DefenceWeb

By Jonathan Katzenellenbogen

13th December 2017

Operation Restore Legacy, which saw the end to Mugabe’s 37 year rule, has broken the log jam in Zimbabwe’s politics. But does it herald a democratic opening and economic recovery?

At the moment, all that is clear is that the military will play a key and expanded role. The military has been highly influential since independence, but its role since it ended Mugabe’s rule will be considerably enlarged.

Earlier this month Zimbabwe’s new President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, gave two of the 22 posts in his cabinet to military men. The man who read the announcement of the military takeover on television, Maj Gen Sibusiso Moyo, was made foreign minister and the Commander of the Air Force, Air Marshal Perrance Shiri, became Land Minister.

Himself a former liberation war military leader, Mnangagwa has had a long and close relationship with the army and is now clearly rewarding the military for paving his path to power. A number of news sites have reported that the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) Commander who led the military takeover, General Constantino Chiwenga, is likely to become Vice President at a ZANU-PF Extraordinary Congress later this month.

The opposition is extremely uneasy about these appointments. Tendai Biti, a prominent opposition leader and former finance minister in the coalition government, was quoted by The Guardian as describing the appointments as a “betrayal”. “We are now dealing with a junta,” he said.

David Coltart, a Senator representing the opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change – Ncube, said, “a tyrant has been replaced, but not the tyranny.”

Coltart views the adoption of a Chinese political model, which would combine economic reforms with tight authoritarian control over any opposition, as the most likely scenario.

To extend the Chinese analogy, there might well be a lesson to be learned from the experience of China. Deng Xiaoping, the leader who implemented the economic reforms that sparked China’s explosive post-1978 growth, was very close to the People’s Liberation Army. This could indicate that firm military support can be key to undertaking economic reforms in authoritarian states.

But the path ahead is not free of complications. Having managed Mugabe’s exit, the army will face certain constraints in the coming phase. Like Deng, Mnangagwa and his soldier friends will have to respond to popular demands for expanded political as well as economic freedoms. Zimbabwe also remains under US and EU sanctions, which although target key individuals, must have the effect of discouraging investment, although poor domestic economic policies play the key role. And Chinese support is not enough in itself to carry the day.

The Zimbabwe armed forces are widely regarded as well-disciplined and professional. They are also expensive. As a percent of GDP, Zimbabwe’s spending on defence is large when compared to that of the region and the world. Zimbabwe spent 2.52 percent of its GDP on defence in 2016, down from 2.75 percent of GDP in 2014. By comparison, in 2016, Sub-Saharan Africa’s regional defence spending as a percent of GDP was 1.25 percent and that of the world 2.2 percent in 2016, according to The Military Balance 2017 published by The International Institute for Strategic Studies. Clearly, if economic growth rises and military spending does not overly rise, this would be a lesser burden.

The 2017 Military Balance estimates the strength of the army at 25 000 and that of the Air Force at 4 000. This is not large given the country’ population size or area. Given Zimbabwe’s fragile financial state, the ZDF is probably battling to maintain both its equipment and its reputation for excellence. The Military Balance 2017 shows the country has a sizable but aging armour, mechanised infantry, and artillery capabilities. China is the main equipment supplier. The army is easily equipped to play a continued role in domestic security, allowing it to always play a background role.

Initial soundings from Mnangagwa were positive for the country’s economic future and a political opening. Yet the record of the army and Mnangagwa in the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland soon after independence and in upholding Mugabe’s rule make for a poor legacy upon which to predict an opening.

Some Generals are known to have been given farms and to hold stakes in the Marange diamond fields. The lifting of the requirement in the indigenisation law that all foreign businesses be 51 percent African owned could well affect the interests of the ruling elite. If there are free and fair elections and the opposition wins and is allowed to form a government, or is in a coalition, the interests of the Generals may well be threatened. How these matters are dealt with could be a complicated, but necessary part of laying the basis for reform.

In addition the military have made it clear that Operation Restore Legacy was about “protecting our revolution,” not ending it. They have also stated that a requirement to be President is having played a role in the liberation struggle. But old comrades are aging and the laws of nature suggest that this will not be possible for long into the future.

