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
July 16, 2007
Zimbabweans must be proactively engaged in their own liberation from Mugabe
One question that will haunt Zimbabweans for the rest of their lives is: How on earth did they allow a senile 83-year-old Robert Mugabe, aka Matibili Mugabe, to destroy the country and its people? How could they passively stand by while Mugabe and ZANUPF wreaked havoc and committed crimes against humanity with such impunity?
If Robert Mugabe and his ZANUPF gang were to stand trial for crimes against humanity the judge would order their immediate psychiatric examination.
Many people would agree that no one in his right mind would engage in wanton, wholesale and systematic destruction of Zimbabwe the way Mugabe and ZANUPF are doing.
Another equally mind boggling phenomenon is that 11 million Zimbabweans would apparently allow Mugabe and his barbarians, for that is what ZANUPF has become, to reduce the country to rubble and transform Zimbabweans into a Stone Age existence. How else would you describe life for the people in the heart of Harare or Bulawayo and who have to cut down trees for firewood to cook their meals? Urban Zimbabweans have to buy maize from an underground parallel market and take maize to grinding mills. They now use the infamous primus stove and have to go to unsanitary wells to look for water. To find a similar lifestyle in history one would have to go back to the 1930s and 40s!
Zimbabweans are now both victims and bystanders in Mugabe’s acts of madness.
Could this apathy among the Zimbabweans be a reflection of a loss of faith in the political system and participatory democracy? It is possible, given the complete U-turn by Mugabe and ZANUPF from the pre-independence nationalists who spoke so generously, passionately and vociferously about the anti-colonial struggle for the restoration of democratic rights of the people of Zimbabwe to the tyrannically dictators who have stripped the same Zimbabweans of virtually all their rights in the post- colonial era.
It is also possible that Zimbabweans no longer listen with a great deal of enthusiasm and credibility to the opposition rhetoric about the restoration of basic human rights and democracy after Mugabe is gone and buried in the dustbin of history. It takes a long time for a woman who has been brutally gang-raped to regain enough confidence in men to fall in love again.
Political texts, narratives and notions of popular democracy, free and fair elections and the rule of law have become clichés in people’s mindset, given their experience with the turn-coat politics of Mugabe.
Mugabe’s dementia and a string of broken promises have become a textbook case for the way people view politics and the political leadership. This has given birth to public apathy and skepticism that the political grass is greener on the other side of the mountain.
When the opposition leadership calls for mass action Zimbabweans have characteristically ignored such efforts to free them from the tyranny of Mugabe. Yet when Mugabe’s thugs go forcing businesses to reduce prices to unprofitable levels Zimbabweans find energy and enthusiasm to follow the Pied Piper in a frantic search for bargains.
These are also the same Zimbabweans who, two years ago, fought running battles with the police for seven hours just because they were not allowed to watch a free football game in Bulawayo! Yet they seem reluctant to channel such energy toward confronting Mugabe.
Given the level of abject poverty and unemployment to which Zimbabweans have been reduced, there is nothing wrong in searching for places where consumer goods are being sold for less.
But Zimbabweans seem to have lost the sense that what they are being offered as a bargain today comes with the heavy price of commodity shortages tomorrow as businesses refuse to restock or even close down. Zimbabweans have focused on a short- term gratification without considering the long-term consequences of Mugabe’s insane policies.
The distortions in the Zimbabwean mindset have to do with their enthusiasm, exuberance and energy in marching en masse for bargains, yet refusing to heed the calls for mass action to get rid of the very cause of their misery and pauperization.
In this action of forced commodity prices Mugabe has been at pains to appear as if he really cares about the plight of the Zimbabweans. He has been quick to make propaganda out of this in the hope that people will somehow vote for him in the next elections.
But with his Machiavellian state of mind, Mugabe knows that he cannot rely solely on people’s change of heart in his favor, if ever this will happen. This is why he is going full speed ahead with rigging plans for the next elections.
However, many analysts will argue that the reason Zimbabweans will not take to the streets in mass demonstrations is they have seen and experienced what Mugabe can do if anyone tried to oppose him. Mugabe’s thugs have, with unprecedented ruthlessness and savagery, killed maimed, tortured, and raped members of the opposition. They are fully armed and have the full support of police and the army.
Some of the soldiers and police have also participated in this orgy of violence and intimidation against the Zimbabwean masses.
