The Sunday Telegraph (UK)
David Coltart, a Zimbabwe opposition leader, reveals Mugabe’s plan
Zimbabwe is dangerous for everyone, but particularly for anyone who dares to criticise Robert Mugabe’s reign of terror. Like thousands of Zimbabweans, I know from personal experience what those dangers are. Just before the election here in June last year, I published an article which pointed out some of the horrific abuses of power committed by Mugabe’s government. Within two weeks of the article being published, my polling agent Patrick Nabanyama was abducted. He has never been seen again. The men responsible are employed by Mr Mugabe’s Zanu PF. Fourteen months later, they walk freely on the streets of Bulawayo. They continue to assist Mr Mugabe in his campaign of brutal violence and intimidation.
How is Mr Mugabe able to get away with it? His government survives not just because it flouts the rule of law and uses violence to intimidate or remove opposition, but also because it manages to maintain a facade of legitimacy. That facade appears to be enough to ensure that neither other African states nor the countries of the Western world are prepared to take the steps required to end Mr Mugabe’s violent dictatorship. The necessary action is of course not criticism for human rights violations from the American government or European Union governments. Mr Mugabe not only cares nothing for such criticism: he actually believes it helps him. He is after the support of black Africans, not Western whites. The more he can portray his regime as the “victims” of white racism and colonialism, the more likely he believes he is to get that support.
That is why he was perfectly happy for coverage of Zimbabwe in Western newspapers to centre last week on the patently unjust detention of some 20 white farmers and the random beatings of white women in Chinhoyi. Those shocking events were deliberately designed by Mr Mugabe to capture headlines in the way that they have. It suits him to have the violence his thugs continuously commit against thousands of black Zimbabweans pass unnoticed. If all the world sees is his attacks on whites, that makes him look like a “liberator”, the leader in a struggle against colonialism.
Presidential elections have to be held in just over six months and the Constitution does not permit any extension. Mr Mugabe knows that despite Zanu PF’s by-election “victory” two weeks ago, he does not have sufficient support to win the Presidential election. He also knows he does not have the ability to manipulate the electoral process throughout the country in the way he can in by-elections. What Mr Mugabe needs is a pretext to impose a State of Emergency, which would enable him to crush the democratic opposition. That is why Gloria Olds, a grandmother, was gratuitously murdered earlier this year, and why her body had an entire AK47 magazine of bullets pumped into it as she lay dead. It is also why farmers have been under siege for days, have had their homes ransacked and the law applied selectively against them. That is why white women were assaulted last week. All those acts have been coldly and cynically calculated to provoke a violent white reaction.
Mr Mugabe desperately needs a few white farmers to lose their tempers and gun down several “war veterans”. Miraculously, not a single “war veteran” has been intentionally killed by a white since those actions began 17 months ago. So Mr Mugabe has stepped up his campaign to provoke them. All his attempts to silence the opposition this year have failed – if anything the opposition is gathering momentum. Mr Mugabe and his cronies now recognise that without the imposition of a State of Emergency, they will not be able to stem this momentum. If whites can be provoked into fighting back and shedding blood in the process then Mr Mugabe believes he will have what he needs: the pretext to crush, not the whites, but the Movement for Democratic Change and its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.
What can outside politicians do to stop Mr Mugabe destroying his own country? Whilst the West has cut off aid to Zimbabwe, that has not hurt the super rich Zanu PF hierarchy. Mr Mugabe is quite prepared to sacrifice the Zimbabwean economy to stay in power. He takes great trouble, however, to ensure that his ruling clique does not suffer. His political allies earn rich dividends from the extortionately high-priced fuel and their access to foreign exchange. They have their hands on the Treasury, so a large portion of taxes end up in their private bank accounts. More than that, they have all been bribed with proceeds from the war in the Congo.
Without the support of the majority of his cabinet Mr Mugabe will not survive. What will make these people move against him? Not the imposition of blanket sanctions, and not the cancellation of cricket tours or sports links. The only thing which will hurt is sanctions targeted at the people who order its violence. The dictatorship will persist only so long as relative moderates – men such as Finance Minister Simba Makoni and Health Minister Timothy Stamps – believe that they can remain in a cabinet responsible for atrocities without risking any of the privileges Mr Mugabe hands them. If travel bans were imposed by Western countries on these ministers, and their children, many of whom study and work in Europe and America, then they would consider whether it is worth their while to buttress Mr Mugabe. If the foreign assets of the entire ruling corrupt elite were identified and threatened with seizure, then that would also give them some pause for thought. Finally, if Europe started investigations in terms of the International Convention against Torture against those responsible for torture, as defined in the Convention, those planning more of it might reconsider.
Politicians in the powerful countries of the world – George W Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroder, etc – do not face being beaten up or killed if they take the only action against Mr Mugabe that has a chance of dislodging him. They risk nothing by imposing sanctions specifically targeted against the cronies who are profiting from Mr Mugabe’s rape of Zimbabwe. They might, however, save the country and the great mass of its people from utter destruction. I hope they can muster sufficient bravery to take the necessary steps – and before it is too late.
David Coltart is the Movement for Democratic Change’s Shadow Minister of Justice.