THE CASE FOR THE SUSTENANCE OF “SANCTIONS”

Published: February 8, 2010

(Opinion)The debate on the issue of “sanctions” that exist on certain ZANU PF individuals and institutions has heated up of late due to recent comments by David Milliband in the House of Commons to the effect that the British Government would take advice from MDC when it came to deciding when to remove the “sanctions”.

So much has been said, most of it not very material or marginally material to the topic to the extent that, if not careful, one would lose grip of the gist of the matter.

To address the matter adequately, it is vital to first understand how the “sanctions” came about.

In summary, Zimbabwe was born in April 1980 and inherited a sound economy and a very strong currency (stronger than the USD i.e. @ 1.47). Health, education, agricultural, social and transport infrastructure, inter alia, were all very sound.

Between 1983 and 1988 there were disturbances in Matabeleland. First, there were gun battles between ZANLA and ZIPRA combatants in camps in Entumbane and Ntabazinduna. Later on the dissidents scourge gripped the province. Then came the notorious North Korean trained 5 Brigade. ZANU PF youth brigade as well as the CIO also unleashed their own brands of terror starting in 1984 running up to general elections in July 1985 as well as after those elections. More than 20 000 innocent and unarmed civilians perceived to be ZAPU supporters, mainly Ndebele speaking, are estimated to have been murdered by the 5 Brigade. Over 3000 ZAPU activists and some leaders were detained by the CIO and most of them were never to be seen again. At one stage there was a food embargo on Matabeleland South. Joshua Nkomo was placed under house arrest and had to flee to Botswana. Dissidents on the other hand killed innocent civilians in their scores.

The disturbances in Matabeleland were only quelled after Joshua Nkomo was literally dragged into signing a unity accord between ZAPU and ZANU in December, 1987. Robert Mugabe had finally succeeded in destroying the only plausible opposition of the times, never mind the ethnic cleansing that the process involved.

Political disturbances aside, the country’s economy deteriorated progressively over the years mainly due to bad economic policies, bad management and corruption. As the economy and standards of living plunged, the support for the ruling party, ZANU PF plummeted and this began to reflect in every successive election result after taking into account the extent to which the process was always rigged and the results were always engineered.

Discontent continued to grow among the population and new opposition parties emerged and challenged the way the country was being run. ZANU PF government took offence and embarked on a retribution exercise using the CIO to sow divisions within the opposition parties and subsequently breaking them up altogether. Edgar Tekere’s ZUM and Margaret Dongo’s ZUD are cases in point.

ZANU PF was becoming increasingly desperate to arrest the decline in its support and in the process it took desperate measures. Firstly, in order to whip up emotions and elicit support from the rural folk, the government seized 1500 commercial farms in 1997 ostensibly for redistribution to the landless. In the same year, it gave in to demands by veterans of the liberation war and undertook to pay the war veterans over ZWD4 billion in gratuities and pensions. This money was never budgeted for. This led to the record fall of the ZWD, the massive exodus from the stock exchange by investors and a stampede on the forex market on what got to be known as the “Black Friday” on 14^th November, 1997. This was to be a major milestone in the decline of Mugabe’s popularity. Things took a sharp and nasty turn for the worse from then on.

The government made things worse when, in 1998, it unnecessarily and unconstitutionally committed the ZNA to a war in the DRC in support of the government there which was under internal threat from rebels combined with external threat from Rwandan and Ugandan army units.

On the other hand, Labour became restive and more militant in the face of the diminishing worth of their earnings. Successive successful industrial action was organized by ZCTU. The generality of Zimbabweans supported the labour cause. Within a short time the labour movement became bedrock for what was to become a powerful political party, the MDC which was formed in September, 1999. They had spotted a political vacuum and the potential for success in the face of bad governance by ZANU PF.

Sensing danger the government crafted a draft constitution in which, among other things, it sought to increase the power and extend the tenure of the presidency. The draft was put to a referendum in February, 2000. The NCA with the support of the newly formed MDC and student union movements and civic society in general campaigned vigorously for a “NO” vote and the “NO” vote carried the day.

In June 2000 parliamentary elections were held and the results were 78 seats for ZANU against 41 seats for MDC, all this despite the fact that MDC was hardly 9 months old. The February 2000 constitutional draft “NO” vote and the 41 seats won by MDC in June 2000 elections were a rude awakening for ZANU PF.

ZANU PF’s reaction was as brutal as it was desperate. It ordered the invasion of white owned commercial farms countrywide by a restive subsistence farming rural people and a mixture of real and fake war veterans. Criminal elements also joined the fray since everyone involved in the violent seizure of the commercial farms was, according to some unwritten law, immune from prosecution. People literally became law unto themselves and the white farming community was under siege. Their sin was that they were perceived to have supported and funded the MDC. Needless to mention, many lives were lost, many farm workers were displaced and agricultural equipment was either looted or vandalized.

