Washington, DC — Democracy advocates in southern Africa have been posing the question recently: When does Zimbabwe reach a "tipping point", where popular opposition to the regime of aging president Robert Mugabe is greater than the government forces arrayed against it.
A delegation of political and civil society leaders who have been visiting the United Nations and Washington, DC says that time has come. They accuse the government of intensifying a campaign of violence against opponents, of accelerating arbitrary detentions and abductions and of exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that has given Zimbabwe the world's lowest life expectancy.
With 83-year-old Mugabe planning to run again in presidential elections next year, they are appealing for international pressure to support the internal pro-democracy struggle. Members of the group say they find it inexplicable that African leaders have failed to take a strong stand on Zimbabwe in the context of African Union commitments to political and economic reforms on the continent. They say they are angry that SADC, the southern African regional organization, declined to censure Mugabe during its March summit, which followed a brutal crackdown on government critics. They say they are particularly dismayed that neighboring South Africa, whose quest for democracy was aided by sanctions against the former white government - and whose president was charged by SADC with mediating the Zimbabwe crisis - has not taken a firmer stand for change. And they say they are saddened that African Americans, who they feel should identify with their struggle, are perceived by democracy activists in Zimbabwe as apologists for Mugabe.
The delegation included Grace Kwinjeh, deputy secretary for international relations of the Movement for Democratic Change, the main political opposition; National Constitutional Assembly Chairman Lovemore Madhuku; Otto Saki of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights; and Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition National Coordinator Jacob Mafume. They were accompanied by Isabella Matambandadzo, program manager for Zimbabwe of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and former executive director of the Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network.
After meetings with human rights groups and other NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and members of the U.S. Congress, the group participated in a lively seminar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington titled "Keeping Democratic Hopes Alive Amid Rising Repression." Participants described the events of Sunday, March 11 as a pivotal moment. About 50 people were beaten and arrested en route to a prayer meeting sponsored by the Christian Alliance, an ecumenical organization described as an effort by religious organizations to cooperate in resolving social and economic problems and to promote justice.
Zimbabwe 's economy is in desperate straits. The International Monetary Fund says the annual inflation rate, already a world record, neared 3000% in February. Last month the Fund revised its inflation projections to 5000% by year end. Unemployment runs between 80 and 90 per cent. A severe drought has further exacerbated the suffering, as hunger mounts. Due in part to an uncontrolled HIV epidemic, life expectancy averages 34 for women and 37 for men.
The country's media have long been shackled, and the pressure appears to be growing. Blogger and web analyst Ethan Zukerman wrote on April 5 about the murder of a prominent journalist following his March 11 reporting. "I'm sad to report a tragic reminder of just how dangerous journalism in Zimbabwe can be. Edward Chikomba, a freelance cameraman, who frequently worked for state-controlled ZBC (the sole terrestrial television network in Zimbabwe) has been found beaten to death on a roadside 50km outside of Harare. Chikomba is believed to be one of the cameramen who shot footage of Morgan Tsvangarai emerging from the courthouse showing evidence of his injuries while in police custody for Mighty Movies Zimbabwe, a production company that sells footage to international broadcasters….It's a good bet that his journalistic activities were a major factor in his death as Zimbabwe is in the middle of a sometimes violent crackdown on independent journalism. Gift Phiri of The Zimbabwean has been in custody since April 1st, charged with practicing journalism illegally. Luke Tamborinyoka, former editor of the defunct Daily News, has been hospitalized under court orders since March 30th, after losing consciousness during his trial - he'd been arrested in the March 28 raid on MDC headquarters and severely beaten in police custody."
On May 4, World Press Freedom Day, four media organizations in Zimbabwe issued a statement saying: The widely condemned Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Public Order and Security Act and the Broadcasting Services Act, continue to be used with impunity to muzzle the media and harass journalists…The intimidation, harassment and unlawful arrests, detentions and torture of journalists going about their professional duties continue unabated…As we mark this day, hundreds of journalists and media workers have been thrown into the streets following the closure of The Daily News, Daily News on Sunday, The Weekly Times and The Tribune.
The crackdown appears to be producing an unintended effect - a widespread sense that the government has gone too far and that the moment has come to take major risks to oust it. "Analysts have long been forecasting that the next step in Zimbabwe's political development will be an alliance between opposition political parties and civic and church groups to form something equivalent to the mass democratic movement, which took over the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa after the African National Congress was banned and exiled," wrote Sarah Dlodlowhich of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting on March 21.
