Speech by David Coltart: Forum Party of Zimbabwe Meeting

Forum Party of Zimbabwe Meeting

20^th April, 1994

Kumalo

It is good to see so many faces I recognise well and I see that some of you were at the meeting last time I was here in October last year. Colonel Dube and I have swopped roles. Those of you who were at the last meeting will recall that I introduced him then and he was the main speaker. For those of you who weren’t at the meeting let me say that Colonel Dube was a high ranking member of Zipra, who has had a distinguished career in the Zimbabwe National Army and is doing wonderful work in the Forum Party of Zimbabwe. It is a great privilege for me to be at this table with him this evening. I last addressed some of you, as I say, in October last year. Six months have gone by since then. Those of you who were here will recall that in my introductory remarks last year I spoke about corruption in Government, the need for accountability in Zimbabwe and the lack of accountability plaguing this nation. What I would like to do initially this evening is to review the last six months since October 1993 with specific reference to those topics of corruption and the lack of accountability. I want to raise four incidents which have occurred since then to illustrate my concerns.

The first is that of Churu Farm. You may recall that at the end of October and the beginning of November last year Government moved into Churu Farm with Police and helicopters. They sealed the farm off, started threatening the inhabitants of Churu Farm and told them to get off. The inhabitants obtained an order through the High Court of Zimbabwe preventing Government from evicting them. In defiance of that High Court order, in contempt of that order, Government continued to act unlawfully. It put landless and homeless people out on the street. Many of those people are now destitute. If you go to Harare along Amalinda Road you will see that a squatter camp has sprouted. There is disease and there are major social problems. You may have read about the so-called squatter camp organised by Government, where some of these people have been moved. Even the Herald, the Government’s mouthpiece, is saying their conditions are worse than they were at Churu. We need to recall that this is the first time that the Government acted in terms of the Land Acquisition Act; the Act is designed, if we are made to believe what they say in Parliament, to provide land for the landless. But it was used for the first time to get poor people off land and it was used to settle a personal feud between Ndabaningi Sithole and President Mugabe.

The second incident was the pardoning of the two men who were convicted of attempting to murder Patrick Kombayi, who is the National Organising Secretary of the Forum Party of Zimbabwe. Much has been said in the press about that pardoning. Very little has been done to put that pardoning in its proper context. We need to cast our minds back to March 1990 when the last general elections were held. On the Sunday before the elections commenced, the Sunday when Patrick Kombayi was shot in Gweru, I watched the evening news on ZBC. ZANU-PF placed two campaign advertisements, one just before the 8 o’clock news and one at the end. The one before the 8 o’clock news had a film of a coffin being taken out of a church and had the inscription “AIDS kills, so does ZUM!” (which was Patrick Kombayi’s party), “ Vote ZANU-PF and live”. After the news they had a film of a car coming over a hill, down a road and smashing into another car with the inscription, “This is one way to die, another is by voting ZUM – Vote ZANU-PF and live!” And of course in the body of the news bulletin they mentioned that Patrick Kombayi had “initiated” a fire fight and had been wounded in the process. We then come to January 1994 when the Supreme Court considers all the evidence and the Supreme Court says: “no”, it wasn’t Patrick Kombayi who initiated this. This was an act done by the head of the CIO in Gweru and the head of the ZANU-PF Youth League in Gweru and they intentionally attempted to murder an opposition political leader. The ink was hardly dry on the judgement when the President of this country comes full circle and pardons them. By saying full circle, what I mean is that ZANU-PF were responsible for those advertisements in March 1990 which foretold the fate of people who oppose ZANU-PF. The pardoning of those two men confirms the complicity of ZANU-PF in those crimes and the complicity of the President himself.

The third incident concerns the salary increases which were granted by Government to itself around about the same times as the Kombayi pardoning. You may recall in July last year civil servants were told, “You have got to tighten your belts,” and because of that some of you are only going to get a 2% pay increase. Low and behold, come January this year the President, the Cabinet Minister and everyone else award themselves salary increases, some as much as 64%. Most of us would be embarrassed.

