Could it be possible that while the public, the press, and the international community were busy with cholera, the illegal regime in Harare actually declared a state of emergency under cover of a “national emergency” (ostensibly against cholera)?
I may not be the only one seeing the reality that what has intensified is not the energy with which Mugabe is combating cholera, but, rather, abducting human rights activists collecting information on human rights abuses and MDC activists.
We have also seen first ‘Comical Ali’ Sikhanyiso Ndlovu insinuating that the British and Americans deliberately infected Zimbabwe with vibrio cholerae. Mugabe himself further expanded on that accusatory narrative when declaring at the burial of the infamous former youth minister Elliot Manyika that cholera had ended and there was no longer a reason for these western powers to declare war.
In the meantime, the narrative of Anglo-American plotting is being linked to alleged MDC “training bases” in Botswana. In the past, the British and Americans have always been Mugabe’s curtain to shut Africa off from seeing his violent crackdown on internal opponents.
What’s left is to get evidence that the MDC and human rights NGOs are behind this broad strategy of regime change.
All this would not have been necessary if the MDC had agreed to ceding Home Affairs to Zanu (PF) or at least “sharing” it. Of course Zimbabweans know that such an arrangement was never going to work because Mugabe would always circumvent and usurp the position of the MDC co-minister and turn him into a deputy minister at best, or, more appropriately, a complete buffoon. The agreement in theory gave a semblance of power-sharing between two equal partners. However, that’s not how things work in Mugabe’s world: in practice, the deal was a virtual swallowing of the MDC and the end of multi-party democracy. The MDC would be used as a goblin to look for money from western countries while Mugabe was busy spending it.
Building a Case: Accusations, Abductions, ‘Assassination’
People should read and analyze carefully the timing of Mugabe’s threat to call new elections if the GNU deal flounders. Patrick Chinamasa, the Zanu (PF) official masquerading as justice minister (there being no government in Harare) made Mugabe’s strategy clear yesterday when declaring:
“If no support is forthcoming, it means that (the constitutional) amendment number 19 bill will be a dead matter…. In the event that the collaboration that we envisage (to pass the bill) is not forthcoming, then that will necessitate fresh harmonized elections at some point in time.”
For the first time in the history of Zimbabwe, Zanu (PF) is a minority party in parliament. While editors are letting their journalists get away with the lie that Zanu (PF) is the “ruling party”, the fact of the matter is that Zimbabwe is now effectively under military rule. It is the Joint Operations Command (JOC) that is running the circus. Zanu (PF) can’t live in a world without a two-thirds majority to chop and change the Constitution as it used to. Are we to assume, therefore, that those who are being “disappeared” daily are casualties in preparation for the next election?
What Chinamasa enunciated yesterday is tantamount to holding a gun at MDC and telling them to pass Mugabe’s laws or else he will dissolve parliament and ‘win’—as he did during the presidential election—through outright violence and rigging. What the MDC perhaps did not foresee when agreeing to the so-called ‘Global Political Agreement’ is that Mugabe would use his executive powers to dissolve parliament and call elections if he could not get his wish.
It seems to me convenient that the change of tone to call fresh elections coincided with the split of “Zapu” from Zanu (PF). Such a dovish approach turns out to be part of a broader constellation of events that add up to what is behind the abductions: a plot to obliterate the MDC.
So first Elliot Manyika dies and many Zimbabweans conclude that it is a “hit job” by internal enemies within Zanu (PF). And yet he was on his way to Gwanda to reorganize the party. Gwanda, in the same province in which a few days later, Dumiso Dabengwa leads the “revival” of Zapu. But how sure are we that the Elliot Manyika “accident” was not, like Cain Nkala’s abduction and murder, another plot designed to incriminate the MDC as a decoy to justify the clampdown that followed?
Anyway, so Manyika is sacrificed. Just as Nkala had been implicated in the abduction of an MDC official, one Patrick Nabanyama from Nketa, so too was Manyika implicated in the abductions, tortures, and murders of MDC operatives in Bindura. So they are convenient and believable alibis deserving of any “hit jobs” the MDC might plot.
