Associate Professor, lar retreats. IDS, University of lecturing Zimbabwe. Chair, Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee.
After two weeks of mulling over the devastation of the fraudulent Presidential elections; millions of Zimbabweans are still in a state of shock and wondering what will happen next. Most citizens went to the polls, aware that the ruling party the had stacked the deck, but hoping that their felt the whelming turnout would negate anv attempts to nul- tion. lify their vote. However, Thousands braved the administrative chaos, deliberate delays, long lines, ruling party harassment and violence, to assert the one practices individual action they thought they still had some control over. Many, usually the non-political people, were Icoponse arrested for daring to assert this right to vote, and had to experiences ponder how far this authoritarian state had taken control of their lives.
The lesson has had to be learnt, that politics is not "out there" for other people to engage in; that if people retreat into their personal and family lives, and ignore their loss of rights and liberties for long enough, then eration the realities of such repressive encroachments will fol- heard, low them into their particu based assertions of who has a legitimate right to be called Robert Mugabe is fond of 'national' undermined the Zimbabweans civic and political rights of about how the liberation millions of Zimbabweans. struggle brought democratic Mugabe's campaign of vioto Zimbabweans. lence and election fraud, as There is substantive truth to well as the persistent mesthat statement, for the ener- sage of recrimination and gies and possibilities, which threat, produced an ominous were released by the anti- sense of a ruling party capacolonial struggle, and the ble of any action to retain promise of the independence power. Indeed we have seen years were immense. the Zimbabwean state reconNo individual who suffered structed and oppression of settler criminalized, in colonial rule could not have allow greater powers to milisense of being tary and militia elements. enabled by the new dispensa- The election process itself has been so badly deformed, Zimbabweans, that only a return to constiincluding the nationalists, tutional reform can offer any learnt about democratic poli-. hope of an overhaul. tics from other sources too, The public including the contradictory authority, the ZBC, is an and promises of obscenity and a daily insult colonial rule itself. to Zimbabwean In a more negative sense One statistic will serve to nationalist legacy, in illustrate colonial vio- Media Monitoring Project lence, also brought with it calculated that out of a total of political of 14 hours and 25 minutes mobilisation which we need, ZBC tnat as a nation, need to unlearn devoted to the Presidential and move away from. campaign, ZANU PF's canIn particular, we need to didate was granted a total of continue our protes againsi 13 hours and 34 minutes, or the practices of forced party about 94% of the coverage. affiliation through violence, The the demonisation of dissent 4% of the coverage, which as "unpatriotic", a selective was used to use of the history of the lib- MDC and struggle to deny other voices the right to be Any and aCC- national discussion through such a media organ was completely lost. That 1.2 million people still managed to vote for Morgan Tsavangirai, in the face of such abuse will be a lasting tribute to the critiCal abilities of Zimbabwean public. No less disturbing has been the supine and accommodatapproach of oner African leaders to Mugabe's project. For they have been unable to challenge increasingly Zimbabwean leader's articuorder to lation of the African project, giving him ample room to define the struggle against colonial legacies in his own authoritarian terms. President Mbeki, in particular, has been found wanting, as he has been left to broadcasting chase Mugabe's tail, in an effort to remain in the SADC political terms of reference, taxpayers. and to avoid South African isolation from the region. this point: The The result has been that Mugabe has effectively toppled South Africa from their assumption of regional leadbulletins ership, thus seriously compromising the much-vaunted New Partnership for Africa's Development, (NEPAD). There is little chance of MDC candidate was civic groups, originally marginalized from the dis"attack, deni- cussions around NEPAD, discredit the claiming any ownership of this project, when the contihope of a fruitful nent's leaders show so little spine in the face of the delinthe the Zimbabwean women queue for sugar as the economy hits the skids quent politics of one of their elders. Solidarity without accountability is simply a return to the modalities of Cold War politics, leading to found a constant stream of empty slogans and political structures locked in arthritic postures.
The western countries should find no solace in their ments condemnations of the ruling party in Zimbabwe. For there are dominant global economic and financial structures, presided over by the regimes of the West, which will make the emergence of a Robert Mugabe a persistent possibility.
We need better and more accountable structures of global economic governance, few for even if a new government were to come to power in Zimbabwe tomorrow, a new round of fallacies about the neo-liberal economic agenda, would not deliver Zimbabweans from their current problems.
Mugabe's message has resonance in Africa and the developing world, because some of his re critique of globalisation is correct. It is also necessary to say that some of the state- id that have emerged from the British government and the EU on Zimbabwe, lack the tone and understanding that are necessary for a more realistic engagement with former colonial Comboones Therefore as much Zimbabweans and Africans more generally must take ha stock of the events of the past itl years in Zimbabwe, fo Western nations must seriously re-examine the terms of their re-engagement with development issues on our continent.
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