Women have been at the forefront of the rising protests. Two years ago, dozens of marchers from Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza) were arrested in Zimbabwe's capital Harare under a sign saying, "The Power of Love can conquer the Love of Power". Six weeks later over 100 Woza members holding a peace vigil were arrested. Blogger Daniel Moshenberg last year quoted a Woza press release on International Women's Day describing police action against them: "In Bulawayo, 174 women, 7 men and 14 babies were arrested and in Harare, an estimated 242 women and 5 babies were arrested, many of whom spent more than three days in custody."
On May 1, AllAfrica's Francois Gouahinga and Yudaya Mawanda talked to Grace Kwinjeh and Isabella Matambandadzo, who stayed in Washington a few days later than the other delegation members.
Kwinjeh: The purpose of the trip was to highlight the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe. The situation did not really start on 11 th of March but in February, when President Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC tried to launch his presidential campaign. He was stopped, and after that there was a ban on all political rallies for three months in many of the big cities. [Even] before the ban it had been difficult to meet. I am one of those who had been arrested several times before that for holding what they call "illegal" demonstrations under the securities laws.
But March 11 th was a dramatization of a situation that was bad already, in the sense that the kind of brutality we experienced was beyond anything that we had psychologically prepared ourselves for. Prayer meetings in Zimbabwe are not governed by the security laws. You can meet to pray anywhere, any religion. There's freedom of religion. There's an alliance of churches that call themselves the Christian Alliance. These are credible church leaders we have known since independence. So they invited all political parties, not just the MDC, and all civic groups to a united prayer meeting in one of the high density suburbs, Highfields.
We went to this prayer meeting thinking that, well, it's a prayer meeting. We have been invited. And when we got there, to our surprise, we heard that some of our colleagues had been arrested. We went to find out why, because this was a legal prayer meeting on a Sunday morning when everybody is in church. I actually learnt later that one of the churches was raided, and people were beaten up who were just having their own normal congregation for that Sunday.
We were tortured for more than four hours with all sorts of objects … baton sticks, army belts, iron bars … If you look at my ear - they bashed me several times on the head with an iron bar. I fainted. The president of the party, Morgan Tsvangirai, was specifically targeted. For every one lash somebody got, he got five. He was always the main target. It got to a point where he lay there still, and I thought he was dead. To this day I really think that the power of God worked and intervened, because the kind of beatings with an iron bar on the head and surviving and actually coming out still walking is a miracle.
Dr. Lovemore Madhuku of the National Constitutional Assembly was also assaulted so badly. At one point he was beaten in front of an assistant commissioner, Mabunda. And this assistant commissioner called Dr. Madhuku and said, "Madhuku, what did I tell you yesterday? Now you deserve what you are getting". The moment he said that there was an orgy of violence to beat up Dr. Madhuku. He's back home now - today he was addressing May Day celebrations, after all they did to him!
After the beatings we were put in a lorry [truck] like animals on top of each other. I was put in a cell with three other guys, feeling very faint because of the bleeding from my ear, and my head was swollen. In the morning, the army came again. Apparently an army bus had been burnt while we were being held. They came to interrogate me on who had burnt the army bus. I said, "I've been in police custody since morning. How can I be responsible for burning an army bus?" That is when they started to torture me again, until I couldn't stand. Then they made me sit and started to hit the soles of my feet. I don't know what else to say, because I passed out completely. You can see that my legs are still swollen, and I am still on medication. Colleagues were also being attacked in their cells.
There was a quick international outcry because prominent figures like President Morgan Tsvangirai, the National Constitutional Assembly chairman, Dr. Lovemore Madhuku, and two legislators - Tendai Biti and Nelson Chamisa were there. Mr. Chamisa was later attacked at the international airport in the departure lounge. He was leaving for a joint parliamentary assembly meeting of the African Caribbean Pacific [group of states] and the European Union.
You know security rules around all airports - the departure lounge is not a place where thugs can just go into, but he was assaulted and left for dead in the lounge. This is an elected legislator who is leaving on legislative business, but they attacked him, and he had to be hospitalized again.
"We fear for our lives"
And so our trip is to highlight the kind of brutality that is in Zimbabwe today. All rules have been suspended - notwithstanding that the rules were really unfair to us, the opposition - but even those have been suspended. We fear for our lives. We fear for the lives of the opposition.
There are now assassination lists being leaked of people to be assassinated by hit groups. There are cars with no number plates going from door to door abducting opposition supporters. Some we know where they are, some we do not know, and others are hiding. This is ten months before key elections are held. It's hardly an election environment at all, where people cannot express themselves, where everybody who belongs to the opposition has been criminalized.
We thought that at the United Nations level, at the U.S. government level, it is important for them to understand that what is happening in Zimbabwe is a real crisis. There might not be guns on the ground, like what is happening in Somalia and the crisis in Darfur. What is happening in Darfur and Somalia is wrong - and so is what is happening in Zimbabwe.