The fourth incident concerns the recent land scandal exposed by the Daily Gazette. It is important to trace how this scandal has been exposed. When it first came out the Minister of Lands, Mr Kangai, denied it. He said that these reports were false. Of course, that lie was ultimately exposed and it was absolutely shocking that when the lie was exposed we found that people like Perence Shiri, responsible directly for thousands of deaths in Matabeleland in 1983, was rewarded by being given a farm. The Minister who was responsible for pushing the Land Acquisition Act through Parliament and in doing so – whilst saying that the Act was designed to give land to landless people – took one of the designated farms for himself. Doctor Utete, the President’s personal secretary, was also given a farm. We are now told that the President did not know about this! He has called for an enquiry. He is cancelling the leases. With the utmost respect for President Mugabe, I don’t believe him! How can a President whose private secretary has got a farm not know about it? I knew about Perence Shiri getting a farm in November last year.

We have gentlemen from the CIO present this evening. Welcome to you. I mean that. These gentlemen attend meetings like this. They report directly to the President. They are in the President’s office. I know of another incident which has not been exposed yet where a local MP in Matabeleland has taken over an ARDA farm that is a parastatal. He has taken it over. The CIO, to give credit to them, actually tired to move him off but he is back on the farm. Now the CIO know about most cases of corruption. Rest assured they knew about P Shiri. Rest assured they knew about Dr Utete. If they are doing their job as I am sure they are doing, they report back to the President. If he reads their report he must have known about these matters. What I have to say about the President’s Commission of Enquiry is that the enquiry should be public; it should be chaired by an independent judge and whatever happens the Minister responsible, Mr Kangai, who lied, who tried to cover up, should resign! Minister Mangwende, the Minister who benefited from this scheme should resign! P Shiri, the Commander of the Air Force, should resign! That is the least that we can expect in a democratic society. That is what happened after Willowvale: Governor Mudena, whose crime was far less serious than these, Enos Nkala and Callistus Ndlovu all resigned.

Now, I have mentioned these four incidents – Churu Farm, the pardoning, the salary increases and the land scandal – for a specific reason. All of them show that Government, ZANU-PF, has become excessively arrogant. It believes it can do anything. These men are either stupid and power has gone completely to their heads, or they are supremely confident that they can do anything, literally anything – murder, steal, or give themselves benefits – and get away with it. It also teaches us, if we haven’t learnt this lesson before, that ZANU-PF is putting its interests before the interests of the country and there are dangerous ramifications as a result.

I have spoken on this topic many, many times before. May I say, firstly, that corruption is bleeding this country to death and when a Government is so arrogant that it thinks that it can get away with corruption, a country is going one way. No country can afford money to be used in non-productive ways like that, because ultimately the entire economy will flounder. Secondly, the Structural Adjustment Programme, which is a much watered-down form of what it should be, will fail if Government doesn’t cut down on its size and corruption. If present trends continue, not only will we be facing economic decay, by we will also have massive World Bank loans to repay. The third ramification – and this is very close to my heart – is that Government at present is completely unaccountable. They have been able to get away with all of these things. Nothing has happened. If we don’t have either a viable opposition to expose these things or a change of Government they will continue to be unaccountable after 1995 for another five years.

What are the people of Zimbabwe doing? The tragedy of Zimbabwe is that democracy, which was what the struggle was all about after all, is in ICU. We have all read about the voters’ registration exercise going on at present. We all go past these booths and see no one there. It is characterised by massive voter apathy. What are the reasons for this? I think, firstly, in Bulawayo certainly, and Matabeleland generally, that people fear what would happen if ZANU-PF lost, for a variety of reasons. There have been threats in Matabeleland in the by-election last year. It was in our own paper, the Chronicle, last year that people campaigning for ZANU-PF said that if ZANU-PF lost in Matobo South Gukuruhundi would happen again. I was speaking to Sir Garfield Todd yesterday. He was saying that he cannot get his domestic workers to go and register. Friends of my parents here in Bulawayo are saying the same thing. Their domestic workers will not go and register because they are fearful. A second reason for this apathy is that, and let’s be frank about it, people are sceptical about politicians and the whole political process in this country, and that doesn’t just mean ZANU-PF. It includes the Forum; it includes opposition parties. Many people have said, especially young people, “At least ZANU-PF leaders have made their money. If we let someone else in they will have to start feathering their nests right from the scratch”. Given the history of politics in Africa, that is quite a reasonable assumption. There have also been internal wrangling in parties, and the Forum especially in recent weeks has been wracked by internal divisions. As a result, for these two reasons, fear and scepticism regarding the political process, people, especially young people, are throwing their hands up and saying “What’s the use?”; “Why bother registering?”

