tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/matabeleland-massacre-42419/articlesMatabeleland massacre – The Conversation2023-08-20T09:27:25Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2116332023-08-20T09:27:25Z2023-08-20T09:27:25ZZimbabwe’s president was security minister when genocidal rape was state policy in 1983-4. Now he seeks another term<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543031/original/file-20230816-17-eic0p6.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tafadzwa Ufumeli/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Trigger warning: this article contains accounts of sexual violence.</em></p>
<p>Zimbabwe will hold its elections on 23 August. The current president of Zimbabwe, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-mnangagwa-presidency-would-not-be-a-new-beginning-for-zimbabwe-87641">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>, is running for re-election. This is despite his having oversight in the execution of the genocide of a minority group of Zimbabweans in the south-west region, as evidenced in my <a href="https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/statecrime.12.2.0001">newly published study</a>. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hazel-Cameron-2">genocide scholar</a>, I have studied the nature, causes and consequences of genocide and mass atrocities, as well as the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41917771?seq=6">role of external institutional bystanders</a>. Since 2011, I have researched the crimes of the powerful of Zimbabwe. Much of this has involved an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316020728_The_Matabeleland_Massacres_Britain%27s_wilful_blindness">analysis of official British and US government communications</a>. This has shed new light on what knowledge was available to the British and US governments about <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325887696_State-Organized_Starvation_A_Weapon_of_Extreme_Mass_Violence_in_Matabeleland_South_1984">atrocity crimes targeting the Ndebele</a> in the early post-independence years of Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/statecrime.12.2.0001">latest study</a> explores a military operation, known as Gukurahundi, between 1983 and 1984 in Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands in Zimbabwe. Drawing on 36 in-depth interviews with survivors, my study provides new insights into <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7388214.stm">Operation Gukurahundi</a>. It identifies systematic patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence in the operation. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/british-policy-towards-zimbabwe-during-matabeleland-massacre-licence-to-kill-81574">British policy towards Zimbabwe during Matabeleland massacre: licence to kill</a>
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<p>The study concludes that these patterns indicate a state policy of systematic genocidal rape in 1983 and 1984. This policy was deployed with the intent to destroy, in part, a specific ethnic group: the minority Ndebele of Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>My study acknowledges the immense suffering of the victims of the genocide and their descendants. It also illustrates that genocide creates victims across generations. Time cannot eliminate the trauma inflicted or the need for justice. </p>
<h2>The genocide</h2>
<p>In January 1983, the Zanu-PF government of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27519044">Robert Mugabe</a>, in the newly
independent Zimbabwe, launched a massive security clampdown on the Ndebele. This was <a href="https://theconversation.com/british-policy-towards-zimbabwe-during-matabeleland-massacre-licence-to-kill-81574">both politically and ethnically motivated</a>. At the heart of the operation was a strategy of state-ordered terror. It was perpetrated by a 4,000-strong all-Shona Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwean National Army led by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zimbabwe-minister-idUSKCN24U0MK">Perrance Shiri</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-mnangagwa-presidency-would-not-be-a-new-beginning-for-zimbabwe-87641">Mnangagwa</a> had oversight over both the army’s Fifth Brigade and the Central Intelligence Organisation in his role as minister of internal security and chairman of Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/17/could-mnangagwa-be-zimbabwes-comeback-crocodile">Joint High Command</a>. He <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-27-op-ed-mnangagwa-and-the-gukurahundi-fact-and-fiction/">reported directly to Mugabe</a>. </p>
<p>Mnangagwa, however, has <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-11-24-00-gukurahundi-ghosts-haunt-mnangagwa/">denied accusations</a> he played an active role in Operation Gukurahundi.</p>
<p>The stated objective of the campaign was to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jocelyn-Alexander/publication/250225505_Dissident_Perspectives_on_Zimbabwe%27s_Post-Independence_War/links/566858c308ae193b5fa0379f/Dissident-Perspectives-on-Zimbabwes-Post-Independence-War.pdf">rid the country of “dissidents”</a>. However, the overwhelming majority of those targeted by security forces were non-combatant Ndebele civilians. The government viewed them as supporters, or potential supporters, of the political opposition.</p>
<p>In 1983, the Fifth Brigade moved from village to village in Matabeleland North and some areas of the Midlands. Their presence led to <a href="https://www.pearl-insights.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/The-Matabeleland-Massacres-Britains-wilful-blindness.pdf">extreme violence</a>. The operation shifted to Matabeleland South in February 1984, where state-led atrocities and violence
continued. This included the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325887696_State-Organized_Starvation_A_Weapon_of_Extreme_Mass_Violence_in_Matabeleland_South_1984">orchestrated starvation of the Ndebele</a>. </p>
<p>Estimates vary on the number of non-combatant civilians massacred during Operation Gukurahundi. One conservative estimate is <a href="https://apnews.com/article/df5722c221bf4c5ca894e5e481413ca3">between 10,000 and 20,000</a>. However, Dan Stannard, the director internal of Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation during Operation Gukurahundi, believed that between <a href="http://researchdata.uwe.ac.uk/104/240/roh-oh-sta-da1-appr.pdf">30,000 and 50,000</a> Ndebele may have been killed. </p>
<p>Although the peak of the violence occurred between 1983 and 1984, the operation didn’t end until December 1987 with the signing of a <a href="https://commonwealthoralhistories.org/explandict/unity-accord-of-1987/">national unity accord</a>. </p>
<h2>Rape and sexual violence</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/statecrime.12.2.0001">My research</a> reveals what has, until now, been omitted from criminological scrutiny: a state policy of rape and sexual violence that targeted the Ndebele people during Operation Gukurahundi. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://unictr.irmct.org/en/tribunal">International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda</a> made a <a href="https://www.refworld.org/cases,ICTR,40278fbb4.html">historic judgment</a> which established that rape and other forms of sexual violence could be acts of genocide as defined by the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf#page=1">United Nations Convention on Genocide Article II</a>. The tribunal recognised how rape and sexual violence functioned to destroy the minority Tutsi group of Rwanda in 1994.</p>
<p>I gathered data for my <a href="https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/statecrime.12.2.0001">study</a> from 36 in-depth interviews with male and female survivors in a representative sample of geographical locations across Matabeleland. While small in comparison to the sheer scale of the violence and the numbers who were victimised, this study nonetheless establishes reliable conclusions about the nature of events. </p>
<p>The patterns I identified include: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>public spectacles of multiple perpetrator rape targeting children and adults</p></li>
<li><p>people forced to witness the rape of female and male family members</p></li>
<li><p>rape and sexual violence followed by mass killing</p></li>
<li><p>forced intrafamilial rape</p></li>
<li><p>forced bestiality</p></li>
<li><p>forced nudity.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>These are acts that can be interpreted as “deliberately inflicting on the (Ndebele) group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, a contravention of <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf#page=1">Article II (c) of the UN Genocide Convention</a>.</p>
<p>The systematic dehumanisation and degradation of the Ndebele through forced intrafamilial rape was a recurring pattern of state harm. It was pervasive in both Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South.</p>
