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Zimbabwe: Repression & Dreams Deferred, Again
AfricaFocus Bulletin
January 22, 2019 (190122)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"Robert Mugabe was really bad because he didn�t listen to anyone unless
under personal duress, and because of that terrible trait in him, it led
to his spectacular and embarrassing undoing with the culmination of a
military coup that was supported by the citizens and the rest of the
world sealing his ungraceful demise. Everybody was just tired of the old
man, and regardless of the unorthodox means used to remove him, it was a
popular and celebrated end of a disastrous rule. His inconvenient and
unintended successor and apprentice, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has only been in
power for fourteen months, but he has perfected his former boss�s art of
not listening and being oblivious to what the rest of the world thinks of
his rule, good or bad." - Hopewell Chin´ono
The sense of disillusionment with any hopes for Mugabe´s successor regime
is virtually universal. On Twitter commentator Alex Magaisa noted on
January 19: �The regime has caused untold damage to itself. If anyone
gave it credit, it�s now eroded. Far from being a New Dispensation it is
performing far worse than the old regime in its vileness & absurdity.
It�s one thing to be incompetent. It�s far worse when coupled with
dishonesty.�
The protests last week called by the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade Unions
(ZCTU) and other groups have been met by brutal repression with live
ammunition and shutdowns of social media and the internet. Although
hundreds are detained and others in hiding, peaceful protests are
continuing this week, and violence from youth against the authorities is
also predicted to continue.
The impact of economic austerity for workers, including civil servants,
contrasts with corruption and luxury for an elite, (
new concessions to foreign mining companies for access to foreign exchange), and
commitment to paying back international loans first. Outside powers are
unlikely to step up to support the government or to overtly condone its
repressive strategies. But international condemnation still seems
unlikely to lead to effective action as long as the negative effects are
felt only by Zimbabweans.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains the essay by Hopewell Chin´ono from
January 17 and a statement from the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition from
January 16. For additional analysis and more current news see the sources
cited below in this editor´s note.
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on Zimbabwe, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/zimbabwe.php
Additional recent news and analysis articles
Alex Magaisa, �Davos� shame as Zimbabwe burns,� Jan. 18, 2019
http://tinyurl.com/y8drstbd
Piers Pigou, Mail & Guardian, �Revolt and repression in Zimbabwe, �Jan.
19, 2019
http://tinyurl.com/yaq5xcdv
Zimbabwe Crisis: What You Need to Know
https://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00065824.html
Citizen´s Manifesto/Cabinet, �Press Statement on the State of Economic
Emergency in the Country,� January 14, 2018
http://tinyurl.com/ycvjrhk3
For current sites with good sources inside Zimbabwe, despite cutoffs of
internet and social media, see https://allafrica.com/zimbabwe/,
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/, https://bulawayo24.com/latest, and
https://twitter.com/Wamagaisa
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++
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Hopewell Chin�ono: The painful undoing of a glorious November 2017: A
dream deferred
https://nehandaradio.com - Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/y8suzz5m
January 17, 2019
[Hopewell Chin�ono is an award winning Zimbabwean international
journalist and documentary filmmaker. He is a Harvard University Nieman
Fellow and a CNN African Journalist of the year. Hopewell has a new
documentary film looking at mental illness in Zimbabwe called State of
Mind, which was launched to critical acclaim.]
Robert Mugabe was really bad because he didn�t listen to anyone unless
under personal duress, and because of that terrible trait in him, it led
to his spectacular and embarrassing undoing with the culmination of a
military coup that was supported by the citizens and the rest of the
world sealing his ungraceful demise.
Everybody was just tired of the old man, and regardless of the unorthodox
means used to remove him, it was a popular and celebrated end of a
disastrous rule.
However this was a thirty-seven year tumultuous relationship and journey
between Robert Mugabe, the people of Zimbabwe and the rest of the world.
His inconvenient and unintended successor and apprentice, Emmerson
Mnangagwa, has only been in power for fourteen months, but he has
perfected his former boss�s art of not listening and being oblivious to
what the rest of the world thinks of his rule, good or bad.