There is a lot to suggest that Mnangagwa and his Generals cannot be true reformers. But popular demand for change is so powerful that it may well force their hand, especially in the economic sphere.

In blocking Grace Mugabe’s succession plans, the military may have unintentionally opened a democratic space it might now struggle to close down again. The outpouring of support for the military onto the streets and the days of public jubilation indicated a mass yearning for change. This might have only been visible in the opposition dominated larger urban areas, but it is likely to have been nationwide. Containing public demonstrations in the future could be difficult now that many have experienced the downfall of Mugabe.

If Mnangagwa can achieve even the beginnings of an economic turnaround he could strengthen the ZANU-PF position for a post-Mugabe era. The coup should help bolster the party, particularly if the opposition is divided. The Generals and Mnangawa may not have to resort to old ZANU-PF intimidation tactics to win, which means the country could work toward the lifting of US and European Union sanctions.

However, without free and fair elections next year and even a full accounting of the assets of the ruling elite, Zimbabwe might find it difficult to restore international confidence and re-build the economy. The European Union and the US are at the minimum likely to insist on free and fair elections, and even Zimbabwe’s Chinese allies have not displayed a willingness to give the country a blank cheque to continue the corruption and mismanagement widely associated with ZANU-PF rule.

The Generals must be fully aware of these realities and must know that their position can only diminish if the economy does not recover.

A key question has to be what does the army really want? That may be difficult to answer as the army is probably divided along the lines of senior officers and the other ranks. There has been much reported on how the most senior officers have benefited from Mugabe’s patronage, have high salaries, been given farms, and even stakes in the Marange diamond fields, and holdings in mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The ranks below those of senior officers have taken strain from the collapsing Zimbabwean economy and poor government finances. Last year AFP reported delays in paying soldiers for a second successive month. Economic mismanagement has wiped out savings, brought on hyperinflation and shortages, and collapsed the economy to a fraction of what it was before the onset of disaster. Only the very well connected were able to avoid this sort of maelstrom. Rhetoric that blames sanctions and the actions of former colonizers for Zimbabwe’s misery increasingly falls on deaf ears.

Senior officers could have most to lose from a proper accounting of their assets and the scrapping of Mugabe’s indigenisation programme, while the more junior ranks might have most to gain from a turnaround in the economy. Yet to retain the support of junior ranks, it is likely the Generals know that economic reform is an imperative. An improved economy and government finances would allow more to be spent on defence and greater pride to be given to the army.

The path ahead for Zimbabwe is likely to be full of uncertainty, but significant changes, for some time. It is unclear the extent to which Mnangagwa has a reform agenda. The election which should be held by September 2018 will give a firmer signal of where Mnangagwa wants the economy and political reform to head. Attempts to delay or rig the election are likely to undermine what little confidence ZANU-PF still enjoys.

At 75, Mnangagwa is very old for a new leader, a factor that makes reimposition of Mugabe-style one man rule unlikely. Like China after Mao, Zimbabwe will have learnt a lesson of the dangers of leaders staying in power far too long. Mnangagwa will therefore not have the same authority and longevity of Mugabe.

One possible model to which the Zimbabwean Generals may have given some thought is that of Myanmar. Under the Myanmar Constitution the military shares power with elected representatives. This allowed the military to undertake a transition to democracy in Myanmar.

Zimbabwe has a sound democratic constitution, but a type of Myanmar option might be the final outcome in reality. It is almost certain that should the opposition do well in the elections, the military will insist on taking a role to protect the Generals’ interests.

The Tutu Foundation

By Michael Holman

12th December 2017

The immigration official at Harare’s Robert Mugabe international airport looked up from examining my passport, his face expressionless. “Why have you come to Zimbabwe?”
“To celebrate,” I replied.

“What will you be celebrating?”

“Zimbabwe’s liberation,” I said, and I held my breath. Journalists without visas have not been welcome in Zimbabwe for most of Robert Mugabe’s autocratic reign.

I need not have worried.

Joined by his colleagues, he burst into laughter, stamped my passport, and waved me through.

