Chicago Tribune
Apr 30, 2008
Suspiciously delayed poll results, army trucks fanning out through villages, police ransacking opposition party offices, and reports of torched huts and broken-limbed civilians _ such has been the ugly face of democracy for nearly a decade in Zimbabwe, and by now most political experts have given up asking whether millions of Zimbabweans will ever reach a violent breaking point.
Indeed, even as fresh reports of government brutality seep out of Zimbabwe in the wake of the still-unresolved March presidential election, there are virtually no reports of unrest on the streets.
A call for a mass protest two weeks ago by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which claims it won the vote, fizzled as usual. Hungry citizens queued obediently for bread in the capital, Harare, last week even as cops rounded up hundreds of opposition activists. And the lone report of a violent backlash _ an alleged attack by opposition members on a rural army barracks on Tuesday _ remains unconfirmed. Human rights activists suspect it may have been planted by the regime of strongman Robert Mugabe to justify further arrests.
This deep well of stoicism _ or, as some critics sneer, passivity _ in Zimbabwe’s victimized population has for years been a source of puzzlement to many Africa analysts, humanitarian workers and foreign journalists, who contrast Zimbabweans’ seemingly inexhaustible acceptance of suffering with deadly explosions of electoral fury elsewhere in Africa, most recently in Kenya.
“This is the single greatest mystery of Zimbabwe,” marveled a Western diplomat in Harare who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. “In most other countries there would’ve been riots and violence years ago. But not here. These people are just too nice.”
The latest test of Zimbabweans’ restraint came on Wednesday, when the United Nations Security Council announced that it would not dispatch a special envoy to Zimbabwe to help resolve the election standoff. South Africa and China opposed the measure.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian group Human Rights Watch reported that Mugabe’s security forces were intensifying violent attacks on opposition voters in remote areas. In Manicaland province, the Zimbabwean army was equipping Mugabe-allied “war veterans” with trucks and rifles, the group said.
So far, at least 20 people have been killed nationwide, the opposition says.
Such organized brutality is by no means new.
Mugabe launched similar attacks in 2000 against white farmers and their black workers, as part of the government’s disastrous land reform policy. Since then, there have been two more dubious elections, reports of “rape camps” for opposition activists, and an economic meltdown that has seen 150,000 percent inflation – the highest in the world – 80 percent unemployment, near-starvation and such critical fuel shortages that ox wagons have replaced ambulances in some areas.
Through it all, hapless Zimbabweans – who favor sunny first names like Goodwill, Anyhow, Primrose and Everjoy – have managed to behave, if not like Africa’s Tibetans, then at least like the continent’s peaceful and law-abiding Canadians.
Theories for this abound: Some point to the lack of standing armies or a warrior caste in Zimbabwe’s majority Shona culture. Others cite the debilitating effects of malnutrition and a huge HIV/AIDS epidemic. Still others note that millions of frustrated young people, the natural base for an armed opposition, have simply voted with their feet. Between a quarter and a third of Zimbabwe’s 12 million people have fled political intimidation and economic ruin in their country to seek work in South Africa, Botswana or other neighboring states.
Another explanation is death by a thousand cuts. After eight years of watching their world fall apart in slow motion, Zimbabweans are ground down, deeply demoralized. An oft-repeated word in their conversations is a toneless “hopefully.”
“We’re also too proper – more English than the English,” said Foster Dongozi, the Secretary General of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, naming Zimbabwe’s former colonial overlord. “Instead of picking up weapons, we go to court.”
Dongozi wasn’t kidding.
“Mugabe has made a specialty of sham legality, lots of useless laws, phony rules that mean nothing,” he said. “He knows how far to push us. He knows how to distract us with a veneer of normalcy. He knows how to beat us way down, but not so far as to embarrass his African neighbors.”
As an example of calibrated repression, Dongozi told how two Zimbabwean journalists were arrested after the elections on spurious charges of arson; an electrical fire had charred a bus in Harare that day. When that charge didn’t stick, police simply switched the crime to attempted murder, and finally settled on public mischief. The reporters remain in jail.
Meanwhile, the city of Harare was hosting an arts festival this week just as pro-government militants armed with guns and machetes were reported to be fanning out to torch the distant homes and granaries of villagers.
“Right now Mugabe may be desperately trying to provoke us into a low-grade civil war,” said David Coltart, an opposition senator from the western Zimbabwe city of Bulawayo.
“We won’t take the bait. That’s where our people’s tradition of rejecting violence pays off,” Coltart said. “It’s taken us longer to go the Martin Luther King route, but I think we’re close to winning.”
Others weren’t so sure.
Reuters reported Wednesday that Zimbabwean election officials would soon announce that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had indeed won the election – but without the majority needed to assume power. A runoff would then need to be called, and Mugabe could spool out that process for months.
“This is a regime that won’t ever give up power easily,” said Elinor Sisulu, a Zimbabwean human rights organizer who lives in South Africa. “It’s going to require extraordinary things from us to get it out.”