<p>One of the people I interviewed, Bukhosi, who was 19 in 1984 and living in Matabeleland South, <a href="https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/statecrime.12.2.0001">shared the cruelty</a> of knowing that the Fifth Brigade might force him to attempt to have sex with his relatives. They would threaten to shoot him if he refused. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There were times we were afraid even to be in the company of our sister, even to go to the shop. Because I know when these guys come and see us together, they say ‘sleep with your sister’. Then you are afraid to go with your mother because something terrible would happen, they will say ‘do this to your mother’. You are afraid even to be with your brother at home, because they … these guys (Fifth Brigade), when they find the two of you. It is terrible … So we were all separated ….</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such <a href="https://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1996/Rwanda.htm">rituals of degradation</a> are found wherever a policy of genocidal rape is adopted. They cause shame and humiliation. They leave communities and individual families destroyed, their bonds crushed through the annihilation of social norms. </p>
<p>Forty years later, the intergenerational impacts of Operation Gukurahundi on the Ndebele group are profound. My interviewees widely reported mental health issues. Children born of survivors are angry and struggle to understand their family’s brutal history when questions about these painful experiences are met with silence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543484/original/file-20230818-15-ngn1e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543484/original/file-20230818-15-ngn1e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543484/original/file-20230818-15-ngn1e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543484/original/file-20230818-15-ngn1e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543484/original/file-20230818-15-ngn1e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543484/original/file-20230818-15-ngn1e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543484/original/file-20230818-15-ngn1e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Mnangagwa
with Senior Royal Prince William in November 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kingston Royal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I also identified patterns of reproductive violence targeting males and females. These included:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>killing the foetuses of pregnant women</p></li>
<li><p>internment in concentration camps for sexual servitude (rape camps)</p></li>
<li><p>forced pregnancies </p></li>
<li><p>genital mutilation. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Fifth Brigade officers targeted the wombs of pregnant women with knives, bayonets or through stamping.</p>
<p>These acts can be interpreted as “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the (Ndebele) group”, a contravention of <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf#page=1">Article II (d) of the Genocide Convention</a>. </p>
<p>Every participant in my study reported the presence of a military rank structure – and complicity of senior officers in mass rapes and sexual violence. There was no evidence of sexual predation by army personnel for personal satisfaction. </p>
<p>Another study participant, Phindile, was 37 and lived in Matabeleland South in 1984. There were 21 homesteads in her village. She told me there were three commanders in her area. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those were the ones who were giving the instructions. Rape was done (by) daylight and darkness but most were done in the evening. The commanders would be there eating. The chief commander would be sitting at a distance and giving instructions on what to do. They used to do the raping according to their rank.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My <a href="https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/statecrime.12.2.0001">research</a> establishes that the policy of rape and other forms of sexual violence was systematic and predicated on the government’s intent to destroy the Ndebele in part. The policy reflects the ideology and strategic goals of those in high office. The fundamental human rights of many survivors remain affected <a href="https://www.zimlive.com/gukurahundi-the-election-dilemma-for-undocumented-victims/">to this day</a>. </p>
<h2>Swept under the carpet</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf">Prosecution for genocide</a> extends to those who plan, instigate, order, commit or aid and abet in its <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/genocide">planning, preparation or execution</a>.</p>
<p>In the early 1990s, reports of state-organised rape, the detention of women in rape camps, enforced pregnancy and other sexual atrocities trickled out of Bosnia and Croatia. Securing indictments became an <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-international-law/article/abs/war-crimes-brutality-genocide-terror-and-the-struggle-for-justice-by-aryeh-neier-new-york-times-books-1998-pp-xiv-274-index-25-can35-between-vengeance-and-forgiveness-facing-history-after-genocide-and-mass-violence-by-martha-minow-boston-beacon-press-1998-pp-xiii-202-index-23/47336631C6CF464C84E5226AB62AD274">international political priority</a>. </p>
<p>Similar <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/revealed-british-diplomats-pressured-bbcs-jeremy-paxman-understand-true-perspective-massacres-zimbabwe-61535">reports had trickled out</a> of Zimbabwe a decade earlier but were <a href="https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10023/16176/Cameron_2017_TIHR_BritainsWilfulBlindness_AAM.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">swept under the carpet</a>. </p>
<p>Intelligence on genocidal rape and other atrocities was <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316020728_The_Matabeleland_Massacres_Britain%27s_wilful_blindness">minimised by British representatives</a> in Zimbabwe. This was clearly politically influenced, as expressed in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316020728_The_Matabeleland_Massacres_Britain%27s_wilful_blindness">numerous diplomatic cables</a> between Harare and London.</p>
<p>The crimes of genocide committed by the Third Reich in Nazi Germany, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or the Hutu government of Rwanda were subjected to investigation, prosecution and judgment in international courts. </p>
<p>Yet, 40 years after the mass atrocities of Operation Gukurahundi, there has been no official investigation, prosecution or judgment. The most senior surviving person accused of overseeing the genocide and other crimes against humanity, the incumbent president of Zimbabwe, enjoys impunity. He is endorsed and flattered – for example, he was <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202304190012.html#:%7E:text=Emmerson%20Mnangagwa%2C%20President%20of%20Zimbabwe%20.&text=President%20Emmerson%20Mnangagwa%20has%20been,ceremonial%20home%20of%20Britain's%20monarchy.">invited</a> to the May 2023 coronation of King Charles III of the UK.</p>
<p>Rather than being subjected to a process of international justice before a court with the jurisdiction to try the mass crimes of Gukurahundi, Mnangagwa will stand for re-election on 23 August. The survivors will continue their <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/memory-and-erasure">search for justice and accountability</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211633/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hazel Cameron received funding for this research project from Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the British Academy and a Principal’s Special Award, University of St Andrews. </span></em></p>President Emmerson Mnangagwa has not faced official investigation or prosecution over his role in Operation Gukurahundi – 40 years on.Hazel Cameron, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of StirlingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1779272022-04-04T14:04:45Z2022-04-04T14:04:45ZA street art mural in Zimbabwe exposes a divided society<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451563/original/file-20220311-26-1f2kx8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">King Lobengula holds Mbuya Nehanda in the mural.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot/Leeroy Spinx Brittain aka Bow</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shona">Shona</a> and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ndebele-Zimbabwean-people">Ndebele</a> are Zimbabwe’s two most dominant ethnic groups. Explaining the ever-present tension between them, historian Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni <a href="https://www.accord.org.za/ajcr-issues/nation-building-in-zimbabwe-and-the-challenges-of-ndebele-particularism/">points to</a> the abuse of the post-colonial state by the ruling Shona-dominated government “in its drive to destroy Ndebele particularism”. He explains, “This sets in motion the current Matabeleland politics of alienation, resentment and grievance.”</p>
<p>This continued marginalisation of Matabeleland (a region in southwestern Zimbabwe inhabited mainly by the Ndebele people) by the ZANU-PF-led government has rendered Zimbabwe so fragile a nation that even a street mural can expose its disunity. </p>
<p>The mural in question borrows two historical figures – King Lobengula and Mbuya Nehanda – to express the possibility of unity between the two dominant groups. How the mural was dealt with is the subject of this analysis.</p>
<h2>The mural that caused the trouble</h2>
<p>Over the weekend of 22 January 2022 a mural appeared at the Corner of Fife Street and 8th Avenue in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Bulawayo">Bulawayo</a>, Zimbabwe’s second largest city and the main city of Matabeleland. The mural was by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/leeroy.s.brittain">Leeroy Spinx Brittain</a>, popularly known as Bow (black or white). By the afternoon of the 24th, the city’s municipality had erased it.</p>
