Zimbabwe - A letter from the diaspora

28th June 2008

Dear Friends.
I have to admit that when I heard the news that Morgan Tsvangirai had pulled out of the election runoff, my reaction was total despair. Why give up now, I thought, when you were so nearly there? You have just handed Mugabe victory on a plate. Judging by comments I read from Zimbabwe, I wasn't the only one who thought that way. Some MDC supporters were asking what all their beatings and torture had been in aid of? They felt betrayed they said.

I hope that, like me, they have now come to see that it was the only thing Morgan could do. What kind of leader would he be if he was prepared to let his followers be terrorised and burnt out of their homes simply for 'voting the wrong way'? Then we could really have accused him of being interested in power for its own sake; anything just to get into State House. Instead he has done the honourable thing; he has put the people's safety first before his own personal ambitions. It was an agonising decision he had to make but the reality is that even if Morgan had won the second round, Robert Mugabe was never going to concede. 'Only God can remove me' he averred, like some monarch of old claiming the Divine Right of Kings! 'God put me here, only God can remove me.' Someone should remind the Dear Old Man that God works in mysterious ways; in England the last king who made that claim had his head chopped off!

Following Morgan's decision to pull out, there was a massive outpouring from world leaders condemning the violence in Zimbabwe and in the last few days even African leaders have finally found the courage to speak out. And last night it was Mandela himself, here in the UK for his 90th birthday celebrations, who finally expressed his 'sadness' at what is happening in Zimbabwe. It was, said Mandela, 'a tragic failure of leadership'. Quite a mild comment, I would say, but it might have the effect of encouraging other African leaders to speak out, excluding Thabo Mbeki of course. Mbeki remains stubbornly unable to admit that he is wrong, that his Liberation comrade has turned into nothing more than a vicious dictator who fully deserves the opprobrium being poured on his head. Zimbabweans must solve their own problems says Mbeki and Mugabe reinforces the message, 'Let them shout as much as they like in London and Washington, only my people will decide who is to govern Zimbabwe.'

And on June 27th the Zimbabwean people will once again go to the polls but no one should be deceived, there will be nothing free or fair about this election. The violence which I thought would lessen once Morgan pulled out has intensified but the objective now is to force people to vote and since there is only one candidate, it's pretty clear that means Vote for RG Mugabe…or else.

That message came home to me very clearly when I read about the behaviour of a certain Major General Englebert Rugeje in Masvingo on Wednesday this week. All the shops were ordered to close and the population of the town was forced to attend a rally at the local stadium. Having got his captive audience in place, the Major General launched into his tirade. As soon as he started to speak the crowd proceeded to stream towards the exits but armed Youth Militia barred all the gates and the people were forced to listen to his chilling words: ' We are going to make sure you go and vote, not for any person of your choice but for President Robert Gabriel Mugabe. I am not asking you to do so but we will force you to go and vote.' And the Major General continued, 'Zimbabwe is tied to the gun. Therefore anyone who wants to rule this country should forget about voting but find his own guns to rule.' Major General Rugeje is a serving officer in the Zimbabwe Army; he is not some half crazed war veteran whose words can be dismissed as so much Chinotimba-style nonsense. The Major General speaks with the authority of his master, the Commander in Chief of the army, who dismisses the cross on a ballot paper as a mere gesture when compared to the might of the gun. That's democracy Robert Mugabe style.

What can the people do tomorrow as they are 'herded' ( the Major General's term ) towards the polling stations? The simplest solution would be to disappear. Hide out in a hole somewhere until it's all over but even that will not prevent the beating you will get afterwards for not voting. It seems the people have no choice, they will have to cast their vote or risk their very lives. Spoil your ballot paper, the MDC advises but even if you are forced to vote for Mugabe, don't panic because no one is going to recognise the result when he declares himself the 'democratically' elected President of Zimbabwe.

Thabo Mbeki flew in yesterday in a desperate attempt to persuade Mugabe to call off the election. Mbeki's appeal was apparently met with outright rejection. The election will go ahead. Mugabe cares nothing, or so he says, for world opinion but he is looking dangerously isolated. As African voices are now raised against him he threatens to reveal their own faulty democratic credentials. Threats and violence are the only weapons he has left. Like Ian Smith before him, Mugabe is at his most deadly as the day of reckoning draws ever nearer. Will his cronies in the party remain loyal as harsher sanctions are imposed and they can no longer travel abroad, access their ill-gotten gains or send their children to expensive schools abroad?

One day before this sham election, the gallant freedom fighter, Tendayi Biti was released from gaol and what he said about his interrogation reveals much about the fractured state of Zanu PF. They are not the united party they seek to portray. Instead, they are desperate to find out who is making deals to secure advantageous positions in any future Government of National Unity. The rats are fighting among themselves as the ship of state begins to sink. It may take weeks or months but the end is very near, I believe. The sacrifices of the courageous Zimbabwean people will not have been in vain. MDC already has control of the Lower House; hope is not lost, freedom will come and Robert Mugabe and his monstrous ego will sink without trace beneath the waves. Such is the fate of all dictators.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle. PH.

