Stephen Sackur (SS) – President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is in his 80’s, his country is in economic collapse and his ruling party is divided over his succession and yet Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, seems preoccupied with internal battles. My guest today, in Johannesburg, is a senior member of the MDC and the question is does Zimbabwe’s Opposition have what it takes to mobilize the masses?
David Coltart welcome to Hard Talk.
David Coltart (DC) – Thank you.
SS – Where do you think Zimbabwe’s Opposition should focus its efforts against Robert Mugabe now? Should it be on the streets with street protests or should it be the Parliamentary process?
DC – I think we need to realise that this isn’t actually a sprint that we had hoped but more of a marathon and we’ve got to employ a wide range of tactics against this regime; it has to be not just in the streets – it has to be in the streets to get the worlds attention – but it also needs to be in the Courts, it needs to be in Parliament and it needs to be in the international community.
SS – You say it’s not a sprint, but everybody knows that we are entering the ‘End Game’ for Robert Mugabe, he’s in his early 80’s, he’s faces the decision about what to do in 2008 when his current term runs out. So these matters are now pressing – you cannot wait and decide strategy in the future.
DC – No, no, we are not waiting to decide strategy in the future, this is a plan that has been in place for a while and I think it is wrong as well to say that this is going to end with Robert Mugabe’s departure. This is a structural problem. This is an issue concerning a regime and it’s a problem that goes beyond Robert Mugabe
SS – When I asked you about street protests, you couched your answer very carefully. Does that mean you have some doubts about the decision for example of the Zimbabwe Trade Unions to go for a series of mass action protests over the next few weeks & months we believe.
DC – No, I have no doubts at all. I commend, we commend, what the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has done. We commend their bravery and the bravery displayed by other civic organizations such as WOZA and the National Constitutional Assembly. What we do say, however, is that this must be well organized and that it shouldn’t be the only focus.
SS – But hasn’t it been well organized?
DC – I think it has been very well organized.
SS – Do you think it seems like the Trade Unions were taken aback when the first rash of demonstrations took place, there were beatings, there were mass arrests and we saw Wellington Chibhebhe saying that perhaps they had to rethink, perhaps there will have to some sort of temporary suspension from protests. Were you surprised by Mugabe’s reaction?
DC – I think they were taken aback by the preemptive nature of the arrests even before they had commenced the demonstrations.
SS – Isn’t that odd that the opposition, as a whole, is still taken aback by the fierce response of the Mugabe regime which has been in power for 26 years and over the last 6 or 7 years has shown itself time and again to be prepared to use force to quell all street protests.
DC – I would agree with that, I think that many of the people, for example, in the north of the country have been taken aback by what has happened in Zimbabwe over the last 6 years. Those of us who come from the South West of the country of course know the true nature of this regime because we saw what it did in Matabeleland in the 1980’s and so we haven’t been surprised by the reaction of this regime. I think the farming community especially was absolutely staggered. They enjoyed 20 years of bliss and many people in Harare and in the North and East of the country have been completely taken aback.
SS – That was understandable 6 years ago maybe but it’s less understandable today.
DC – Well, I am always amazed by the brazenness of this regime. I’ve been surprised myself. I’ve been working in human rights for 23 years in Zimbabwe and I was staggered by the brazenness of what they did to the Trade Union leaders by beating them in the manner they did. They did not even try to give the excuse that they were beaten up in the streets. They were taken into cells and beaten up systematically.
SS – But you see a lot of people outside Zimbabwe will wonder at your surprise when in 2005, we had 700,000 people rendered homeless because of the mass clearance of shanty towns around some of Zimbabwe’s biggest cities. We’ve had the persistent reports from the Human Rights Groups of not just torture and beatings but also murder carried out by the Mugabe regime – and you tell me you are surprised that Union leaders were still being beating.
DC – Well I am not surprised that they are still being beaten; I am surprised that the regime has allowed the façade of civility to drop. One of the things that has distinguished the Mugabe, the Zanu PF, regime, from, for example, a regime like Arap Moi’s regime, is that they have shown some finesse in the past: they’ve always described themselves as democrats; they’ve always been conscious of their international image. So we are not surprised by the brutality but we are surprised by the brazenness of it.