<p>King Lobengula is portrayed with an arm around the shoulders of Mbuya Nehanda, in life-sized images resembling popular archival reproductions of them. In his other hand Lobengula is holding a heart-shaped balloon instead of his usual spear. It’s derivative of UK-based street artist <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-story-behind-banksy-4310304/">Banksy</a>’s mural <a href="https://www.myartbroker.com/artist-banksy/series-girl-with-balloon">Girl With Balloon</a>.</p>
<p>Bulawayo deputy mayor Mlandu Ncube is <a href="https://www.chronicle.co.zw/king-lobengula-and-mbuya-nehanda-mural-erased/">reported</a> to say that the artist had not applied for permission and creating a mural without the city’s licence could attract a hefty fine or jail time. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1485854215176130563"}"></div></p>
<p>The artist was <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/zimbabwe-street-art-debate/">calling</a> on Ndebeles and Shonas to begin a dialogue and unite. But judging from the divisive comments on social media platforms like <a href="https://twitter.com/zimlive/status/1485854215176130563?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1485933578554904579%7Ctwgr%5Ehb_0_8%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.okayafrica.com%2Fzimbabwe-street-art-debate%2F">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/215170571826981/posts/5224165710927417/">Facebook</a>, few embraced his message.</p>
<p>According to online comments and news <a href="https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-214233.html">articles</a> some found the mural disrespectful and offensive – because of the contentious matter of the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-gukurahundi-43923">Gukurahundi</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2b5iVGCDs0">massacres</a>. </p>
<h2>Echoes of Gukurahundi</h2>
<p>Gukurahundi refers to an ethnic cleansing atrocity which claimed up to 20,000 lives in Matebeleland and parts of Midlands in the 1980s. It’s <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/shemurenga-the-zimbabwean-womens-movement-1995-2000">described</a> by feminist academic and activist Shereen Essof as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-gabriel-mugabe-a-man-whose-list-of-failures-is-legion-121596">Robert Mugabe</a> regime’s “first, and still unpunished genocide”. British author Hazel Cameron <a href="https://news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/wilful-blindness/">claimed</a> that the massacres were committed under the watchful eye of the British government eager to safeguard its significant economic and strategic interests in Southern Africa. </p>
<p>To this day, Zimbabwe’s leadership refuses to publicly acknowledge and address the massacres, with Mugabe once referring to them as a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2021.1954356">moment of madeness</a>. I would argue that the unaddressed atrocities have left Zimbabweans failing to collectively embrace and appreciate even a harmless but constructive expression of art. As long as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">Gukurahundi</a> continues to be ignored by the state, Zimbabweans will not find common ground.</p>
<h2>Who were Nehanda and Lobengula?</h2>
<p>Mbuya Nehanda is a <a href="https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Zezuru">Zezuru</a> (Shona) ancestral spirit (mhondoro) said to possess different women at different times in history. The Nehanda in the mural is <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/zimbabwe-unveils-statue-anti-colonial-leader-mbuya-nehanda-180977835/">Charwe Nyakasikana</a>. She led the Shona resistance against <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a>’ colonising forces. For her role in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/181122?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">1896-7 First Chimurenga Uprisings</a>, she was hanged. To emphasise her importance, the ruling regime erected <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/may/26/anger-in-zimbabwe-at-nehanda-statue-amid-collapsing-economy">her statue</a> in Harare last year.</p>
<p>A son and successor of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/king-mzilikazi">King Mzilikazi</a>, founder of the Ndebele Kingdom, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lobengula">King Lobengula</a> ruled the nation from 1868 to the 1890s when his kingdom succumbed to the British. He was never captured. In polarised Zimbabwe, some Shona people blame him for signing the <a href="https://www.ipl.org/essay/The-Rudd-Concession-FJXAHDL4RG">Rudd Concession</a>. This paved the way for the colonisation of the country.</p>
<p>To this day Shonas and Ndebeles identify with these figures, who never met in the flesh.</p>
<h2>Public art in Zimbabwe</h2>
<p>This is the first major controversy around murals and graffiti in the country in years. Sometimes municipal authorities don’t erase work at all, despite it being created without permission. This is the case with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/mar/07/these-are-our-local-heroes-the-artist-painting-murals-of-hope-in-a-zimbabwe-township?fbclid=IwAR03t5tR74KcXwvd61LD5kFXJLhE7prCjW4k8rkA-UF7XGV9r-eym1R_0qE">Basil Matsika</a>’s murals in Mbare.</p>
<p>It is the state-sanctioned public art, mostly statues, that tend to attract controversy. Issues of patronage and who commissioned the work are crucial in determining whether it survives a critical and public onslaught. In 2010 people were generally unhappy when the government commissioned the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2010-09-30-north-korean-statues-open-wounds-in-zim/">North Koreans</a> for a pair of statues of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joshua-Nkomo">Joshua Nkomo</a> for Bulawayo and Harare. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A crowd with banners gathers around a statue of a man standing proudly on a plinth." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters at the Joshua Nkomo statue in Bulawayo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ZINYANGE AUNTONY/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nkomo was a nationalist and revolutionary leader of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), which fought alongside (now ruling) ZANU in the country’s liberation struggle. Ndebele people in particular were incensed that Pyongyang had a hand in training the Fifth Brigade, a section of the Zimbabwe National Army responsible for unleashing Gukurahundi. Zimbabweans were also unhappy that no local sculptor was assigned to do the work.</p>
<p>Last year, the government withdrew the first statue of <a href="https://www.zimlive.com/2020/12/18/mnangagwa-rejects-youthful-and-big-booty-mbuya-nehanda-statue/">Nehanda</a> after a public outcry. The youthful, large-bottomed depiction of Nehanda went viral on the internet. The artist, David Guy Mutasa, was given a chance to amend his mistakes. The Nkomo and Nehanda statues went ahead because they were political posturing from the government, disguised as cultural revival initiatives. </p>
<p>The same cannot be said of Bow’s mural as an independent initiative. The artist has worked with advertising company <a href="https://www.facebook.com/caligraph.co/photos/?ref=page_internal">CaliGraph</a> to create murals of other figures like musician Sandra Ndebele and socialite Mbo Mahocs and these have not been removed. This would indicate that the authorities embrace his work as long as it is about aesthetics and not politics.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">How artists have preserved the memory of Zimbabwe's 1980s massacres</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Alongside the likes of Black Phar-I, <a href="https://twitter.com/aero5ol">Aero5ol</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ckombo/?hl=en">Kombo Chapfika</a>, the Bulawayo-based Bow is part of a new breed of street artists. He is <a href="https://www.chronicle.co.zw/muralist-behind-mbuya-nehanda-king-lobengula-bares-it-all/">reported</a> saying he was raised by a Ndebele grandmother and a Shona grandfather, which makes it difficult to assign him an ethnic group unless he identifies with one. </p>
<p>This makes him a neutral observer in the socio-political divide. Driven by his desire to see a more united Zimbabwe, Bow <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/zimbabwe-street-art-debate/">promises</a> to do more poster art and murals that call for unity between the Shona and the Ndebele. This will continue challenging the status quo and initiating dialogue around the country’s history.</p>
<h2>Freedom of expression</h2>
<p>Instead of the mural brewing a fresh tribal storm or creating a bitter debate – as highlighted in articles in <a href="https://thestandard.newsday.co.zw/2022/01/30/erased-mural-brews-tribal-storm/"><em>The Standard</em></a> and <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/zimbabwe-street-art-debate/"><em>Okay Africa</em></a> – I argue that Bow’s piece reminded the nation how polarised it has always been. </p>
<p>And the jail threats of the deputy mayor would certainly deter graffiti artists who desire to address contentious political matters that rattle the state. As long as the government continues to stifle freedom of expression, artists who do street art and graffiti are in danger of limiting their expression to commissions for social campaigns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177927/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History in the NRF SARChI Chair program in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa, Rhodes University.