20th June 2008

Dear Friends.
The headline on the front page of today's Guardian ( 18.06.08) declares 'Zimbabwe's voters told: Vote Mugabe or you face a bullet.' The question everyone is asking is WHY, why is Mugabe doing it? Does he really think sheer terror will persuade the electorate to vote for him? Does he truly believe that such vicious punishment for 'voting the wrong way' is justified because, as he claims, he and Zanu PF won the country's freedom? Or, as some people think, has the old man completely 'lost it' and is living in the past: Zimbabwe is at war again but this time the enemy is the Zimbabwean people who dared to vote against him. The gun is mightier than the pen declares Mugabe; no mere cross on a ballot paper is going to stop him retaining power. Could any words better demonstrate his total contempt for the democratic process?

There may be another explanation for Mugabe's behaviour since his defeat at the ballot box. Despite the fact that the people have clearly shown him that they want change, an unprecedented orgy of government-sponsored violence has spread from the rural to the urban areas. It is, I believe, all part of a calculated campaign. Mugabe knows that he will lose the forthcoming vote so he creates a situation whereby the observers declare that there is no possibility of a free and fair election. And, according to this scenario, ever the democrat (!) Mugabe bows to world opinion and cancels the election 'for the good of his people' thereby ensuring that he remains in power. He waits for the furore to die down and then slowly the country reverts to its former comatose condition. Mugabe's kingdom is secure and HE can dictate the time of his departure – unless of course the Almighty intervenes – and nominate his chosen heir. The AU and the west will fret and fume, the UN may even condemn him in the Security Council – though not if Thabo Mbeki has anything to do with it - but Mugabe will still be in power with the opposition rendered totally powerless, either imprisoned or dead. And waiting in the wings will be Mnangagwa, 'the crocodile' ready to snap up the presidency and the military will be right there with him. Such a scenario is not totally impossible given what we know of Mugabe's political cunning.

The western media has preferred to describe what has happened in Zimbabwe as a military coup but Wilf Mbanga is right when he says there has been no coup in Zimbabwe; Mugabe needs the military as much as they need him, his is the recognisable face, the brand name of Zanu PF. The reality is that Zimbabwe has had military men in key positions for several years. There was no need for a coup, the generals and brigadiers were already in place: in government, in the judiciary, in business where they have become fabulously wealthy, on the farms and in mining. Mugabe is, however, still firmly in control, he is the one giving the orders. What has been so striking about his rhetoric and actions in recent weeks is that he has clearly abandoned all pretence of being a democrat. Those early images of Mugabe exchanging laughter and good-humoured banter with the likes of Lord Soames or Lord Carrington have gone forever. Instead, nearly thirty years later we have an old man whose power is crumbling around him. Having successfully created an enemy for the masses to hate, he can pin all the blame for his self-inflicted troubles on the former colonial power. Almost daily he warns the credulous Zanu faithful that Britain will come back again via the MDC and re-colonise the country. There is never a shred of evidence for these wild allegations but his followers swallow the lie. Similarly Mugabe's claim that the MDC is funded by the UK and the US and that the NGO's are no better than channels for regime change is entirely unsubstantiated. This last week his rhetoric has become even wilder. According to Mugabe, there's a white under every bush just waiting for him to leave the stage so that they can reclaim their stolen farms. Where are they all, I wonder? I remember before I left in 2004 taking a bet with a friend as we drove into Harare. $500 (!!!) for the first one to see a white person; I lost when a very old white man tottered down First Street. Perhaps all these pernicious whites are hiding in Old People's Homes or Bowling Clubs, both of which have been the subject of war vets' manic attentions this week.

The rhetoric and the accompanying violence are unprecedented in their ferocity. At a funeral last weekend Mugabe threatened the entire population with war if he was rejected at the polls. This is nothing less than another liberation struggle. He forgets that Africa is a very different place in 2008. All of Africa is free of colonial rule now, there are no frontline states any more to provide him or any perceived enemy with bases from which to operate. As to weapons, it appears that even the Chinese are unwilling to help him openly, sensitive as they are to world opinion in the run up to the Olympic Games. President Mbeki too has 2010 and the football World Cup to consider, an outright civil war in Zimbabwe could scupper any chance of that. Various news items over the last couple of weeks have suggested that perhaps al Quaida has been approached for weapons. Even the somnolent AU might be inclined to condemn outright open warfare on the African continent using weaponry supplied by Bin Laden. Mugabe would not find many or any supporters if he declared war on his own people but so desperate is his battle for survival that not even the shouts and cheers of the rented crowds at his rallies can convince him of victory. Instead, despite all the evidence from impartial observers that it is his government committing the violence, Mugabe threatens to arrest MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai as the perpetrator. And in blatant contravention of Zimbabwe's own laws, he holds the MDC Secretary General Tendayi Biti in gaol for six days without charging him. The plan of course is to disable the MDC from top to bottom and having arrested Morgan Tsvangirai too, the violence will miraculously cease and Mugabe will emerge – forgive the expression- whiter than white.