Farm invaders became law unto themselves. If they coughed, the whole country trembled. Murder became permissible as long as one could justify it by suggesting that the victim was a member of the MDC. ZANU PF’s military and paramilitary groups {war veterans militia (Green Bombers) wrecked havoc in the countryside and in the cities especially around 2002 presidential elections. Murder, rape, abductions, physical and psychological torture became commonplace. If the victims ever dared to report to the Police, this was only so that they be subjected to further beating by the Police, thus making a bad situation worse. Human rights groups, NGOs, Churches, opposition political parties, labour unions, student unions, the general civic society and anyone who dared express divergent views on issues affecting day to day life became targets for terror and victimization. In short, the Zimbabwean people were under siege from their own government.

Meanwhile the government passed draconian laws with the kind of haste that would be shameful in a normal civilized society. To make sure that the population understood how their word had become law, one of them, typically Jonathan (Comical) Moyo would first announce that punishment would be meted out to such and such an individual or entity and for sure a few days down the line the named entity would be befallen by an unnatural catastrophic mishap. The Daily News was bombed in those circumstances in 2001.

In early 2002, P.O.S.A. was signed into law. This was to be followed closely by AIPPA. The former closed down democratic space further by giving the Police sweeping powers. It literally criminalized human nature by making it illegal for say 5 or more people to be seen together. The latter gagged private media, persecuted journalists and shut down privately owned media houses.

It was around this period that the progressive world in general woke up to the reality of the Zimbabwean situation. They condemned and tried to put peer pressure on the Government to abandon its dictatorship. Mugabe was to pull the government out of the Commonwealth in December, 2003, just so that he would not have to be accountable to anyone.

Britain and the EU imposed restrictive measures on selected individuals and entities associated with the human rights violations in Zimbabwe in 2001. These, naturally, tended to be Robert Mugabe and his wife as well as the management team of his party and the companies they directed as well as their close business associates.

The US, through its ZEDERA also imposed restrictive measures to largely the same lot in the same year.

The human rights situation worsened over the coming years nevertheless. As the population’s restiveness increased with the deteriorating economic and human rights situation, so did government repression and so did the number of individuals and entities included on the restrictive measures. ZANU PF’s brutality and human rights violation tended to peak around election times.

The landmark events were the May 2005, operation Murambatsvina (clean up) which left over 700 000 Zimbabwean urban dwellers homeless. These were people who had initially been encouraged to build homes by the government in those areas that the government was now condemning as illegal. More recently was the post March, 2008 elections operation Mavhotera Papi “ For who did you vote” during which rural people, mainly, were brutalised for having voted for MDC. Many were murdered, even more were maimed and even more were displaced by the violence. Even the ambassador of the US to Zimbabwe was at one stage a victim of this spate of terror. Even worse terror was to be meted to a captive population in the run up to the June 2008 one horse presidential election re-run.

Now, if it is as it would appear, that the whole intention of the restrictive measures was to encourage ZANU PF to refrain from further human rights violations and possibly to turn over a new leaf and start according people their basic human rights, then the goal has not been achieved yet.

For starters, ZANU PF lost its parliamentary majority and Robert Mugabe lost the presidential run in the March 2008 election. They sat on the result for weeks on end whilst they engineered the result to reflect a more respectable loss. During that time, Mugabe and the military junta were planning the next move, which again turned out to be further violence and murders, this time even worse than before, and this time directly led by the army. All this was against a defenceless civilian population.

The situation indirectly arm-twisted the MDC into a GPA in the interest of saving lives and ultimately a GNU came into being in February, 2009. Robert Mugabe, despite having lost elections, is still the head of state, the head of government and the commander of the armed forces in Zimbabwe today.

Less than half of the issues agreed upon in the GPA have since been implemented. The constitutional process is working in fits and starts and there is every indication that either, there will not be a new constitution in place by the time the next elections are necessitated (most probably in 2011 or thereabouts) or there will be a new but grossly deformed constitution such that Zimbabwe will experience the same routine of election violence, murders and engineered results as in the past.

Brutal repression continues to date. Murder of political and human rights activists also continues. Abductions, farm invasions, displacements, terrorism of villagers, persecution of MDC leadership, militia activity in rural areas, suppression of the independent media, selective application of the law etc continue to date.

This brings us to the question, is it time yet for the lifting of restrictive measures? I would say not just yet. Only two things seem to have changed so far, namely, the nominal stabilization of the economy and the fact that Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and their MDC colleagues are now trotting around the globe pleading with the progressive world for the easing of the restrictive measures, all that in the hope that the beast will change in future. Everything else is business as usual, the ZANU PF way.

I rest my case. (ZimEye, Zimbabwe)

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THE CASE FOR THE SUSTENANCE OF “SANCTIONS”

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