3 February 2002
(Page 2 of 3)
What we are beginning to see is that the elected lieutenants of Mugabe are not now playing a leading role in putting strategies for his survival; it is the non-elected [directly appointed] MPs who have been made ministers [without] any democratic credentials; we are talking of the minister of information, of agriculture, of justice; those are the people now with Mugabe's ear. They do not have any other constituency except Mugabe himself and they remain in power at Mugabe's pleasure.
There was an interesting article in the Financial Gazette saying Nigeria's President Obasanjo was recently trying to arrange behind the scenes for a guaranteed safe exit for Mugabe so that he could leave the country if he lost the election. Is that plausible?
Eliphas Mukonoweshuro: I think that the opposition has always had that position, that they do not believe it will be in the interest of the country to embark on politics of retribution and I think the leader of the opposition has on several occasions been on record as saying that. The only difference is that now he has approached the regional leaders and I know for certain he has written to President Obasanjo undertaking that there will be no retribution, that despite his soiled legacy, Mugabe still deserves some respect as the founding prime minister and the founding president of Zimbabwe.
Assuming free and fair elections, most press reports say the outcome would be very close. From that we have to assume that there is still a constituency very supportive of Zanu-PF. What is the basis for that support?
Mark Chavunduka: I'm not so sure that I agree that Zanu-PF still have that formidable level of support. Firstly there's going to be no free and fair election; but if that were going to be possible, it would not be a tight race at all. The vote would be overwhelmingly in favour of the opposition.
Eliphas Mukonoweshuro: I think what you should also remember is that we have had a dry run of the presidential election in which Mugabe lost - the constitutional referendum. That's why Mugabe is now insisting that voting should not be on the basis of a national constituency. He wants it to be on the basis of parliamentary constituencies because he's realised that the strategy of intimidation works if people are restricted to a particular parliamentary constituency.
That is the reason why the MDC is going to court challenging that; they have won in the court of law, the High Court, but I think Zanu-PF is appealing now to the Supreme Court because they do not want to abandon the constituency approach to voting, even though in the past two presidential elections the whole country was turned into one national constituency. If that [referendum] had been a presidential election then Mugabe would have been out of power; they don't want a repetition of that in this election.
I think there is a marked denudation of Mugabe's support in his traditional stronghold, the rural areas. A piece of land does not mean anything to anybody if there are no support services, if there is no health, no education. The cost of living now in the rural areas is higher than in the urban areas! So you can see, on the basis of that, there has been a spectacular erosion of the support that Mugabe used to enjoy in the rural areas.
So it could be a close-shave election. If it is a close shave, the only reason will be that Zanu-PF has opened all the floodgates to rig the election. Of course this is what is happening; we're no longer talking about whether the election will be free and fair but of the magnitude of rigging. It is a foregone conclusion that the election is rigged; it stands rigged even before the first ballot is cast.
What's happening in Matabeleland?
Mark Chavunduka:I think Matabeleland is suffering in the same way that other provinces are. The Professor has [described elsewhere] the system of command centers which have been set up at national level and then replicated in all the provinces of the country. Basically these are structures which comprise the army, the police, the Central Intelligence Organisation, Zanu-PF youths and the militia. What they do is mobilize, through violence, support for Zanu-PF in the forthcoming elections and they have been brutalizing people in all the areas where the command structures are in place.
Matabeleland has not escaped that, so they are facing the same problem that others are. I think Zanu-PF to a certain extent has lost hope [there] because the people of Matabeleland were beaten up badly and killed during the time of the Gukurahunde [the war of repression waged by the Zimbabwe army in Matabeleland during the early '80s in which tens of thousands may have been killed] and in the last parliamentary elections, those provinces emerged as the strongest support bases for the MDC. So one would have thought that the government would have given up on those areas as lost provinces - but no, they have also been targeted for assault and intimidation.
Eliphas Mukonoweshuro: What is happening on the ground in Zimbabwe now is that, for the first time since independence, there is a recognized official infrastructure of violence that permeates all the corners of the country - the command centre system that he referred to. Orders are rapidly transmitted from the command centre in Harare, in the shortest possible time. Why do we say that? Because we have seen the simultaneous occurrence of similar events throughout the country, like the closure of schools, for instance. One could only conclude that these orders must have been transmitted from the same source.
In the past they used to use underground party structures to perpetrate violence so that they could then afford plausible denial. That is gone. This structure we are talking about is above board; it operates and is perceived to be operating with chilling efficiency by everyone who cares to investigate its permeation in society.
Apart from the command centre system, we are also talking of the deployment of 18,000 soldiers in civilian clothes who are campaigning on behalf of the ruling party. So we are seeing a militarisation of the campaign structure; what is, in actual fact, in place are not civilian campaign structures but military command structures. For the opposition to penetrate the rural areas it would have to meet those structures with similarly militarized structures. And of course you are describing a civil war if that happens.
So is the MDC preparing to respond in kind?
Eliphas Mukonoweshuro: No, the MDC is not preparing for anything. Certainly they don't have the resources and they don't believe in violent confrontation of that nature. But of course, the patience of the ordinary civilians on the ground is wearing thin. You know, they are beginning to organize now to resist so that their neighbourhoods are not terrorized by these state-sponsored thugs. What I am only saying is that if you want a free and fair campaign the military structures have to be abandoned by the ruling party, otherwise the only way that the MDC can penetrate is if it has military structures of the same nature, which it does not have.
And presumably, you don't expect Zanu-PF to abandon those structures?
Eliphas Mukonoweshuro: Oh no, the government is not going to abandon those structures. They are going to ensure that they remain in place. The strategy is: "Let's go ahead and win the election by whatever methods and then after that, present the international community with a fait accompli: [they will] have to deal with the government that is in place." I think that is their strategy.
Do you think smart sanctions will have any effect? And where are the assets being held that will have to be frozen?
Mark Chavunduka: Definitely they will work. We have said that we prefer a system with staggered implementation of sanctions, it is much better than imposing blanket sanctions on Zimbabwe because, that way, you only serve to make the circumstance of the ordinary Zimbabwean more difficult. But if they are targeted at particular individuals...
Where the money is, is difficult to say - I wish I knew! - but a substantial part of it must be in Europe and the US. But it's going to be a very difficult task [to track it down] because a lot of it is hidden through various shell companies and syndicates which could be very difficult to trace.
The Commonwealth's failure to suspend Zimbabwe at the foreign ministers meeting in London: was it a surprise? A disappointment?
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