Endgame or gambit in Zimbabwe?

Contemporary Review, July, 2005 by Stephen Chan

Professor Stephen Chan's study of the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe: a Life of Power and Violence (I.B. Tauris 2003) was internationally acclaimed. His book-length collection of interviews with the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, was clandestinely distributed by the opposition party, the MDC, during the recent parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe.

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MARCH 25: Ahead of me at the desk at Harare's new International Airport buying US$55 tourist visas is a line of 'informal' election observers, mostly academics, journalistic stringers, opportunists. If they're humming insouciant tunes, hoping to blag their way in without accreditation, the immigration officers are more genuinely casual. They couldn't give a damn. The word's come down that every official in the country is going to go out of his or her way to make the parliamentary elections on 31 March appear as relaxed and peaceful as possible. If not actually fair, the first line of defence would be that they were free and that as many as who wanted--the BBC and the seasoned electoral observers from the Carter Center excepted--should be freely welcomed to see the theatre that Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party can turn on. The gruff CNN cameraman is not pretending to be a tourist. He shoulders his equipment and doesn't notice, outside, the expert Zimbabwean intelligence agents quietly noting the exact specifications of his satellite equipment.

Twenty-five years and almost three months is a long time. I remembered arriving at the very colonial-looking old airport, barely thirty and a very junior international civil servant, with a week to organise--in a country of which I knew almost nothing--the logistics by which the Commonwealth Observer Group, following-on behind, were to observe the independence elections and certify whether they were free and fair. Then, the possibility of gerrymandering was laid at the door of the newly installed British governor. Times change. I remembered the old Rhodesian immigration form. You had to state your race. I had left the space blank. We were going to do away with that whole race thing.

It is April as I write this. I went on to Zambia, among other things to see my old friend, Fred Mmembe, the battling editor of that country's only independent daily. It's a brilliant little newspaper. To get it going and keep it going, Fred has been arrested, beaten up, imprisoned, sued blind, and threatened with atrocities. He's won the Commonwealth Astor Award for Press Freedom, but the tributes come at a price. My diary entry for 22 February 2005 provides proof: 6 a.m. in Sydney, and I can't sleep any more because of jetlag. I go to the gym. Fred's already there, swinging the dumbells as if he has a demon in his soul. Even on holiday he only sleeps three hours a night. The political persecution has made him a driven man. But his paper, The Post, defends the election results in Zimbabwe and urges the defeated opposition to accept them.

All the observer groups that came to Zimbabwe for the March election, and all the 'informals' too, have gone home. Behind them, the prices of basic commodities have risen again. The government had worked hard to restrain price rises for the campaigning period. Inflation will probably remain in three figures. HIV is increasing and employment is not. Food production is a long way off being able to feed the country and--no one can blame Mugabe for this and he is quick to make the point--the rains failed again. But it is the reports that the observer groups filed that make interesting reading. There is a bifurcation here. Almost all the groups from Western and 'white' countries condemned the elections as unfree and unfair. Almost all the groups from African countries said they were not only free and fair but among the best organised elections they had ever seen. This last part at least is true. The arrangements for polling day were by and large superb. But perhaps observer groups still get that old immigration card as they enter the country. What race are you? There is something incredibly black and white going on when it comes to the issue of Zimbabwe.

African Attitudes to Blair

For a brief 'Harare Spring' the opposition party, the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change), could campaign freely. Springtime basically began when the observers started coming to town. The MDC television ads were slick. The Mugabe full-page newspaper ads began with a defiant excoriation of Tony Blair. All the speculation as to when Mugabe will retire can be simply answered. He will retire after Blair has stood down. He cannot abide the man. The animosity began at the 1997 Commonwealth summit in Edinburgh. There, the fresh-faced newly-elected Prime Minister Blair informed Mugabe he had not the slightest interest in keeping John Major's promise to help fund the nationalisation of Zimbabwean farmland. For Mugabe, it was not just that a promise was being repudiated but that Blair's manner was hectoring, abrupt and, above all, condescending--in a word, colonial. If the farm invasions were a result of that broken promise, and the manner of its being broken. Blair's condemnation of them never deviated from the hectoring tone that alarms even some British voters. It goes down like ten lead balloons in Africa.