Читать книгу A Predictable Tragedy - Daniel Compagnon - Страница 8

Chapter 2

Violence as the Cornerstone of Mugabe’s Strategy of Political Survival

Violence was crucial for ZANU-PF to secure victory in both the parliamentary elections in June 2000 and the presidential election in March 2002, and once again in the 2008 presidential run-off (although systematic rigging also played a determining role, especially in presidential elections). From a survey conducted of people coming out of the polling stations in June 2000, Professor R. W. Johnson estimated that up to 12 percent of the voters changed their vote from MDC to ZANU-PF as a consequence of the political violence inflicted on them during the electoral campaign,¹ a figure corroborated by an October 2000 survey using the same methodology. It could be argued that only a minority of the electorate was affected, but this violence then targeted primarily the swing vote in the twenty constituencies where ZANU-PF eventually won with a margin of 500 votes or less. Therefore, it is very likely that without inflicting such violence the ruling party would have lost its absolute majority in Parliament. Moreover, with 75 seats the MDC would have been in a position to amend the constitution or impeach Mugabe. There was no public opinion survey after the presidential election. However, since political violence intensified rather than abated between 2000 and 2002, it is reasonable to assume that state-sponsored violence kept Mugabe in power for the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Many observers were caught off guard by the violent character of the Zimbabwe crisis. It seems that the façade of urbane language before some audiences and institutionalized procedures deluded many foreigners, who failed to listen to opposition parties’ pleas before 2000. “Political stability,” hailed by Western resident diplomats up to 1997 and seen as a guarantee for the security of foreign investment, was also used as a convenient justification for authoritarian rule among academic commentators. The other face of the Mugabe regime was ignored, and the role of political violence and oppression was assiduously downplayed. However, violence has been part of the ruling party’s political culture (even in the infancy of black nationalism in Rhodesia)² and government’s policies from the outset. ZANU-PF leaders were not even secretive about it, and hundreds of actions and speeches can be cited from press reports over the last twenty-two years. Not a single electoral campaign since Independence has been free of violence, albeit with variable intensity and geographical extension.³ That illusions about “democratization” and “reform” prevailed for so long over the grim reality can only be explained by the convergence of Western powers’ constant search for an African showcase and the Third World’s perceptions of Mugabe as a freedom fighter. Nevertheless, February 2000 was a turning point: the intensity of violence and, more important, the cynicism of the state’s obvious involvement, its indifference for the law also meant that the regime had thrown off its mask in the fight for survival with no prospect of reversing such policy.

A Political Culture Rooted in Violence

Ruling party secretary for information Nathan Shamuyarira once cynically pointed out: “the area of violence is an area where ZANU-PF has a very strong, long and successful history.”⁴ Although Mugabe and his party enjoyed some strong support among the masses, especially in the early 1980s, and were able to mobilize the electorate in the rural areas until the mid-1990s, this popular backing was at best ambiguous since it was obtained partly through the use of political intimidation, sometimes through direct violence, but most of the time—until 2000—through innuendos and coded discourse, enough to remind the people what the ruling party was capable of doing. Along with the deep-seated intolerance against all dissenting voices (as seen in Chapter 1), violence is part and parcel of the “one-party-state” culture, which remains to date ZANU-PF’s ideological mold.

Contrary to the dominant historical narrative and the apparent collective memory, the internationally monitored 1980 elections were far from being “free and fair.” In fact, widespread intimidation played a major role in ZANU-PF’s victory: between 4,000 (official British estimate) and 10,000 ZANLA fighters were not stationed in the assembly points when the December 1979 ceasefire took effect but were hidden in the villages to prevent other parties from campaigning,⁵ telling people to vote for Mugabe’s party or the war would resume. ZANU’s Enos Nkala publicly confessed this in Matabeleland.⁶ Authors of a biography of Mugabe, generally sympathetic to ZANU’s leader, write the following on the basis of an election supervisors’ interim report: “More than half of the people of Rhodesia were being intimidated by Mugabe’s guerrillas and supporters, they said. Conditions for ‘free and fair’ elections did not exist in five of the eight electoral districts in the country. Contrary to the claims of Mugabe, the supervisors found little proof of intimidation by [pro-UANC] Rhodesian security force auxiliaries.”⁷

Although in some areas of Manicaland and eastern Mashonaland Province, UANC youths also employed methods of intimidation, nothing could match ZANU-PF’s “paramilitary campaign” carried on against the background of wartime coercion. In any case, the UANC auxiliaries were kept in closer check, by journalists and Commonwealth observers, than ZIPRA and ZANLA forces. In regions like Masvingo, the Midlands, or some Harare townships where ZANU-PF and ZAPU were in direct competition, or Manicaland, the UANC stronghold, intimidation was paramount: “voting in these areas took place in an atmosphere of fear and under evident compulsion.”⁸ Political murder and explicit threats of retaliation were rife. In more than a quarter of the country no parties other than ZANU-PF had been able to campaign for fear of reprisals. Joshua Nkomo warned, “People are being terrorized…. There is fear in people’s eyes.”⁹

Incensed by overwhelming evidence of ZANU-PF’s violence and intimidation, Lord Soames—the British governor appointed to oversee the transition—confronted Mugabe but refused to ban his party from contesting or to nullify the poll altogether in the relevant districts, and for obvious reasons: when challenged, Mugabe had threatened to throw away the peace agreement and he was likely to resume war. The British government had no intention of taking that responsibility and risking an international outcry at the United Nations. It was not prepared to lose such a golden opportunity to rid itself once and for all of the Rhodesian problem, that thorn in the flesh of its African policy since the 1960s. These calculations took precedence over concerns for democratic elections. The fact that ZANU-PF, most probably, would have won the elections anyway, contrary to Ian Smith’s claims in his memoirs, is beside the point. Even if intimidation accounted only for the difference between a simple majority and an absolute majority, it mattered politically. Mugabe’s 57 seats made his claim to the premiership indisputable. He could form a government of his choice, even with apparent magnanimity, and Joshua Nkomo had to surrender.¹⁰

So the people voted for “peace” in 1980, for the party that could deliver the war end as they had done in April 1979—then in favor of Muzorewa.¹¹ Yet the founding elections set a terrible precedent: for Mugabe what matters is the balance of forces and the electoral process a mere technicality to emphasize power. Therefore, there is a continuity in behavior between the wartime violence against black peasants and the harsh tactics implemented since February 2000 against farmworkers and selected communities suspected of supporting the MDC. For many people who lived through the war in the rural areas, ZANLA surpassed all other sides in brutality.¹² Recent historiography on Zimbabwe’s liberation war indicates that routine coercion was an important and in some areas crucial resource to obtain political support from the “masses”:

Parents, youth, and the rural elite had little choice but to identify with ZANU and provide logistical support for the guerrillas…. One dared refuse only at the risk of personal physical harm…. A war [village committee] chairman succinctly expressed the sentiments of others when he explained that “comrades would know if you refused the job and then you could get beaten. I never knew of anyone who did refuse. There was just that fear that if one did, one could get beaten.” …Failure to conform with guerrilla demands might also result in death, usually with the same instrument with which the guerrillas beat people.¹³

Villagers would be beaten for being too slow to surrender their meager resources, for declining to attend political meetings, or for their lack of commitment to the war and ZANU-PF.¹⁴ Punishment of “sellouts” more than once degenerated into collective retribution against whole villages.¹⁵ This dreadful experience created the basis of the culture of fear that has pervaded Zimbabwe’s politics since Independence. Therefore, the use of violent methods to ensure the ruling party’s electoral victory in 2000 and 2002 does not come as a surprise. Victims describing war veterans’ terror techniques spontaneously recalled their war experience and the mix of ideological propaganda and violence they endured in the notorious compulsory night meetings—called “pungwes.”

Gukurahundi

In the post-independence era the worst example of politically motivated violence was the massacre of thousands of civilians in Matabeleland in an orgy of killing known as “Gukurahundi.” As argued in Chapter 1), the main purpose of these deliberate killings, rapes, torture, and destruction of property (huts, crops, and cattle) was the elimination of ZAPU’s popular following as a way to force the party’s leadership into submission. What is striking though is the savagery of the onslaught by the North Korean-trained and Shona-recruited Fifth Brigade, the CIO, some other army units, and the ZANU-PF Youth League, which left thousands of people dead and many more maimed and marked for the rest of their lives, most families being affected one way or another.¹⁶ “From about the beginning of 1983, the people of Matabeleland experienced once again military and political terror hardly distinguished from that inflicted on the people of Zimbabwe by the Rhodesian State.”¹⁷ There was a dimension of ethnic hatred that resembled the “ethnic cleansing” later practiced in the former Yugoslavia in the 1992–95 wars: Fifth Brigade members told the women and girls they raped that they would bear Shona babies to wipe out Ndebeles in Matabeleland. There is little doubt that ZANU-PF leaders encouraged this attitude.¹⁸ To this date, some ZANU-PF leaders who took part in these crimes boast of having no regrets as “the Ndebeles got what they deserved.”¹⁹ According to Amnesty International (AI), “The abuses documented during this period by Amnesty International and other organizations, including torture, extrajudicial executions and ‘disappearances,’ are serious crimes under international law, and may amount to crimes against humanity, as defined in the Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted in July 1998.”²⁰ When one sees to what extreme Mugabe was prepared to go in 1982–86 to get rid of ZAPU, the terror campaign launched against MDC since 2000 fits in the pattern.

