What is happening already is the increasing militarization of the regime.99 Mugabe has relied increasingly on military officers to deliver the 2002 presidential election and 2005 parliamentary elections, which were run as military operations: service army officers supervised the administration of the ballot, including the counting and centralization of results, and retired officers packed the Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC). Head of the ESC and later attorney general Sobuza Gula-Ndebele was a former military intelligence officer, while former High Court judge George Chiweshe, who became chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) in 2005, was an army officer before being appointed to the bench in 2001. Military officers were appointed to run strategic parastatals such as National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM), Grain Marketing Board (GMB) and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) under the excuse of fighting corruption or red tape, some others were assigned to ministries or diplomatic missions abroad. Military officers even held positions in the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority and the Central Bank. It betrayed Mugabe’s need either to control access to rare commodities—such as gasoline—or to use policy tools—such as selling grain—for political benefit, but also to gather information to rein in rival party factions.
The armed forces were also involved in the infamous Operation Murambatsvina (or “Drive Out Trash”) from May to July 2005 and committed numerous human rights violations. Interministerial Committees (IMCs), headed by high-ranking military officers, have been set up in all major towns and provinces to oversee the Hlalani Kuhle reconstruction exercise; they have taken over some of the city council functions. In November 2005, the government launched Operation Maguta/Sisuthi (“Operation Eat Well”), using the military to stem food shortages by helping resettled farmers in tilling the land, planting, and harvesting on underused land. But again the army personnel acted without restraint and often brutalized villagers,100 and the command-style campaign failed to increase the agricultural output significantly, rather, the contrary. Soldiers forced the farmers to plant maize for the GMB and destroyed small vegetable gardens to render the farming communities dependent on their political support for the ruling party. The farmers were obliged to work all day almost at gunpoint and without food, and the whole operation disrupted farming activities rather than enhanced production—a typical ZANU-PF program.
The Joint Operations Command recreated by Mugabe at the beginning of the Third Chimurenga has played an increasing role. “The JOC has replaced the cabinet as the primary policy-making organ, briefed on and approving major measures before ministers implement them.”101 It organized the terror tactics against the opposition, defined the attitude toward the South African mediation, and was to play a central role in organizing Mugabe’s illegitimate reelection in 2008. Whatever the rumors of military commanders dictating their terms, this inner circle is dependent on Mugabe for protection and is content to enjoy his patronage through which it has amassed unbridled wealth.102
According to a 2005 survey, “There are no official figures of those killed in political violence, but human rights groups estimate that over the past seven years over a thousand have died. The actual figure could be much higher as parts of the rural areas are now inaccessible to NGOs and indeed to anyone who is not overtly pro-ZANU-PF.”103 Many more were injured or maimed, some of them handicapped and psychologically traumatized for the rest of their lives. Mugabe is personally responsible for this nightmare, all the political crimes perpetrated in Zimbabwe since March 2000, and he should be held accountable in a court of law. Beyond the horror, what was striking in the developments since February 2000 was the cynicism of Mugabe and the ZANU-PF ring leaders using violence as a political means. Indeed they never parted with their wartime political culture.104 That war was their deep-seated vision of politics was embodied in a statement from Mugabe in a radio broadcast in 1976: “After all, any vote we shall have, shall have been the product of the gun…. The people’s votes and the people’s guns are always inseparable twins.”105 Ruling party leaders have kept their supporters mobilized during two and a half decades by using bellicose language and creating situations of violent confrontation with ZAPU, ZUM, FORUM, MDC, whites, the West, or “paper tigers” such as the IMF or British colonialism. Mugabe and his lieutenants have never moved into a true culture of peace and democracy.106 Their vision is supported by the War Vets: since ZANU-PF won the right to rule through the blood spilled and not through elections, why should they hand over power to another party that has not defeated them in war? Mugabe, who claimed that his August 2002 government was a “war cabinet,” and his two deputies who threatened the MDC with bloodshed would certainly welcome a violent confrontation that they are confident of winning. In Mugabe’s mind the Lancaster House agreement in 1979 left unfinished business: he always longed for a “crushing” victory on the battlefield.
Chapter 3
Militant Civil Society and the Emergence of a Credible Opposition
Although some opposition parties existed prior to 1999, none succeeded in breaching the ZANU-PF monopoly. Indeed, the Movement for Democratic Change is “the first substantive opposition party to emerge [in Zimbabwe] in the last 20 years.”1 However, the positive legacy of the failed opposition of the 1990s should not be underestimated. Not only had these parties contributed to the democratic struggle at a time when many civic and union leaders claimed to remain “nonpartisan” and avoided harassment from the state, but the MDC also drew some precious lessons from their pioneer work. By its near success and the sheer scale of its challenge to Mugabe’s rule, however, the MDC is unique in Zimbabwe’s history.
Civil Society Moves from Passive Resistance to Politicization
The limits and failures of opposition political parties in the 1990s, partly attributable to their lack of impact at the grassroots level, left civil society as the only effective source of opposition to ZANU-PF’s neo-authoritarian rule.2 If indeed Mugabe’s regime was not at that time just another African autocracy, it was largely attributable to a lively civil society and its almost twenty-year resistance to incorporation or control by the state. This militant civil society later became the cradle of the MDC, the emergence of which incidentally tends to defeat the notion of civil society’s ingrained political impotence. The trade unions and their sustained struggles to achieve and maintain their autonomy, as early as 1988, played a pivotal role in this transformation. The contributions of the private media and independent-minded judges are also key factors in understanding how civic organizations managed to counter ZANU-PF hegemony.
Whether or not theoretical debates on the concept of civil society validate its use in an African context,3 there is, in countries like Zimbabwe, a reality that needs to be assessed. A wide range of nonstate actors (sometimes called “civic organizations”), differing in significance, stated objectives, and structure, are active in the public sphere in competition and/or in collaboration with the state. Some are seen as formulating primordial identities (class, religion, or ethnic affiliation) or as protecting sectional interests (professional lobbies), but others, such as various advocacy groups on the environment, human rights, women’s conditions, or HIV/AIDS, are providing services yet also promoting a public debate on policy issues. They try to force government to take into account all stakeholders or, more specifically, the marginalized sections of society.4 Some play a unique social or economic role; others raise the people’s political awareness. This broad category of organizations operating outside the