"The pattern becomes more brutal"
As a Zimbabwean society, we are a religious society, a peace loving society, and we are a traumatized society at the moment. We have seen protests repressed before. In 2000 [the government dismissed the opposition as controlled by] white commercial farmers, because Mugabe wanted to correct past land injustices by giving land to black people. And we had the same thing in 2002 and 2005. So the pattern of violence repeats itself but becomes more brutal. You are supposed, as a citizen, to seek protection from the police. In my country, we now run from the police because you never know what can happen to you. So I am lucky to be here to tell my story.
But the real story is that of the 28 activists who are being tortured and with whom I would be in Remand Prison with right now [except for international pressure to allow medical evacuation to South Africa]. Mr. Morgan Chomicki is a member of our standing committee, one of the highest office bearers. We hear that he is being tortured and is bleeding from the nose and mouth. There's Ian Makoni, who is an adviser to [MDC] President Morgan Tsvangirai. He has been tortured, and he has been there for two months. Several other activists are being denied bail and are being tortured. Part of our mission is a campaign for them to become prisoners of conscience, to bring to the attention of the international community the kind of brutality that we are living.
You have been quoted as saying that this delegation is the voice of the Zimbabwean people who have no access to international public opinion.
Matambandadzo: I think when you consider how this is a shared story about the many hundreds of Zimbabweans who have disappeared, been abducted - to date our figures stand at about 600 people who are missing in some shape or form - then you understand that [the delegation members] bear testimony. They carry the scars on their bodies and in their minds of what happens when a police station becomes a site of torture and of violence. They are the voices of the citizens who are being brutalized with impunity.
Police stations are locations where you go to seek justice and to seek safety and security in the event that you have been denied those things. We would have expected the commissioner of police in Zimbabwe to call a commission of inquiry into the ten police stations that were involved in the incidents pf March 11. We would have expected the minister of home affairs to demand accountability from his office bearers around the incidents of March 11. In fact, we would have expected the president of our nation to demand accountability. Instead, on national television, national radio, in the national press, the president said, "They deserved to be beaten". So that is really a shocking revelation of the extent of brutality in our society from office bearers who receive salaries that are directly related to tax payers' contribution.
You are suggesting that this incident, this day, is a kind of iconic representation of what's happening in Zimbabwe.
Matambandadzo: Yes. Dr. Madhuku calls it the 'tipping point,' when he speaks. How do so many people who are representatives of lawfully registered non-governmental organizations, who are members of parliament, of an opposition that is registered and recognized by the government, who are members of the political opposition, that is also registered and recognized by our government and our laws, get beaten up in police custody?
What do you expect to happen when you go home?
Kwinjeh: We expect retribution. You know, we were not taken to the courts, we were not charged, and we did not have the right to reply to the charges brought against us. But I am encouraged by the activists on the ground, my comrades on the ground. Today was May Day celebrations, and with all that has been happening over the past weeks, the past days, Zimbabweans attended the May Day celebrations. People like Dr. Madhuku, who have been tortured and left for dead, stood up to address the celebrations. The secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, who was almost murdered on the 13 th of September in 2006, was there to speak on workers rights, political rights.
So as Zimbabweans we will not give in to political dictatorship. We will continue to speak out and not to be cowed into silence. I think our strength and resilience comes from the courage of the Zimbabweans who continue to say that we do not accept the situation we are in. Only a few days ago, some women organized themselves and held a demonstration against the high electricity tariffs. They were arrested and 30 of them were stripped naked and tortured.
Whatever happens to us, we are going back home, we are Zimbabweans. It is in Mugabe's favor for us to stay here and say, "Look we cannot go back." He wants us to run, but we will not run. I faced evil in its eyes on the 11 th of March and looked at it and I think God saved me. The God who worked on the 11 th of March is the God who is going to continue to work on behalf of the oppressed, the poor, and the hungry in Zimbabwe.
What do you expect from the international community?
Kwinjeh: We expect the international community to deal with the Zimbabwean situation within its right context. Talking about elections is not the right context, at a time when there is no election environment. A situation where we are still denied access to public media, where we have to apply to police to have rallies and meetings is not the right environment for elections. We have young people who have turned 18 since 2005 who do not have identification cards, because we do not have the capacity, according to the government, to produce [them], which means they cannot be registered to vote. In the diaspora, there are three million Zimbabweans who have been disenfranchised. Electoral rules and laws in Zimbabwe are very much in favor of the regime. The right context would be to deal with proper political transformation through a new constitution. That is what people are saying. We want a new constitution. We want to be able to vote freely and fairly for a leader of our choice. That is what Zimbabweans want.