His Ph.D. research is partly funded by the Rhodes University African Studies Centre through its funding from the DFG, the German Research Foundation under Germany ́s Excellence Strategy, funding number EXC2052/1</span></em></p>The unity between Zimbabwe’s two main ethnic groups is so fragile that even an inspirational street mural can expose it.Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti, Ph.D. in Art History candidate, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1438472020-08-04T15:24:33Z2020-08-04T15:24:33ZHow artists have preserved the memory of Zimbabwe’s 1980s massacres<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350897/original/file-20200803-14-1vcb9b8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from a play about the Gukurahundi genocide, 1983 The Dark Years, performed in Harare in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">JEKESAI NJIKIZANA/AFP/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Let people vent,” lamented performing artist and television personality <a href="http://almasiartsalliance.org/category/kudzai-sevenzo/">Kudzai Sevenzo</a> in a <a href="https://twitter.com/KudzaiSevenzo/status/1288407558097641472?s=20">tweet</a> as Zimbabweans on social media reacted to the death of <a href="https://apnews.com/7afe3ad83057f11f793dd54228e8e8d9">Perence Shiri</a>. Shiri was the Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/zenzele-ndebele">Zenzele Ndebele</a>, an investigative journalist, also spoke out in a <a href="https://twitter.com/zenzele/status/1289075563236413441?s=20">tweet</a>: “Shiri gets to be buried like a hero. We never got a chance to mourn our relatives who were killed by the 5th Brigade.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/zimbabwe/who-is-perrance-shiri-black-jesus-dead-29-july-2020/">Shiri</a> was a military man who commandeered a praetorian army that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/19/mugabe-zimbabwe-gukurahundi-massacre-matabeleland">killed</a> over 20,000 civilians in the provinces of Matabeleland and the Midlands between 1983 and 1987. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2b5iVGCDs0">Gukurahundi</a> saw his North Korean-trained unit, the <a href="https://gijn.org/2018/12/03/digging-up-zimbabwes-gukurahundi-massacre-dossier/">Fifth Brigade</a>, descend on provinces inhabited by the Ndebele people to quell dissent. <a href="https://bit.ly/2Po03WA"><em>Gukurahundi</em></a> is a Shona term referring to the early summer rains that remove chaff and dirt from the fields.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1289075563236413441"}"></div></p>
<p>The death of Shiri on 29 July 2020 has kindled flames of debate that the ruling party has tried to shut down for many years. </p>
<p>I argue, in a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021989415615646">paper</a> on Gukurahundi, that writers and artists have left behind a richly textured memory on what writer <a href="https://www.novuyotshuma.com/">Novuyo Rosa Tshuma</a> has called the country’s “<a href="https://www.theelephant.info/features/2018/12/06/old-faces-new-masks-zimbabwe-one-year-after-the-coup/">original sin</a>”.</p>
<h2>Enforced ‘collective amnesia’</h2>
<p>In the aftermath of Gukurahundi, <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-gabriel-mugabe-a-man-whose-list-of-failures-is-legion-121596">former president</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-gabriel-mugabe-a-man-whose-list-of-failures-is-legion-121596">Robert Mugabe</a> enforced collective forgetting of this period in Zimbabwe’s history. He referred to it simply as a “<a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/mugabes-moments-of-madness">moment of madness</a>” and suggested that discussing the events would undermine attempts to nurture national unity. </p>
<p>His successor, <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-mnangagwa-usher-in-a-new-democracy-the-view-from-zimbabwe-88023">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>, Minister of State Security at the time of the Gukurahundi <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml">genocide</a>, has also implored Zimbabweans to “let bygones be bygones”. At his 2017 <a href="https://bit.ly/2PqhhSY">inauguration</a> he said that the past cannot be changed, but “there is a lot we can do in the present and the future to give our nation a different positive direction”.</p>
<p>However, as l contend in another <a href="https://journals.assaf.org.za/index.php/tvl/article/view/1548">paper</a>, silence on Gukurahundi has not led to any national cohesion. Instead, it has been a part of what’s responsible for the culture of state violence and impunity in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. </p>
<h2>Writing against forgetting</h2>
<p>Yet, a rich body of literary and visual artworks has emerged thematising the genocide. There have been books in indigenous languages such as <em><a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Uyangisinda_lumhlaba.html?id=U80JAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Uyangisinda Lumhlaba</a></em> (This world is unbearable) in Ndebele by Ezekiel Hleza and <em><a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Mhandu_dzorusununguko.html?id=jBAkAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Mhandu Dzorusununguko</a></em> (Enemies of independence) in Shona by Edward Masundire. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Farrar, Straus and Giroux</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There has been an even bigger corpus of texts written in English. Among them is the late Yvonne Vera’s 2002 novel <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466806061"><em>The Stone Virgins</em></a>. It details the horrors faced by villagers from a ruthless army. In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/zimbabwe-running-with-mother-robert-mugabe"><em>Running with Mother</em></a>, a 2012 novel by Christopher Mlalazi, a child narrator, Rudo, recounts the arrival of the Fifth Brigade in her village.</p>
<p>Peter Godwin’s largely autobiographical <a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/book-title/mukiwa-a-white-boy-in-africa/"><em>Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa</em></a>
in 1996 gives a picture of Gukurahundi from the eyes of a young white journalist. And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/books/review/house-of-stone-novuyo-rosa-tshuma.html"><em>House of Stone</em></a>, the 2018 novel by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, tells the story of an orphaned young man trying to explore his past. He’ll find out that his father is Black Jesus (a name by which Shiri was known). Tshuma’s descriptions of the genocide are detailed, graphic and ghastly. </p>
<p>Literary creativity has made it possible to remember, commemorate and document experiences that otherwise would have been forgotten or dispersed through wilful omission. In doing so, literary texts create narratives of Zimbabwe’s history and national identity. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">W. W. Norton & Company</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>“To write is to banish silence,” writes Vera in her 1995 <a href="https://ocul-yor.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01OCUL_YOR/q36jf8/alma991010694059705164">doctoral thesis</a> on colonialism and narratives of resistance. “As a writer, you don’t want to suppress history, you want to be one of the people liberating stories.” </p>
<p>She explains that “to write is to engage possibilities for triumphant and repeated exits, inversion and recuperation of identity”. In this line of thinking, writing can offer victims of Gukurahundi a voice which the state continues to deny them. </p>
<h2>Art of torture</h2>
<p>Visual artworks have also engaged with Gukurahundi, such as in the exhibition <em>Sibathontisele</em> by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/04/zimbabwe-artist-arrest-mugabe-censorship">Owen Maseko</a>, which has stood for years as a material text-under-erasure in Zimbabwe. <em>Sibathontisele</em> is a Ndebele word meaning “we drip it on them”. It refers to an infamous torture technique used by the Fifth Brigade in which they dripped hot and melted plastic on victims.</p>
