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 30, 2007
Time to delegitimize and arrest Mugabe
The latest barbaric assault by Robert Mugabe’s police thugs on the members of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), especially women, some of whom had children on their backs, is further evidence that Zimbabwe is now being ruled by an increasingly ruthless gang of terrorists who have absolutely no respect for the sanctity, or constitutional rights of, human lives.
The extent of their savagery were bizarre reports that women were ordered by police to place their children at a corner and forced to lie face down for a marathon assault. All this happened in front of wailing and traumatized children! The irony of it all is that in previous beatings all the victims were acquitted by the courts. But they carry both the physical wounds of injury and the mental anguish. Their children will also grow up with these harrowing and haunting images of seeing their parents being brutalized.
Mugabe and ZANUPF’s strategy is obvious. Knowing they can never bring a sustainable case in courts, they are now resorting to routinely assaulting their victims.
The picture of the trigger happy police brutally assaulting NCA members is the latest among pictures of barbarism that have been flashed around the world. The world needs no convincing that Mugabe and ZANUPF are savage brutes who have dragged the country into one huge dungeon of oppression, torture and mayhem.
Incidentally, it was the very same Mugabe who circulated a memo to the world alleging that violence in Zimbabwe was being perpetrated the MDC!
Time has come to call a spade a spade. Mugabe and ZANUPF should be defined as terrorists. An international warrant of arrest should be issued against Mugabe and his top ZANUPF cronies for crimes against humanity.
Negotiating the Mbeki-SADC brokered talks with Mugabe or his representatives is now a complete waste of time. Mugabe’s representatives have already missed two scheduled meetings in South Africa. This shows they do not care and are not serious about these talks.
It is now obvious that Mugabe is using these so- called talks to play for time.
It is high time the opposition leadership stopped playing games in Mugabe’s merry go round circus. The opposition movement should now engage in more serious and more confrontational acts of civil disobedience. For this is the only language, short of violence, that Mugabe will understand.
Time has come for Zimbabweans to tell Mugabe in no uncertain terms that the country is not his or ZANUPF’s personal property, and that Mugabe has now lost the mandate to rule the country .Mugabe lost the legitimacy the very first day he rigged the elections in 2000. Rigging elections by Mugabe was a criminal act that deprived Zimbabweans of their constitutional right to select a leader of their choice to rule the country. Since the elections of 2000 Zimbabweans have been ruled by an illegitimate president.
The Movement for Democratic Change was right to refuse to recognize Mugabe as president of Zimbabwe. But a mere refusal to recognize Mugabe should not be an end in itself. It should be the starting point in a long-drawn program to confront Mugabe.
Civil disobedience represents the constitutional right of the people to take back through civil protest their country from a leader who has denied them the right to free and fair elections. How else do you remove Mugabe from office when he has closed all avenues for democratic elections?
Mugabe recently reportedly asked the army chiefs to help him win elections. This was a tacit admission that Mugabe stands no chance in hell to win any free and fair elections. If Zimbabweans participate in next year’s elections without iron clad guarantees they will not be rigged, Zimbabweans are headed for another humiliating defeat as a result of extensive rigging.
According to Mugabe’s plan he intends to rig the elections to ensure his victory. Then immediately after the elections he plans to step down and hand over the presidency to the non-electable Emerson Mnangagwa. In the event Mugabe dies in office, or is unable to function as president, Mugabe has already prearranged to have parliament appoint his successor!
ZANUPF has a two thirds majority in parliament – thanks to the extensive rigging of elections. This means Mugabe’s successor is guaranteed to come from ZANUPF. Mugabe’s strategy means Zimbabweans will be reduced to spectators in the election of someone who will rule them. This is not only unconstitutional it is downright criminal and a vicious slap in the face of the Zimbabwean’s legitimate right to chose whoever they want to rule them.
The opposition movement, notably the MDC, faces an intractable dilemma. If they continue attending the talks and Mugabe does not; if they continue to participate in the parliament, and if they attend Mugabe’s official functions the opposition movement will undermine its non recognition of Mugabe as president. How do you not recognize Mugabe as president when you attend his official functions?
ZANU and ZAPU never attended Ian Smith’s parliament or his official functions during the struggle for independence. It does not matter that you are attending in your capacity as a member of parliament. Mugabe will always argue that parliament operates independently from the executive. He will, of course, be trying to mislead the world into thinking that parliament is a real force in Zimbabwean politics instead of an instrument of manipulation and control by Mugabe and ZANUPF.