I want to give you a few reasons why you should register if you haven’t registered yet and why you should go out as a matter of urgency and get your friends and fellow workers, employees, everyone you know, to register. Firstly, as Harold Wilson once said, “A week in politics is a long time”. It is April 1994. The election is unlikely to happen before April 1995. The President can wait until August 1995 before calling an election. A year is much longer than a week. A great deal can happen in Zimbabwean politics within the next year, and let me just speak positively about the Forum in this regard. You have all read about the internal wrangling. We believe that within the Forum much of this strife has been orchestrated by ZANU-PF. As a lawyer I have worked with the CIO and against the CIO and the Police since 1983. I believe I can see someone who works for the CIO a mile away.

When the Forum was first set up in 1992 I warned Dr Dumbutshena, saying “so and so and so and so cannot be trusted – just believe me”. Being the gentleman that he is he didn’t take note of what I said and sure enough these people have been within the Forum and dividing, causing strife. You know if I was in ZANU-PF, if I controlled the purse strings, if I wasn’t committed to democratic principles, I think I would do exactly the same. The CIO in last year’s budget was given 90 million dollars. That is an enormous amount of money. I am involved in the Legal Resources Foundation. We run legal aid clinics throughout the country. We operate countrywide on a budget of three million dollars a year – we give legal advice to thousands of people countrywide on three million dollars! The CIO last year was given 90 million dollars and it seems absolutely logical to me that they would pay people to go in to act as agent provocateurs in opposition parties to disrupt and destabilise. That has happened within the Forum. But the good news is that we have now recognised this problem. The Forum has undertaken a cleansing process. We are identifying the people who are genuinely committed to democracy and to establishing a viable opposition party and we are starting to get our act together. We are the first to admit that we haven’t had our act together.

Last week we won our first victory. ZANU-PF tried to put up a candidate against us in Ward 5 in Bulawayo. I know two eminent white people were approached: the one was not prepared, the other was prepared to stand by was disqualified. They battled to get a candidate to stand against us and at the end of the day they couldn’t find one and we won. The Victoria Falls Town Council elections are taking place on 7^th May. We have been organised for weeks. I was speaking to someone on the telephone this afternoon. I am told that ZANU-PF are in total spin. They only submitted their nominations at 3.40 yesterday afternoon. They had a Cabinet Minister up in Victoria Falls running around furiously trying to find candidates. The Forum is starting to move. Let me also say that we are involved in unity talks with other opposition parties. At the end of 1992 I went to Kenya as part of an American observer team and one thing I learnt there was that if you are divided you fall. There are many in the Forum Party who recognise that. We are engaged in serious unity talks with other opposition parties so that we can try to present to the electorate a cohesive unit. So that is the first reason. The Forum is getting its act together. It is going to have its act together by the time the elections come. That will be no use at all if you don’t register.

The second reason, and contrary to what ZANU-PF and its various organs would have you believe, is that the Forum Party does have policies and they are radically different to ZANU-PF’s policies. ZANU-PF is unable to implement the policies that this country desperately needs. We have a manifesto. We don’t have the money sadly to publish it widely, but it is all down there in a detailed document and I just want to spend a brief amount of time highlighting three areas bearing in mind the topics I have spoken to you about this evening.