In rural Matabeleland, the memory of the Fifth Brigade and Gukurahundi has not faded yet and it forms the background of any political activity in that region and to a large extent in the southern Midlands to date. At election time, frequent references to the 1983–87 violence could be found in the government press and in the ZANU-PF leader’s speeches. For example, government intelligence was leaked to the press in January 1994 revealing that “a security joint operation command (JOC) [had] been put on full alert [in Bulawayo] to deal with any disturbances that might occur following surfacing reports that a group of youths calling itself Super ZAPU [was] allegedly planning to terrorise non-Ndebele speakers.”²¹ It was a reference to the South Africa-backed guerrilla unit that infiltrated Matabeleland during the conflict of the early 1980s and that was accused of the worst of the atrocities perpetuated by the “dissidents.”²² The allegation that Super-ZAPU was revived fooled nobody but was meant to create a climate of fear in the region. During the 1995 campaign, several ZANU-PF cadres threatened a return of the civil war of the early 1980s if the people in Matabeleland voted for the opposition parties. There was also a veiled threat in the president’s speeches when he urged the Ndebeles to preserve unity and support the ruling party if they wanted to keep the peace they had enjoyed since 1987. In other parts of the country, especially in Masvingo, Manicaland, and Mashonaland, which bore the brunt of guerrilla activity during the liberation war, similar threats to resume fighting if the ruling party lost the elections were routinely made during the election campaign in 1995, but observers easily dismissed them as mere political rhetoric.

The same threats were renewed, more aggressively this time, during the 2000 and 2002 electoral campaigns. Didymus Mutasa’s public admission that party leaders “would be better off with only 6 million people, with [their] own people who support the liberation struggle“²³—the current government—betrays the extent to which ZANU-PF hard-liners are prepared to go eventually to get rid of the opposition. The then ruling party secretary for administration alluded not only to farm workers, many of whom are of Malawian, Mozambican, or Zambian descent, but also to opposition supporters in the rural areas who have been deprived of food aid repeatedly by party militias from 2002 to 2005. Food as a weapon had already been used against alleged dissidents in Matabeleland during the Gukurahundi.²⁴

Even after the Unity Accord and the end of the alleged Matabeleland dissidence, the 1990 general elections were marred by several incidents of violence. The worst was an attempt to murder Patrick Kombayi, then a ZUM candidate in Gweru, who was widely expected to win the constituency held by Vice President Muzenda.²⁵ Two of the culprits, the Midlands CIO chief who was in charge of the vice president’s security and a ZANU-PF youth leader, were eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in jail. Although the Supreme Court upheld their conviction, President Mugabe, using his presidential prerogative for mercy, pardoned both in 1993. Incidents of violence were less prominent in the 1995 elections, but were far more numerous than most observers assumed, in particular in the ZANU-PF primary elections. The impression conveyed by the Electoral Supervisory Commission and several reports from civic groups that had monitored the elections—with the notable exception of the informed judgment of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZIMRIGHTS)—that the 1995 elections were “free but not fair” because there was little violence does not reflect the reality. Violence was rife in areas of actual competition, hence in the ruling party primaries (disregarded by the ESC), which were the real elections in many constituencies. In these the MP was subsequently elected unopposed as a direct result of the opposition’s partial boycott. There were a few constituencies where ZANU-PF encountered real challenges from opposition or independent candidates. Such was the case in Harare North, where Trudy Stevenson campaigned actively for the Forum Party—and was called a “dirty white pig” by ZANU-PF women—or in Harare South, where ZANU dissident Margaret Dongo was castigated as a “sellout” by her CIO-sponsored opponent. A real challenge to its power always generated a violent response from ZANU-PF. The above-mentioned study of the 1995 elections concluded that when facing a credible and organized national opposition—what the MDC happened to be—Mugabe and his lieutenants would not hesitate to resort to large-scale violent methods already tested in 1980, 1985, and 1990. Unfortunately this prediction was vindicated by subsequent developments.

Violence as a Tool for Electoral Campaigns and Political Retribution

Although originally located on the commercial farms, a wave of organized violence immediately followed the government’s defeat in the 12–13 February 2000 constitutional referendum. This reveals its real motives. Whatever the misgivings Mugabe might have had about the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) draft, and a reform exercise imposed on him, he did not take lightly to defeat. He knew very well that the people voted for change and against him and his government rather than against a constitutional proposal that only a few had read. The grass roots had been successfully mobilized by the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) outreach program against a twisted process of constitutional reform and a draft entrenching the president’s powers. However, the majority of the people were primarily concerned with bread-and-butter issues after the 1998 food riots and used their vote as a protest. Not only had ZANU-PF, for the first time since Independence, lost a poll at the national level, but demonstrators took to the street to show Mugabe “red cards” after a referendum result seen as the “yellow card,” a now famous soccer-inspired metaphor to convey the message that the president’s time had come to leave the playing field. This strong anti-Mugabe mood prevailing the country over—although stronger in the urban areas—was measured by the Helen Suzman Foundation opinion poll in late January and early February 2000.²⁶ Mugabe’s compromising tone when he acknowledged the referendum results on television was not an admission of failure but rather a tactical retreat to prepare for the next step.

The first purpose of post-referendum violence was retribution: white farmers had to be punished for their support of the MDC/NCA. For the ruling party strategists, the latter’s victory in the referendum was only made possible by white financial and logistical support (indeed farmers were shown in the media signing checks for the MDC after a meeting with Tsvangirai and ferrying their laborers in trucks to the polling stations). Farmers—and to some extent employers in the manufacturing sector—were accused of mobilizing their black workers in favor of the opposition, although the role of the trade unions was more decisive in this respect. All this provided a convenient excuse to duck the real issue: the low popularity of the president and his party after years of corruption and bad governance. Besides, the “Yes” vote campaign led by Jonathan Moyo, Godfrey Chidyausiku, and Patrick Chinamasa of the CRC had already pointed to a “white plot,” and targeting white farmers transformed the lunacy into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The “land clause” was inserted into the draft constitution to win War Vets’ support but also to provoke the farmers into reacting en masse and to create the ensuing racial polarization. The white farmers felt Mugabe had reneged on his Independence reconciliation policy. They were suddenly in a weak political position, and campaigned against the adoption of the draft constitution to prevent the land grab from being legalized. So the farm invasions targeted first the farms of MDC sympathizers—in fact a minority of the white farming community—and the first farmers to be beaten or killed were also MDC local organizers, such as David Stevens, openly abducted from a police station and murdered on 15 April 2000, or known MDC supporters. In subsequent government and ZANU-PF discourse, the MDC was portrayed as the party that wanted to give the country back to the whites; moreover, the party leaders were “puppets” of the British government and therefore all MDC supporters were traitors to their country and to their race—in ZANU-PF’s view, a justification of the harsh treatment they were to receive. However, as early as May 2000 the black casualties of this undeclared war greatly outnumbered the white victims.

The murders and beatings of white farmers had a second purpose in Mugabe’s plan: they were meant to frighten them away from the land and make the land grab easier. There would be no more legal technicalities, no more judicial squabbles, they should simply give up their farms; this was the ultimate objective. That message came out loud and clear throughout the months after February 2000, and the façade of legal procedures maintained up to mid-2002 was merely a cover-up for a cynical instrumental use of terror. At the December 2000 ZANU-PF congress, Mugabe explained his strategy: “we must continue to strike fear into the heart of the white man, our real enemy,”²⁷ and he renewed his threats on many occasions during the following months. But the antiwhite violence was even more important from a symbolic point of view: it illustrated and justified the government’s racialist propaganda; all that it was about was the final battle against colonialism, the “Third Chimurenga,”²⁸ as Mugabe chose to call it. For a Pan-African audience that has little knowledge of what was (and is) really happening on the ground, the emotional appeal of this anti-colonialist discourse is undeniable, and it has been the basis of Mugabe’s belief that whatever he did he would not lose the support of his African colleagues.