There are still ten days to go before the vote. Under SADC observers' very noses Mugabe's thugs continue to terrorise the country believing that no African leader will criticise their master. Dare we hope that perhaps this time Mugabe has seriously over-estimated his 'heroic' standing and African leaders will finally find the moral courage to stand together and roundly condemn his actions? More than that, they will tell him bluntly that neither he nor his government will be recognised if he steals another election; is that too much for the long-suffering and courageous Zimbabwean people to hope for as they stagger towards another election? Perhaps Africa and the world will hear the voice of the people this time and clearly tell the old man that he must accept defeat. It is time for him to go.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle. PH



8th June 2008

Dear Friends.
On the very day Robert Mugabe jetted into Rome to attend a UN conference on the world food crisis, I received an email telling me that a good friend of mine in Murehwa was in trouble. 'He's in hiding' read the message, 'and he needs your help now.' While Robert Mugabe and the Amazing Grace stayed in their £420 a night luxury hotel in Rome, I was scrabbling around trying to get a measly little sum to help my friend, A.K. I'll call him. By Monday morning when the conference opened in Rome and Mugabe was posturing in front of the world's cameras, I managed to talk to A.K. and it was true he was in hiding, on the run from Mugabe's thugs. What I heard in A.K.'s voice was not fear for himself. He had told me so many times that he would never chant Zanu PF slogans, that he would never make the hateful Zanu PF salute, the clenched fist that accompanies every word of Mugabe 's lying rhetoric. 'I have told my wife,' A.K. had said, 'I would rather die.' So it was not fear that I heard as he told me how he was moving around from place to place like a hunted animal. What I heard was desperate anxiety for his wife and children; they had all fled from Murehwa and now they were separated. Wife and children in one place and A.K. in another, each sick with worry that the police or the CIO would get to them. It was the wife they got to first; forcing her to reveal A.K.'s number 'or we will take you and the kids' they threatened. Then they phoned A.K. and told him that he must report to Harare Central first thing Monday morning. Failure to do so would mean they would pick up his wife and kids. ' But I'm not going to do that,' he told me. That was why he needed money, to get his family out, they at least would be safe.
So, while Mugabe and his wife enjoyed the fine food and spring sunshine in Rome knowing that their children were safe and well-fed at home in Zimbabwe, A.K. and thousands like him are in fear for their lives from the onslaught of violence that Mugabe's assorted thugs have unleashed on the whole country. They're not hiding because they have committed any crime but because they dared to support the opposition. In A.K.'s case he and other activists had witnessed the abduction of Shepherd Jani, the MDC's senatorial candidate for Murehwa North. Earlier, they had seen the local MP threaten the people at gunpoint at a Zanu PF rally…Vote for Mugabe next time they were told…or else. A.K. and other activists had seen the brutal attack on Jani and tried desperately to stop it but Shepherd was pushed into a vehicle and driven away, his battered body found later, another victim of the insanity that is sweeping the country leaving the population beaten and traumatised, their homes destroyed, their children without education and, in many cases without food. Four million people in Zimbabwe are in need of food aid and, rather like the Burmese generals in that other dictatorship, the Zimbabwean government halts the work of the aid agencies with the excuse that they are working for the ' British backed' opposition to bring about regime change.
It goes without saying that Mugabe's utterly predictable address at the World Food Summit was the usual attack on the west. All Zimbabwe's problems he claimed, are the result of illegal sanctions imposed by the west and the machinations of opposition parties which are a creation of the west. 'The UK and her allies' claimed Mugabe, 'have cut off all development assistance, disabled lines of credit…all this has been done to cripple Zimbabwe's economy and thereby effect illegal regime change in our country.' This from the man who has just lost the elections and is in the middle of a campaign for the runoff on June 27th! Back home it was the Bright One who offered this explanation for how Mugabe could find the time to go to Rome in the middle of his election campaign. 'We are very confident that he is going to win. That's why he could afford to go to Rome to represent Zimbabwe in this crucial meeting.' And with sickening hypocrisy Bright Matonga added, ' This is about more than politics: it's about people's stomachs.' This in the same week that inflation rose to 2 million % and it was calculated that a family of six needed 350 billion Zim dollars a month to survive. Yes, Mugabe could 'afford' to go to Rome while his people at home face starvation and joblessness. Like thousands of others, my friend A.K. hasn't had work since the economy collapsed with the takeover of the commercial farms.
' Zimbabwe's land reforms are an example to all' crowed Mugabe in Rome while all hell breaks loose in Zimbabwe. Like some all-powerful Mafia boss, he is never there when the worst affronts to international standards of decency are breached. Mugabe leaves the dirty work to his underlings, he always has. No blood on his hands! The entire MDC leadership is held for 10 hours at a remote police station… but it's nothing to do with the boss; American and British diplomats are threatened, detained and abused by a bunch of thugs calling themselves policemen and war veterans but Mugabe is not there, nothing to do with him. He was away in Rome at the time on crucial matters of state and he has the pictures to prove it. Perhaps someone should warn all his willing henchmen, from the Generals and Commissioners at the top right down to the unemployed youngsters brutalising fellow Zimbabweans, that when Truth and Justice prevail in Zimbabwe – and they surely will – Mugabe will abandon them to their fate. Loyalty is not a concept Mugabe understands.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle. PH.