At one level at least, Zimbabwe has changed for the better. Despair has been replaced by hope. Views are expressed freely and openly. Optimism hangs in the air, albeit tempered by caution, but nonetheless tangible – almost as tangible as the musty smell of the parched earth as it soaks up the first of the country’s summer rains.

But less than a month since the country’s generals orchestrated the removal of the ageing dictator without the bloodshed and looting associated with coups the world over, concerns and doubts are creeping in.

Will the wave of goodwill be squandered by the new regime, will the optimism turn to cynicism and plans for a fresh start become no more than an illusion? Are we seeing, not the emergence of democracy but the modernisation of a one-party state, the overdue infusion of life into a sclerotic regime led by a despotic old man, increasingly under the influence of an ambitious wife?

Or is the change in mood in itself an assurance that the process of reform will get under way, of a sufficient intensity to prevent back-sliding? On previous visit to Zimbabwe, the land that nurtured me until I was twenty, and on which I have reported for nearly 40 years, my time had been soured by tension and fear, generated by authoritarian regimes, whether white or black.

Would the mood of post-Mugabe Zimbabwe be sustained, would it be radically different?

I set off from London to see and to feel for myself.
*
Together with a photographer colleague, we spent the next week travelling across the country, talking to anyone who was prepared to talk to us: mission priests and teachers, roadside vendors and taxi drivers, civil rights lawyers and political activists, hotel stewards and opposition leaders, students and university – acutely aware that our journey barely touched on a land as vast as it is beautiful.

The journey would take us to the eastern border town of Mutare, picturesque but run-down, nestling in the green hills of the Nyanga mountain range, and on to Catholic mission stations a three-hour drive north of the city, on the border with Mozambique.

I had first visited these missions in 1975, at the peak of Rhodesia’s guerrilla war. Four years later Rhodesia became independent Zimbabwe, as the conflict ended at the Lancaster House conference in London, but not before hundreds of children from the mission schools had sacrificed their careers and crossed the border to join Robert Mugabe’s guerrilla army.

Back to Harare, and on to the town of Chinoyi, north of the capital, driving through countryside that had been home to many of the 4500 white farmers, forcibly evicted from their land by government-backed mobs.

Finally a 40 minute flight to the southern city of Bulawayo, stronghold of the opposition Zapu party and capital of the province of Matabeleland, scene of one of the darkest events in the country’s history – massacre of some 20,000 civilians known as gukurhuundi.

In different ways the journeys touched on many of the issues confronting the new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Will the government agree to a commission of enquiry into the massacre?

How would it handle compensation for the white farmers?

Would the composition of the new cabinet reflect the new Zimbabwe?

And would the 75-year old president, nicknamed the Crocodile, who had loyally served Robert Mugabe for the last 40 years, repent of his past and turn over a new leaf?

In his inauguration address no one was surprised when Mr Mnangagwa ruled out a return of their land to the farmers:

“Dispossession of our ancestral land was the fundamental reason for waging the liberation struggle. It would be a betrayal of the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives …if we reverse the gains we have made in reclaiming our land.”

He failed, however, to address the central concern of commentators who sympathised with the principle of land reform, but who were critical of its implementation. Not only was it conducted violently; many of the farms were allocated to cronies of Robert Mugabe, including the army generals who would later remove him.

Mr Mnangagwa did make one concession:
“My government is committed to compensating the farmers from whom the land was taken.” But the farmers will not be holding their breath. The government has not the funds to cover even modest compensation.

Of far greater concern is the tragedy of Matabeleland.

We spoke to David Coltart, a Bulawayo-based human rights lawyer, and a former senator widely admired for his work as education minster in the government of national unity.

He has no doubt about Mr Mnangagwa’s complicity in the slaughter of civilians in the early 1980’s. At the time, he was head of the country’s Central Intelligence Organisation, and had access to the membership records of Zapu. The impact of the information was devastating. Party officials were singled out, interrogated and summarily executed, effectively destroying Zapu, says Coltart, who has detailed this infamous campaign in his book, The Struggle Continues: 50 years of tyranny in Zimbabwe.

The only way this boil can be lanced, say survivors, is for Mr M to admit his role, to apologise, agree to a public enquiry, and to provide compensation in the form of schools, clinics, boreholes and other community services.

