Zimbabwe Information Center in North America
A project of the North American Coalition for a Free Zimbabwe (NACFREEZ)
MDC
By Stanford G. Mukasa
Letter from America
December 3, 2007
ZANUPF’s million- man woman march circus
Attempts by the self styled so-called war veterans to stage what they called a million- man woman march in support of Robert Mugabe amounted to a desperate act by the ageing dictator to show the world that he still has support in the country.
Mugabe’s propaganda machinery was agog with showing pictures of what they called millions of Zimbabweans who had ostensibly gathered from all corners of Zimbabwe to express solidarity with their besieged president.
And when the pictures of the crowds were splashed around the world through the Internet Mugabe’s apologists were eager to give the count at more than one million.
Some of them went as far as two and half million!
That would amount to about 20 percent of the population who turned up.
Mugabe’s propaganda machinery must have gotten a lot of satisfaction that some media outside Zimbabwe published figures that varied from 200,000 to as high as 800,000. While not exactly one million, these figures were considered high enough to bring home the point that Mugabe still has significant support in the country.
But what was the real truth about this so called million- man -woman march?
First, an analysis of the pictures showed beyond reasonable doubt that the crowd was nowhere near one million.
Some eyewitnesses gave an estimate of between 10,000 and 50 000.
But even more revealing was the great lengths to which Mugabe’s thugs went to get even 10,000 people to attend.
Insider sources said that Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, Gideon Gono, had provided billions of dollars to fund the demonstration. Some put the amount of support at as a high as $400 billion. This money went mostly to pay the army of organizers, some of whom had been recruited from the unemployed youths in a country were four out of every five Zimbabweans are unemployed.
The so-called war veterans, or more appropriately, the militia thugs got a lion’s share of this windfall from Gono.
This is the same government that said it did not have money to give salary increases to the striking magistrates as well as other civil service employees.
ZANUPF is a bankrupt organization and relies very heavily on taxpayers’ money for its operations. Under the hierarchy of command the party is supreme. Government takes orders from ZANUPF’s politburo.
As a result, top ZANUPF officials can dip into the Reserve Bank anytime and take as much money as they want for party or even personal business. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has in effect become the Reserve Bank of ZANUPF and Gono is no more that the party’s accountant who dutifully takes his orders from his ZANUPF bosses.
But ZANUPF went beyond hiring buses to bring people to Harare. There are reports that the ZANUPF youth thugs commandeered buses full of passengers and ordered them to the venue of the meeting.
A close analysis of the so called million- man -woman march pictures showed that few people were actually singing and dancing. The rest were following like sheep with expressionless faces, indicating a high degree of coercion or forced attendance.
An observer noted that trucks which had no permits to carry people were arriving with expressionless and somber people who had been cramped like sardines. There were unceremoniously dumped and force -marched to join the crowds.
In a remarkable, contrast rallies organized by the MDC have drawn thousands of people, despite threats and intimidation against attending from Mugabe’s thugs. Last year’s MDC congress, which was held in face of all efforts by Mugabe’s regime to minimize attendance, brought an estimated 17,000 people.
Even after bus operators had been threatened their road permits would be withdrawn if they ferried MDC supporters people flocked in from around the nation.
One man from a remote area in Binga reportedly sold his goat to raise money to come to Harare. This showed that a determined people can overcome threats and intimidation.
ZANUPF army, police, or thugs can never succeed in coercively mobilizing all the Zimbabweans into these pseudo marches in support of Mugabe. This is evidenced by the fact they failed to mobilize one million people.
By all estimates among independent observers, the numbers of the people who attended Mugabe’s rally fell way below expectations. There is among the Zimbabweans a large reservoir of resistance to Mugabe regime.
In the case of Mugabe’s so-called million- man -woman march there were also reports of widespread intimidation. As the gangs of thugs moved around, especially in rural areas, it is reported that they told the villagers that they were preparing lists of people who attended and those who did not.
Anyone who was not on the list of those who attended would be dealt with severely.
The thugs threatened to deny food as well as to evict or destroy the property of the villagers who opted not to go the march. Many of these thugs have been trained at the so-called Border Gezi schools under the guise of national service. But, as some of defectors have repeatedly revealed, these institutions train the ideology of ZANUPF as the only legitimate representative of the people of Zimbabwe.
Other institutions are regarded as stooges of imperialism and the so called reactionary forces. It is also well known that these thugs are organized to spy on each other. This way each of the thugs is aware that they cannot afford to deviate from their instructions in intimidating the villagers in particular.
These strong-arm tactics are now well known and documented
The so-called million- man -woman march showed two things.
First, Mugabe now has to take extraordinary efforts including the use of thugs and intimidation to bring people to his rallies. This is a very clear indication that Mugabe has now lost the support of most Zimbabweans.
Secondly, Mugabe will not hesitate to use violence to get what he wants. This has been the characteristic feature of his self -imposed rule in the past 27 years.
A top ZANUPF official reportedly dismissed suggestions of intimidation. He pointed to the crowds and said there was no way ZANUPF could coerce so many people to come to its rally. But deep down in his heart this official knew very well that plans for this million march started about a month or more ago and part of the strategy was to threaten people with dire consequences if they did not show up for the rally.
The same official also chose to ignore that ZANUPF had, through these militia thugs, commandeered the national transportation systems, buses and trains, and had ordered some businesses to shut down in order to force people to go to the rally.
The fact that the militia thugs, who have a reputation of violence, were used made the ZANUPF threats believable in the minds of the people.