On this basis, analysts have lost any hope that Zimbabweans will rise and use their strength in numbers to confront Mugabe through mass demonstrations.
But this kind of logic is tantamount to condemning Zimbabweans to passive objects of manipulation by powers that be. It becomes the psychological justification for the notion of rule by sheer force, that if you have the army and militia thugs you have the people nicely wrapped around your finger and you can practically do whatever you want.
This logic is not supported by history. People have indeed revolted against their oppressors.
While the situation in apartheid South Africa was ultimately resolved through negotiations, the Mass Democratic Movement that was formed in the 1980s mobilized the oppressed people of South Africa around the theme “Let us make South Africa ungovernable.”
The world watched TV images of masses engaged in running battles with the apartheid regime‘s brutal police force and army. Earlier in 1976 the school children of Soweto had staged a heroic demonstration against being forced to learn in Afrikaans.
In recent years thousands of people demonstrated in Togo against what they saw as rigged election results. A similar demonstration was carried out in Madagascar, Haiti and Kyrgyzstan. As a result, all the rulers in these countries were effectively ejected from power.
In all these countries the regimes had very strong and determined police force and army units. But with all their arsenal of weapons they could not subdue the rising tide of mass demonstrations.
Some people have defensively argued that the situations in these countries were different from Zimbabwe.
Not surprisingly, according to the logic of the apologists for inaction, wherever and whenever a mass demonstration occurs in any part of the world the situation in those countries will invariably be different from Zimbabwe. It's almost like Zimbabweans are a very different breed and type of humanity, more like sheep!
The irony of it all is that Mugabe’s own intelligence chiefs do not see Zimbabweans as docile. This is why they have repeatedly warned Mugabe that if Zimbabweans were to stage a mass demonstration they could topple Mugabe and his regime.
The army and intelligence chiefs are aware of their limitations in keeping people suppressed. They realize that there will be a triggering event that will unleash the tidal wave of popular protest and they know that the soldiers or the thugs they command will not be able to contain that tide, no matter how much mind numbing drugs they are force-fed.
The military chiefs have also acknowledged that if the opposition leadership were to put together a common strategy they could mobilize the 11 million Zimbabweans into a successful overthrow of the Mugabe regime.
But they were not advising Mugabe to relax or abolish his draconian laws. On the contrary, they were recommending that Mugabe must take immediate and effective pre-emptive measures, like arresting key leaders in the opposition movement to prevent mass demonstrations as well as to instill and institutionalize fear among the Zimbabweans.
The opposition and civil service leadership must not engage in apologist notions like the people of Zimbabwe ‘are too poor or too oppressed militarily to stage mass demonstrations’ against Mugabe.
It is the responsibility of the leaders to always carry high the flame of hope and resistance. They must continue to drum into their supporters the message and ideology of mass resistance and mass action against Mugabe even when all hope appears lost.
To their credit, some in the opposition leadership have been in the forefront of demonstrations which, most regrettably, have not attracted thousands of followers. But this should not discourage the leadership. The leader of the resistance movement in Portuguese Guinea Bissau, Amilcar Cabral wrote in a letter to his followers: “Expect no quick or easy victories.”
There is already a silent war of attrition in Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans have the numbers and the time. Mugabe has neither. Let the leadership of the opposition movement build upon these facts a solid foundation for popular resistance.
The so-called talks between ZANUPF and MDC and apathy among Zimbabweans are not, so far, leading to a resolution of the crisis. Armed resistance is out of the question. Participating in elections is a futile exercise when those elections are guaranteed to be neither free nor fair and are rigged.
So what is left? It does not take a great deal of imagination that mass resistance and civil disobedience are the only viable option left for the opposition and the masses if they want to be actively involved in regaining their freedom, democracy, and basic human rights from the Mugabe tyrannical regime; and in the construction of the agenda for a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.
If Zimbabweans continue with their apathy, and if Mugabe falls as a result of the economy or dissension within ZANUPF, Zimbabweans could be marginalized in the shaping of the post- Mugabe era. If this happens, they will have no one to blame but themselves.
If Mugabe were to lose political power today or in the immediate future under circumstances that did not involve popular resistance or vote the Zimbabwean’s jubilation could be a premature, or even misplaced, hope and anticipation for their emancipation.
ENDS