A senior Zapu official was doubtful that such steps would ever be taken. The alternative, he warned, was an embittered, resentful people who account for one in five of Zimbabwe’s population.
*
One obstacle to such an enquiry is the loyalty of the new regime to the former president, who after all bears overall responsibility for the slaughter – just as he does for the state of the country today.

Far from condemning the man, his successor has gone out of his way to praise him: “He remains a father, mentor, comrade in arms and my leader … history will grant him his proper place and accord him his deserved stature as one of the founders and leaders of our nation”.

Mnanagwa continued:
“I have no doubt that over time we will appreciate the solid foundation layed by my predecessor”.

Needless to say, this view is not shared by most Zimbabweans.
*
We were in Bulawayo when the names of the new cabinet were announced, seen as the first sign of the president’s intentions.

Hopes that it would include new blood and fresh talent were dashed. With an average age in the mid-fifties, only one woman, and four ministers with army backgrounds it was seen as business as usual.

It should have come as no surprise. An editorial in the state-controlled daily newspaper, the Herald, had early given advocates of a cabinet of talent short shrift.

“Zanu-PF has a clear mandate” read the headline.

“Why have a government of national unity … when Zanu-PF has a clear mandate”, the paper asked.

“The challenge is to reconcile the interests of the revolution with those of the people who went into the streets…those who have struggled for years to put Zanu-PF in the dustbin of history”.

The message was unmistakeable. The ruling party has no intention of surrendering its grip on power.

Neither the government of Zimbabwe nor the international and bi-lateral donors are comfortable in the relationship now being forged. The former will resent the conditions attached to urgently needed financial support; the latter will surely feel uncomfortable at having to deal with such an unsalubrious group of ministers.

Only China will have no qualms, well ahead of the field as it provided substantial emergency funding.

The outcome is uncertain.

Is a process of genuine reform under way; or are we witnessing the salvaging of Zanu-PF, being rescued by western donors from a crisis of its own making, yet unrepentant and arrogant, intolerant of dissent, the opposition in disarray,keeping the press and the social media on a tight rein.

In the meantime Zimbabweans and donors alike are waiting for a concrete gesture from the president that allows them to believe that the crocodile can change his spots.

Many Zimbabweans express pride at the bloodless nature of the coup. Only in Zimbabwe, they say, could there have been such a peaceful transformation from dictatorship to a celebration that brought hundreds of thousands of joyful dancing citizens onto the streets, embracing soldiers as they celebrated.

But there are two sides to this coin.

Zimbabwe appears to have a culture of deference to authority, and a veneration of age.

What else explains the full page advertisements in the country’s newspapers, extoling the virtues of their new leader, whose brutal past is well known, and who must surely share the responsibility for the sorry state of Zimbabwe today?

“We pledge our unwavering support and absolute dedication … your wise counsel and visionary leadership … your astute quality,” read one especially obsequious endorsement. Not since the days of Ian Smith, the former prime minister hero worshipped by white Rhodesians, has there been such a fawning welcome to the man in office.
*
Meanwhile images and scenes from the journey recur like flashbacks.

Workers painting road signs in the farming town of Rusape, on a Sunday; grass growing in Mutare’s main street; the collonaded, wood panelled, century-old Bulawayo Club; women selling mushrooms by the roadside in the Nyanga national park; the polite treatment at a roadblock north of Mutare; guti (mist) clearing as the sun rose over the resort of Troutbeck …

But most vivid, most memorable, are the students at the mission where we spent a night. Confident youngsters, smartly turned out, free from the horror of war that had destroyed the lives of an earlier generation, expressing a determination to succeed in their chosen professions.

Today a cabal of old men run Zimbabwe. If they have the good sense not to cling to power, the country’s future is in safe hands.

Bulawayo News 24

2nd December 2017

Almost 15 years after Henry Olonga wore a black armband, Mugabe’s rule in Zimbabwe is finally over. “I’m stunned,” he says. “Here we are in a country that is Mugabe-less for the first time in 37 years. It’s extraordinary.”

Henry Olonga had long assumed that Mugabe – who “held 15 million people ransom to the weird machinations of some depraved mind” – would die in power. “I hope that Zimbabwe will get leadership that is worthy of the people. The Zimbabwean people should say never again to someone like Mugabe. We can’t have a despot like that again.”

