Weaver Press

How Mugabe defied the winds of change

Published in The Zimbabwean on 14th March 2010


Defying the Winds of Change, Zimbabwe's 2008 elections (ed.) E.V Masunungure, Weaver Press and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Harare, 2009.

BY GIFT MAMBIPIRI

2008 went down as the year when President Robert Mugabe should have bid good-bye to the state presidency and all the comforts that come with being a Head of State.

His exit strategy was clearly worked out by a combination of factors as Zimbabweans went to the polls. His imminent departure from State house was given a big boost by the results of the 29 March 2008 harmonised elections that confirmed he had become unpopular with the electorate.

But foxy Mugabe staged what can be called the most dramatic and bloody campaign to forestall the change.

The harmonised elections of March 2008, hailed by many observer missions as
largely free and fair, and the result as a true reflection of people's choices, had given Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC majority votes. But the presidential election result, kept a secret for four weeks by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, showed there was no clear winner for the presidency. Therefore, there had to be a run-off, pitting the top two candidates - Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe.

And this book is about how Mugabe cruelly turned the tide, against all known electoral conventions - local and international - to 'win' back the presidency by a landslide.

Mugabe must have felt a sense of grievous personal loss and humiliation. His power base - the military/security establishment - also got angry on his behalf once the initial results showed he was losing. The loss had to be avenged, and those who had caused it - the MDC in particular and the voters in general - had to be 'disciplined' for their 'delinquent' conduct on 29 March 2008.

The strategy first centred on the media. Andrew Moyse, director of the Media
Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe, believes all the evil we saw in the media in
the period between harmonised elections and the presidential run-off had its
roots in the period just after the 2000 referendum.

"In many ways the constitutional referendum of 2000 defined the nature of today's media landscape (43)".

Civil society and the independent press had joined forces to counter the propaganda that came from the government-controlled media that was campaigning for the draft constitution. The result was a rejection of the draft constitution, and by extension the rejection of Zanu (PF) and its tired policies.

In response, "a host of blatantly unconstitutional and repressive laws were
enacted that effectively emasculated the independent media and deprived the
nation of its rights to freedom of expression...(44)"

At least four newspapers were closed under these harsh laws and scores of journalists
harassed, arrested, detained and thrown out of work. One was even murdered! (44)

Despite the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation's (ZBC's) publicised promise that it would abide by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's (ZEC) media regulations that demanded fair, equitable and balanced coverage of contestants at least 21 days before the 29 March 2008 election, its coverage of contesting parties showed a complete disregard for these provisions.

Instead, the political leadership and journalists working for state media "employed unacceptably offensive, false and intolerant language," first to persuade the electorate not to vote for people and parties opposing Zanu (PF) and then to threaten them particularly in the presidential run-off. (54)

Before the run-off election, "contrary to media regulations, the MDC was denied all access to the government media and the daily hate campaign ...against its presidential candidate became a tidal wave of venomous insults, threats and false allegations." (52)

The propaganda line was the same in all state media outlets: the opposition were "puppets of the British whose intentions were to resist the land reforms and surreptitiously 'recolonize' Zimbabwe' (53).

The media campaign was not enough for Mugabe to forestall the winds of
change pronounced with the results of the harmonised elections. With the
state media covering his back in those elections, he still came second to
Morgan Tsvangirai.

The risk was great and there had to be another strategy - bringing in the military. Eldred Masunungure, a political scientist believed the force behind the militarised election of June 27 was the Joint Operations Command (JOC), a military/security body comprising heads of security organs, which "decided within days of the (29 March) election to deploy a strategy of delay and violence in order to hold on to the
all-important executive" (81).

The brutal campaign that followed was code named CIBD, an acronym for Coercion, Intimidation, Beating, and Displacement (87). The vicious campaign also included torture, arson, kidnapping and murder of opposition supporters. This bloody crackdown was reportedly orchestrated and systematically executed by soldiers, police, state security agents, Zanu (PF) militia, and veterans of the liberation war.

The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace graphically captured some
aspects of the pre-election violence cited in this book: "People are being
force-marched to political re-orientation meetings and are told that they
voted 'wrongly' in the presidential poll on 29 March 2008 and that on 27
June 2008, they will be given the last opportunity to 'correct' their
mistake, else the full-scale shooting war of the 1970's will resume " (89).

The result was Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the run-off five days from the
polling day and the subsequent one-man race that had Mugabe winning
resoundingly.

Even the hand-picked international observers who covered the elections were
united in their judgement: "The elections did not represent the will of the
people of Zimbabwe"(95).

Reading this book really brought back the sad memories of 2008. The
extensive citations and hard work put into it by many Zimbabweans makes it
to me so far the best graphical and analytical tool ever produced of the monster that tore our society two years ago apart , and from which we are still struggling to recover. - In Touch Jesuit Communications.