Rest that bloody case. So Manyika dies, and the next day or two Zapu is “revived”. A reader of the Zimbabwe Times who is conscious of history questions the authenticity of the man chosen as Dabengwa’s deputy, Nziramasanga, saying he has some close associations with the state security apparatus. The observation and caution passes quietly as a “comment” on a published article.
Soon after this “revival”, Chinamasa discloses details of an MDC plot to destabilize the army and to invade Zimbabwe from Botswana. This is not anything analysts, readers, and observers were not already seeing in their crystal balls. The power of the internet, camera phones, laptop computers, and digital cameras lies in their ability to get information out quickly and expose such plots while they are being hatched. Some are able to do so using “anonymous inside sources” whose authenticity readers or those implicated can dismiss as not concrete enough.
However, the information itself, as each set of seemingly unconnected events unfolds, enables those who take time in the service of their country to think very deeply about what it may add up to. For several analysts, the answer was clear: There were signs that the illegal regime in Harare was plotting to implicate and destroy the MDC. The “mutiny” in Harare was a virtual giveaway—baton-wielding and even unarmed soldiers, well dressed in their combat gear, throwing stones at shops in downtown Harare, chased around by policemen armed with rifles. I digress.
So now we hear that Joseph Chinotimba, the notorious security guard whom Mugabe used as a hatchetman to orchestrate violence to seize white farms and redistribute them to Zanu (PF) bigwigs and cronies and to bludgeon pro-democracy activists and supporters, was involved in a “freak” accident and is probably now paralyzed. We have just learnt of attempts on the life of Perence Shiri as he left his farm. Exactly: sacrifice some of your best men to make the story authentic. That’s one way to read this: that even within JOC itself, nobody is safe from Mugabe’s bloodthirst. Let’s be less charitable. The guy is said to have been alone in his car. Nobody reliable has actually seen Shiri’s bullet wound, so cut the excitement. The bullet marks on his vehicle can be made: it’s expendable.
So here is a follow-up from the soldiers in the streets. That’s right, rebellious troops targeting first Gono and the forex people and now the commander of the air force. The question is not who-dun-it but who is behind it.
The same day Patrick Chinamasa, the Zanu (PF) person responsible for legal affairs and who calls himself a minister, is busy running with the conspiracy angle while Sikhanyiso Ndlovu is singing the hymn about British biological warfare.
Point? Who is behind the people who spread the cholera? Who is behind the people who tried to kill Shiri? One answer: They will say it is the MDC. That’s what Mugabe did to Joshua Nkomo. Our answer lies in the abductions. If the abductees are killed, there won’t be any evidence. So they will not be killed—yet. They will be tortured and made to admit that they were preparing the factual case for external military intervention, spreading cholera, and training in Botswana and possibly spying. Some will be made to confess that they attempted to kill Shiri. They will then be tried and sent either to jail or to heaven (God bless their innocent souls).
The idea is to soil the reputation of the MDC and Botswana in the region, not only as lackeys of the West and a destabilizing force in SADC. The ultimate aim is to make it appear moral in the eyes of Africa that it is right to destroy the MDC. It’s an appetizing prospect: Each country has its own MDC. The ANC has COPE and the DA, Mozambique Renamo—you get the picture. Several ANC members including in particular Blade Nzimande, have already labeled COPE “the modern face of counter-revolution” which is being paid to destroy the overwhelming majority of the ANC’s support. ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has used similar words.
Mugabe is playing into the ANC’s own uncertainty and its search for alibis going into the 2009 elections. He knows that Pretoria will “persuade” him and will not take the route of sanctions or military intervention, as Mantashe himself declared a few days ago.
Therefore, it is a very realistic agenda to incriminate the MDC—with Botswana as a dangerous force for instability—as a prelude to disqualifying it from running if and when he calls an election. Who will speak for the MDC if the SADC’s Troika on Defense and Politics finds the evidence that Botswana is training insurgents? By Chinamasa’s own admission, the evidence he is relying on to make the charges of MDC training was unearthed by officers who went in disguised as defectors, before turning loose and betraying the plot to Harare. So suppose the “evidence” of the training is found, what is to stop us from saying that just as such spies could come and go to collect evidence, they were also capable of coming in to plant evidence which the troika will find?