And yet what replaces Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe remains uncertain. Mugabe’s successor, his former vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, “is cut from the same cloth,” Olonga acknowledges. “You could argue that this man was there when a lot of the nonsense happened in Zimbabwe – human rights abuses in the 1980s in Matabeleland, farm invasions, the bulldozing of hundreds of thousands of people’s homes, corruption.”

Still, Henry Olonga cannot help but be optimistic. “You want to give someone the benefit of the doubt. If there’s the opportunity for them to bring effective change in a country – well, you give them a chance.”

The germ of one of the most famous protests in sport came a month before the 2003 World Cup, over a cup of coffee with Andy Flower. He was surprised by the invitation. On a tour of England in 2000, which took place against the backdrop of land seizures by the Mugabe regime, principally against white farmers, Olonga criticised how white players treated their black staff on their estates in Zimbabwe.

“They treated me differently to the way they would treat their own workers. I challenged them. Is that right, you know? Is it right to look down on people?”
He and Flower “weren’t that close,” Olonga recalls. Yet over coffee the two found a shared cause. “Although we had a strained professional relationship we found ourselves on the same side of a coin, of the idea of protesting against Mugabe. And so we found common ground, and then put our differences behind us.”

Flower initially proposed that that the entire squad boycott the World Cup. Olonga considered this impractical. Eventually the two, together with David Coltart, a lawyer and MP from the Movement for Democratic Change, hit upon a more subtle protest.

Flower and Olonga, the leading white and black players in the team – Olonga, indeed, was Zimbabwe’s first ever black cricketer – would wear armbands in protest against Mugabe. The night before Zimbabwe’s opening game, Olonga watched Gladiator for inspiration. When he and Flower took to the field, they wore black adhesive tape, and released a 450-word statement “mourning the death of democracy in our beloved Zimbabwe” under Mugabe.

Olonga had worn the armband expecting it to receive international attention. What he had not expected, as he details in his absorbing autobiography Blood, Sweat and Treason, was the depth of hatred he now faced in Zimbabwe.

“We were standing up against that kind of inequality between the rich and the poor, the extravagance of the Mugabe family. And the poor guy who doesn’t have enough money to buy a new pair of shoes or fresh shirt hated me more than Mugabe, the man who was the cause of his misery. Go figure. The guy with nothing says: ‘Olonga, you’re a sell-out!'”

Olonga was immediately dropped from the team, for clearly non-cricketing reasons, and was derided as an Uncle Tom. “You’ve got the first black player for Zimbabwe as a mentor to a mainly black side, standing up against the government of Robert Mugabe, a liberation war hero. They didn’t like it. So they vilified me.”

He was followed. His phone was bugged. He received death threats by email. During one match, Olonga was abused by Mugabe’s youth militia. Most ominous of all was a message his father received from a contact at the central intelligence organisation just before the game against Pakistan: ‘Tell your son that he needs to get out of Zimbabwe before the World Cup ends.’

“I aware of the fact that I could meet an ugly end,” Olonga says. “There was definitely moments of fear.”

Olonga was lucky. After a few nervous weeks in South Africa, David Folb, the chairman of the Lashings World XI, helped him move to the UK. Yet Mugabe’s regime still afflicted Olonga: his Zimbabwe passport expired in 2006, and he was told that he could only renew it by returning there.

And so, for a decade he was a citizen of nowhere. He remained in the UK, in Taunton, but, until he gained a UK passport in 2015, could not leave the country. A few months after getting his passport, he emigrated to Adelaide, the home town of his wife Tara, with their two children.

Cricket gave Olonga much joy – crucial contributions in consecutive Test victories against India and Pakistan; a match-clinching spell of reverse swing against India in the 1999 World Cup; 6-19 in an ODI thrashing of England – and yet it also burdened him. Olonga was given “label after label after label” – everything from ‘erratic’ bowler to tail-end ‘rabbit’ and then, most unwanted of all, the ‘Uncle Tom’ moniker. He likens his departure from the game, aged just 26, to “a bad divorce” and considers cricket “very insular and inward-looking”.