When the invasions began, most farm workers expressed solidarity with their bosses, in spite of their supposedly conflicting class interests and contrary to the assumption that all white farmers were necessarily unreconstructed racists—in most cases labor relations were of a benevolent paternalistic nature with farmers providing their workers with basic but precious services in housing, health care, food supply, and schooling for the children. In any case, workers reckoned that the farmers’ source of income was also their means of a livelihood and their jobs depended on their capacity to operate—indeed, most of these workers have been laid off since mid-2000 and their families left destitute. Besides, many workers understood that it all amounted to a political gimmick—more than anybody else they knew how difficult it was to become a successful farmer—and that the land illegally appropriated would end up in the hands of Mugabe’s cronies (as was the case from mid-2002 onward). In a few instances the workers sided with the invaders, becoming accomplices to acts of violence—sometimes exerting revenge for some unsettled labor dispute—taking advantage of farm looting or applying for plots on occupied land. All attempts to resist illegal farm invasions have resulted in savage punishment, since it did not follow the script written by ZANU-PF “chefs.” When farm workers defended themselves or tried to retaliate—as was the case with Stevens’s employees who tried to evict invaders from the farm after the militias had raped a worker’s daughter—War Vets would come back later with reinforcements and there would be more severe casualties. Violence or straight evictions—usually accompanied by the looting and the burning of workers’ houses—drove several thousands from their homes. But this was only the beginning.

Parliamentary Elections

It soon became obvious that the violence associated with the farm invasions also had a third and a more crucial purpose for the ruling party, namely, to win the 2000 parliamentary elections. Originally due in early April, they were conveniently postponed until June 2000 to allow the time for violence to produce the desired outcome. The big cities like Harare and Bulawayo, which massively rejected the constitutional draft—with 73.2 and 75.3 percent of the vote respectively—were written off by ZANU-PF strategists. However, CIO reports indicated that the MDC, though less than a year old, was also making significant progress in the rural areas, the traditional power base of ZANU-PF. The usual methods of election manipulation and inflammatory rhetoric, through which the ruling party had managed to dominate the political scene since independence, were not going to work this time: outright but controlled violence was crucial to cow the rural masses back into submission. The margins might be too narrow and with a still relatively independent judiciary, postelectoral litigation could be—and indeed was—used by the MDC. Successful legal challenges might then reverse an election victory obtained through rigging. In other words, the façade of legalism more or less maintained until February 2000 had to be dropped for a more offensive campaigning.

Mugabe made his intentions clear in March 2000 when he declared at an official ceremony: “Those who try to cause disunity among our people must watch out because death will befall them.”²⁹ The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum final report on the parliamentary elections is based on 1,000 statements from victims. Providing only a glimpse of the massive scale of political violence it stated:

ZANU-PF supporters and many state organs were engaged in a systematic, premeditated campaign to terrorize local communities into voting for the party or not voting at all…. One independent report has estimated that there were well over 200,000 cases of political violence in the first half of 2000…. The evidence clearly supports the view that there was a systematic campaign of organised violence and torture perpetrated against all opposition political parties and their supporters. The physical acts of violence conform to the definition of torture contained in the UN Convention Against Torture.³⁰

International observers from the Commonwealth and the European Union concurred with the NGOs on the role of violence that prevented the opposition from campaigning openly and the electorate from voting freely.³¹

Intimidation followed a pattern: elements of the ZANU-PF militia called War Vets, armed mainly with knives, spears, axes, machetes, batons, and a few firearms, would round up the farmworkers—wives, the elderly, and children included—frog-march them to the militia’s nearby camp (usually an invaded farm), and beat them at random, force them to sing pro-ZANU-PF chants, keep them at all-night “political education” meetings reminiscent of wartime pungwes, while some MDC activists would be singled out to be tortured, beaten, and sometimes killed. Workers would be released only once they had pledged to vote for ZANU-PF and were threatened by War Vets with severe punishment if they did otherwise. The violent campaign moved from one farming district to another, probably because the party strategists lacked the resources (manpower and finances) to operate simultaneously in all areas. For many farmworkers with little education and no access to independent information, the threat was credible enough, given the fact that the police refused to act when violence was reported to them or often sided with the War Vets, who clearly enjoyed full government support. How could you believe your vote to be secret, as NCA, MDC, and election monitors had told voters, in circumstances where the whole state apparatus colluded with the perpetrators of violence? This terror campaign extended to some mining camps in the Bindura area and forest plantations in the Eastern Highlands.

The same violence fell upon MDC activists in Harare’s high-density suburbs like Mbare, Mufakose, and Budiriro, this last being the locality of War Vets leader Chenjerai “Hitler” Hunzvi’s private surgery, which was used as a torture chamber and murder arena by ZANU-PF activists, with the complicity of elements of the police and the army.³² All around the country, MDC local officials were beaten and maimed and saw their houses and other properties destroyed as the campaign expanded from the commercial farming areas to the communal lands (the former tribal reserves where blacks peasants were confined prior to 1980) and small towns. Testimony gathered by human rights groups shows that victims were sometimes chosen haphazardly but more often were carefully identified on preestablished lists, suggesting that the War Vets benefited from intelligence sources—although one of the purposes of the torture sessions was to extract more inside information from alleged MDC members. In the rural areas, ZANU-PF militias were tipped off by headmen and traditional chiefs. Several opposition party members were abducted and subsequently killed, such as MDC candidate David Coltart’s electoral agent in Bulawayo and an MDC activist in Mberengwa. The June 2000 MDC candidate standing against Emmerson Mnangagwa in Kwekwe went into hiding after surviving an assassination attempt and seeing his house burned down by ZANU-PF thugs,³³ only to reappear when he won the election—to his own astonishment. MDC candidate for Bindura, Elliot Pfebve, narrowly escaped several attempts on his life but his look-alike brother was murdered. There were 40 deaths countrywide in the run-up period, 36 of them MDC supporters.³⁴

Some constituencies were put under siege, with War Vets and other party militias manning roadblocks to prevent MDC activists from campaigning and creating “no-go areas,” not only for MDC but also for independent press reporters, church and NGO activists, and election observers—in particular in the three Mashonaland provinces. In the rural areas and small towns, various categories of people perceived as potential opposition supporters (like schoolteachers, council employees, doctors, and nurses) were systematically assaulted or driven away.³⁵ They took refuge in towns as dispossessed farm workers had done and were not able to vote in the elections. Although MDC, seen as the main political threat, was also the main target, other opposition parties were treated in the same fashion, such as UP in the Mudzi area. In May and early June 2000, most MDC candidates could not hold campaign meetings in the rural areas or townships without been physically attacked by the War Vets or brutally dispersed by the riot police. Several ZANU-PF candidates took an active part in the violence—some of them using firearms against their opponents—and were later rewarded by Mugabe for their zeal.

State Sponsorship and Impunity for the Criminals

That Mugabe condoned such deliberate and often carefully planned violence was made clear from the very beginning. In public speeches he downplayed the importance of the murders and other incidents of violence, claimed on several occasions that the farmers or the MDC activists had “provoked” the War Vets, stopped the police from acting against perpetrators of violence when they were linked to ZANU-PF, and threatened on various occasions, including formal party meetings or state functions, to crush the white farmers and all political opponents. Plans for the violent invasions had been drawn in advance and bore no resemblance to the spontaneous occupations that had taken place from time to time since independence and were always ended by a timely police intervention. The coordination of the farm invasions, in particular the choice of the first targets, bore the mark of the CIO.³⁶ The strategic planning at the highest level was entrusted to the JOC, which acted under direct instructions from Mugabe and involved minister of justice Emmerson Mnangagwa; the national security minister (Sydney Sekeramayi and from July 2000 Nicholas Goche); the head of the CIO; chief of staff of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) General Zvinavashe; notorious former head of the Fifth Brigade General Perence Shiri; War Vets leader Hitler Hunzvi, and Border Gezi. This committee became the real power behind ZANU-PF’s Politburo and the Cabinet. Only a few high-ranking chefs close enough to Mugabe—not even all Politburo senior members—were privy to its decisions.

The executive branch of the state fully supported the violence against the opposition, and the CIO was behind several cases of abduction and torture. The murder of Martin Olds in April 2000, with its bizarre modus operandi, was the work of either the CIO or the military intelligence. A paramilitary unit came from outside the Nyamandlovu area—perhaps from Harare—and its obvious purpose was to kill the farmer (they started to shoot shortly after arrival). The uniformed police stopped neighboring farmers who responded to Olds’s urgent call on the road to his farm and intervened only after the death squad had left the scene. The operation was staged on Independence Day, when Mugabe was delivering his speech on television, and was meant to terrorize the white farmers.