Whatever the case, it may not be far-fetched to say that plans are already underway to create a diversionary “opposition” in any future election in which the MDC is banned from contesting because it is a terrorist organization. This is the internal settlement election of 1978 all over again, when Smith banned the “terrorist organizations” Zapu and Zanu from contesting and went ahead with Muzorewa, Sithole, Chirau, and Ndiweni.
This is where the “Zapu revival” must raise suspicion for each and every one of us. It is comforting to say that this development is a sign of Zanu (PF) disintegration. So people sing and dance, oblivious to the fact that the people who are leading it are the very same ones who said nothing and in fact defended the status quo under their bogus “unity accord”. They invaded farms together, orchestrated the burning alive of people like Chiminya. All of a sudden they come round and say, “Mugabe is a violent man”. Yah right.
It’s called being “sold a dummy” in football. The idea seems to be that all Ndebele people will vote for Zapu and then Zanu (PF) sweeps Matabeleland, and then the two parties strike a deal, with the MDC completely out of the equation.
If one is more charitable, one might say that the MDC will be severely weakened but not outlawed. The question then is: Which of the two parties, the MDC or Zanu (PF), will benefit from a Zapu “revival”? You guessed right: Zanu (PF), realizing that the individual MPs in the MDC-Mutambara faction have not cooperated as well as they should with Mutambara himself in swinging to Zanu (PF), has every need for a more usable front. The Mavambo project failed to do that with MDC’s urban electorate, so Zapu might do it with those who “think tribally”.
After all, this is the same thing that happened with Jonathan Moyo in Tsholotsho, is it not?
It’s much more serious than that. The idea is to incriminate the MDC and declare it a criminal or “terrorist” organization and ban it from contesting any election. Like he has done in the past, Mugabe will then sweeten the “shelf company” party as his contestants. Who will then say he competed alone? Zapu would step into the breach and “win” Matabeleland, with Mugabe winning Mashonaland.
The sort of planning that seems to have gone into this survival plot is more sophisticated than the one preceding Gukurahundi. One associate of Jestina Mukoko’s says “she had catalogued thousands of incidents of murder, assault, ?torture, arson, and who the perpetrators are. The work was so meticulous it ?could stand up in any court”. Hopefully the Zimbabwe Peace Project was smart enough to have back-up databases out of the country, where none of those abducted had any passwords.
What Zimbabweans have not realized in the battle against Mugabe is the role of information technology in unhinging a dictatorship. Anybody can be turned into a journalist simply because Zimbabwe has one of the highest numbers of cell phone users in Africa. It means that while journalists are the traditional sources of information, they are not the only sources of information that internet publishers can turn to. Nor do editors necessarily have to initiate the story; their websites are only warehouses to which citizens are depositing their keen observations on the ground.
In the next few days we will begin to see the “compelling evidence” of MDC “bandits” being paraded before ZBC and occupying even the sports sections of The Herald and The Sunday Mail. The venom in Chinamasa’s words is designed to rouse (Southern) Africa into a pan-Africanist defense of Mugabe against Botswana, which has “rendered itself a surrogate ?of Western imperial powers… has decided to be a destabilizing ?factor in the region”.
The plot is designed to re-brand Zanu (PF) as a dove while MDC is the hawk. Again, listen to Chinamasa: “As far as we are concerned as Zanu PF, we have done all we can ?to ensure peace and stability in the country which are prerequisites for ?economic recovery. MDC-T, on the other hand, is bent on foisting war on the ?country and the region. It has become evident that MDC-T is negotiating in ?bad faith and has engaged in dialogue as a ploy to string us along. They lack sincerity.
“We now have evidence that while they were talking peace they have been ?preparing for war and insurgency, as well as soliciting the West to invade ?our country on the pretext of things like cholera.
“We can look our people in the eye and say ‘enough is enough’. Our backs are ?now to the wall and a day may soon come when each and every one of us may be ?called to defend our revolutionary gains and our sovereignty.”
In other words, prepare for a formal declaration of a state of emergency and a draft to defend ‘your country’—code for Zanu (PF).
The World Cup as a Weapon Against Mugabe
All of the ingredients Mugabe has put into his plot have potential to backfire. SA President and SADC chair Kgalema Motlante has said the regional body does not believe that Botswana is plotting. Yet his country blocked the Security Council from taking action on Zimbabwe just yesterday, thereby continuing the policy Mbeki has followed since 2000.