SS – Your Opposition movement is split, why?
DC – What the world needs to understand is that any organization, any group of people, who are put under as much stress as the opposition have been in Zimbabwe in the last 6 years are ultimately going to crack. That’s what happens to marriages, many divorces …..
SS – So the Movement for Democratic Changes has cracked has it?
DC – I think it has cracked but this is a direct result of 6 years of brutality. Morgan Tsvangirai has been subjected to a treason trial before a judge who received a farm – he faced the death penalty. That has an impact on a person and the same applies to the rest of us.
SS – No one would doubt that Morgan Tsvangirai has suffered over the last 6 years and now it seems you have abandoned him.
DC – I don’t think we have abandoned him. There are as we speak, talks taking place to try and reunite or get a coalition agreed to. But those of us who are no longer with him have said that we need to go back to our founding principles and we don’t believe that Morgan Tsvangirai is the problem. We believe that there are people who have infiltrated who need to be dealt with by him and when that happens I have no doubt that a united front will be presented again.
SS – What kind of people had infiltrated?
DC – Six years ago, when the MDC was set up, I have no doubt that the Director General of the CIO was given a specific mandate to infiltrate….
SS – Mugabe’s Central Intelligence Organisation?
DC – That’s right, Zimbabwe’s equivalent of Stazi… was given a mandate to infiltrate and disrupt and if possible to destroy the opposition and I have no doubt that people have infiltrated during that period of 6 years and those are the people who are primarily responsible for organising and perpetrating the violence against members of the MDC.
SS – So you are talking about people close to Morgan Tsvangirai who, in your opinion, are infiltrators working for Mugabe’s intelligence?
DC – I wouldn’t say they are close to Morgan Tsvangirai, but they have certainly got themselves into key positions. I don’t think that Morgan Tsvangirai as an individual condones what has happened.
SS – But the fact is the split occurred when you and a number of your senior colleagues in the MDC decided it was right and proper to fight the Senate Elections that Mugabe had called for November of 2005. Mr Tsvangirai, the leader of the Party, thought that was plain wrong.
DC – I think that the Senate Election issue was simply a ‘smoke screen’; it was not the real reason. There had been issues building over time and it just so happened that it was the Senate Election that acted as a catalyst for the split that occurred in October last year. There were philosophical differences.
SS – Philosophical, in what sense?
DC – In essence, I think it was a difference in views as how best to tackle the regime, with some saying we needed to use all means at our disposal, including participation in obviously flawed Senatorial Elections, whereas another faction of the Party believed that the electoral process was so flawed in Zimbabwe that it should be abandoned.
SS – Is it also the case that you believe that some in the Party wanted direct action perhaps contemplating violent action and you were not prepared to go down that path.
DC – Well, I personally have never been prepared to go down that route. Not just for moral reasons, but for practical reasons. I believe it would be foolhardy to tackle the Zanu PF regime on the ground it has the most experience in.
SS – We see that Morgan Tsvangirai says that your faction, the faction that chose to fight these, as you called them, ‘deeply flawed Senate Elections’ was playing directly into the hands of Robert Mugabe. You offered some sort of legitimacy to those elections, you also by creating this split within the Movement for Democratic Change did the work of the Mugabe regime for it.
DC – I don’t think we legitimised the elections at all. All rational people throughout the world know that Zimbabwe’s elections are deeply flawed ….
SS – If they are pointless, why fight them?
DC – It comes back to the philosophical question of – “are you going to use all means at your disposal or are you going to cut off those means?” The problem about not participating in elections is where does that end? Does it mean that one does not go into Parliament? Does it mean you don’t use the Court system and what signal does that send to the Zanu PF regime? Is the signal that you have abandoned your policies, your principles of using non violent methods of tackling this regime or is it that you are going to participate using the same methods used over the last 6 years?
SS – You have just given me a hint that behind the scenes there are some sorts of talks going on to try and heal the deep rift between the Movement for Democratic Change.
DC – One of the ways in which one can facilitate unity, once again, is by employing a certain term – ‘tough love’. You have to build up a faction so that it cannot be disregarded. Once it is there as a political force, that will encourage those, the hawks in the other side who believed that the Mutambara faction was not going to be factor in Zimbabwe politics, to think again. You force their hand to reunite and when those two groups reunite either as a united opposition or in some form of coalition or alliance then we will present a very powerful force against the Zanu PF regime.