According to Amnesty International, “impunity has become the central problem in Zimbabwe, where state security forces—police officers, army officers or agents of the CIO—commit widespread human right violations without being brought to justice.”³⁷ Although statements from victims gathered by the Human Rights NGO Forum and witnesses who testified in the election challenges at the High Court named some perpetrators of violence, very few were subsequently prosecuted. The General Amnesty for Politically Motivated Crimes, which was enacted on 6 October 2000, absolved most of them. As a matter of fact, violence with impunity is part of ZANU-PF’s political culture: a general amnesty was granted after both the liberation war³⁸ and the Matabeleland massacres,³⁹ allegedly in both cases in a spirit of reconciliation but effectively preventing any accountability on the part of combatants and officials involved. In any case, the Emergency Powers (Security Forces Indemnity) Regulations, enacted in July 1982, which were similar to the indemnity law passed by the Smith government in 1975, had in advance indemnified subsequent unlawful acts perpetuated by government officials and security forces. The report of the commission of inquiry set up in November 1983 to investigate human rights abuses by the Fifth Brigade during the Gukurahundi—the Chihambakwe Commission—was never released by Mugabe, and when human rights groups went to court in 1999 to compel the government to publish it, minister of justice Emmerson Mnangagwa—one of the officials implicated in the killings and abuses—claimed the document was missing and could not be located. The “dissidents” who surrendered to the police benefited from the amnesty, but civilian victims and their families received no apologies, and the issue of appropriate compensation is still pending as of this writing.

Another sign of this culture of impunity entrenched in the ruling party is the extensive use of presidential pardon;⁴⁰ as earlier stated, the two who made an attempt on Kombayi’s life in 1990 were pardoned. Edgar Tekere, ZANU-PF secretary general and a Cabinet minister, who took part in the murder of a white farmer in 1980, benefited from an indemnity law passed by the Rhodesian regime to protect its soldiers who had committed atrocities from prosecution. Similar methods were used to protect some of Mugabe’s henchmen in the last two years.

Although murder, robbery, rape, indecent assault, and possession of arms were formally excluded from the October 2000 amnesty, very few ZANU-PF criminals have been prosecuted and none convicted. Mberengwa War Vet leader Wilson “Biggie” Chitoro, who coordinated the terror campaign against the opposition in the district,⁴¹ was arrested after the parliamentary elections and remained in prison for more than a year, charged with torturing to death an MDC activist at Texas Ranch Farm militia camp. However, he was released on bail in November 2001 and has not yet stood trial. He allegedly resumed his activities in December the same year and set up another militia base at Chingoma Secondary School in preparation for the presidential election.⁴² When the Buhera North election challenge was heard in the High Court, judge James Devittie requested that attorney general Andrew Chigovera arrest and prosecute the known suspects (one a local War Vet and the other a senior CIO operative in Chimanimani) for the murder of two MDC officials campaigning for Tsvangirai who were burned alive in their car on 15 April 2000. The police were tasked in July 2001 to investigate the case but to this date the docket is blocked by the police chiefs in Harare, and the killers remain at large, perpetrating violence (one of them was briefly detained by the police and then released). The impunity granted by the police to criminals from ZANU-PF militias extends to uniformed police officers who committed human rights violations voluntarily. Indeed, impunity creates a sense of solidarity and common belonging between the two, in the process further damaging the police as an institution of the state.

Moreover, the presidential amnesty covered only the period between 1 January and 31 July 2000. However, political violence, including murders, committed since then was not attended to by the authorities either. In instances when perpetrators of violence were arrested and stood trial, they happened to be MDC members. This was a deliberate attempt to portray the opposition as violent—a recurrent claim of the government press—while ZANU-PF militias, responsible for close to 90 percent of the incidents, and all of the most serious, enjoyed impunity. The latter were clearly encouraged by party leaders to terrorize again in preparation for the 2002 presidential poll. In addition, victims seeking redress or witnesses giving evidence in the High Court when MDC’s electoral petitions were heard were assaulted again and some had to go into hiding.⁴³ Those arrested who had benefited from the amnesty then took their revenge against the people who reported them to the police.

From the 2000 to the 2005 Elections and Beyond

Violence abated for a couple of weeks before the 24–25 June 2000 elections, and the months of July and August were relatively calm. However, retribution violence against farmworkers never stopped completely. In Harare high-density suburbs that had returned MDC members of Parliament with huge majorities (80 percent or more), riot police and army units were deployed in early October 2000 to quell some public unrest over the rising food prices and started a door-to-door campaign that lasted until the end of November to beat people at random. Perpetrators did not hide the political motives of this retributive violence. In February 2001, an MDC MP in Chitungwiza and the party security chief, Job Sikhala, and his pregnant wife were assaulted in their house at night by soldiers. Another MDC MP Willias Madzimure was attacked by ZANU-PF militias twice (in May and July) and his house was ransacked while he was sitting in Parliament.⁴⁴ Once again between late February and 20 March 2001, army units were deployed in several townships and raided beer halls, streets, and private properties to beat people and force them to chant slogans in support of Mugabe and ZANU-PF.⁴⁵ The same scenario repeated itself in July, in response to a two-day general strike organized by the ZCTU.⁴⁶

Throughout 2001, random beatings, abduction, and torture of MDC supporters went on sporadically. Gokwe saw some of the worst violence between the parliamentary elections and the presidential ballot, with a record number of schools closed as War Vets attacked scores of teachers and forced them to flee to Harare.⁴⁷ The latter were told that as civil servants they should not hold political views different from those of the government. The minister of Foreign Affairs warned: “You are going to loose your jobs if you support opposition political parties in the presidential election…. You can even be killed for supporting the opposition and no one would guarantee your safety.”⁴⁸ This was a constant view shared by ZANU-PF leaders, as illustrated by the public controversy over civil servants’ political neutrality in 1995.⁴⁹ Back in 1990–91, Cabinet ministers declared that civil servants should be card-carrying members of the ruling party.⁵⁰ In all instances of violence (including rape) inflicted on teachers since February 2000, often in front of their pupils, the regional and national authorities of the Ministry of Education failed to stand up for the rights of the victims and provide them security. Not only were the teachers perceived as a natural ally of MDC since their union leaders had taken an active part in ZCTU and the foundation of the party, but they were seen by ZANU-PF as spreading wrong ideas contradicting the ruling party’s propaganda—thus explaining MDC’s growing success among the rural youth.

The June 2000 parliamentary elections established a pattern of extremely violent behavior that was to be repeated in by-elections thereafter, all of them “won” by ZANU-PF, including the presidential election in March 2002. Burning MDC members’ houses and other properties and harassing their families became permanent features of ZANU-PF’s modus operandi in 2001 and 2002. On several occasions, campaigning MDC convoys faced a coordinated assault of ZANU-PF youth, War Vets, and police, some of whom used firearms. This was the case during the Bindura parliamentary by-election campaign, on 22 July 2001, but also during the presidential campaign in Nkayi in an incident involving soldiers using AK47 rifles. MDC campaigners were routinely assaulted or abducted to be tortured and killed. Such was the fate of Ephraim Tapa, president of the Zimbabwe Civil Service Employees Association, a ZCTU member union, who, with his pregnant wife, was abducted on 16 February 2002 by ZANU-PF militias. He was held in the militia camps around Mutoko for almost a month, during which time he was severely beaten and tortured. The couple were rescued by the police, which for once implemented an urgent order from the High Court, when their captors were about to kill them.

Violence intensified again in late 2001 when a new militia, the National Youth Service, was deployed in preparation for the presidential election. The categories of people already targeted in 2000 were once again assaulted on a larger scale between December 2001 and March 2002. According to the NGO Forum, 31 people were killed between 1 January and 1 March 2002, including one former MDC candidate in the 2000 parliamentary elections.⁵¹ However, on the eve of the ballot, violence focused on MDC polling agents, many of whom were abducted and severely tortured. Some others were caught after the presidential election in retribution for the MDC vote in a specific area. Month after month, women became increasingly the victims of sexual violence, including gang raping and tortures affecting the genitals, inflicted by ZANU-PF militias, policemen, and soldiers in retaliation for their political support of the MDC. Rapes involved girls as young as twelve and were sometimes performed in public to increase the humiliation and “teach a lesson” to the whole community.⁵² The pattern emerging from NGO interviews of rape victims suggests a deliberate and systematic policy of terror covertly promoted by the top echelons of the state, which went on long after the 2002 presidential election.

What has taken place in Zimbabwe since 2000 has nothing to do with ordinary interparty violence as might be observed in hotly contested ballots the world over. The ANC official who compared Zimbabwe’s situation to the political violence in South Africa during the transition period, prior to the 1994 democratic election, was wrong. Indeed, the violence that engulfed Zimbabwe after February 2000 was deliberate (Hunzvi boasted that he led a revolution that required violence to succeed), state-sponsored, carefully planned, and perpetrated by party militias acting in concert with state security agencies.⁵³ It was a war of attrition against the opposition, and anyone in civil society expressing dissenting views was thus perceived as an enemy of the ruling party. It was a “revolutionary war” with tactics very similar to those used to erode ZAPU’s popular base in Matabeleland in the early 1980s.