<p>Unlike literary texts, which have remained unbanned and uncensored, Maseko’s 2010 exhibition was banned by state security a day after its opening at the <a href="http://www.nationalgallerybyo.com/">National Arts Gallery</a> in Bulawayo and the artist was arrested. Visual art, it appears, is deemed more subversive than written texts. In spite of such restrictions, Maseko’s exhibition has been hosted outside Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>The artist explains in this <a href="http://archive.kubatana.net/docs/artcul/osisa_trials_tribulatn_of_artist_110630.pdf">article</a> that art, justice and human rights are intricately interrelated. Visual art plays a role in bringing to the surface narratives on Gukurahundi, which have been buried for almost three decades.</p>
<h2>The rich memory</h2>
<p>Writers and visual artists are able to create alternative spaces for marginalised and forgotten stories. And Zimbabwe’s artists have created a rich memory and archive that counters the culture of forgetting and criminalising open discussion of Gukurahundi. </p>
<p>Through their works, histories are revisited so that they can be better understood and can be accorded their rightful recognition. They have opened new spaces of discussion and have gestured towards the importance of remembering and learning from the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143847/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gibson Ncube does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Artists are filling the state’s silence by revisiting history so that it can be discussed.Gibson Ncube, Associate Professor, University of ZimbabweLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/891772017-12-29T08:23:21Z2017-12-29T08:23:21ZThe three barriers blocking Zimbabwe’s progress: Zanu-PF, Mnangagwa and the military<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199889/original/file-20171219-27557-8tx029.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=206%2C577%2C5544%2C3026&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Zimbabwe’s new President <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41995876">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a> has been cautiously welcomed with the hope that he will place Zimbabwe on a <a href="https://theconversation.com/mnangagwa-has-the-capacity-to-focus-on-the-new-zimbabwe-but-will-he-88254">more democratic trajectory</a>. He has spoken of a <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/can-emmerson-mnangagwa-a-mugabe-ally-bring-change-to-zimbabwe-12134023">new democracy “unfolding”</a> in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>But this is wishful thinking.</p>
<p>There are three major barriers to a decisive break from the corrupt and dysfunctional political system that has been playing out in Zimbabwe: the ruling <a href="http://www.zanupf.org.zw/">Zanu-PF</a>, its president and what’s been their main sustainer – the military. </p>
<p>None would want to oversee real change because facilitating democratic rule with real contestation for power would mean running the risk of electoral defeat. This would endanger the networks of self enrichment that have been put in place over decades. </p>
<p>Instead, the next few months will see Zanu-PF, Mnangagwa and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwe-beware-the-military-is-looking-after-its-own-interests-not-democracy-87712">military</a> continue to block democracy as they seek to hold onto the power. </p>
<h2>The nature of Zanu-PF</h2>
<p>Zanu-PF presents a formidable obstacle to democratic progress in the country. Zimbabwe has maintained the outward appearance of a multiparty democracy since <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/4/newsid_2515000/2515145.stm">independence in 1980</a>. But it’s effectively been a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-modern-african-studies/article/towards-the-oneparty-state-in-zimbabwe-a-study-in-african-political-thought/BD356807617492EBE85877DB6CD815C7">one-party dictatorship</a>. </p>
<p>The party brings a zero-sum game mindset to politics: it must always prevail, and its <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/06/09/bullets-each-you/state-sponsored-violence-zimbabwes-march-29-elections">opponents must be crushed</a> rather than accommodated. Opposition parties formally exist but they have not been allowed to win an election. Should such a possibility arise – as it did in <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-are-elections-really-rigged-mr-trump-consult-robert-mugabe-68440">2002, 2008 and 2013</a> – elections will be rigged to preserve the status quo. </p>
<p>Zanu-PF provides the most egregious example of the culture of exceptionalism which has characterised the liberation party in power. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the belief that its entitled to rule indefinitely, </p></li>
<li><p>its refusal to view itself as an ordinary political party, </p></li>
<li><p>its conflating of party and state, and </p></li>
<li><p>its demonising of other parties as ‘enemies of liberation’ seeking to restore colonialism or white minority rule. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>The way in which Zanu-PF has colonised the state over almost four decades means that there is a vast web of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2013.862100?src=recsys">patronage networks</a> that have been entrenched to facilitate the looting of the state’s resources. Democratic change and clean government pose a mortal threat to these networks and such privileges are unlikely to be surrendered without intense resistance.</p>
<h2>The new president</h2>
<p>Mnangagwa’s ominous record makes it difficult to build a persuasive case that he represents a new beginning. </p>
<p>He served as <a href="https://theconversation.com/mnangagwa-has-the-capacity-to-focus-on-the-new-zimbabwe-but-will-he-88254">Mugabe’s “chief enforcer”</a> until November 2017. He was pivotal to the collapse of the rule of law and the implosion of the Zimbabwean economy. And he has been a central player in the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20161116-Zimbabwe-Early-Warning-Report.pdf">gross human rights abuses</a> that have characterised Zanu-PF rule. This includes the killings in <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">Matabeleland killings</a> in the 1980s. This is a past for which he has refused to <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-27-op-ed-mnangagwa-and-the-gukurahundi-fact-and-fiction/#.WjFR4Ux2trQ">acknowledge any responsibility</a>. </p>
<p>His more conciliatory language has not matched his actions. After becoming president he appointed an administration of cronies, <a href="http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-40875-Chiwenga+appointed+defence+minister/news.aspx">military hardliners</a> and ‘war veterans’. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199891/original/file-20171219-27591-gl6nvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199891/original/file-20171219-27591-gl6nvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199891/original/file-20171219-27591-gl6nvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199891/original/file-20171219-27591-gl6nvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199891/original/file-20171219-27591-gl6nvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199891/original/file-20171219-27591-gl6nvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199891/original/file-20171219-27591-gl6nvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa at his inauguration.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The appointments appeared to consolidate the power of the now dominant faction of Zanu-PF: the old guard securocrats who routed Grace Mugabe’s equally malign <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/G40_(Zanu-PF_Faction)">G40 faction</a> through the barrel of a gun rather than democratic processes. </p>
<p>Having waited such a seemingly interminable length of time to land the top job, it is difficult to envisage Mnangagwa now placing his hard earned spoils at the mercy of <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/politics/2017-11-20-justice-malala-dont-fool-yourself-zimbabwe-wont-be-fixed-by-mugabes-ex-cronies/">a programme of democratisation</a>.</p>
<h2>The military</h2>
<p>The Zimbabwean Defence Force’s role in the removal of the president means that it has secured a place for itself as a privileged political actor and overseer of the entire political system. </p>
<p>The defence force has never been a neutral custodian of constitutional rule. Instead it has always been a highly politicised extension of the ruling party, a party militia in effect. </p>
<p>Previously its role was confined to repressing the ruling party’s opponents and maintaining the party’s dominance. The principle of civilian rule was respected even if this model of civil-military relations failed to meet any reasonable democratic standards. But with the coup, the military crossed a line. They determined the outcome of power struggles within the ruling party itself. </p>