Charity work, mentoring children and helping prisoners, are altogether more fulfilling. He also hopes to release an album next year, and is working on producing short films.

“I’m in a place where I’m much happier, because I don’t have the constant scrutiny of selectors coming to watch games,” he says.

There is even a sense that the new Zimbabwe might embrace Olonga. In 2001 he released a song, Our Zimbabwe, a collaborative venture with a vision of the inclusive and welcoming country he thought Zimbabwe could become. It was a number one hit in his home country but was effectively barred from the airwaves after Olonga’s black armband protest.

While the emblem of Olonga’s courage – that black adhesive tape – lies somewhere in his shed, his song is now being widely played again. Olonga himself will sing it at a concert in Zimbabwe later this month.

It will be his first trip back to Zimbabwe, where many of his family remain, since the 2003 World Cup. Only now Mugabe has been ousted does he deem it safe to return.
“It’s bittersweet. When I left Zimbabwe it was under a cloud and it was a traumatic separation. A lot of my friends have moved on and left. A lot of the things I planned and hoped to achieve in Zimbabwe effectively ended.

“But if we had the death of democracy in 2003, I would hope that in 10 years’ time democracy in Zimbabwe will be alive and well. It sounds cheesy but you’ve got to do cheese once in a while.”

He laughs, and then returns to his new life.

Gulf Times

1st December 2017

“We dare not squander the moment,” Emmerson Mnangagwa said just a week ago at his swearing in as president, referring to the high hopes Zimbabweans had placed on him as a harbinger of change for a desperate nation.

Seven days on and optimism was turning to cynicism as Zimbabweans’ collective high following the ouster of longtime leader Robert Mugabe began to wear off and reality started to sink in.

Yesterday Mnangagwa’s cabinet was announced, with key positions handed to the military top brass who oversaw the new president’s stunning turn of fate — from being fired as Mugabe’s deputy just weeks earlier to replacing him and being hailed as a national rescuer.

No opposition members were included in the cabinet, dashing the hopes of many Zimbabweans for a unity government.

Those rewarded were the military and the politically influential war veterans who had backed the coup — all ruling party stalwarts and no new blood.

“Nothing new, same old faces that were responsible for our suffering for the past decades,” said Emily Zondwa, a University of Zimbabwe student.

In his inaugural address Mnangagwa pledged reforms — with a focus on the ailing economy — as well as promising to stamp out corruption and hold elections next year.

He failed to mention press freedom, human rights or show much interest in bringing the opposition in from the cold.

“Zimbabwe, you are right to feel betrayed,” tweeted opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) member and ex-minister David Coltart.

“On 18 November, we all came out on the streets, united as a people around a common vision of a new Zimbabwe. This cabinet does not represent a new Zimbabwe but the entrenchment of the old failed political elite,” he said.

Coltart was referring to a huge rally where Zimbabweans of all political affiliations took to the street to demand Mugabe step down.

At that outpouring of hope, many protesters said they were aware of Mnangagwa’s chequered past, but still believed any change had to be good change.

But MDC Secretary General Douglas Mwonzora said that the new cabinet showed Mnangagwa was no reformer.

“The appointment of the cabinet was an anti-climax for Zimbabweans; it showed that the new president is not progressive. This shows the militarisation of key institutions,” he said, adding there were few women or young people among Mnangagwa’s picks.

Tendai Biti, Zimbabwe’s former finance minister and another opposition leader, said on Twitter that Zimbabweans had been naive.

“Up until now, we had given the putsch the benefit of the doubt. We did so in the genuine, perhaps naive view that the country could actually move forward. We craved for change, peace and stability in our country.” “How wrong we were,” he added.

Mnangagwa has been linked to one of Zimbabwe’s darkest chapters, the so-called Gukurahundi massacres of a rebellious Ndebele tribe shortly after Independence in 1980.
He denies involvement.

He is also widely believed to have been involved in violent crackdowns on the opposition in recent years, members of whom were threatened, tortured or disappeared.
He has urged his countrymen to “let bygones be bygones” and the ruling Zanu-PF party has said it will not be calling for the Mugabes’ prosecution.