These are tough times for Zimbabweans. And the opposition leadership faces major decisions and challenges on how to react to this mayhem.
Time has come for the opposition movement to treat Mugabe for what he really is: an illegitimate president. The opposition MDC must withdraw from parliament; must not participate in official functions of Mugabe, and must not participate in next year’s elections. There must be a complete delegitimization of Mugabe. If MDC members want to stay in parliament for economic reasons then they should stand as independents.
Some people have argued that if MDC does not participate in next year’s elections Mugabe will always find smaller parties to field candidates. They also argue that if MDC is left out it will lose an important platform for fighting Mugabe and ZANUPF. Other apologists for participation in elections say that if MDC is not in parliament and Mugabe somehow reforms the world will ultimately recognize him as the legitimate president of Zimbabwe.
These are very weak arguments. The international community has already made its position known and is unlikely to shift from its insistence that only free and fair elections will form the basis for normalizing relations with Zimbabwe.
Parliament is not an effective forum for confronting Mugabe. MDC has been in parliament for seven years. MDC has absolutely nothing to show that its participation in parliament helped Zimbabweans. In fact conditions for Zimbabweans have become worse! Mugabe has exploited the MDC presence in parliament by arguing that all laws and amendments to laws were voted upon democratically. So if Amendment 18 is passed Mugabe will say it was a majority decision taken after both ZANUPF and MDC MPs had engaged in a debate!
As the Zimbabwean crisis deepens and as the conditions for Zimbabweans worsen the eyes of the nation and the world are now focused on what the MDC and the opposition civic society leadership will do.
What options is the opposition movement considering right now? Many people had pinned their hopes on the divided MDC reuniting. It had been hoped the reunification would give the MDC the extra strength and resolve to confront Mugabe. Such hopes for unity have been dashed by reports the Mutambara’s group has broken away from the Save Zimbabwe coalition. This will be second time the Mutambara splinter faction has broken away.
As I said last week, Save Zimbabwe coalition remains the most promising hope for a united front against Mugabe. Save Zimbabwe did not necessarily mean all parties to it must be united into one party. Rather, Save Zimbabwe has the potential to give different opposition groups a common strategy and a coordinated onslaught against Mugabe.
While espousing a fiery revolutionary rhetoric against Mugabe, Mutambara has turned out to have little to offer by way of the politics of confrontation that have characterized the likes of Lovemore Madhuku and Jenni Williams.
It is ironic that Mutambara announced his group’s pullout against the background of some of the most heroic street confrontations involving NCA and WOZA against the brutal police. Mutambara and his groups were political bystanders to this street confrontation. They have no record of having contributed anything significant to any civil protest.
Mutambara’s threats that he has options A B C D E in the struggle against Mugabe have yet to be experienced by ordinary Zimbabweans. The big question for Mutambara’s faction is: Where do they go from here?
Mutambara himself had stressed the need for a united front among the opposition movement. He did not mince his words when he said that it would be an uphill struggle, if not impossible task, to defeat Mugabe unless the opposition movement had a common united front. Now he is undermining his own rhetoric on unity.
Mutambara’s complaints that Save Zimbabwe was biased in favor of the Tsvangirai faction is hard to believe unless he can come up with concrete proof.
Since its breakaway in October two years ago the Mutambara faction has no record of any real activism against Mugabe. The group’s secretary general, Welshman Ncube, has historically been on record as rejecting all forms of civil protest, preferring, instead, to participate in elections regardless of whether they are rigged. His infamous statement “even if it is an election for a janitor, we will participate,” has placed him at ideological odds with the fiery statements of Mutambara who called for a variety of civil protest strategies to remove Mugabe. This leads people to speculate whether Mutambara is now going to break away from Ncube since Ncube has either been undermining, or not publicly supportive of, Mutambara’s public statements. If this happens, this will be the third breakaway.
The Tsvangirayi MDC has borne the brunt of Mugabe’s savage violence for the simple reason that it is this main faction that has the mass grassroots support and a great potential for being more actively engaged in the struggle.
It is also noteworthy that the Mutambara faction has now started all kinds of attacks on the Tsvangirayi faction as if this party is the real source of problems in Zimbabwe. This is cheap politics when and where you attack anyone other than the real enemy.
Somebody ought to remind the Mutambara faction that if by breaking away they feel they have best the chances at confronting Mugabe then they should focus on confronting Mugabe and prove to the people of Zimbabwe that they had the best ideology, the best strategy and the most successful outcomes in confronting Mugabe.