SS – Do you think the problem perhaps lies in the nature of the Movement for Democratic Change? Did it not, in early days, receive substantial amounts of money for example from white farmers? We all know that Robert Mugabe made a great deal of political play of pictures of white farmers writing out cheques to the MDC. Haven’t you always been vulnerable to Mugabe’s powers that in the end you are a tool to the colonialist, imperialist powers in Zimbabwe and beyond?
DC – Let me challenge that assumption in the first place, you say that we received substantial funding from white farmers, that is part of Robert Mugabe’s propaganda, he was fortunate enough to get one television clip but we certainly didn’t get substantial funding. The MDC ….
SS – Are you denying that white farmers were early supporters in 1999 of the MDC?
DC – Of course white farmers were supporters, as well as people from the Churches, Human Rights groups, the Trade Union movement and other groups that wanted to restore the rule of law in Zimbabwe. But to say that we were somehow aligned with white farmers isn’t correct at all.
SS – Let’s be blunt about it. In a sense the extent of the problem you have is that you stand before me as a senior leader and spokesman of the Movement for Democratic Change as a white Zimbabwean. That is a problem for your Movement given the way Mugabe consistently plays the liberationist and nationalist card.
DC – Well it may appear to be a problem externally, but certainly internally it isn’t a problem. I was elected last year in a predominantly black constituency, a working class constituency, which is 95% black. I stood against a black woman Cabinet Minister and beat her with a 76% majority. There’s no problem within Zimbabwe. It’s one of the remarkable things about Zimbabwe, I think we have gone a step further, several steps further, than for example South Africa – race is a propaganda ploy employed by Robert Mugabe which gets a lot of currency in the international community but does not rub within Zimbabwe.
SS – But Mugabe is a canny political operator. I’m sure you can see that after 26 years. He does not make these statements and continue his tirades against people like you being the tool of Tony Blair and the colonial powers for no reason. He does it because it gives him political leverage.
DC – I think it used to give him political leverage but I that the truth is now coming out in Zimbabwe and I think that even in the region if we look at the last SADC Heads of Government meeting held recently in Lesotho, you will see that Robert Mugabe’s propaganda, the use of race, the use of land, is wearing thin.
SS – Can you be a coherent Movement and such a broad church bringing everybody from the white farmers on the one hand to the poorest black Zimbabwean who has suffered under the slum clearances on the other. Can there be a meaningful political party that embraces all of those people and everyone in-between?
DC – Well, we were originally a very broad church. White farmers are no longer a factor, there are perhaps 300 white farmers on the land, whites have gone out in their droves from Zimbabwe. There are hardly any whites left in the country. So it’s not as broad a church as it was and I think in the context of 6 years of struggle, we are refining our policies, we have a clearer ideological and philosophical direction.
SS – How bad do you think can things get in Zimbabwe? The UN special envoy to Humanitarian Affairs has called it a meltdown, inflation is running at over 1000%, 80% unemployment, many millions of people living on international food aid. Can it get worse?
DC – It can get far worse. One of the tragedies of not doing this interview in Zimbabwe is that you don’t see for yourself what is going on. Life for the average Zimbabwean is sheer hell now with rampant inflation, food shortages and an increasingly authoritarian and paranoid regime. It’s a hell hole at present. But unfortunately when we look elsewhere in Africa, if you take the extreme examples of Somalia and Liberia, it can go a long way down. One just hopes that because Zimbabwe is situated in the middle of Southern Africa, regional leaders will understand that this is a cancer in our region and that they need to take stronger measures to reign in this regime so that we can negotiate a way out of this mess.
SS – Do you think that Mugabe is going to have to go before his term ends in 2008?
DC – I think if we are to stop the suffering of Zimbabweans, if we are to tackle the economy, he needs to go today, he needs to have gone yesterday. But I think he is so fearful that he will hang on to the death.
SS – We spoke to Jonathan Moyo, who as you well know used to be his Information Minister now an Independent MP. He says that the ‘end game’ is upon us and that when it comes there will be huge splits within Zanu PF, the ruling party. He said there could even be civil war. Do you believe that?