Mnangagwa inherited Mugabe�s Presidency at a time when everyone including
those that never liked him were reluctantly willing to welcome Mugabe�s
departure in exchange to the new political arrangement that involved the
military generals, who later removed their uniforms and became part of
the civilian political establishment.
I was one of those Zimbabweans who pleaded with compatriots to allow the
new order space and time to try and fix the economic and political mess
that Mugabe had left behind him, a mess that had affected every citizen
in one way or another.
A mess that also unfortunately had been underpinned by Mugabe�s
successors through, a very brutal and violent machinery that included the
military and other state security services like the police and the
Central Intelligence Organization.
Many of us realized that there was no other alternative to the new
arrangement until the people had an opportunity to choose who they really
wanted to lead the country post Robert Mugabe�s misrule.
I have never seen such unprecedented goodwill extended to a new regime
that interestingly had been part of a past terrible, disastrous and
incompetent political old order.
Western ambassadors and their ministers like Catriona Laing and Rory
Stewart of Britain and international business people piled their support
behind Emmerson Mnangagwa�s government hoping that they would become the
solution to Zimbabwe�s decades old misrule.
When the American senators sponsoring ZIDERA 2 ([imbabwe Democracy and Economic
Rocovery Act] came to town in April, I
was one of many Zimbabweans who were invited by the American embassy to
speak to the senators about the need to loosen the political pressure
through removing unhelpful elements that were in the original ZIDERA 2
bill.
The senators agreed to remove what many of us identified as re-engagement
obstacles in the original bill, they told us that they were willing to
wait and see whether President Mnangagwa�s government was genuine or not
in its mantras and promises.
What has followed is a historical fall from grace by our government, the
very same men and women whom we had marched shoulder to shoulder with
promising us that we were headed for greater times.
In October, during earlier protests,
the government arrested leaders of
the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
The same people who had said that the past will never again be replicated
in our soon to be glorious future, they have become the impediment to our
progress, they have proved that Robert Mugabe alone was not the main
problem at all.
They have since done everything possible in the book and beyond to not be
taken seriously by both the citizens that they rule, and the rest of the
world that they wanted to reengage with.
Today they have gone full circle in effortlessly achieving that
unfortunate pariah status and nobody sane is now taking them seriously on
their promises, because they have failed to even do the very things that
do not require money or effort, like merely asking the state media to
report in a non-divisive manner.
They have allowed the state media to create a THEM and US narrative that
is further dividing the country, the very thing that Mugabe did so
excellently well has now been renewed, only that this time it is being
done with embarrassing crudeness, scaffolded by a litany of lies,
misinformation, misrepresentations, fear, threats and intimidation.
Those that we thought had the President�s ear and were willing to see
their man succeed from being part of a rogue Robert Mugabe government and
past, to being the man that turned the corner and gave the country a
fighting chance, are either not listened to or they exaggerated their
influence, or the President actually does not have full control of the
decision making processes.
How else would you explain such spectacular political and economic
disasters that have ensued post August 1 of 2018 up to this very today?
How do you explain the harshness in shutting down the Internet and
stopping citizens from talking to each other and blocking the world from
interacting with the country and yet the President is abroad saying that
Zimbabwe is open for business at the World Economic Forum in Davos in a
couple of days?
Robert Mugabe had dropped the bar so low that it takes monumental
incompetence to fail to do just the bare minimum to appease a nation that
had lost all hope resulting in those who could leave, actually flying
away to other countries to seek greener pastures.
As I write this article, compatriots in townships are being beaten up by
the military and security services and about eight people have been
confirmed dead, killed by their own government, the same government that
is peddling democratic credentials abroad.
This Word Economic Forum visit by the President comes at a time when we
have civil service strikes, national shutdowns, general price hikes, a
biting fuel crisis, gross incompetence in government, accentuated
corruption and a lot of promises that we have been fed since November
2017 without even a distant hope of any fulfillment.
How will our president explain his open for business mantra when the very
same men that were part of Robert Mugabe�s administration from Chief
Cabinet Secretary, Chief of Protocol, central Bank Governor to Spokesman
surround him on his trip to Davos at the World Economic Forum and indeed
in government?
