3. The Post Independence state as a burden and challenge
The post-independence state derived its legitimacy from two factors, namely, the legacy of anti-colonial struggle and its broad developmentalist social Program.
13 This, however, did not stop the state using coercive means to consolidate its support in areas where its support base was weak.
14
There was a contradiction in the behaviour of the state characterized by a popular level of consent as well as a distinctive coercive element. In political terms, this translated into strong controls over emerging citizen formations such as the labour, student and women's movements.
15 This behaviour by the state as well the security situation
16 in the country proscribed the spaces open to citizen groups at the local and national level.
The legacy of the liberation struggle ensured that the two liberation parties, ZANU PF and PF ZAPU, provided the only recognized framework for political and social organization in independent Zimbabwe. Thus, community development was enacted largely from above, steered by partisan citizen formations. The state sought to guide and enable a definite movement of voluntarism from below. Citizen formations in turn sought state and ruling party patronage, by framing their demands through a government friendly terms that were less threatening to the state. This paved the way for the creation of an authoritarian state founded upon forced consent and co-option of dissenting voices.
17 This facilitated the capture of the state by the new political elite and the collapse of national consensus on the vision, framework and processes of development.
18
IMF/World Bank Economic Reforms: The Markets as Liberators?
The demise of the Soviet Bloc and the resultant end of the cold war were accompanied by a number of defining events at the national and regional levels, such as the end of apartheid in South Africa, the fall of dictatorships in Zambia and Malawi and the introduction of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes (ESAP) in the 1990's. Paradoxically, these events created conditions conducive for political liberalization. ESAP, in particular, exacerbated the plight of many poor communities and thereby exposed the multi-faceted fractures in the social relations and structures in Zimbabwe. Hence the increased advocacy on questions of poverty, participation and governance. This new advocacy questioned the very basis of power in Zimbabwean society and thus initiated a protracted debate about democratization, the state and citizenship. It characterized social inequities and exclusions as aspects of limited citizenship.
19 In particular, it sought to establish the nature of barriers to participation in governance and decision-making faced by poor communities.
This politics of impoverishment was couched in the non-materialist discourse of human and citizenship rights to inclusion, participation and respect. There were sudden multiple demands upon the state from a multitude of citizen groups representing different constituencies such as women, war veterans, labour and cultural minorities all questioning the basis of their respective marginalisation in society. Citizen groups perceived the problem essentially as one of failed institutions and as a result, they seldom critiqued the practice of governance and politics. Another marked feature of this era was the propagation, implementation and defence of neo-liberalism by the left through the infamous SAP's.
20 SAP's were preceded by attempts to formally turn Zimbabwe into a one-party state in the years 1989 to 1990.
As intimated above, the impact of ESAP revitalized the formation of community-based associations dealing with critical issues such as housing, land, health and employment. Residents associations also re-surfaced in response to the poor performance of local government authorities (Loewenson et al, 1995: 3). This growth of community based citizen associations provided a popular base for resisting unpopular state policies in the late 1990s. These formations inevitably became the incubators of new oppositional politics in the late 1990s(Raftopolous, 2000.)
21
Democratization and the Constitution-Making Debate
A number of NGOs came together in 1995 to strategize about monitoring the parliamentary and presidential elections. It was in vogue those to talk broadly about consultation and participation of citizens in decision-making. This marked the beginning of the new wave of broad coalitions. It is this new broad front politics amongst citizen associations that informed the formation of the National Constitutional Assembly, NCA.
22
A critical by-product of the re-emergence of community based citizen associations in Zimbabwe was the renewed interest in Constitutionalism and constitution making.
23 Notably similar trends occurred throughout Africa in the 1990s, in places like Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and South Africa.
The South African attempt to reconstitute the nation through facilitating a process through which plural communities articulated collective national visions for designing and promoting democratic values became both a challenge and problem for Zimbabwe.
24 This entailed educating the populace, drawing attention to existing social contradictions and generally promoting a new culture of tolerance, inclusion, participation and democratization. In this, South Africa presented both a challenge and example to Zimbabwe.
25
In Zimbabwe, participatory constitutionalism was used by the non-state sector to mobilize the populace to resolve the legacies of dictatorship and to establish a new agenda for growth and development or what others simply called "change".