<p>In the same way that the military has been politicised, the political system has been heavily militarised. This can be seen in the several key military veterans who have been appointed to the cabinet as well as Mnangagwa being the military’s candidate for the presidency. Essentially this is the civilian face of quasi-military rule in Zimbabwe. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199886/original/file-20171219-27568-zgjuxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199886/original/file-20171219-27568-zgjuxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199886/original/file-20171219-27568-zgjuxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199886/original/file-20171219-27568-zgjuxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199886/original/file-20171219-27568-zgjuxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199886/original/file-20171219-27568-zgjuxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199886/original/file-20171219-27568-zgjuxw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zimbabwe National Army commander Constantino Chiwenga, second from left, addressing a press conference in Harare, in November.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What this points to is an effective “barracks democracy” emerging in Zimbabwe. The military has secured a veto over the leadership of the ruling party and over the wider political process. It also reserves the right to reject election results that it does not approve of, or to take action that could prevent such results materialising in the first place. </p>
<p>To see the military’s removal of Mugabe as an overriding good ignores the fact that it has no concept of the national interest, or that it views that national interest as synonymous with its own and Zanu-PF’s. </p>
<p>It is dangerously naïve to expect such a force to help facilitate genuine democratic transition when its entire raison d’etre has been to preserve one-party rule (under a leadership of its choosing), to disable meaningful opposition and to <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2017/09/15/military-looted-diamonds-report/">preserve its own corruption networks</a>.</p>
<h2>Unsettling prospects</h2>
<p>True democratisation – as opposed to merely maintaining the procedural forms of democratic government – is anathema to Zimbabwe’s ruling party, its president and the military. </p>
<p>It is evident that their task is threefold over the next few months. They have to secure support for a measure of liberalisation; arrest political enemies for corruption rather than tackling corruption <em>per se</em>; and provide a smokescreen of a largely vacuous democratic rhetoric. </p>
<p>The hope is that this will be sufficient to secure aid, investment and an endorsement by external donors while virtually nothing changes in the actual power relations inside the country. </p>
<p>Anyone committed to democracy in Zimbabwe -– whether inside or outside the country – should begin mobilising against this project sooner rather than later.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89177/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Hamill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Robert Mugabe’s rule in Zimbabwe is over. But the country’s road to democracy remains a bumpy one as Zanu-PF, the new president and the military go about entrenching power.James Hamill, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/881712017-11-29T13:26:13Z2017-11-29T13:26:13ZWhy signs for transitional justice in Zimbabwe don’t look promising<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196713/original/file-20171128-7474-14sr3fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=112%2C241%2C5639%2C3354&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the first reports appeared of military tanks approaching Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, questions started flooding my mind: would this mean a transition in power? And would it be a transition of the kind regarded as “model” transitions – transition from dictatorship to democracy? </p>
<p>Ever since it became clear that Emmerson Mnangagwa would be inaugurated as the <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/africa/2017-11-24-mnangagwa-sworn-in-as-zimbabwe-president/">next president</a>, there are fears that the country wouldn’t go through a genuine transition, that one dictator might simply replace another <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13313370">as was the case in Egypt</a>.</p>
<p>Transitional justice is a term coined by the scholar <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/62448130/transitional-justice">Ruti Teitel</a> in 1990. She defined it as a form of justice that could address the legacy of human rights violations and violence during a society’s transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. Transitional justice refers to the ways in which countries emerging from periods of conflict and repression address large scale human rights violations so numerous and serious that the normal justice system is unable to provide an adequate response.</p>
<p>Transitional justice has become a vital part of modern peace building efforts alongside disarmament, security sector reform and elections. The United Nations <a href="https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/TJ_Guidance_Note_March_2010FINAL.pdf">views it as the full range of processes</a> associated with a society’s attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses with a view to ensuring accountability, serving justice and achieving reconciliation. </p>
<p>It encompasses issues such as whether the perpetrators of serious human rights violations under a previous regime should be prosecuted or pardoned. It also involves looking at reparations, institutional reform, public recognition of violations and whether and how investigations should be initiated to uncover the truth about past violations. </p>
<p>It’s still unclear whether Zimbabwe will manage an effective transition to participatory democracy and freedom. But the current signs are not encouraging. </p>
<h2>Transitional justice in Zimbabwe</h2>
<p>After three decades of state <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20161116-Zimbabwe-Early-Warning-Report.pdf">sponsored violence</a>, there is an acute need to break the culture of impunity that has become entrenched in Zimbabwe. The steady erosion of human and political rights has further led to a lack of faith in the rule of law. </p>
<p>Early excitement about prospects of transitional justice in Zimbabwe has already been dampened by the agreement struck between the military and the outgoing president. The deal entails exempting Robert Mugabe <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zimbabwe-politics-mugabe/mugabe-granted-immunity-assured-of-safety-in-zimbabwe-sources-idUSKBN1DN0UX">from prosecution</a> for crimes committed during his 37 years in office. The immunity deal reportedly covers numerous members of Mugabe’s extended family, including his stepson and nephews. It may also include senior ruling party officials detained by the military as well as those who are currently overseas.</p>
<p>This immunity agreement creates grave doubts about the legitimacy of the foundation on which the new Zimbabwe will be built.</p>
<p>It’s clear that the agreement violates international law. Under Mugabe’s rule opposition supporters suffered harassment, intimidation, forced removal and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/2170138/Zimbabwe-Death-toll-rises-in-Robert-Mugabes-reign-of-terror-before-election.html">death</a>. <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/11636475">Crimes against humanity</a> were also committed. There are also strong allegations that Mugabe ordered his opponents to be tortured. International law holds that to be guilty of torture, it isn’t necessary that a person should have directly participated in torture. Ordering torture is sufficient to warrant conviction.</p>
<p>There are other reasons to doubt whether Zimbabwe’s new leadership is interested in pursuing transitional justice. For example, would they be prepared to look back at post-independence crimes such as the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">Gukurahundi massacre</a> in Matabeleland that claimed the lives of 20 000 people? Given Mnangagwa’s <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-27-op-ed-mnangagwa-and-the-gukurahundi-fact-and-fiction/#.Wh1qlVWWbIU">prominent role</a> in this massacre it’s highly unlikely that official attempts will be undertaken to uncover the truth of this massacre.</p>