Violence became more sporadic after the presidential elections, surging again when there was a by-election or during the rural and urban council or mayoral elections in 2003–4.⁵⁴ For instance, MDC MP Job Sikhala and his lawyer Gabriel Shumba were detained during three days in January 2003 and tortured at the CIO underground torture chambers at Goromonzi—to force them to confess a plot to kill Mugabe.⁵⁵ During the 2004 parliamentary by-election in Zengeza, on the second day of polling, ZANU-PF Cabinet minister Elliot Manyika was accused of having killed MDC activist Francis Chinozvina in public with a gun. The minister was never prosecuted and the opposition candidate filed an electoral petition in vain.⁵⁶ The campaign for the March 2005 general election was less violent than the 2002 and 2000 ballots (as noted in Chapter 1), but there were still provinces like Mashonaland Central where the MDC candidates could hardly set foot in early 2005, let alone campaign normally. Moreover the ZANU-PF candidates—including several prominent Cabinet ministers—who had sponsored violence in 2000 in twenty constituencies, and had not been held accountable by the courts, were standing again in 2005.⁵⁷ The impunity they enjoyed sent a dreadful message to the electorate and was an effective deterrent to opposition sympathizers.

Persecution against the MDC went on after 2002. Its leaders and MPs, including Morgan Tsvangirai and party treasurer Fletcher Dulini Ncube, were detained on spurious grounds. The incident most publicized outside Zimbabwe was the persecution of Roy Bennett, the popular (white) Chimanimani MP. In 2000 his farm was invaded and his workers assaulted. In April 2004 he was evicted from the property in spite of five court orders prohibiting the farm’s compulsory acquisition, and his cattle and farming equipment were confiscated. Following a brawl with Patrick Chinamasa in Parliament in May 2004 after the minister of justice had insulted him, Bennett was unfairly sentenced to fifteen months in jail, with a three-month suspension—an unusually harsh punishment for such a light offense—and was taken into custody on 28 October.⁵⁸ Detained in squalid conditions (now a common fate in Zimbabwe prisons) and denied food and proper clothing, Bennett was freed on 28 June 2005.

In March 2006 an alleged plot—again to assassinate Mugabe—was fabricated by the CIO to implicate Giles Mutsekwa, MDC MP for Mutare North, whose contacts in the army were feared in a volatile political climate.⁵⁹ But the prosecution abandoned the case for lack of incriminating evidence after some of the accused claimed to have been tortured to extract their confession. In the meantime, Roy Bennett, who had been cited by the government press as one of the alleged plotters, fled to South Africa in fear for his life. There his application for political refugee status was first rejected by Pretoria on the grounds that the courts in Zimbabwe upheld the law (!) but eventually accepted after he went to court.

After the parliamentary elections in 2005, the usual political retribution was unleashed on communities that had voted for MDC, its polling agents, and some of its candidates—some were arrested and tortured.⁶⁰ In addition, this time there was a concerted assault on the MDC’s primary constituency, the urban poor. On 25 May 2005 the police, supported by the army, embarked on Operation Murambatsvina (Restore Order)⁶¹ allegedly to clean up the cities, implement urban planning and curb the black market and other crimes.⁶² The massive destruction without due notice of makeshift houses and other “illegal structures” erected in the city suburbs countrywide left about 700,000 people homeless and destitute in the middle of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter. Thousands of informal traders were detained by the police, and an estimate of 2.4 million were affected in one way or another—including losing their only source of income. In addition, an estimated 500,000 children were forced out of school or had their education seriously disrupted. The operation, widely condemned (outside Africa) for the violence with which it was carried out, ended officially on 27 July 2005, although sporadic destruction and many arrests continued. Beyond its stated aim of “cleaning” the cities, Murambatsvina had a middle-term strategic dimension also: by destroying the homes and businesses of millions of people in the MDC strongholds, the government wanted to force them back into the ZANU-PF controlled rural areas where they would become dependent on government food aid. Sometimes the displaced persons were rounded up and bundled in police and army trucks to be dumped hundreds of kilometers away from their home.⁶³ Subsequently some of the victims were sent to rural “re-education camps” run by the security services and militias. It is possible that depopulating opposition enclaves was meant to weaken the opposition votes in the following parliamentary and presidential elections and in the meantime jeopardize the ability of the urban poor to stage organized protests against the government.

In an attempt to legitimize Murambatsvina as an operation aimed at improving urban settlements and to counter the international outcry, in late June 2005 the government launched Operation Garikayi/Hlalani Kuhle (Live Well), and claimed that it would build 300,000 houses before the end of 2005, and a total of 1.2 million by the end of the program in 2008.⁶⁴ Despite a UN offer to assist, the achievements of this policy, riddled with mismanagement and corruption from the outset, were limited, and after a year most of the victims remained homeless, as a few thousand houses had been built countrywide.⁶⁵ In May 2006, a follow-up Operation “Round-Up” forcibly transferred about 10,000 homeless and street kids from Harare to country farms where they were dropped without food, water, sanitation, or proper equipment. They were held on the farms, destitute and frightened.

Throughout 2006 there were renewed threats from Mugabe or his security minister to violently suppress any attempt from the opposition groups to protest in masses in the streets. MDC and civic organizations were again under assault in early 2007: on 11 March, the riot police brutally disrupted a prayer meeting held by civic organizations, killed one activist and injured many, and arrested more than fifty leaders, including Tsvangirai. They were severely beaten while in custody, while others were abducted by the CIO and tortured.⁶⁶ Violence has remained the cornerstone of the government’s attitude toward any form of perceived dissent or criticism.

The ZANU-PF Militias

In line with its tradition of violence, ZANU-PF always had a tendency to use certain party organizations to exert coercion and intimidation on its opponents, in addition to or in conjunction with state security agencies. Hence the Women’s League and the Youth League were mobilized as the party shock troops during electoral campaigns. The ZANU-PF youth and women’s leagues have been used in the past to intimidate opponents in the high-density suburbs and the rural areas in what was euphemistically called “door-to-door” campaigning, a tradition going back to 1963, when ZAPU and ZANU were fighting for political control of the African townships and their rivalry left hundreds of people maimed with property destroyed as the Rhodesian police stood by. The same tactic was employed again in 1980 and 1985, against ZAPU, and in 1990 and 1995, against ZUM and other opposition parties. ZANU-PF youth and women’s leagues disrupted opposition party rallies and serious violence erupted; they also harassed people at night.⁶⁷

The violent behavior of ZANU-PF youth and women was at that time already openly condoned by Mugabe who even asked his supporters to intensify the door-to-door campaign. When FORUM leaders said that their supporters were entitled to defend themselves since the police remained inactive, Mugabe responded during a central committee meeting of his party with a thinly veiled personal threat: “In that dangerous game our side would certainly have more and better arrows and spears than Dumbutshena [Forum president], now nicknamed Dumbutshaka, and his handful of warriors can ever hope to wield. Will the former chief justice really be able personally to avoid and duck those arrows he is inviting?”⁶⁸ Alleging that the leader of the FORUM, dubbed a party of European settlers by government’s propaganda, was manipulated by whites, the president added: “They will come off, in a contrived violent conflict situation, not second best, but not best at all. Let them be warned.”⁶⁹ This was in 1994. Already the same Mugabe who would claim in 2001 that he and his party had “degrees in violence.” The ZANU-PF Youth League had also taken part in the Gukurahundi along with the Fifth Brigade and the CIO, and a lesson had been learned then: mass repression can be more easily denied when performed by “uncontrolled” militias rather than the regular army. However, before February 2000 there was nothing on the scale of the War Vets and the militias called “green bombers,” who have since waged the sustained, nationwide campaign of violence detailed above. It seems necessary therefore, to look at the creation and dynamics of the ZANU-PF militias,⁷⁰ the shock troops of the Third Chimurenga.

War Vets

When Hitler Hunzvi and his supporters of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) rioted in the streets of Harare, in July–August 1997, after the plundering of the War Victims Compensation Fund⁷¹ by the regime’s “big men” was revealed, press commentators mistook them for the most determined opponents of the government and were astonished to see ZNLWVA members spearheading the farm invasions. Although the fiction that they were acting independently from the government soon dissipated, their exact relationship with the ruling party is still contested and has evolved since 2000.⁷² War Vets invading the farms were transported in army, police, or District Development Fund trucks (the DDF having been for a long time a ZANU-PF instrument of patronage in the rural areas) and were given army tents and food rations. Money from the president’s office was channeled to the War Vets by party officials (Z$20 million was allocated for the 2000 elections campaign and another Z$15 million was budgeted in 2001). ZNLWVA operated from two-story headquarters in a government building in Harare, and its shock troops were hosted during much of 2000 and 2001 by the ZANU-PF headquarters, where some offices were used to torture people. Indeed, ever since 2000 War Vet leaders repeated that they would use all means to keep Mugabe in power.