DC – I believe that there is a danger of that. However I think what will restrain people is the memory of two civil wars in the recent past – the Liberation Struggle in the 1970’s and Gukurahundi in the 1980’s. Those two civil wars act as an enormous restraint on the people. Zimbabweans are remarkably peace loving as a result. But let me say this – that the only difference between the MDC and Zanu PF at present, is that the MDC’s split is out in the open, whereas Zanu PF has managed to paper over its split but the divisions are very serious. I think that change will come when the military and the police finally realize that the pool of patronage used by Robert Mugabe has dried up. When that happens, there’s a danger that they will fall under one or other of the Zanu PF divisions or factions and that could cause trouble.
SS – There have been negotiations in the last couple of years between members of the Opposition MDC and Zanu PF – do you believe there can be negotiations now or in the very near future?
DC – I think there have to be negotiations. One of the political realities of Zimbabwe is that despite what the Zanu PF regime has brought to bear on Zimbabweans, they still retain enormous support in certain areas of the country. For example in the Mashonaland rural areas up in the north of the country, Zanu PF still has core support and to that extent it remains a massive factor in Zimbabwe politics. There can be no settlement of the Zimbabwean crisis without Zanu PF’s involvement in that. Now I hope, of course, that we can deal with moderates within Zanu PF, and there are some, and bring them to the negotiating table so that we can thrash out an agreement regarding a new constitution which in turn will lead to the first genuinely free and fair elections in Zimbabwe since Independence.
SS – But are you prepared to say to Robert Mugabe, if he is to retire from the scene, and to his key lieutenants – are you prepared to say to them that you will offer them guarantees of safety, of the clearance of any suggestion of legal action against them from the table as part of a deal?
DC – I have much deeper human rights than political roots. I was a human rights Lawyer before going into politics, so the thought of granting amnesty to people guilty of war crimes is anathema, but that is a personal view. We have to take a practical decision; we have to weigh up whether it is worthwhile pursuing a prosecution against Mugabe against the deaths that are taking place every week – 3500 people are dying in Zimbabwe every week though the deadly combination of AIDS, poverty and malnutrition. We have to bring an end to that and the price we may have to pay may be to grant Robert Mugabe amnesty if it is going to bring an end to this calamitous situation that we face and provide him with a safe and secure way out.
SS – And if that does not work and Jonathan Moyo is right and there is the prospect of violence, civil strife inside Zimbabwe – will the MDC, in the end, make preparations for that and in the end fight if it has to?
DC – If I have my way, we will remain committed to the principles of Gandhi and Martin Luther King – I don’t believe that any form of violence is going to help Zimbabweans, if anything it will help a ruthless and paranoid regime. This is the argument we have made for 6 years. The one thing that the Zanu PF regime wants is for us to take up arms of war because they fought a guerilla war, they have the expertise…….
SS – Sorry to interrupt. Are you sure that no body in the MDC is currently contemplating or preparing for armed action?
DC – I can say, with absolute assurance, that in our faction ….
SS – Well it’s not actually what I asked you, what about the Movement for Democratic Change generally?
DC – Well I don’t know what some of the people who have been infiltrated into the organisation are planning but I certainly know my colleagues of like-mind in the other faction, people like Tendai Biti, and Morgan Tsvangirai himself, are not contemplating that and certainly if any of them are contemplating that then that would certainly secure us never joining up with them again.
SS – You spent more than 20 years fighting for human rights in Zimbabwe, you’ve spent the last 7 years involved with the Movement for Democratic Change – are you more pessimistic now than you’ve ever been about Zimbabwe’s short and medium term future?
DC – No I’m not pessimistic surprisingly enough, because I study history and I realise that dictators come and go and they are often the authors of their own demise. So when one looks at Hitler in his final days he became more extreme, more paranoid and I see the same happening to this regime. If anything I think the regime is speeding up its own demise and so in the context of this being a process, I see us nearing the end.
SS – David Coltart, thank you very much for being on Hard Talk.
DC – Thank you.
Transcript of BBC HardTalk Interview with David Coltart – 12 October 2006