<p>Measured against the <a href="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Am_Law_Econ_Rev-2013-Inman-aler_ahs023(1).pdf">South African transition</a>, it is already clear that the “transition in Zimbabwe” is imperfect. This is because it lacks democratic legitimacy. Unlike the wave of transitions from socialism to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s the Zimbabwean transition, at this stage, does not look as if it has the potential to truly liberate Zimbabwean citizens and to convey them into a state in which human rights are supreme.</p>
<h2>Free passage for Mugabe</h2>
<p>Former Zimbabwe finance minister and opposition party member Tendai Biti said in a recent interview with South Africa’s Sunday Times that there was no point in prosecuting Mugabe. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>we cannot let the past continue to hold the future, and Mugabe is in the past… He must be given the right of free passage… </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But Mugabe does not deserve a “right of free passage”. To award him this right would be to make a mockery of the principles of international law, transitional justice and the ongoing suffering of millions of Zimbabweans. </p>
<p>Biti emphasised the importance of economic growth and transformation. As a former finance minister he should know that financial prosperity cannot be separated from social cohesion and respect for the rule of law.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88171/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mia Swart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s still unclear whether Zimbabwe will manage an effective transition to participatory democracy and freedom. And the current signs are not encouraging.Mia Swart, Professor of International Law, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/877122017-11-21T14:04:31Z2017-11-21T14:04:31ZZimbabwe beware: the military is looking after its own interests, not democracy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195615/original/file-20171121-6031-14lazje.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwe National Army commander Constantino Chiwenga, second from left, addressing the media.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>November 2017 will go down in the history of Zimbabwe as the beginning of the end of Robert Mugabe’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/14/tanks-seen-heading-towards-zimbabwe-capital-harare/">37 year tyranny</a>. A tumultuous week finally culminated in <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42071488">his resignation</a> on November 21st. One cannot understate the widespread jubilation at the demise of Mugabe and his desire to create a dynasty for himself <a href="https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/660122/Zimbabwe-news-Robert-Mugabe-Grace-Zanu-PF-Twitter-latest-situation-coup-Emmerson-Mnangagwa">through his wife Grace</a>. </p>
<p>But the optimism is misplaced because it doesn’t deal directly with the dearth of democracy in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>First, contrary to popular sentiment that the coup was meant to usher in a new era of political <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42035981">liberalisation and democracy</a>, the takeover is actually meant to deal with a succession crisis in Zanu-PF. The military made this clear when it said that it was dealing with <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/zimbabwe-military-statement-seizing-power-171115061457199.html">criminals around Mugabe</a>. And the party’s secretary for legal affairs Patrick Chinamasa indicated that removing Mugabe from the party’s Central Committee was an <a href="http://www.thezimbabwemail.com/politics/dont-need-opposition-zanupf-business-chinamasa/">internal party matter</a>. </p>
<p>Secondly, I would argue that the military resorted to a “smart coup” only after its preferred candidate to succeed Mugabe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was fired from the <a href="https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2017/11/07/vp-mnangagwa-fired">party and government</a>. </p>
<p>The way in which the military has gone about executing its plan upends any conventional understanding of what <a href="http://www.jonathanmpowell.com/uploads/2/9/9/2/2992308/powell_and_thyne_2011jpr_-_global_instances_of_coups_from_1950_to_2010.pdf">constitutes a coup d'etat</a>. It’s a “smart coup” in the sense that the military combined the frustrations of a restive population, internal party structures and international sympathy to remove a sitting president. It thereby gained legitimacy for an otherwise partisan and unconstitutional political act – toppling an elected government. </p>
<p>This begs the question: Is the military now intervening for the collective good or for its own interests?</p>
<h2>Why the military intervened</h2>
<p>It is baffling to imagine how the military has suddenly become the champion of democracy and regime change in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>It’s clear that what motivated the military commanders was a fear of losing their jobs and influence after their preferred successor was purged. They launched a preemptive strike against Mugabe to safeguard their own selfish interests as a military class and the future of their careers. </p>
<p>Given the symbiotic relationship between the Zimbabwean military and the <a href="https://rusi.org/system/files/Zimbabwe_SSR_Report.pdf">ruling Zanu-PF party</a>, it was inevitable that the top commanders would be embroiled in the party’s succession crisis. After all, the military has been the key lever behind the power of both Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF since 1980. </p>
<p>In the past they have acted as part of the Zanu-PF machinery, openly <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/06/09/bullets-each-you/state-sponsored-violence-zimbabwes-march-29-elections">campaigning for Mugabe</a> alongside other security agencies.</p>
<p>And they have played a key role in neutralising political opponents. Back in the 1980s the military was responsible for the massacre of thousands of civilians and Zapu supporters in <a href="https://archive.org/stream/BreakingTheSilenceBuildingTruePeace/MatabelelandReport_djvu.txt.">Matebeleland</a>. More than two decades later in 2008 they were responsible for the torture, death and disappearance of 200 opposition activists and the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/2170138/Zimbabwe-Death-toll-rises-in-Robert-Mugabes-reign-of-terror-before-election.html">maiming of hundreds more</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, <a href="http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/DRC%20S%202001%20357.pdf">the UN</a> has implicated Mnangagwa and the generals in the illegal plundering of resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They have also been fingered in the disappearance of diamond revenues from Zimbabwe’s Marange <a>diamond fields</a>. </p>
<p>On top of this the military and Zanu-PF share a special relationship that has its roots in the liberation struggle. The Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) was the political wing of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (Zanla) during the liberation war. They therefore have vested interests in the survival of the party.</p>
<p>After independence, the relationship remained intact as the military became the <a href="http://bulawayo24.com/index-id-opinion-sc-columnist-byo-86814.html">guarantors of the revolution</a>. Some of the same surviving commanders of Zanla are still senior high ranking officials. The commanders are also bona fide members of the ruling party and <a href="https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/112460/JUL09SSRZIMBABWE.pdf">guarantors of Zanu-PF power</a>. </p>
<p>The same securocrats are also members of the Zimbabwe National Liberation <a href="http://www.pindula.co.zw/Zimbabwe_National_Liberation_War_Veterans_Association">War Veterans Association</a>. This quasi paramilitary group is an auxiliary association of the ruling party and has fiercely opposed Mugabe’s attempt to create a dynasty.</p>
<h2>Military must step aside</h2>
