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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
All the ZANLA dissidents jailed in Mozambique were released after the Lancaster House agreement, when Lord Soames made it one of the conditions allowing Mugabe back in Salisbury (now Harare).26 Most of them were never readmitted into ZANU. For the 1980 elections, Mhanda and twenty-six of his colleagues aligned with ZAPU (others went with Sithole or Muzorewa), only to be arrested again when Mugabe assumed power. The protection of Joshua Nkomo saved them from further harassment,27 but Mhanda was marked as an enemy of the regime and had to go into exile in West Germany, where he eventually graduated with a degree in chemistry. When he returned in 1988, after the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), the state intelligence agency, plotted to have his work permit in West Germany revoked, he found himself blacklisted for all jobs in the public sector and had a difficult time finding a job even in private companies because the CIO interfered with potential employers. Thanks to an intervention by army commander general Constantine Chiwenga, Mhanda managed to have the interdict lifted, provided he would never get involved in politics again.28 Rugare Gumbo crept back into ZANU-PF after two decades of political oblivion (when he was a board member in a parastatal), received a commercial farm, and was elected to Parliament in 2000. He was made a deputy minister in 2002 and full minister after the 2005 elections.
The death of Josiah Magama Tongogara remains to this day clouded in mystery. However, it is very likely that he was killed because he was far too popular among the guerrillas and Mugabe feared the competition from a charismatic and ruthless army chief.29 Further, the OAU Commission on the Assassination of Herbert Chitepo had noted that the ZANLA chief was a man “of inordinate ambitions” who once claimed he would be Zimbabwe’s first president.30 Many observers believed the military commander to be ZANU’s real boss, and Mugabe a political figurehead. Tongogara astonished the British negotiators in Lancaster House with his nonpartisan views and moderating influence, and he emerged from the negotiations with a new national aura. In addition, at Central Committee meetings in London and Maputo, he had openly supported unity between ZANU and ZAPU and argued in favor of a joint election campaign under the Patriotic Front.31 He affected being an admirer of Joshua Nkomo and backed the latter’s aspirations to become Zimbabwe’s first prime minister (possibly with a view to quickly succeeding a more pliant Nkomo).32 An alliance between Tongogara and Nkomo would have looked attractive to the strong Karanga element in ZANLA. That was a mortal sin to Mugabe, and indeed the threat of such a “south-south” alliance—that is, Masvingo and Matabeleland Provinces—became Mugabe’s obsession well into the 1990s. Tongogara was likely to gather support from Front-Line States leaders such as Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and Mozambique’s Samora Machel, who had leaned on Mugabe to adhere to the peace agreement or lose their support but never trusted him. Machel was in tears when he heard the news of the “accident” in which Tongogara died. Thus there were good reasons for the paranoid power freak that Mugabe had become to order Tongogara’s murder. It removed a potential hazard on his road to power, dissuaded others tempted to breach party discipline on the eve of the crucial electoral battle, and taught Front-Line States leaders a lesson: Mugabe ought not be treated like a schoolboy again, and he would no longer tolerate any interference in ZANU’s internal affairs.
The highly suspect “car accident”33 took place after Tongogara failed to win the vote in the Central Committee, and just before he was due to fly to Salisbury to oversee the assembling of ZANLA guerrillas (Mugabe had dispatched him away from Maputo to the guerrilla camps near the border, purportedly to explain the contents of the peace agreement). Although Mugabe insisted that there was no split between Tongogara and the rest of ZANU-PF’s leadership, Samora Machel suggested the contrary at the ZANLA chief’s burial when he urged the Central Committee to revise its position and work for unity, if only to honor Tongogara’s memory. Although showing ostensible grief at the time and in spite of the official cult status rendered to the war “hero” after independence, Mugabe stuck to his electoral strategy. Tongogara’s death also benefited others: the late Simon Muzenda, who had been promoted to the Central Committee to fill the gap left in 1978 by the arrest of prominent Karangas (Gumbo and Hamadziripi), was to be a lifelong vice president “representing” the Karangas; Rex Nhongo (Solomon Mujuru), a Zezuru close to Mugabe (himself a Zezuru), became ZANU’s top military man and subsequently the head of the new Zimbabwean army. Nhongo had been ZIPA’s chief when Tongogara was jailed in Zambia, and again his deputy upon his return as the supreme military commander at the time of the Geneva conference. He had been close to the ZIPA camp commanders from March 1975 until October 1976, when he changed sides (according to Wilfred Mhanda) after Mugabe offered to appoint him head of the army. From then on he took part in Mugabe’s brutal suppression of all dissenters. If indeed he were the one carrying the bomb that killed Chitepo, as alleged by the OAU report, he probably would not have balked at organizing Tongogara’s murder. Whatever the details, the alleged crime was likely to cement solidarity bonds between members of the ZANU leadership for the following decade. It set the rules of the game in Zimbabwean politics: be on Mugabe’s side or pay the price.
Factionalism and Purges in ZANU Since 1980
Given the legacy of the 1970s, there was no room for dissent within the ruling party, even after the war was over and the Independence elections duly won. Mugabe had retained control of the liberation front in 1975–78 by violent means, both directly and indirectly and elections for the Central Committee, Politburo, and presidency were not competitive ballots. He was wary of losing control and would crush dissenting voices before any structured opposition could take hold. It was, in practice, almost impossible to oppose Mugabe from within. ZANU-PF internal proceedings were derived from Lenin’s concept of “democratic centralism” and its congresses and national conferences followed a ritual similar to the proceedings of former Communist parties in Eastern Europe. The Politburo controlled both the agenda and the nominations, and party leaders would not hesitate to flout the party constitution to silence critical backbenchers. Before primary elections to select the party candidates for the local councils and Parliament were introduced in 1989, the people were given the names of their MP from a Politburo-vetted list in line with the one-party-state philosophy. Therefore, primaries really but temporarily opened a democratic space at a grassroots level, and several unpopular Cabinet ministers were trounced in the 1989 and 1994 primaries.
However, the selection of ZANU-PF candidates at the constituency level became heavily corrupt and manipulated, and the primaries were used by provincial and national barons as a conduit for the elimination of vocal outgoing MPs.34 Such was the fate of Margaret Dongo, who was barred from standing for the ruling party in the 1995 parliamentary elections.35 The party local apparatus was officially “restructured” in 1994 in order to manipulate the primary election in Harare South. Some fictitious branches were created to pack the voting assembly with supporters for her rival, CIO operative Vivian Mwashita. Violence was directed at Dongo’s supporters and the full propaganda machinery put to use. Dongo did not waver and stood eventually as an independent candidate and won the election. Most outspoken backbenchers in the second, third, and fourth legislatures were sidelined at the following primary elections. Even the reform-minded Speaker of Parliament from to 2000, Cyril Ndebele, who infuriated the leadership when he refused to censure Dzikamayi Mavhaire in February 1998, after the Masvingo MP had said in Parliament “Mugabe must go.” Ndebele invoked the Privileges, Immunities and Powers of Parliament Act that guarantees freedom of speech in the House of Assembly. Besides, Ndebele, who was the driving force behind the work of the Parliamentary Reform Committee, was a known supporter of the empowerment of Parliament to counterbalance the Office of the President. Political purges had been a recurrent process within the ruling party, as Politburo “big men” perceived any critical voice as a threat—to themselves let alone to Mugabe.
Prior to the 2000 parliamentary elections, Border Gezi, ZANU-PF’s secretary for the commissariat and Mashonaland central governor, was tasked to discipline