How can any citizen who thought of giving him the benefit of a doubt live
with that self-evident act of arrogance of extending John Mangudya�s
tenure as the central bank governor at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, when
his name is synonymous with the comical currency policy that pegs the
Bond Note at par with the greenback and that has resulted in the current
upheavals in the country?
How can the rest of the world and businessmen like Aliko Dangote want to
come and invest in Zimbabwe when the very same men who were asking him
for bribes two years ago are still part and parcel of today�s Mnangagwa
administration at both government and political party level, still oozing
the same amount of power they had under Robert Mugabe or even more?
How can any international finance institution take us seriously when no
single person has been send to jail through what has now become a comical
prosecution process nicknamed �Catch and Release� by the citizens?
How can we take those people around the President and his Deputy
seriously when at weekends and at night they harass his cabinet ministers
with requests to have their wives, husbands, children, friends and
relatives appointed to state enterprise parastatal boards?
Is this not the same patronage system that underpinned Robert Mugabe�s
disastrous rule that the current government used as an excuse to grab
power on the back of citizen frustrations?
How does the citizen become content and hopeful with a government that
practices the same �blind eye� and �see no evil� behavior to bureaucrats
that instruct investors to use certain service providers if they want
their investment deals to go through without hassles?
Today I had a chat with a Western ambassador of a very key country who
told me that they have put out an investment note telling their citizens
of this practice of being instructed to use certain banks, accounting
firms, law firms, Architectural firms and employment agencies if
investors want their deals to be smooth.
This has made many of us realize that what we thought were patriotic
individuals, were actual buccaneer political and business elites pushing
personal enrichment agendas on the back of people�s anger against Robert
Mugabe, and that Mugabe was not entirely responsible for the collapse of
the state and the country, he was just the face of it.
Our government must understand the relatedness of global capital and that
banks in Russia, Rwanda, Egypt and indeed states like Belarus all do
business with New York, the very same place that we are trying to avoid
because we do not want to reform our economic, political and
constitutional distortions that the very same President committed himself
to undoing.
There are many states like Rwanda that are not exactly the poster boys of
democracy, however the difference between us and them is that they do not
allow monumental levels of state embezzlement, corruption, gross
incompetence and civil service inertia that our government still
tolerates fourteen months since Mugabe�s departure.
Zimbabwe�s brightest intellectuals, academics, professionals and global
thinkers are today working for or with the Rwandese government.
That is how committed President Paul Kagame is to meritocracy and
advancing the economics of his country in his endeavors to transforming
the lives of his people.
Last week the Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube asked for more time, to do
what when you are failing to do the very small things that will enable
the people with deep pockets to come and rescue us through investment
capital?
If you want Zimbabwe to be a Rwanda, a country with little democracy
underpinned by meritocracy, then hire competent people like what Kagame
has been doing and continues to do, professionalize state institutions
including parastatals and root out the self evident corruption.
The government could have done all this without losing their grip on
power, the fact that they have failed to do this exposes how incompetent
and clueless they are to a world of ideas and many bright options.
They are sticking to what they have done best in the past 38 years,
corruption, patronage underpinned by crude intimidation, fear and
violence.
The only difference is that there is NO bogeyman called Robert Mugabe to
hide behind, it is them that were his wind beneath his wings, it is them
again who have gotten us into this political mess that is manifesting
through economics.
No Mr president, this time it will not work, the world has changed and
with that change must come the realization that behaving as you did in
2000 means that you have lost nineteen years of our time.
I would personally never say this, but it is a cruel indictment on the
President and his government that people in Matebeleland of all places
and indeed around the country are now saying ��Robert Mugabe was a better
devil after all.�
It can�t get any worse than this Mr President, if your real friends,
surrogates, associates and subordinates are not telling you this Sir,
they indeed hate you, they are only around you for the money that they
are making through their association with yourself!
Like the former President Robert Mugabe, you will realize how your phone
will suddenly stop ringing Sir the day you lose power and the trappings
of the Presidency.
