LETTER FROM ZIMBABWE:There are signs Mugabe's party is gearing up for polls using illicit techniques it favoured in the past, writes BILL CORCORAN
EXAMINING UNFOLDING events in Zimbabwe over the past few months has brought an old epigram, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”, to mind on more than one occasion.
Even a cursory look at the main news items in local newspapers over that period suggests that President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party’s repeated calls for upcoming elections to be free and fair may not be genuine.
The Southern African Development Community recently decided that fresh elections should be held in Zimbabwe before June next year to end the stalled powersharing arrangement between Zanu-PF and the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party factions.
That much-heralded pact, mediated by the development community and signed in 2009 as a way to overcome disputed polls the previous year, has stabilised the country somewhat. But it has failed to take it forward, due to the ideological differences between the opposing groups.
Initially it appeared that Zanu-PF and the MDC parties were willing to work together for the sake of the country. However, the relationship between the groups has worsened significantly, and there are indications that Mugabe’s party is gearing up to contest the coming polls using the illicit techniques it favoured in the past.
Instances of hate speech, harassment, intimidation and violence attributable to traditional supporters of Zanu-PF, which has been in power since 1980, have begun to make the headlines more frequently in recent months than a year ago.
In the courts, especially at magistrate level, legal actions involving members of MDC and pro-democracy movements have become long and drawn out. Critics of Zanu-PF maintain this is being done to ensure those involved have less time to focus on the upcoming elections.
A good example involves Women of Zimbabwe Arise leaders, Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu, who were charged in April with kidnapping a woman named Emma Mabhena, and remanded in custody.
On May 1st, a magistrate dismissed their application to have the case against them dropped even though the alleged victim refused to acknowledge being kidnapped. After appealing the decision to the high court, they were released.
At the end of June, 100 of the organisation’s members were arrested and detained by police in Bulawayo for holding a pro-democracy rally in the city centre.
On May 12th, the Zimbabwe Standard newspaper reported that the MDC faction, aligned to the prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has accused the police of setting in motion a campaign to disrupt its election rallies.
Observers of the Zanu-PF-instigated “indigenisation” policy, under which black Zimbabweans must own 51 per cent of shares of foreign companies operating in the country, say the strategy is designed to a facilitate the creation of a new patronage system.
Empowerment minister Saviour Kasukuwere expanded the policy this week to include all foreign-owned businesses in Zimbabwe.
The land reform policy of 2000, which involved often violent land grabs of white-owned farms, has been completed and there are few farms left that can be given to Zanu-PF loyalists.
It is believed the policy will be used to replace the land reform strategy as a means to ensure supporters stay loyal to the former liberation movement, and do its bidding in the run-up to the election.
Kasukuwere gave foreign-owned banks and other companies – including tourism businesses and private schools – a year to cede the 51 per cent stake of their operations to local indigenous Zimbabweans or face expropriation.
It was reported in mid-June that the Zanu-PF controlled defence minister had clandestinely recruited 5,000 additional members in a bid to beef up the security forces, which have always been loyal to Mugabe’s regime, even though the state does not have the money to pay their wages.
A further 5,000 people have been employed under similar circumstances by Zimbabwe’s interior ministry, another government department controlled by Zanu-PF.
In terms of an increase in hate speech, Tsvangirai said on World Press Freedom Day on May 3rd that Zimbabwe’s state-controlled media was using the same strategy as Rwanda’s “Hate radio” that helped to incite the violence in 1994 that led to genocide.
A pro-democracy civil society movement in Zimbabwe, Sokwanele, has been monitoring press articles generated within Zimbabwe since 2008 to watch for violations of the terms of the powersharing agreement.
In May it recorded 72 reports that showed violations, such as incitements to violence, intimidation, hate speech, threats, abductions and brutality: all of these were attributed to Zanu-PF.
“The category with the highest number of recorded violations was the harassment of perceived opposition politicians and supporters using drawn-out litigation, with 18 cases logged,” Sokwanle reported.