What if ZANUPF had not resorted to measures to arm-twist people to turn up for the rally? How many people would actually have come on their own volition? Mugabe would have been lucky if he got a handful.
And the highly inflated figures of people who attended shows how desperate Mugabe is to gain national and international attention that he has significant support in the country.
In some respect Mugabe appears to have succeeded. Some commentators now say MDC stands no chance of wining the next elections even if they were reasonably free and fair. They argue that divisions within the party and constant bickering have not only turned people away from the MDC but also split their votes between the two factions.
There is merit in the proposition that lack of a common front among the opposition movement is a political liability for the MDC.
But there is no real evidence that there will be a mass defection of votes from the MDC to ZANUPF at the next elections.
Mugabe and ZANUPF have driven Zimbabweans into a Stone Age existence. The national infrastructure and its institutions lie in ruins, and people are having to rifle through the rubble of a failed state and a failed economy to salvage whatever they can.
People are also aware that Robert Mugabe and ZANUPF are the direct and primary cause of their malaise. They are aware their lives and those of their children have been ruined by none other than Mugabe and ZANUPF.
Zimbabweans need no education to realize that the Zimbabwe ruins are no longer confined to a small area in Masvingo but are now the national character of Zimbabwe as a whole.
One proof of this is the heavy handedness by which Mugabe has treated Zimbabweans. If Zimbabweans are indeed shifting their votes towards ZANUPF, Mugabe would, in fact, be relaxing all the authoritarian controls he has unleashed on the country.
If Mugabe was really confident that support for the opposition has eroded he would right now be repealing the repressive legislation. Mugabe would be touring the country and holding rallies more frequently. He would be inviting foreign correspondents to see for themselves just how popular he is.
Notwithstanding the breadcrumbs of concessions he has so far given in the talks with the MDC, Mugabe is strengthening his rigging machinery.
This shows that he knows, and is well informed, that support for him dried up over 10 years ago, and that he has not won a single election in the past decade – the fact that he is still president is because of extensive rigging.
Mugabe has also been told that there were situations were it was simply difficult to rig because almost everyone voted against him. He was only rescued by an administrative decision by the military election directorate to award him the victory.
This explains why the ballot boxes have never been subject to an audit despite a number of successful high court challenges by the MDC.
One specialist who examined a sample of the voters roll was able to project that as many as one million votes which were counted in favor of Mugabe were all fraudulent.
That specialist has now been deported from Zimbabwe.
Some analysts are also hung up on the MDC split. They have predicted that the split will cost the MDC dearly at the polls. The Mutambara splinter faction has indicated it will field its own presidential candidate, which means the election will most likely be a three -way contest among Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara.
The problem with this prediction is the flawed assumption that when the MDC leadership split in October 2005 the party supporters were also split. But since the October split there has been no evidence of a clearly recognizable grassroots support for the Mutambara splinter group.
The rallies that both Mutambara and Tsvangirai have held have shown that Tsvangirai MDC has an overwhelming grassroots support, judging by the hundreds of thousands of people who attend his rallies.
Mutambara, on the other hand, has managed to draw in hundreds if not scores of supporters.
Another myth among analysts is that the split in October has weakened the MDC. Yet MDC has just this year had the political strength to bring Mugabe kicking and screaming to the conference table. And right now the MDC holds the veto power over the talks.
If ZANUPF does not meet MDC’s demands the opposition party delegation is walking out. If MDC was weak because of the split then this threat to walk out would not be taken seriously. Mugabe would be laughing at it. But Mugabe knows that next year’s elections will not be internationally recognized without the MDC’s participation.
Mugabe also knows that the split in the MDC did not weaken it sufficiently for him to manipulate, otherwise he would right now be encouraging the Tsvangirai -led MDC to walk out so he can reach a bilateral agreement with the unpopular Mutambara splinter group the way Ian Smith worked out a short-lived internal settlement with Bishop Abel Muzorewa’s African National Council and excluded ZANU and ZAPU.
Mugabe is painfully aware that when Zimbabweans vote at the next elections those who support the opposition movement are not likely to split their votes significantly between the two MDC candidates.
If attendance at the rallies for both MDC and ZANUPF is a measure of how Zimbabweans are likely to vote then there can be no doubt as to which candidate will emerge victoriously head and shoulders above the rest.
What will influence voters far more than anything else is who is responsible for their abject misery, poverty and the precipitous decline in the quality of life, soaring hyperinflation and massive unemployment.
There is a historic precedent to this.
Back in 1985 after Mugabe’s notorious Fifth Brigade had committed acts of genocide in Matabeleland the then ZANUPF top official, Enos Nkala, said the people of Matabeleland were now supporting ZANUPF. He even predicted a massive victory for ZANUPF in Matabeleland. To prove his point Nkala said ZANUPF membership cards were selling like hot cakes all over Matabeleland.
ZANUPF officials at the party’s regional office in Bulawayo were having a hard time meeting the demand for cards.
Yet, as the world knows, ZANUPPF suffered a heavy and humiliating defeat in Matabeleland in the 1985 general elections. The people had refused to be intimidated. They stood their grounds and punished ZANUPF for its atrocities in Matabeleland.
If elections are free and fair in 2008 the Zimbabwean nation is poised to deliver a punishing blow on Mugabe for the misery he has caused them. Mugabe is painfully aware of this. And this is why he will not dismantle his rigging machinery despite whatever agreements are reached in talks with the MDC.