Zimbabwe’s future still hanging by a thread

The Irish Times

10 June 2010

By Petroc Trelawny

Despite its disparate membership, the MDC- Zanu-PF coalition seems to be working, writes PETROC TRELAWNY

AT THE end of a gala concert at Bulawayo’s Academy of Music, the audience stand to sing the Zimbabwe national anthem. It’s a substantial work – three verses – sung in Shona, Ndebele and English. On stage, a children’s choir performs with gusto.

The largely white audience are less sure; many of them are over 60 and this is the fourth anthem they have known.

In the middle of Row E, a tall, lean man, his back ramrod straight, delivers the words with energy, even pride. Senator David Coltart has his right hand clasped to his chest. His fingers are spread flat – the open palm is the symbol of his party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu- PF uses the clenched fist as its trademark.

Last year Coltart became Zimbabwe’s minister for education, sport, arts and culture, part of the new coalition government that saw the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai appointed prime minister.

Although the latter part of Coltart’s brief enables him to attend the occasional classical concert or watch the Brazilian football team beat Zimbabwe in a pre-World Cup friendly, it is education that is by far his biggest responsibility. His department employs 90,000 teachers and civil servants.

Until the inflation-ridden Zimbabwe dollar was abandoned last year and replaced by the US dollar and the South African rand, many of Coltart’s employees could not even afford the cost of their transport to work. Now schools are open once again and an education system that 20 years ago was the envy of Africa is gradually returning to life.

Dozens of people at the concert want to shake Coltart’s hand or have a word. Many white Zimbabweans see him as a figure of stability in a deeply uncertain world. When we speak at his suburban house the next morning though, he immediately makes it clear that he is not in government to represent the white minority.

As he points out, the electorate in his Bulawayo constituency is 95 per cent black, and he has tough words for anyone who suggests Mugabe is entirely to blame for Zimbabwe’s breakdown.

“Whites need to understand the role they have played in bringing about this current regime,” he says. “Rhodesia in the 1950s was charting a rational, liberal, democratic path and then along came Ian Smith with policies that were pretty close to South African apartheid.

“We had 20 years of Rhodesian Front Rule and then 30 years under Zanu-PF, and it’s only now that we are beginning to emerge from an authoritarian nightmare.”

The cause of Zimbabwe’s beleaguered commercial farmers is another issue on which Coltart chooses his words carefully. Since 2002, the majority of white farmers have been forcibly evicted from their lands by so-called war veterans. Any farmers hoping an MDC government would simply turn the clock back will be disappointed.

At the gala concert, I met a white farmer who lost his land in 2002. Now working as a janitor at a Bulawayo school, he is bitter, his wife still tearful at the memory of their eviction. Where does the MDC’s policies leave them?

“We believe in the rule of law”, replies Coltart, “which means that property rights are sacrosanct. If farmers can’t be returned to their land, then they must be compensated. The problem is that this country is well-nigh bankrupt.”

Coltart was a law student in Cape Town when Zimbabwe became independent in 1980. Like many young former Rhodesians, he eagerly returned home, encouraged by Robert Mugabe’s promises of a new, multiracial republic.

Within three years the dream had turned sour. Coltart found himself representing victims of the Gukurahundi, the tribal war in which Mugabe’s 5th Brigade massacred as many as 20,000 Matabeles – a genocide that many western politicians found it expedient to ignore.

His role in exposing brutal human rights abuses ultimately led him towards the often dangerous world of Zimbabwean politics.

He was first elected as an MDC MP in 2000. Since then his own party has split into two rival factions, a move he describes as “the greatest possible gift” to Zanu-PF.

Despite its disparate membership, though, the coalition seems to be working. “Cabinet is tense but functional,” says Coltart.

He places the Zanu-PF politicians with whom he works in three different groups.

“There are the moderates, who support more rational economic policies and are prepared to contemplate loss of power. Then there are those who don’t like the power-sharing agreement, but when push comes to shove, don’t want to destroy the country. I put Mugabe in that group.

“Then you have the hardliners, often corrupt and guilty of crimes against humanity. They are 20 years younger than Mugabe – terrified of losing his protection and of the loss of power democracy will mean for them.”

Mugabe’s official portrait hangs in shops and offices and hotels across Zimbabwe, but it’s an old photograph, taken soon after independence.

“Even now many Africans see him as an icon of the struggle against colonialism and apartheid. We have very poor information flows in Africa, so most people don’t know about the catastrophic situation he has brought to bear in Zimbabwe. But he is 86 and, while he’s astonishingly sprightly, he turns 87 next February and time marches on.”

There is also the issue of what would happen to Mugabe should he stand down as president.

“We’ll need some form of amnesty for corruption and crimes against humanity,”Coltart says. “We are not going to move forward if Mugabe believes he is going to end up in the Hague or before a Zimbabwean court.”

As we finish talking, I remark to the senator that Zimbabweans seem far more optimistic than I had expected. I suggest there is hope in the sight of a multiracial choir of smartly uniformed schoolchildren singing Vivaldi’s Gloria. Proof at least that Zimbabwe’s education system is working. Coltart nods slowly, “but let me stress, like everything else here, education is hanging by a thread. It’s only narrowly survived the calamity our nation has been through over the past decade.”