ZNLWVA was formed in the early 1990s under the ruling party’s patronage, as part of a constellation of similar groupings to promote the economic emancipation of former war combatants⁷³ and their social and welfare needs. Although many of them were employed in the police and the army and others had sought education abroad and found jobs in the state apparatus or the private sector, some remained destitute ten years after independence and grew very bitter when witnessing the social impact of ESAP and the blatant corruption of the ruling elite. Although ZNLWVA once claimed a 40,000 strong membership, it is difficult to assess its popularity among ex-combatants. Some ZANU-PF backbenchers like Margaret Dongo and Ruth Chinamano promoted the association’s agenda in Parliament as a convenient political resource against the party “big men.” Dongo’s vehement accusations against minister of social affairs Nathan Shamuyarira, of neglecting the war veterans’ welfare was one of the reasons for her fall from favor in 1995. Indeed, since Independence, Mugabe has made use of former guerrillas in the army, the police, and the CIO to drive out ZAPU/ZIPRA in the 1980s⁷⁴ and prevent this constituency from developing as an independent power base within or outside of the ruling party.

There was a new turn of events, however, when the ambitious “doctor” Hunzvi was elected chairman of ZNLWVA in 1995. Despite his claims, Hunzvi had no war record since he had spent most of the war years abroad—in Romania where he contracted his unconditional admiration for the communist dictator Ceausescu, and in Poland where he did medical studies. He was briefly employed in a government hospital when he returned from Poland in 1990. Hunzvi, a racist by his own admission, proud of his chosen Chimurenga name “Hitler,” claimed at the same time to be a dedicated communist. However, his Polish former wife publicly denounced his male chauvinism and domestic violence. Hunzvi had become popular with the ZNLWVA rank and file by granting them medical certificates of disability to support their bogus claims of war injuries submitted to the War Victims Compensation Fund. Hunzvi also obliged the ruling party “big men” and some of their relatives, who never saw action or were too young during the liberation war, with even more dubious certificates that enabled them to claim unreal percentages of disability. For good measure Hunzvi included himself among the disabled veterans and was granted a total of Z$517,536 for a 117 percent disability.⁷⁵ Thus, Hunzvi actively participated in the plundering of the fund at the expense of the real victims as the government commission of inquiry, headed by Judge Godfrey Chidyausiku, later established. However, when payments were suspended in mid-1997, the ZNLWVA leadership cleverly deflected the anger of those who had not yet benefited by encouraging them to take to the streets and to squeeze concessions out of Mugabe, holding him hostage while he attended a meeting at the ZANU-PF headquarters in August 1997. A package of a Z$50,000 gratuity and a Z$2,000 monthly pension was awarded to each registered veteran.

Mugabe’s first reaction was to punish Hunzvi, who was the only person cited in the Commission’s report to be subsequently prosecuted by the state and held in jail for a time in 1999. Soon after this, war veterans were co-opted into the grand strategy of farm invasions. Instead of receiving more gratuities that the public treasury could not afford—as the lump sums granted in 1997 had already been eaten up by inflation—Hunzvi’s militant faction of ZNLWVA would spearhead the campaign of violence and be rewarded with land. This was to become the most critically damaging of their actions. A brilliant ploy of enrolling this discontented fringe of the regime into the president’s political survival campaign was to follow in order to channel their frustration toward the whites and the MDC. It prevented a sizable constituency within ZANU-PF from becoming a powerful internal opposition, while at the same time the president could use this ruthless mercenary force to fight his enemies. More important, as the farm invasions commenced, Mugabe could pretend to dissociate himself from these activists and claim that he could not order the police to remove them from the farms without risking a bloodbath. More brazenly, he observed that they were merely “demonstrating” for their right to land. By constantly denying the obvious links between his government and the militias he obscured his ultimate responsibility for the beatings and murders. By so doing, Mugabe could dupe, at first, his SADC and other African colleagues into believing that the state was not behind the human rights violations. Moreover, when the MDC challenged parliamentary election results in 38 constituencies on the basis of the violence perpetrated by ZANU-PF militias, the concerned ruling party candidates conveniently denied any link with these activists.

Once they moved onto the farms, the core of ex-combatants were joined by ZANU-PF youths, along with unemployed urban people who were attracted by the daily allowance and, in a few instances, by some communal farmers enticed by the prospect of being awarded a piece of land. They soon formed a ragtag militia known as “War Vets,” which perpetrated most of the atrocities of 2000 and 2001. Some MDC supporters were forced into joining the militia and taking part in violent campaigning to avoid being beaten up themselves.⁷⁶ Initially the War Vets and party youths were paid for their performance, fed (although they often demanded food from the white farmers whose farms they occupied), and given free alcoholic beverages—in some places they took mbanje (marijuana)—and they often went out beating people while drunk or high on drugs. They were confident that Mugabe had granted them impunity as long as they obeyed the directives of the central command. Their leader, Hunzvi, who toured the invaded farms to keep the militias on the upbeat, fast became a central figure of the regime, whose word would take precedence over the vice presidents or Cabinet ministers, even though he had never held office in the party or the government, other than by becoming an MP. Hunzvi’s lack of a war record and his original affiliation to ZIPRA rather than ZANLA made him more malleable by Mugabe, who always feared high-profile former guerrillas with an independent power base. Contending factions in ZANU-PF courted Hunzvi, and Solomon Mujuru offered him the Chikomba constituency that the retired general had held in a previous Parliament. No one dared oppose Hunzvi’s nomination in the ZANU-PF primaries. The MDC was not allowed to campaign in that area and Hunzvi was elected by a large majority. He had hoped for a junior Cabinet position in the July 2000 reshuffle but was still more useful to Mugabe outside government, propping up ZANU-PF campaigns—for example, against the independent judges. When Hunzvi died suddenly on 4 June 2001, officially of cerebral malaria but most probably of AIDS, he was buried in Heroes’ Acre—the national monument for liberation war heroes—and Mugabe read his eulogy, with all the ruling elite behind him, posing as grief-stricken comrades. Though dispensable as an individual, Hunzvi was a useful pawn in the autocrat’s power game. No other ZNLWVA leader since has displayed his skillful and charismatic demagoguery.

“Green Bombers”

The death in a car accident in May 2001 of Border Gezi, minister of youth development, gender, and employment creation, whose role in the 2000 election campaign had been decisive, was another important setback for Mugabe. But Gezi was replaced in the redundant Cabinet position—a means to channel public resources to the ruling party—by Elliot Manyika, also a young Turk from Mashonaland Central, where he had succeeded Gezi as governor, and whose violent campaign in the Bindura by-election had been hailed as a model by ZANU-PF hardliners. Manyika went on with Gezi’s plan to establish the “green bombers” militia under the guise of a six-month National Youth Service. The first battalion of approximately 1,000 volunteers completed training in the Border Gezi Training Center (a militia camp established at Mount Darwin, near Bindura) by the end of November 2001 and was deployed in the rural and suburban areas in December and January 2002. They were placed under the local War Vets’ command to bolster ZANU-PF’s campaign effort. The rationale for the creation of such paramilitary units lay in the fact that ZANU-PF youths and ZNLWVA elements originally mobilized in the farm invasions and the 2000 parliamentary elections were too few to cover the whole country and were poorly organized. Although in September 2000 the War Vets became a “reserve force” of the national army, in a move to instill some discipline into their ranks, on the ground they remained uncontrolled and dangerous.

The new force was summarily trained by CIO and military officers in military discipline, drilling, counterinsurgency, and terror tactics, and duly brainwashed to regard the MDC, whites, and Western countries as enemies of Zimbabwe.⁷⁷ Initially ZANU-PF supporters joined the “green bombers” en masse, but some other youths, with no particular political affiliation, were lured into the force by promises of cash and future jobs in the police and the army. As time went on some were forcibly drafted into the militia especially as a means to destroy support for the MDC among the rural youth. These units were equipped with olive green uniforms—hence the popular nickname alluding to the containers of an insect-killer spray—fed and paid with the taxpayers’ money, which was particularly attractive for ZANU-PF leaders at a time when the ruling party’s coffers were empty. Although this ostensible National Youth Service was inaugurated to provide community services countrywide (to give credibility to the official stance some did sweep the streets and public squares with much publicity provided by the government press in December 2001), the militia inflicted the worst violence before and after the March 2002 presidential election as noted by the Commonwealth Observer Group.⁷⁸ Being de facto a branch of the state, they could operate in broad daylight with every pretense of legality.