It is crucial to note that begging South Africa to take action is not going to cut it. Pretoria must be forced into taking action. It is incumbent upon all concerned to now make the Zimbabwe issue “Issue # 1” in the forthcoming South African presidential elections, because this is now a domestic issue for all South Africans as well. It is now time to launch a “Get Mugabe Out Or No 2010 World Cup” campaign. SA has already sunk in billions into the tournament, all of which will go to waste if it loses the right to host this cup. There is no bigger issue upon which an entire world is united than soccer, the Fifa World Cup in particular.
It is THE pressure point diplomats and ordinary citizens all over the world who want Mugabe to go will unite on. Imagine at every match in Europe, Africa, US, Canada, Asia, and Australia placards demanding action: “Get Mugabe Out Or No World Cup”. Imagine the public in South Africa demanding: “Get Mugabe Out Or No World Cup”. Everywhere, there is a possibility of what Pele called “The Beautiful Game” saving the people of Zimbabwe from the tyranny executed in the name of liberation. Of course, if South Africa takes the sort of decisive action that South Africa, Zambia, and Kenya are talking about, by all means let us descend on every stadium to cheer Bafana Bafana. But when a soccer ball is what may be required to get the politicians to act, so be it.
This is a program of action which can be easily communicated to the South African public to take up without conflict. The xenophobic violence last year was triggered by accusations that foreigners are “taking away South African jobs”. It may be time to convince the South African public that it is within the power of their government to free up such employment opportunities by defusing the flood of immigrants. Zimbabweans would rather much stay in Zimbabwe and rebuild their own country, but they are not doing so because the SA government is unnecessarily protecting the illegal regime in Zimbabwe.
If the South African government is convinced that it is doing the right thing on Zimbabwe, how about putting the issue of intervention—by sanctions or force—to a referendum so that South African citizens can guide their government on the issue? As it is, Pretoria is simply acting on politicians’ opinions, even defying very glaring evidence of wheels that have come off in Harare. The World Cup is one way of putting the necessary pressure on Pretoria, while also making in clear that there are hefty rewards that lie in doing the right thing. Interactions with SA citizens reveal their disgust at Mugabe’s treatment of his own people, so from whom is Pretoria taking its cue?
The populist message is that the 2010 World Cup is going to relieve grassroots poverty. Yet the big contracts for stadium construction, tourism lodges, advertising and suchlike have already gone to the capitalist fat cats and party-connected Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) sharks. It will hurt their pocket if the cup is withdrawn. It might hurt the poor, but they are getting poorer still even with the cup. At least if the cup is used as a leverage, the Zimbabwean crisis will be solved and South Africans citizens don’t have to compete with the entire able-bodied Zimbabwean population for jobs and health services.
Turning Mugabe’s plotting on its head
It is positive, therefore, that Pretoria has seen what journalists and political analysts had already foreseen: that Mugabe is trying to ‘cook up’ a coup in a teacup to declare a state of emergency. To me, the exposure of this plot by Zimbabwe’s info-savvy public is a sign that citizens are exploiting the loopholes in Mugabe’s ‘go-for-broke’ strategy. Now is the time for Zimbabweans to start exposing those loopholes and exploiting them to turn the tables on the dictatorship.
President Motlante’s words must be seen by all Zimbabweans as an invitation to put forward a case for regional sanctions or the use of force. This is what he said today: “It’s really not for us,” he said when asked whether SA should force Mugabe out. “I mean I don’t know if the British feel qualified to impose that on the people of Zimbabwe but we feel that we should really support and take our cue from what they want.”
One doubts if the horror pictures of cholera, abductions, and his own confirmation of the “plot” as a farrago of nonsense isn’t enough message of a regime emasculating a clear message Zimbabwe have been sending out since March 29 and before.
Still, the question now is what we, as Zimbabweans, should do to communicate to President Motlante that we want him, and other SADC heads, to do. It is a call to intensify the methods we have been using to get the message across not just ourselves, but people within SADC, so that as a regional coalition of peoples tired of one man destabilizing the entire region while lying about land, we can communicate that message. It is a battle that will require the dissemination of information on a massive scale, as well as a more strategic assessment of means of communication.