You still have a chance to turn things around by making the right and yet
tough choices Sir, that option is entirely yours to take or not.
But like the former President Mugabe, there will come a time when such a
choice is no longer an option!
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU, http://zctu.co.zw) has been
one of the organizations leading resistance to corruption and economic
�austerity� programs that penalize ordinary Zimbabweans.
Urgent Memo on need for action on Zimbabwe
Attention: The African Union Chairperson, H.E Paul Kagame
CC: All AU Heads of State and Government
Crisis in Zimbabwe Commission
16 January 2019
http://tinyurl.com/y8t5qmng
Ref: Urgent Intervention on the Fast Deteriorating Humanitarian and Human
Rights Situation in Zimbabwe
Preamble
We, as Civil Society Organisations from Zimbabwe under the banner of
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CiZC) are encouraged by the AU High Level
Consultation meeting of Heads of States and Governments on the situation
in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to find a lasting solution to
the post-election developments.
As your Excellencies are discussing the DRC situation, we exhort you to
take time to reflect on the fast deteriorating humanitarian and human
rights situation in Zimbabwe following the call for a peaceful national
stay-away from the 14th-16th of January 2019 in response to the social
and economic deterioration.
Recalling that on the 30 October 2018, Zimbabwe Civil Society
organisations under the leadership of Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition met
with the Chairperson of Southern African Development Community (SADC),
His Excellency Hage Geingob at State House in Windhoek, Namibia and
brought to his attention that:
- The political tension and economic meltdown, if left unresolved has a
potential to cause regional, political and security instability;
- The unwarranted presence of the military in all spheres of the state,
including public spaces and a glaring interference on the day to day
duties of other authorities since the military intervention in 2017 was a
threat to national stability;
- An inclusive national conversation with all players led by SADC on
Zimbabwe�s future was needed;
- SADC must impress on Zimbabwe the imperative to return to civilian -
military relations, to full compliance in modern state craft where the
military is subordinate to state authority and does not interfere with
civilian political processes;
- SADC community together with global players must institute discussions
on Zimbabwe to address the deteriorating political and economic
situation.
Post this meeting the situation has since deteriorated in Zimbabwe. The
Zimbabwe state�s response to the national stay-away has been
disproportionate marked by clampdown on fundamental rights and freedoms.
It is our considered view that the country might be sliding into a state
of emergency. As of 16 January 2019, we are aware that of the following
- Blackout on access to information through the suspension of internet
services and restricted telephone communication across Zimbabwe, from
Tuesday 15 January to date.
- Zimbabweans conduct their daily financial transactions on mobile
platforms due to the chronic cash shortages and these online payment
platforms have been disrupted.
- The unconstitutional deployment of the military forces in the country
has resulted in use of live ammunition, wanton assaults, unlawful
entering and breaking into people�s homes reminiscent of the extra
judicial killings of 1st of August 2018.
- Reports of arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions and abductions of
unarmed civilians and civil society leaders, including children below the
age of 16 years.
- Multiple threats and intimidation by government officials against trade
unions, civil society leaders and ordinary Zimbabweans are continuing
unabated.
As a result of these developments we are reliably informed that:
- 8 individuals have been killed during the violent crackdown
- Hundreds of innocent civilians have sustained different injuries
consistent with gunshot wounds and are failing to access health care
facilities.
- More than 150 people arrested and have not been charged nor brought
before a competent court of law
- The right to freedom of movement has been restricted affecting the
ability of ordinary Zimbabweans to sustain their livelihoods.
This might result in regional instability as Zimbabweans seek food,
shelter and refugee in neighbouring countries.
We therefore call on the African Union to place Zimbabwe on the agenda of
the consultation meeting on 17 January 2019 and deliberate on the
situation to:
- Act decisively by urgently and adequately intervening in the Zimbabwe
situation;
- Calling for withdrawal of the unconstitutional deployment of the
military from conducting policing duties;
- Call for the immediate restoration of Internet service provision across
Zimbabwe;
- Restore civil liberties of people.
Thank You,
Rashid Mahiya
National Chairperson
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition
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