Two takes on Zimbabwe
BY SOLEDAD GALIANA
Zimbabwe's presidential election takes place on 10 March against a background of political violence and land conflict. On Monday 18 February, European Union foreign ministers agreed unanimously to impose targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe and to withdraw all EU election monitors from the country. They took their decision after the Zimbabwean government expelled the Swedish head of the EU monitoring mission, who in a previous election mission had been strongly vocal against the government. Some foreign journalists have also had their visa applications rejected.
Relations between Robert Mugabe's government and the West have turned sour of late, while it seems that the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is rapidly becoming a favourite of the West. But, why this turn of events? Is it a question of democracy or of land-ownership? Dr George Shire, a former pro-independence combatant, and Brian Bako, representative of the MDC, were invited by the Africa Solidarity Centre to come to Dublin and explain the situation in the country from their different respective positions.
Dr George Shire is a Zimbabwean academic, writer and cultural critic. He travelled around the world, working with Palestinian organisations, teaching in Canada and Australia, and has published many works. The latest one is titled "Raising Zimbabwe: the land question and the politics of representations", which will be published in September.
His family origins can be traced to those Africans who were dispossessed of their land to make room for white landowners, rewarded with Zimbabwean land for their services to the British crown. His parents took a very active role in the liberation movement, and he became involved in the fight for independence. For a very long time, Shire has been a link in Britain with Zanuk PF, Mugabe's political party. He said:
"I want to start by condemning the wanton violence that has continued to dominate the political landscape in Zimbabwe. In my view, that violence has been largely carried out by young people with links to both Zanu PF and MDC. The international media has not reported violence suffered by people committed to the Zanu PF. In the last two week,s I have been at the receiving end of threats, abuse, racist literature and my family had to go into protection as result of the threats that I have received. And that is in Britain, and not in Zimbabwe.
The majority of the people of Zimbabwe have lived their lives in an atmosphere of violence that dehumanises, oppresses, tortures and terrifies the black population of the Southern African developing region in order to keep them in their subservient place.
In its current new form, colonialism is the enforcement of western capitalism. In the eyes of many Zimbabweans and Zanu PF supporters, Britain's colonial policies comprise part of a global network of interests and it is shaped by transnational considerations - the policies of the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation - which translate into MDC's policies.
Some of the MDC leaders not only benefited from the spoils of the Rhodesian regime, but were members of its army and police service. Ian Smith, who is also a supporter of the MDC, was for Zimbabweans what Ariel Sharon is to many Palestinians in the West Bank today.
It is not just the fact that there are these remnants of Rhodesia's repressive machinery inside the MDC that I have a problem with. The MDC has to face up to the links and support they have with very right wing organisations in Britain. They are supported by the Zimbabwe Development Trust, which is made up of people who used to run Mrs Thatcher's government. If you want to know how a right wing regime looks like, you have to know that lot at least.
In my view, they could not care less who governs Zimbabwe as long as they can keep the land and continue to live like emperors and kings. Everyone who knows that region will know that in the first ten years of the history of Zimbabwe, South Africa was at the gates of Zimbabwe and Apartheid was still raging in the southern region. It would have been absurd for anybody to commence a fast-track land resettlement programme when South Africa, which had corporations that own land in the country, could have invaded the country as they were doing in Mozambique.
Also, any speedier process of resettlement of indigenous landless people would have come across the intricate networks that link farmers, produces of agricultural inputs and implements, markets, banks and insurance houses - all dominated by the same people.
It is my view that any interest of this sophisticated network, which is white, have been allowed to overshadow the morally legitimate cry of impoverish and landless majority in post-colonial Zimbabwe. The government of Zimbabwe has faced a range of constraints in trying to address the area of land acquisition; one of them has been the shortage of financial resources for land acquisition.
The withdrawal of the international donor community from the land reform and resettlement programme and farm occupations have forced the Zimbabwean government to embark on this fast track settlement.
MDC want to mortgage Zimbabwe for the third time around. What they have put on offer would make the situation worse economically.
For two thirds of the last 20 years, Zimbabwe was everybody's best costumer. In 1995, the IMF was giving it ten out of ten. And then the question of land changes everything, including the policies of Zanu PF. The people who have been orchestrating the policies of land occupations had been a thorn in Zanu's side. They are not controlled by the party, but the other way around.
I like the turn to the left of Zanu politics. That is precisely why I joined the armed struggle. I did not join the armed struggle so I could become another bureaucrat or an academic. I joined because my land was taken away from me, and I am glad that Zanu is going back to make possible that my land is returned to me.