With these two militia forces used in tandem, the regime militarized the rural areas, establishing illegal roadblocks to stop “undesirable” people, confiscating ID cards (which were needed to be able to vote) from real or alleged opposition supporters, rounding up and beating villagers and raping or killing at will. Their camps, which were scattered around the countryside, became feared centers of torture, the practice of which intensified as the presidential election drew to a close. In Matabeleland their behavior reminded people of Gukurahundi. The “green bombers” tried to emulate the abuses of the ZANU-PF youth brigades of the 1980s. They were “fighting the enemy” again with a similar excuse of protecting national sovereignty. There were no limits because impunity was guaranteed. Abducted young women and girls, supporters or relatives of MDC supporters, were gang raped and reduced to the status of sex slaves by the militias, often contracting AIDS in the process in a country where 20 percent of the adult population is HIV positive. As in the liberation war, when rape and abduction of teenage girls for sexual services were sometimes perpetrated by the guerrillas, these are another feature of the culture of violence. The Zimbabwe Women Lawyers’ Association estimated in mid-2002 that some 1,000 of these women had been held in militia camps.⁷⁹

As a result of this policy, many districts became “no go areas” for the opposition in late 2001 and early 2002, and people were effectively intimidated into voting for Mugabe at the presidential election. Although the ruling party had managed to retain the majority in Parliament in June 2000 and win subsequent parliamentary by-elections, it had lost the towns to the MDC in the mayoral elections in Masvingo in mid-May 2001 and in Bulawayo—the second largest city in Zimbabwe—in early September. With Zvobgo’s influence, Masvingo Province was no longer secure and ZANU-PF’s full control was only assured in rural Mashonaland where the MDC had been eradicated in May–June 2000. Therefore, in a national ballot such as the presidential election, a total control of rural areas was necessary to counterbalance the numbers of mobilized MDC voters in urban areas. It was the militias’ task to create a permanent climate of fear among rural communities, and they thoroughly succeeded.

Collapse of the Rule of Law

Besides its immediate impact on the political opposition and civil society, the long-term disruptive effect of state-sponsored violence should not be ignored. Two years of systematic violence singling out specific groups of people had already transformed the postcolonial state. The Police Support Unit (notably in the repression of various demonstrations in the mid-1990s and of the food riots in January 1998) and the CIO and the Police Law and Order Section have been used in partisan ways since 1980. Previously the uniformed police, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), were seen generally as a professional and politically neutral force but this is no longer the case. The commissioner of police, Augustine Chihuri, himself a former combatant in the liberation war, claimed in January 2001 that he was a ZANU-PF member and later in the same year that he would not obey the orders of an MDC president. Police station commanding officers were under instructions not to assist assaulted MDC members and not to act against ZANU-PF supporters acting violently.⁸⁰ In the few instances when police officers tried to protect MDC people from ZANU-PF’s thugs, they themselves were assaulted. One constable was murdered by War Vets when conducting an inquiry on an invaded farm, and his superiors made no attempt to arrest the culprits. Members of the force feared the ZANU-PF militias that enjoyed such political protection. But the collusion between the security forces and the War Vets also stemmed from ZNLWVA’s 1997 campaign for payment of war services to all former guerrillas, including those employed in the state apparatus.

Therefore, in most instances, police officers stood by when MDC members were assaulted, only to charge the victims themselves for allegedly “inciting violence” or to refuse to take reports from the victims (which enabled the police spokesman to declare afterward that he knew nothing of the incident since it had not been reported to the police!). Sometimes they would say that the docket was lost so that police investigations would not lead to prosecution. Arbitrary detention without charge increasingly became a pattern of police behavior toward the MDC in 2001 and 2002. Some police officers took an active part in the harassment of opposition supporters or human rights activists in several cases documented by human rights groups,⁸¹ and this behavior tended to spread as time went on, while increasing numbers of War Vets were drafted into the force and speedily promoted. By mid-2002 the riot police and some officers from rural police stations were involved in torture cases against the opposition members. Police officers also colluded with militias looting the properties of MDC supporters or the white-owned farms by providing transport for the looted goods and sharing the spoils.

Between 2000 and 2002 a minimum of 2,000 police officers were transferred. Suspected MDC sympathizers—or just politically neutral officers—were purged, posted in bureaucratic assignments (the infamous “Commissioner’s pool” in Harare headquarters for senior police officers), or kicked off the force. Others resigned out of frustration or in fear of harassment, while War Vets in the police were promoted to the head of rural police stations in order to cooperate with ZANU-PF militias.⁸² Chihuri’s excuse for purging senior officers—that they were remnants of Rhodesian Selous Scouts and British South Africa Police⁸³—betrays the war mentality still dominating ZANU-PF leadership. All these “political policemen” report to Mugabe directly rather than to their commanding officers. When the station head is a professional officer, his orders might be overruled by a deputy or junior officer who is a War Vet, especially when incidents on white-owned farms or politically motivated violence are involved. As if a legitimate excuse, the phrase “it is political” became the customary, official response when police were criticized for inaction as the crisis mounted. More War Vets and ZANU-PF youth were recruited by the police, hastily trained, and dispatched in the rural areas prior to the presidential election at a time when scores of professional policemen had left the force. Through these changes in both personnel and behavior the ZRP was transformed into another de facto party militia and all pretense of impartiality has been dropped. On several occasions, assistant police commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena professed no knowledge of cases of assault and torture documented by NGOs and lately cynically dismissed numerous reports of politically motivated rapes as “cheap propaganda,” when in fact many victims who reported to the police were sent back and told that they or their parents should not have voted for the wrong party. The police as a major institution of the state has been compromised and corrupted for political expediency, thus destroying the underlying basis of the rule of law. The police nowadays tend to ignore court orders when they are opposed to the government’s interests, and they see themselves increasingly as being above the courts.

The same process has affected other branches of the state. Army generals see themselves as above the law since the abduction and torture of two independent journalists by military intelligence in January 1999. Officers suspected of supporting the opposition have been removed from commanding positions, sometimes paid their salary but with no duties to perform, or transferred to lower-status postings. Others have been forced into early retirement, while less qualified former guerrillas were promoted ahead of them.⁸⁴ The promotion of noncommissioned and junior officers on the basis of political loyalty rather than professional ability has eroded the army as an institution of the state. In the process the amalgamated national army created in 1980 is being transformed into a partisan private army to serve Mugabe’s interests.

Other segments of the public service have been targeted by retribution violence and have ceased to function normally, including the educational system with about 48 rural schools closed down by mid-2002 in various parts of the country—since assaulted or raped teachers had fled to safety—especially in MDC electoral strongholds. The health care delivery system and several rural councils were also affected. However, the lack of funds and shortage of qualified people also played a role in the collapse of these services. The idea was to destroy MDC’s local organization to leave no dissenting voice in the rural areas so that government officials (including chiefs and headmen on the government payroll) would cow the people into voting for Mugabe, but the purge went on until well after the presidential ballot. The district administrators of Matobo and Umzingwane—who are the representatives of the state in the local arena—were pushed out of their offices by War Vets in July 2002 after Minister Chombo accused civil servants of delaying the land redistribution exercise. As in a Maoist-style “Cultural Revolution,” nobody is untouchable except Mugabe’s inner circle. Thus continuing violence is eroding the effectiveness of state institutions. Zimbabwe was, up until the mid-1990s, a relatively well administered state in comparison with many African countries (petty corruption was contained, law and regulations were enforced and records more or less kept), but in the future, incompetence and arbitrary rule might prevail. Violence is also damaging the fabric of society, undermining values such as justice, truth, and accountability. The longer this situation endures the more strenuous it will be to restore law and order afterward. Under these circumstances the government is likely to find that it has opened a Pandora’s box that will be hard to close again.

Civil War or Militarized Autocracy?

A neglected aspect of the crisis so far is the potential loss of control by Mugabe and his lieutenants of these party militias created to fight the opposition and chase the whites away from the land. Although the government had no difficulty in reining in War Vets from invading businesses in Harare when it suited its interests, this does not mean that the state could evict them from the farms or disband them without provoking violent reactions. State-sponsored violence might then evolve into outright anarchy in the wake of the state collapse if not into a full-fledged civil war.

After the death of Hunzvi, the ZNLWVA was rocked by quarrels between individuals who vied for the top job (Andrew Ndlovu, Andy Mhlanga, Patrick Nyaruwata, or even Harare-based Joseph Chinotimba) and by corruption scandals. It transpired that the mismanagement of Zexcom, the ZNLWVA investment fund in which most members had invested the gratuities received in 1997, would cost most members their savings. ZANU-PF strategists preferred to delay the ZNLWVA congress, which was due to elect a new chairman, and they confirmed Hunzvi’s deputy as the acting chairman. In late July 2002, the inquiry into the misappropriation of ZNLWVA’s funds led to the imprisonment for embezzlement of Andrew Ndlovu,⁸⁵ the acting chairman. Hunzvi had also been charged with defrauding Zexcom of Z$3 million. Factional strife among the War Vets was a logical development of the competition for spoils but may also have been fanned by the CIO as a control technique. Although there were places like Nkayi and Lupane in Matabeleland North where the local chapters of ZNLWVA were less prone to violence during the parliamentary election campaign,⁸⁶ this situation changed radically later and these two districts saw the worst incidents of violence during the presidential ballot. Some of the War Vets’ victims mention Ndebele speakers alongside Shona speakers among their torturers, thus indicating that wartime political cleavages were less relevant among ex-combatants. This does not necessarily preclude an ethnic rift from developing in the future.

