 1995 elections, but were far more numerous than most observers assumed, in particular in the ZANU-PF primary elections. The impression conveyed by the Electoral Supervisory Commission and several reports from civic groups that had monitored the elections—with the notable exception of the informed judgment of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZIMRIGHTS)—that the 1995 elections were “free but not fair” because there was little violence does not reflect the reality. Violence was rife in areas of actual competition, hence in the ruling party primaries (disregarded by the ESC), which were the real elections in many constituencies. In these the MP was subsequently elected unopposed as a direct result of the opposition’s partial boycott. There were a few constituencies where ZANU-PF encountered real challenges from opposition or independent candidates. Such was the case in Harare North, where Trudy Stevenson campaigned actively for the Forum Party—and was called a “dirty white pig” by ZANU-PF women—or in Harare South, where ZANU dissident Margaret Dongo was castigated as a “sellout” by her CIO-sponsored opponent. A real challenge to its power always generated a violent response from ZANU-PF. The above-mentioned study of the 1995 elections concluded that when facing a credible and organized national opposition—what the MDC happened to be—Mugabe and his lieutenants would not hesitate to resort to large-scale violent methods already tested in 1980, 1985, and 1990. Unfortunately this prediction was vindicated by subsequent developments.
Violence as a Tool for Electoral Campaigns and Political Retribution
Although originally located on the commercial farms, a wave of organized violence immediately followed the government’s defeat in the 12–13 February 2000 constitutional referendum. This reveals its real motives. Whatever the misgivings Mugabe might have had about the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) draft, and a reform exercise imposed on him, he did not take lightly to defeat. He knew very well that the people voted for change and against him and his government rather than against a constitutional proposal that only a few had read. The grass roots had been successfully mobilized by the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) outreach program against a twisted process of constitutional reform and a draft entrenching the president’s powers. However, the majority of the people were primarily concerned with bread-and-butter issues after the 1998 food riots and used their vote as a protest. Not only had ZANU-PF, for the first time since Independence, lost a poll at the national level, but demonstrators took to the street to show Mugabe “red cards” after a referendum result seen as the “yellow card,” a now famous soccer-inspired metaphor to convey the message that the president’s time had come to leave the playing field. This strong anti-Mugabe mood prevailing the country over—although stronger in the urban areas—was measured by the Helen Suzman Foundation opinion poll in late January and early February 2000.26 Mugabe’s compromising tone when he acknowledged the referendum results on television was not an admission of failure but rather a tactical retreat to prepare for the next step.
The first purpose of post-referendum violence was retribution: white farmers had to be punished for their support of the MDC/NCA. For the ruling party strategists, the latter’s victory in the referendum was only made possible by white financial and logistical support (indeed farmers were shown in the media signing checks for the MDC after a meeting with Tsvangirai and ferrying their laborers in trucks to the polling stations). Farmers—and to some extent employers in the manufacturing sector—were accused of mobilizing their black workers in favor of the opposition, although the role of the trade unions was more decisive in this respect. All this provided a convenient excuse to duck the real issue: the low popularity of the president and his party after years of corruption and bad governance. Besides, the “Yes” vote campaign led by Jonathan Moyo, Godfrey Chidyausiku, and Patrick Chinamasa of the CRC had already pointed to a “white plot,” and targeting white farmers transformed the lunacy into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The “land clause” was inserted into the draft constitution to win War Vets’ support but also to provoke the farmers into reacting en masse and to create the ensuing racial polarization. The white farmers felt Mugabe had reneged on his Independence reconciliation policy. They were suddenly in a weak political position, and campaigned against the adoption of the draft constitution to prevent the land grab from being legalized. So the farm invasions targeted first the farms of MDC sympathizers—in fact a minority of the white farming community—and the first farmers to be beaten or killed were also MDC local organizers, such as David Stevens, openly abducted from a police station and murdered on 15 April 2000, or known MDC supporters. In subsequent government and ZANU-PF discourse, the MDC was portrayed as the party that wanted to give the country back to the whites; moreover, the party leaders were “puppets” of the British government and therefore all MDC supporters were traitors to their country and to their race—in ZANU-PF’s view, a justification of the harsh treatment they were to receive. However, as early as May 2000 the black casualties of this undeclared war greatly outnumbered the white victims.
The murders and beatings of white farmers had a second purpose in Mugabe’s plan: they were meant to frighten them away from the land and make the land grab easier. There would be no more legal technicalities, no more judicial squabbles, they should simply give up their farms; this was the ultimate objective. That message came out loud and clear throughout the months after February 2000, and the façade of legal procedures maintained up to mid-2002 was merely a cover-up for a cynical instrumental use of terror. At the December 2000 ZANU-PF congress, Mugabe explained his strategy: “we must continue to strike fear into the heart of the white man, our real enemy,”27 and he renewed his threats on many occasions during the following months. But the antiwhite violence was even more important from a symbolic point of view: it illustrated and justified the government’s racialist propaganda; all that it was about was the final battle against colonialism, the “Third Chimurenga,”28 as Mugabe chose to call it. For a Pan-African audience that has little knowledge of what was (and is) really happening on the ground, the emotional appeal of this anti-colonialist discourse is undeniable, and it has been the basis of Mugabe’s belief that whatever he did he would not lose the support of his African colleagues.
When the invasions began, most farm workers expressed solidarity with their bosses, in spite of their supposedly conflicting class interests and contrary to the assumption that all white farmers were necessarily unreconstructed racists—in most cases labor relations were of a benevolent paternalistic nature with farmers providing their workers with basic but precious services in housing, health care, food supply, and schooling for the children. In any case, workers reckoned that the farmers’ source of income was also their means of a livelihood and their jobs depended on their capacity to operate—indeed, most of these workers have been laid off since