Firstly, the Forum believes in small government. We have one of the largest cabinets in the world. We spend an enormous amount of money on different Ministries which do absolutely nothing at all. Let me give you one practical example. Last year some Z$ 34 million was allocated in our budget to the Ministry of National Affairs and Employment Creation. One would hope that the bulk of that money would go to employment creation. That is the pressing need in this country! A friend of mine, who is involved in a venture capital company, recently went to ZANU-PF’s headquarters in Harare where this Ministry is located to get involved in discussions regarding employment creation. Do you know what it comprises of? It comprises of the Minister responsible for employment creation and his secretary! So much for employment creation! So much for the 34 million dollars going to that! The bulk of that money is going to ZANU-PF. Our taxpayer’s money which could be put into productive enterprise is going to non-productive enterprise. We have Governors all over the place, who all live with Ministerial status. A couple of weeks ago Government spoke about enhancing their status. They all drive around in Mercedes Benzes worth $400,000 each. So that is the first fundamental difference between the Forum and ZANU-PF. The Forum says it will have 14 Ministries – no more. We believe we can run this country on 14 Ministries; we believe we can slash Government expenditure. We don’t have to rely on this system of patronage that keeps Robert Mugabe in power. The reason he has got such a large Government is because he has got so much internal division and wrangling. He has got to have two deputies, two vice-presidents, so that he keeps a balance. He has got to have all the other Ministers so that they are all happy and don’t make public what happened in Mozambique. We don’t have that problem. We do not have skeletons to hide.

The second policy difference is important. It is a strong anti-corruption policy. We have studied anti-corruption legislation introduced throughout the world. We say that we will bring in a Corruption Commission headed by an independent person so that we don’t have to rely on the Daily Gazette, which is doing a sterling job, to expose corruption on its own. In the meantime we hope they will continue to perform this function. We will have a permanent Corruption Commission with wide powers to investigate. We say we want a Freedom of Information Act. This is an Act used in Australia, the United States and other countries. It gives citizens the power to have access to Government records. Minister Kengai would not two months ago have been able to deny that there was a land scandal because in terms of this legislation, if it was enacted in this country. The Daily Gazette would have been able to force its hand. It would have been able to say, “We want to see all 98 leases and we want to see them now”. This legislation is used in Canada and Australia to do a myriad of things. For example, citizens and the press can investigate how the budget is drawn up and how the money is being spent. They are entitled to see Government documentation and that in itself combats corruption. ZANU-PF wouldn’t dream of having a Freedom of Information Act. We say that we want a new Bribery Ordinance similar to the one in Hong Kong where civil servants have to explain why their standard of living exceeds their income. I would love to get General Mujuru to explain how he owns half of Bindura, having been in the employ of the National Army of Zimbabwe. I would love to find out how some of these ZANU-PF supporters in Harare have accumulated so much wealth on civil servants’ salaries in such a short space of time. ZANU-PF would not dream of introducing such a Bribery Ordinance. We say we will introduce it.

We will introduce a policy which encourages openness. One of the first things that has to be done is the disbanding of the Mass Media Trust. We will make sure that the Herald and the Chronicle are owned by the people and are used in the interests of the people and not in the best interests of ZANU-PF. Then we will amend the Broadcasting Act to permit the establishment of private radio and television stations not controlled by ZANU-PF. There are other policies which we will introduce to encourage open government.

These three general measures are fundamentally different to ZANU-PF. ZANU-PF wouldn’t dream of introducing them. The Forum says we will introduce these measures and what we say in our manifesto is that we will record what we are going to do in the manifesto. If we don’t do it, vote us out. We encourage you to vote us out if we don’t do it.

But is this all pie in the sky? These are laudable policies, I am sure you will say, but what are the scenarios facing us? Well, let me give you a world case scenario and a best case scenario. The worst case scenario is that the apathy we see today will continue; that ZANU-PF will win the bulk of the seats. I say even in that worst case scenario, go and register because there are certain areas where the Forum can still win individual seats. The Forum could get 5, perhaps 10, seats in Parliament. If we get those 5-10 seats, those parliamentarians, those Forum parliamentarians, will immediately obtain parliamentary immunity. Parliamentary immunity is vital for the debate of serious problems facing any country. I can only say certain things on this platform, because if I not absolutely sure of my facts, if I am relying on the word of someone else, there is always a danger that I will be sued for defamation or worse. The moment you get into Parliament you enjoy parliamentary immunity. You can say what you like and you cannot be touched. If we get competent Forum Members of Parliament into power, even in this worst case scenario, when we only win 5 to 10 seats, those Forum Members of Parliament can do two things: they can start to expose corruption by mentioning in Parliament those matters involving facts we are not absolutely sure of and perhaps can set the ball rolling in exposing corruption. The other thing that they can do is to start pushing some of the Forum’s policies. One can introduce Private Members’ Bills. Sure, they can be outvoted, but we are talking about a process of democracy here. If you introduce certain concepts into Parliament there are people in ZANU-PF, good people, men and women of integrity, who will latch onto some of those ideas and foster them. So even in the worst case scenario, go and register because in Bulawayo South we stand a very good chance of winning. In Gweru Central, in some of the Harare Central constituencies and in Mutare we have a very good chance of winning. If you don’t register you don’t have a hope.