The announcement of the EU sanctions on Zimbabwe is one of the most regressive steps in the development in Zimbabwean politics. Nine countries - France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Greece, Luxemburg, Ireland, Portugal and Austria - were invited to come and observe the elections by the legitimate government of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe did not extend invitations to Britain, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.
Zimbabwe does not accept that anyone should come and monitor its elections. You monitor an election where there is no legitimate government and monitoring is a Western imposition on the Third World.
But how will it look after 10 March, when the result of that presidential election has been ratified by the South Africa Development Committee, the Organisation of African Unity, the majority of the Commonwealth countries? What will the EU do then?
Brian Bako is the chairman for Britain and Ireland of the Movement for Democratic Change - the main Zimbabwean opposition party. For a long time he worked as a social worker in Britain. Now he runs his own business and an IT training centre. Academically, his background is in theology and divinity and his most recent degree is a Masters in pastoral theology from the University of Birmingham. He said:
"Zimbabwe was colonised by the British a hundred years ago. Zimbabwe's ethnic composition is 99 per cent black and around one per cent white. This one per cent controls the vast majority of the land in the country, as it does with economic corporations - manufacturing and banking.
Because of the composition of the country, it is obvious that most of the members of the opposition party are blacks. The whole leadership of MDC in Zimbabwe is black, except for possibly five members of parliament, who contested in the election in their constituencies and got elected through the ballot box.
MDC does not think that the problem in Zimbabwe is one of identity or ethnicity. The president of Zimbabwe is diverting the attention of the international community from the real causes of the crisis in Zimbabwe. He has placed blamefor the trouble in Zimbabwe on the issue of land that he could have redistributed equitably in the over 21 years he has been in power.
After independence, the land forum felt apart and Britain refused to fund land redistribution. But 400 farms were repossessed from 1988 and redistributed to the ruling party cronies.
Currently in Zimbabwe, anyone who is in the army and holds a position over the rank of coroner has got a farm. Anyone over the rank of an assistant inspector in the police has got a farm. Every government minister in Zimbabwe, if they have not got a farm it is their choice. The same applies to Zanu PF members of parliament.
We all fought the war. The war was not only fought by ex-combatants. We fed them, we protected them, and we gave them information. Without us, they would not have been able to fight the war.
I will take you back to Zimbabwe after independence. There were two parties in Zimbabwe at the time: Zanu PF and Zapu. Zapu was the opposition party. They refused to submit to the government party. The government created a militia called the 50th Brigade, trained in Korea. They carried out terrible massacres, witnessed by Amnesty International, the Red Cross, Zimbabwe Catholic Commission. They looted, massacred, raped, killed. Was that caused by the land crisis? It was not land, it was a question of power.
In the early '90s, the MDC was formed from the labour movement. There was an important decline in the quality of education, health care, and transportation. There was also generalised urban decay. The labour movement realised that the only way of changing that was to take a role as a political party. That was when MDC came into force.
At the time, MDC realised that there was a problem with Zimbabwe's constitution and it would be very difficult to achieve any meaningful political change, because the constitution gave so much power to the president that despite the parliamentary election results, he can nominate his own government independently.
In 1999 there was a referendum, and with the result of the referendums, Zanu PF realised that they were losing support and that possibly they would lose the parliamentary elections. What they did was to intensify their terror tactics. They recruited what they call the Youth Brigade, and then mobilised the ex-combatants. Then they focused on the land issue. They evicted, they looted. Most of the farm workers came from Malawi and were made homeless - it was then that Red Cross International asked permission to go into the country to feed them, house them, etc, but the government of Zimbabwe refused.
The government retired all police officers over the rank of chief superintendent and replaced them with ex-combatants, and the brigades integrated into the police force.
This has caused the breakdown of the rule of law.
Now, during the presidential campaign, of grave concern are the 16 politically motivated murders reported in the month of January. This confirms the often-repeated assertion that Zimbabwean elections are almost always accompanied by gross human rights violations and loss of life. These human rights violations create a climate of fear and terror within the electorate. We are very concerned at the European Union's decision to recall its election monitors from Zimbabwe.
MDC members have been arrested in cases where they have been victims of violence. They go into the police station to make a report and they have been assaulted while in police custody. The police, who are supposed to protect the citizens of Zimbabwe, are assaulting them.
When MDC talks about land redistribution, it recognises that a government that is interested in that same land cannot equitably redistribute it. So, it is necessary to appoint an Independent Land Commission."
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