As ZNLWVA squabbles proceeded, a movement that had begun during the farm invasions developed very rapidly: every district chairman or local prominent War Vet became a law on to himself and tended to act independently from the organization’s leaders in Harare. If the Third Chimurenga was a new kind of war, some of the War Vets certainly behaved like local “warlords”—a media catchword to suggest autonomy and paramount authority in a certain territory. A notable example was former army captain “Comrade Chiweshe,” who terrorized the Marondera farming area during election campaigns, acting as if he was the true local government authority, helped by young militiamen to implement his decisions. Others enjoying various degrees of autonomy were “Comrade Jesus” in Kariba and “Biggie” Chitoro in Mberengwa. Taking their line from mysterious national directives coming from Harare, War Vets masquerading as “land committees” made arbitrary decisions regarding farms: closing down offices and schools, sacking civil servants and teachers, and, without any proof, telling people that laws and statutory instruments had been rescinded. The district administrator was usually powerless to stop them.

Farm invaders ceased to be paid daily allowances, as had been the case at the beginning of the invasions, because the government ran out of funds. The War Vets invented various strategies to secure new sources of income: extorting payment from frightened farmworkers for ZANU-PF cards that never materialized, selling “permits” to communal farmers and other hangers-on applying for plots of land, selling crops (an estimated 50 percent of the maize crop in 2001 was stolen or destroyed by squatters) and equipment impounded on the farms, and later, “managing” food aid. In so doing, their interests were competing with those of the ZANU-PF “big men” who intensified their land-grabbing after the presidential poll. On several occasions after March 2002 squatters were evicted by the riot police when they were told that the farm they had occupied was “earmarked” for a party official or a general. It became impossible to ignore the prospect of violent confrontations between government and embittered militias.

After two years of activity, ZANU-PF militias became accustomed to enjoying impunity when beating, looting, and robbing alleged MDC supporters, especially as the police pronounced them “untouchable.” The “green bombers” frequently complained quite openly that they had not been paid—being provided only with food and beer (and some say drugs)—and claiming that their crucial role in Mugabe’s election victory had not been adequately rewarded. Many had joined the National Youth Service because they were unemployed school graduates or had lost their jobs. The promised positions in the army, police, or civil service were not forthcoming (although some were hastily drafted into the police to enforce the August 2002 farmers’ evictions). They have been increasingly driven to use their special status for survival and behave like criminal gangs, especially in urban townships. For example, a militia group attempted in July 2002 to extort “security fees” from vendors at the Mbare Musika vegetable market in Harare.⁸⁷ Violence is becoming a way of life for these young people⁸⁸ in a process similar to the building up of militias in other war-torn African countries.

War veterans do not form a social class or even a cohesive group interacting as such with government and party leaders. Indeed, many genuine former combatants of the liberation war do not feel represented by the ZNLWVA criminal leaders⁸⁹ and disapprove of the organization’s endorsement of ZANU-PF’s political agenda and the War Vets’ thuggish behavior. Some regrouped in May 2000 to form the Zimbabwe Liberators’ Platform (ZLP) with a view to challenging ZANU-PF’s monopolization of the liberation legacy. Their spokesman, Wilfred Mhanda (alias Dzinashe Machingura in the war), was a former ZANLA commander victimized by Mugabe.⁹⁰ Mhanda claims that the bad publicity attracted by ZNLWVA’s violent actions, which put the war veterans in disrepute, prompted him with his colleagues to form the ZLP. At the outset, he said, most members of the organization, who “range from company directors, to magistrates, to high-ups in the army and the police …even within the intelligence services,” are now sympathetic to the MDC although not aligned with it. They hoped for its victory in the past elections and claimed to support a democratic constitution and the restoration of the rule of law. Some war veterans even joined the MDC, such as Sarodzi Chavakanaka (alias Zulu in the war), a former intelligence officer for ZANLA who retired from Mugabe’s presidential guard in 1997 and became an MDC organizer in Mashonaland Central in April 2000. So effective was he that Joyce Mujuru allegedly offered a reward for his assassination.⁹¹

Conflict Scenarios and the Army’s Role

The Mugabe clique’s war of attrition against the MDC increasingly tested the party’s commitment to a legalist and peaceful course of action. The number of violent incidents initiated by MDC people rose significantly during the parliamentary by-elections in 2001 and the presidential and Kadoma mayoral elections in 2002—though still far below violence coming from the other side—and there were more ZANU-PF/ZNLWVA members among the casualties. Cases of arson on ZANU-PF activists’ properties were also on the increase. MDC supporters were desperate after years of suffering and three stolen elections, and some MDC youths and a good number of party cadres wanted to fight back. As matter of fact, many MDC activists were defectors from ZANU-PF who carried with them the ruling party’s culture of intolerance and violence. This violent behavior was also manipulated by certain party leaders to settle scores in internal squabbles, and, as we will see, it played a role in the split of the MDC in 2006. However, the ruling party might also split along regional/tribal lines. Contending factions led by regional “big men” are likely to fight over shrinking economic resources and attempts to preempt Mugabe’s succession. Therefore, a civil war would not necessarily pit the MDC against ZANU-PF but rather various factions of disintegrating political parties.

The future attitude of the army will be crucial in this respect. Certain units like the presidential guard division have already participated in retributive violence in Harare high-density suburbs in late 2000. Elements from the air force were used to quell a strike in August 2001 and to occupy the local MDC MP farm in Chimanimani. Some soldiers were also seen beating up people in Masvingo in the run-up to the mayoral election. Others were seen manning roadblocks alongside the CIO and the police. However, it is difficult to establish the facts accurately because CIO operatives sometimes dress as uniformed police or military as a cover: it is in the regime’s interest to project the impression of a police and an army united behind ZANU-PF if only to preclude dissidence in these corps. The head of ZNA and now chief of staff general Constantine Chiwenga toured the barracks prior to the presidential elections to urge the military to vote for Mugabe. The commanders of the armed forces claimed before the 2002 and 2008 presidential elections that they would not salute Tsvangirai if he won. There has been a policy of politicizing the army ever since Independence, especially during the Matabeleland “disturbances” when ZANLA elements in the integrated national army illegally discharged ZIPRA ex-combatants, including superiors in rank, and were promoted according to their political loyalty.⁹² War Vets leaders had threatened to “declare a military government” if the MDC won the parliamentary and then the presidential elections and vowed to fight to defend ZANU-PF.⁹³ Promotion in the military and the police force, and even the prison corps, favored former ZANLA guerrillas politically loyal to the president. The upper levels in the military establishment share with ZANU-PF politicians and high-ranking civil servants the same political culture and they have the same vested interest in perpetuating Mugabe’s regime.

There have been, however, some signs of sympathy for the opposition: some army rank and file waved in support to NCA/MDC demonstrations in 2000, and some army units intervened to stop ZANU-PF violence in the run-up to the parliamentary elections in Mashonaland Central. There was also sporadic unrest in the barracks after the intervention in the DRC, rumors of mutinies in late 1998, and protests over the high level of casualties. Only a minority of high-ranking or well-connected officers got rich from business deals in the DRC and the prevailing mood among the military was probably not at variance with public opinion: most soldiers suffer as much as the rest of the people from the inflation and the food shortages. In July 2001, according to the South African press, some unnamed junior brigadiers had offered to depose Mugabe if they received South Africa’s political and logistical support. Mbeki is said to have rejected this proposal as premature, too risky, and projecting a bad international image. Whether the story is genuine or not, the dissatisfaction of the military from junior brigadiers down to privates has increased along with the worsening economic and social situation. The ZLP offered to broker contacts between the MDC and the army chiefs like Perence Shiri or retired general Solomon Mujuru to have them switch sides, to no avail. Conversely, staging a coup is made more difficult by the army’s organizational structure:⁹⁴ distribution of food rations, fuel, and ammunition is closely monitored on a short-term basis to control the units’ operational autonomy. Planning even limited troop movements would quickly attract suspicion from headquarters.

Besides, the military intelligence is fully at work to uproot any feeling of dissent or unrest in the defense forces, as was apparent in the unlawful detention and torture of the two Zimbabwe Standard journalists in 1999. In addition the government tries to keep the armed forces happy to be able to rely on them to nip in the bud any popular uprising. Provisions for defense in the state budget have always been high since independence to keep the generals happy. Army and police personnel’s wages were raised significantly before parliamentary and presidential elections, again in April 2006 and July 2007 (by 900 percent!).⁹⁵ However, these pay rises failed to catch up with inflation, and there have been reports of army and CIO personnel resorting to crime to make up for their shrinking income while others deserted to South Africa.⁹⁶ Some officers have also been rewarded with land as more and more farms were confiscated after 2002. In August 2006 the government spent millions of foreign currencies to buy cars for middle level police and army officers to buy their loyalty to the regime.⁹⁷ By mid-2006 the army had recruited new soldiers to expand the existing force of 30,000 to 35,000.⁹⁸ However, Mugabe does not need many troops to shoot disarmed civilians; he can rely on his presidential guard and the 20,000 ZANU-PF youth militias, which have been used in the past to quell opposition protest marches.

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.