In your Fahamu guest column of April 11, you noted that when you were harshly beat up by the riot police officers on March 11 th , "It was about me as a woman and what I stand for or represent".
Kwinjeh: I have been in the women's movement with Bella since our college days, since our teens. At times women are said to be less equipped for continuously getting arrested. I wrote that article with many women in mind who continue to stand up and challenge the regime. At times we get targeted because we are women, and we are doing something outside the norm. When they target you by name and start beating you up, it is because of how you have been standing up to them and refusing to succumb to fear.
Sekai Holland [the MDC secretary of policy who was seriously injured on March 11] was called a whore - called a lover of white men because she is married to an Australian. She's 64 years old, she's a war veteran. She fought for Zimbabwe's liberation, but she was called a whore, and she was beaten up.
Then there is the use of sexuality. We made to lie down on the floor, and they would hit us on the buttocks with baton sticks. They would beat us up and say, "The prostitutes, whores, and Tony Blair's whores", and so on.
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But, really, when I wrote about the woman in me, it was really as a feminist. There's backlash on all fronts, because Zimbabwe is still mainly a patriarchic society where - even in the movements we might be in - the word 'feminist' is still taboo. You can't call yourself a feminist; your comrades look at you. But feminism is about the women's struggle and liberation, which is part and parcel of political liberation of Zimbabwe. So, there is always backlash, labeling of women who stand out.
What is your appeal to the countries in your region and to the government of South Africa, which was tasked by the region to mediate in Zimbabwe?
Matambandadzo: South Africa is playing a brokerage role that brings forward the political elite of Zimbabwe and South Africa to discuss our future. Four men are seated at a table somewhere in Pretoria to talk about the future of millions and millions of Zimbabweans. They do not have a structure of accountability, they do not have an agenda that explains to us what they are discussing, but above all they are not discussing with us the issues that we see as priorities for our society.
We would expect, at the very minimum, that South Africa use the process it learned out of its own experience of interim government, where many people were consulted and included in a question saying, "What do you dream for your own future?" We would expect that South Africa would respect the processes of civil society in Zimbabwe - the processes of drawing up a draft constitution, the process of a women's charter, which outlines what women expect from the constitutional process. We would expect a starting point there - not to broker a deal for the political elites. That is a big shame for both countries. It is even a greater shame that SADC even endorses such a process and that the African Union seems to support it.
We were hoping that Africa's leadership would step up to the issue of the violation of rights. I want to put it in that context: that we have seen the most horrific violation of rights in Zimbabwe. March 11 is the violation of the right to be free of torture. But there are other violations of rights in our society, among them economic rights. We live in a society where inflation, officially, is 2000 percent. Where you walk into a supermarket to buy toothpaste, you wish and pray that the manufacturer would make a smaller tube. You wish and pray that you could buy one sanitary towel at a time, because you can't afford a month's supply. We live in a society where parents who can pay fees to send their children to school receive a letter from the school saying "send more money" before the term is out. The economic violations are very severe, and they are a sign of an incredibly irresponsible government. They occur in a context of phenomenal corruption and in a context where our state is incredibly excessive with the meager resources that we currently have.
There are further violations in our society, like the rights of women that Grace has talked about; the rights of media; the rights of freedom of assembly - no more than four people can meet at a time in Zimbabwe to discuss political issues.
When we look at that broad array of rights that's being violated, many of which I haven't named in this conversation, we would have expected African leaders to recognize that what is happening is a shame for the whole continent. It is an embarrassment that the vast majority of Africa's leadership can keep quiet. It is a huge embarrassment for the mechanisms we have worked very hard to establish on the continent that are meant not only to promote but to protect human rights. What it does is to send a very clear signal that [the political leadership's commitment to rights] is rhetoric; that the reality is very different.
Is there a country that you could look to today on the continent as an honest broker?
Matambandadzo : Every single African nation, if we were to invoke the mechanisms we have in the NEPAD [New Partnership for African Development] Peer Review Mechanisms, is enabled to be an honest broker. The question, really, is about the leadership - on whose side are they? We harbor in Zimbabwe, Menghistu [the former Ethiopian ruler] who for many years was responsible for death and destruction that Ethiopians faced. He is looked after through resources gathered through our central budget. This is irresponsible. We have not made him available to the rest of the African community to stand judgment and to take responsibility for what he did as a leader.
Through the mechanisms we have, be at the level of SADC or at the African Union, every single nation on the African continent, even the tiniest island, has the ability to show leadership and honest brokership on the question of Zimbabwe. It's a question of will.
