The Two Opposing Faces of the Country

Financial Gazette (Harare)

24 June 2011

opinion

His enemies call him “The Crocodile”, but even that does scant justice to the long list of charges levelled against Emmerson Mnangagwa, the one person in Zimbabwe more feared than President Robert Mugabe.

The former head of Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation, his name gets a dishonourable mention in many of the most sinister episodes of President Mugabe’s rule, from the massacre of thousands of political opponents during the 1980s, through to the violence of the disputed 2008 election, in which President Mugabe is widely accused of stealing victory from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Also known as the “Son of God” (President Mugabe being “God”), he is even feared by fellow members of the President’s ZANU-PF party, who suspect that he too would like the top job one day.

All of which makes it all the stranger when, in a rare interview with The Sunday Telegraph on Friday last week – his first with a British journalist in 10 years – he gives a smile that is not particularly reptilian, a handshake that oozes no blood, and a manner largely devoid of “Comrade Bob’s” anti-British histrionics.

What is equally surprising, though, is the thumbs-up he gives to Zimbabwe’s coalition government, brokered in 2009 after outside pressure forced ZANU-PF to share power – or at least some of it – with their sworn enemies in Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.

“It is more than two-and-a-half years since we established the inclusive government, and a lot of things have happened that are positive,” said Mnangagwa, 64, whose cronies are accused of murdering at least 200 MDC supporters during the 2008 polls, and of three separate attempts to kill PM Tsvangirai himself over the years.

“Among them is that we discovered that our differences with our opponents are not that serious, and that we can work together without too many problems.”

The words of a man genuinely seeking to bury Zimbabwe’s many hatchets? Or a cynical charm offensive from someone with his own eye on the throne? As Western diplomats in Harare wearily point out to their governments in Europe and America, working out what is really going on in within the secretive, eccentric world of ZANU-PF’s ruling elite is impossible. What they are less in doubt of, though, is that despite the relative calm since the power-sharing government took over – steering the country from the brink of anarchy – Zimbabwe remains as much a tinder box as ever.

With Britain, Europe and the United States currently preoccupied with the “Arab Springs” in the likes of Egypt and Libya, Colonel Gaddafi’s fellow “African freedom fighter” in the southern half of the continent has all but slipped off the radar this year in Downing Street and Washington.

Yet in the last couple of months, there have been claims that Pres-ident Mugabe is re-activating his ZANU-PF street militias, in order to intimidate his way to victory in yet another set of elections, mooted possibly for next year. This time around, though, the prospect of the 87-year-old strong-arming his way to office once more is just one of the worst-case scenarios. Of equal concern is that he may drop dead at any minute, paving the way for a bloody confrontation as “The Crocodile” and other factions seek to fill the power vacuum left by his autocratic rule. A post-Mugabe Zimbabwe, diplomats warn, could end up even more unstable, polarised between the hardline vision of the likes of Mnangagwa and the reformist world view of PM Tsvangirai.

“(President) Mugabe is the glue that holds the whole political firmament together, and if you take him away you are into completely uncharted waters,” said one Harare observer.

“There is a definite fear of bloodshed within ZANU-PF if he goes, as there will be a lot of very tough people with a lot to play for in terms of the spoils of office. The MDC is also unlikely to stand on the sidelines if ZANU-PF implodes, and it could lead to a very chaotic environment.”

President Mugabe has always been bullish about his health, and has insisted that recent trips to a private hospital in Singapore are merely for routine cataract treatment rather than rumoured prostate cancer. As he told Zimbabwe’s state-controlled Herald newspaper last month: “I want to live to over 100.”

But at a meeting last week in South Africa with President Jacob Zuma, who is tasked with monitoring Zimbabwe’s power-sharing arrangements, the Zimbabwean leader was rambling and incoherent, at one point even calling his host “Mr Mandela”.

“He was slurring his speech and generally all over the place,” said the observer. “He is fine in brief public engagements in Zimbabwe, but when he’s sitting through a lengthy diplomatic summit, when he can’t control the timing of when he speaks, it’s clear he’s on a downward slope.”

True, aside from its ailing President, Zimbabwe does now look rather less in terminal decline than before. Thanks to a decision by Tendai Biti, the MDC Finance Minister, to replace the Zimbabwe dollar with the American one, the 25 000 percent annual inflation rate has now been slashed to around 2,5 percent; as a result, staples like bread and cooking oil are back on the shelves, and can be bought with a few dollars rather than a brick of trillion dollar notes. Civil servants are being paid again, allowing schools and hospitals to function once more, famine in rural areas has gone, and the valuable tourism sector is also showing signs of renewed. Also welcome again under the power-sharing government are foreign journalists: The Sunday Telegraph’s visit last week was the first in five years in which it was possible to get an official press badge – lack of which landed two previous correspondents for this newspaper in jail in 2005 and 2008.

“Things are definitely better compared to 2008,” said Tinashe Zihansu, 26, a market analyst, as he browsed for a flat-screen television in a newly-opened mall in a Harare suburb. “Two years ago you had to queue all day just for things like bread and sugar. I would almost rather the power-sharing government continued without any elections, to be honest, because at least it means they are only fighting each other within the cabinet rather than out on the streets.”

That such an unlikely partnership has functioned at all is a testimony to the patience of Tsvangirai, many of whose own supporters thought the power-sharing arrang-ement would simply taint the MDC with ZANU-PF’s failings.

Like Mnangagwa, Tsvangirai too is surprisingly polite about working with his enemies; ask him how coalition life is, and one gets a show of statesmanship that David Cameron and Nick Clegg might struggle to muster.

President Mugabe, who views the MDC leader as simply a pawn of British neo-colonial interests, is at least “polite and respectful” during their meetings every Monday, Tsvangarai told The Sunday Tele-graph in an interview at his Harare villa.

Power sharing, he added, had drawn the country back from the “precipice” of anarchy; indeed, he jokingly offered to school Cam-eron on its merits when they met at a summit in Davos earlier this year.

“I told him ‘Why did you guys take so long to form a coalition, you should have asked us, we could have given you some experience,'” he said, smiling.

“Coalitions are not the best arrangement in the world, but they are undertaken by a politician in order to pass through a certain phase, and I think to a large extent we have delivered.”

Rather like Clegg, though, Tsvangirai, 59, is very much the junior partner in the arrangement. Crucially, President Mugabe still retains control of the country’s police, army and security services, which continue to harrass Tsvan-girai’s own ministers and other political opponents on blatant fashion: in the past three months alone, two MDC ministers and a serving Members of Parliament have been chucked into prison on trumped-up charges of corruption.

Such tactics are understood to have earned President Mugabe an unprecedented private rebuke last week from Zuma, who, unlike his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, is far from star-struck by the former liberation hero.

But on the ground in Zimbabwe, there is little Zuma can practically do to stop the harassment – as the likes of MDC activist Raymond Saidi, 53, knows all too well. A ward chairperson in a Harare suburb, he was badly beaten two weeks ago after being ambushed by ZANU-PF youths on his way home from an MDC rally.

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