How about the best case scenario? What if the Forum wins? For those sceptics I want to remind you of what happened in Zambia. In October 1991 the MMD came to power in Zambia. Do you know that the MMD was first set up in the Garden Hotel in Lusaka in July 1990? It gathered together people opposed to UNIP. President Kaunda acted in a very similar fashion to the way President Mugabe is acting now. He did not believe that he could lose. Do you know that the MMD believed that they could not win? When they won they were hopelessly disorganised because they only expected to become a viable opposition – they never expected to come into power. I quote Harold Wilson’s view again: “a week in politics is a long time”. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Forum could win if the Forum could link up with other political parties; that the electorate could get so fed up with what is going on that they decide to change government. If we don’t register that will never happen.

Ladies and Gentlemen, in conclusion let me just express the danger we are facing at present is that the elections could be lost by 4^th May 1994. Let us not kid ourselves; ZANU-PF doesn’t mind having a low voter registration turn-out. I know Minister Dabengwa has been talking about it. He is a man of integrity and I think he wants to do what is right and is encouraging people to register. But have you heard a single word by the President of this country encouraging people to go and register? Did he say a word about it on Independence Day when he had an audience of 50,000? I didn’t hear him. Perhaps I missed something. Did any of you here mention a word about people needing to register? I didn’t hear it from the President of the country! What I am saying is that it is not necessarily in the interests of ZANU-PF for people to register.

I want to tell you in closing a little story. I was down in Botswana in February and I had a bit of run in with the Registrar General, Mr Mudede. We were both at a conference looking at the electoral process and before I had the run in I have a couple of private chats with him and he told me two things. I approached him and I expressed my concern about the voter registration exercise which wasn’t happening then, and he told me not to worry because two things were happening. He said to me that we have already got mobile voter registration teams in rural areas, and secondly that all those who are turning eighteen before the elections will automatically go onto the voters’ roll. He explained to me that the moment you register, you get your identification documents and you get your number, it goes into a computer and he said that registration will automatically put you onto the voters’ roll. Now what has happened since then? Since February this year we hear that everyone has to re-register again and we are told that the registration process hasn’t happened in the rural areas. But where lies the truth? Have they been registering the rural people or haven’t they? And why aren’t these young people going to be automatically registered? I wonder if we are seeing another scam developing here. Let’s face it, ZANU-PF are happy if rural people register; they know they lack support in urban areas. So, firstly, they want rural votes. Secondly, the last thing they want are votes from young people. People who have turned eighteen in the last five years haven’t got a single reason to vote for ZANU-PF and they’ve got millions of reasons to vote for other people. Now, what I am saying in all of this is that there is a grave danger that if a disproportionate number of voters register in rural areas, but young people don’t register, ZANU-PF could win by default. What happens if ZANU-PF wins by default is that they will have another 5 years of unaccountable government, another 5 years of corruption, another 5 years of the system of patronage, of bloated government. The question I want to leave you with is can democracy in this country survive another 5 years? I fear that it can’t. I fear that ultimately the strains on our society will become so great that people will lose all respect for the democratic process, and what happens then is that we get a Liberia or a Rwanda or a Burundi, where young people take to the streets.

Ladies and Gentlemen, you have a duty to go and register if you haven’t registered yet. If you have registered and know of people around you who haven’t, go and tell them to register. Don’t beat around the bush – we have until 4^th May to register. Your future is in your own hands.