In early 2000, the NCA 26 led a campaign for the rejection of a new draft constitution, which would have entrenched the powers of the country's executive President, Mr R.G. Mugabe. Against expectation, the campaign was successful and the draft constitution was resoundingly rejected in a nation-wide referendum. A parliamentary general election was due to be held in mid-2000 and, seeing a threat to its hold on power, ZANU (PF) set out to smash
27 all oppositional voices in the rural areas of Zimbabwe. Generally unchecked by the government's law enforcement agencies, gangs of state sponsored militants led by war veterans invaded commercial farms, terrorised villagers and set up bases and torture centres round the country. This manifestation of political violence is part of long history of impunity dating back to the process of colonisation and subsequent colonial rule.
The genesis of the current political crisis
Following its loss in the February 2000 Constitutional Referendum, ZANU PF embarked on a desperate bid to recreate itself as a revolutionary vanguard party. This attempt at self-recreation, of necessity had to be centred around the recreation of Robert Mugabe as the post-modern Nkwameh Nkrumah, "A Man of the People?"
This effort at self-recreation was not the product of a policy blueprint, but a knee jerk reaction to an ebbing power base. Hence, the instinctive resort to liberation war strategies of using coercion as a tool of mobilisation. ZANU PF set up infrastructure for the purposes of supervising and monitoring rural communities. This infrastructure of violence, supervision and surveillance was set-up with the opposition in mind .A concerted effort was made to make the rural areas protected zones in which oppositional voices were criminalized.
Containment of the opposition alone was not enough to safeguard ZANU PF's ebbing power base. So, ZANU PF embarked on a programme to neutralise the critical arms of state such as the judiciary, parliament, disciplined forces and media.
ZANU PF also relapsed into a vicious authoritarian nationalist discourse that dismissed the arguments of the rule of law and human rights as vain attempts to preserve settler privilege or imperialism in new guise. It abandoned respect for the sanctity of formal arms of government and set up parallel structures run by youth militia and war veterans. These parallel structures were not subject to constitutionally defined rules nor were they accountable under any legislation. They were a law unto themselves and owed their allegiance to only one constituency, the state president.
This infrastructure of violence, supervision and surveillance became the main vehicle through which the rural and farming communities were immobilized and condoned off .It also permitted for unprecedented levels of political violence and gross human rights violations.
Political Violence and Intimidation
As indicated above, the current cycle of violence began in February 2000 with the politically inspired invasion of commercial farms by war veterans. The invasions were purportedly aimed at redressing racial imbalance in the ownership of land. Press reports at the time gave prominence to attacks on white farmers thereby deflecting attention from what amounted to a countrywide terror campaign conducted largely by militants of the ruling ZANU (PF) party against perceived MDC sympathisers and supporters.
This widespread violence did not prevent the MDC from winning 47 per cent of the vote in the parliamentary elections held in June 2000, and securing 57 out of 120 contested seats. This result confirmed the magnitude of the threat to ZANU (PF)'s hold on power.
The violence caused heavy casualties. At least 45 MDC officials and party supporters had been killed by December 2001. For only two of these killings are suspects facing trial. Leaders of the MDC were physically attacked and received death threats. MDC Members of Parliament and parliamentary candidates were attacked in their homes. They and members of their families were injured and had their property destroyed. Thousands of MDC supporters were sought out and attacked by militias'. Others were abducted to be tortured. Hundreds others were severely assaulted and thousands were forced to flee from their rural areas and become internal refugees.
Educated people in the rural areas were (and still are) suspected of sympathising with the MDC, and as a result, many teachers, doctors, social workers, civil servants and nurses were forced to flee to urban areas. Government employees were transferred at the insistence of the war veterans. War veterans warned rural hospitals and clinics not to offer medical treatment to MDC supporters.
28
The Legacy of Impunity
The war veterans and members of their militias were encouraged to believe they were immune from legal responsibility for their actions. They were fortified in this belief by amnesties granted to them by the government, in particular an amnesty granted in October 2000
29 which pardoned all politically-motivated crimes committed in the run-up to that year's elections, except crimes of murder, rape and fraud. And perpetrators of even those crimes enjoyed de facto immunity from prosecution since more often than not the police turned a blind eye to their activities.
Law enforcement agencies became increasingly partisan, to the extent that the government's perceived opponents could expect almost no protection from the law. Police officers who sought to carry out their duties professionally and on a non-partisan basis were forced to resign or were transferred. Large numbers of war veterans were recruited into the police force and many of them actually or effectively commanded (and still command) rural police stations. The Commissioner of Police is an avowed supporter of the ruling party. Hence the reluctance of the police to act against ZANU (PF) militants responsible for attacking MDC supporters and their swiftness to arrest MDC supporters who engaged in retaliatory violence.
The perpetrators' belief in their immunity was encouraged and re-enforced by, leading members of the ruling ZANU PF party who repeatedly proclaimed that the MDC would never be allowed to come to power in Zimbabwe and that a war would be waged against it. Thus in December 2000 Mr Mugabe told a ZANU (PF) congress that the commercial farmers had "declared war" on the people of Zimbabwe, that the white man was "not indigenous" to Africa and was part of an "evil alliance."
He urged, "We must continue to strike fear into the heart of the white man, our real enemy". These sentiments were echoed by other prominent members of the ruling party.
Footnotes:
- The Independence State's first five-year development plan entailed an aggressive programme to build schools, hospitals, roads and dams. Primary education as well as medical care was made free for the poorer sections of the community and virtually free in all other state institutions.
- The new government had very little support in areas of Matabeleland and the Midlands, which were ZAPU strongholds. Throughout the eighties, these areas became subjected to state sponsored violence and gross human rights violations of varying degrees.
- In 1985, the state passed the Labour Relations Amendment Act (Chapter 28:01), which proscribed severely the operations of labour unions and placed them under the effective control of the state. In 1990, the State passed the University of Zimbabwe Act (Chapter 26:01), which provided for the arbitrary expulsion of students and members of staff for broadly political reasons. In 1996, the government passed the Private Voluntary Organisations Act to control the activities of NGO's.
- See the CCJP/LRF authored Breaking the Silence Report, 1998 which documents how the state extra-judicially executed in excess of 20 000 civilians in the Midlands /Matabeleland during the years 1981-1987 under the guise of maintenance of state security.
- There was actually a failed move towards a dejure one-party state between the years 1987 to 1990. This move was foiled by the formation of Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) and ferocious opposition by organised labour and the student's movement.
- This capture of the state by social forces aligned to Zanu PF is what I have explained as substitutionalism.
- Clearly, citizenship from the majority black population became limited since the inception of the colonial state in 1894. The colonial limitation was premised on race and in the post-colony, on political association. In the critique of the socio-economic inequities confronting Zimbabwe, race is the easiest scape-goat It is easier and safer to suggest that the black masses continue to suffer, not owing to poor governance, but because they were colonised by whites. This spectre of a permanent 'white evil' is consistently used to shield the incumbent regime from scrutiny by citizens, regional and international community.
- ESAP was a program of the IMF and World Bank.
- The MDC was formed by individuals who were leaders of organised labour, the students' movement and the constitutional lobby. Hence Zanu PF's reference to the' unholy alliance' between the MDC and civic formations.
- There were other critical coalitions such as the Women's Coalition, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network; the NGO-Human Rights Forum and the Church-NGO Forum.
- The constitutional debate was an entry point into the discussion of politics of reform in Zimbabwe .It questioned the manner in which Zimbabwe was being governed .A sub-intended result of this was questioning Mugabe's leadership and the general need for political change.
- Challenge because Zimbabwe had not gone through a similar process of nation building and soul-searching .A problem because the Zimbabwean political elite was unwilling to avail Zimbabweans a similar opportunity. This became the source of conflict and polarisation that attended the Constitution Making process in Zimbabwe between the years 1998 and 2000.
- This was particularly true of its approach to truth, justice and reconciliation. Zimbabwe is an equally divided society with a very violent history. Unlike South Africa, Zimbabweans have never been accorded the opportunity to reflect on this past collectively.
- It is out of the NCA and ZCTU alliance that the leadership of the MDC was drawn.
- It is no exaggeration to use this word. The President, Mr Mugabe, has boasted that his followers "have degrees in violence", and in March 2000 is reported as having said: "Those who try to cause disunity among our people must watch out because death will befall them."
- The incidents of violence are recorded in reports produced by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (their website is www.hrforumzim.com) and in volumes 3 to 5 of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Bulletin, produced by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights.
- Clemency Order No. 1 of 2000, published in General Notice 457A of 2000.
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