<p>Zimbabwe goes to the polls next July to choose a new president and parliament. The elections – if conducted in a credible way – will provide the next government with the legitimacy it needs to take the country out of its political and <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-financial-system-is-living-on-borrowed-time-and-borrowed-money-86159">economic crises</a>.</p>
<p>Now that Mugabe <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-42071488">has resigned</a> the hope is that the military will allow a genuinely democratic transition to take place. All political players, including opposition parties, would need to be incorporated into a broad-based transitional authority pending credible elections. </p>
<p>But for the elections to be credible, the transitional authority would need urgently to reform the electoral system. This would ensure Zimbabweans can freely and fairly choose their leaders. Without this, peace and prosperity will continue to elude Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>In the long run, the military would do well to get out of politics instead of continuing to view itself as <a href="https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2017/11/14/chiwenga-warns-mugabe-zanu-pf">“stockholders”</a> in the country’s political affairs because of its liberation struggle credentials.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87712/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Enock C. Mudzamiri has in the past received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, American Political Science Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities</span></em></p>Contrary to popular sentiment that the coup in Zimbabwe would usher in a new era of democracy, the military intervention is much more about a succession crisis in the ruling Zanu-PF.Enock C. Mudzamiri, DLitt et DPhil Student in Politics, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/876892017-11-19T09:15:50Z2017-11-19T09:15:50ZMugabe and Dos Santos: Africa’s old men seem, finally, to be fading away<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195298/original/file-20171119-11467-i9mm17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mugabe tried to impose his wife on his party as his chosen successor.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Soon after Zimbabwe’s army confined President Robert Mugabe to his <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/mugabe-latest-leader-over-years-to-be-placed-under-house-arrest-20171115">palatial Harare home</a> this week – allegedly for his safety – it was announced in Luanda that Angola’s new President, João Lourenço, had relieved Isabel dos Santos of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/15/angolan-president-sacks-predecessors-daughter-as-state-oil-chief">her position</a> as head of the state-run oil company Sonangol. </p>
<p>While there may not be any direct connection between these two events, they suggest some intriguing comparisons. In both countries ruling families seem to have failed to secure themselves in power. </p>
<p>When Mugabe, as leader of the <a href="http://www.zanupf.org.zw/">Zimbabwean African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF)</a>, became ruler of Zimbabwe at independence in <a href="http://www.africanews.com/2017/11/15/as-he-turns-93-years-old-today-who-is-robert-mugabe/">April 1980</a>, José Eduardo dos Santos was already <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13036738">President of Angola</a>. He had succeeded to that position after the death of Agostinho Neto in <a href="https://afrolegends.com/2011/08/04/agostinho-neto-doctor-poet-president-and-father-of-angolan-independence/">September 1979</a>. </p>
<p>Dos Santos had to deal with <a href="http://www.africansunmedia.co.za/Sun-e-Shop/Product-Details/tabid/78/ProductID/429/Default.aspx">external intervention</a> and over two decades of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history">civil war </a>, during which he ruled dictatorially. Mugabe, despite a facade of constitutionalism and regular elections, also became increasingly dictatorial. He abandoned adherence to the rule of law and his country’s <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/africa/2017-10-02-hopes-dim-for-zimbabwes-economy/">economy collapsed</a>. Angola became notorious for the scale of the corruption linked especially to its <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-luandas-residents-are-asking-where-did-all-the-oil-riches-go-49772">oil riches</a>. Zimbabwe went from bread-basket to basket-case. With the great majority of the people of both countries living in dire poverty, Dos Santos flew to Europe when he needed medical attention, while Mugabe <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/10/robert-mugabe-ruling-zimbabwe-from-hospital-bed-says-opposition">went to Singapore</a>. </p>
<p>Though Dos Santos was probably as reluctant as Mugabe to give up power, he decided to quit as president of the country and try to retain influence through the ruling party and members of his family. Mugabe tried to impose his wife on his party as his <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/mugabe-announces-appointment-of-controversial-wife-grace-to-a-key-post-20170915">chosen successor</a> and then to cling on to his positions even when the army took effective control of his country.</p>
<p>Given recent developments in Luanda and Harare, it would seem that neither of these two old men have succeeded in securing their family dynasties.</p>
<h2>Dos Santos’s succession plan</h2>
<p>By 2016, suffering health problems that took him to Spain <a href="https://www.enca.com/africa/angolan-president-back-home-after-treatment-in-spain">for treatment</a>, Dos Santos announced that he would step down as president of Angola and he <a href="https://theconversation.com/election-unlikely-to-herald-the-change-angolans-have-been-clamouring-for-82851">approved</a> his Minister of Defence, João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço as his successor. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195184/original/file-20171117-7547-1lnoizb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195184/original/file-20171117-7547-1lnoizb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195184/original/file-20171117-7547-1lnoizb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195184/original/file-20171117-7547-1lnoizb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195184/original/file-20171117-7547-1lnoizb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195184/original/file-20171117-7547-1lnoizb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195184/original/file-20171117-7547-1lnoizb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, president of Angola.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Fernando Villar</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following the victory of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the general election held in August this year, Lourenço took over as <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/09/26/new-angolan-president-joao-lourenco-sworn-in">president</a> in September. But Dos Santos remained president of the MPLA, and clearly expected Lourenço to look after his interests and that of his family, who had become enormously wealthy. </p>
<p>From the action Lourenço has now taken against Dos Santos’ billionaire daughter Isabel, it would seem that he’s becoming his own man. It appears he wishes to distance himself from the Dos Santos family, which for many Angolans is associated with corruption on a vast scale. </p>
<p>The London-educated Isabel has proved herself to be a very capable businesswoman, and though the Angolan economy has been suffering because of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-prices/oils-bull-run-hides-a-deep-disconnect-crude-traders-warn-idUSKBN0NR1Q320150506">low oil-prices</a>, on top of <a href="https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/elections_in_angola_time_to_tackle_corruption">massive corruption</a>, it’s unlikely she was sacked to bring in a better chief executive to run the country’s most important state owned company. There is talk in Luanda that Isabel’s brother, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2012-11-02-00-angola-whos-who-in-the-palace">José Filomeno dos Santos</a>, will be relieved of his position as head of the country’s large <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-24/angolan-wealth-fund-plans-shift-away-from-external-managers">Sovereign Wealth Fund</a> and that his father, the former president of the country, will be replaced as president of the ruling party, though that may have to wait until a party congress is held.</p>
<h2>Mugabe’s succession plan</h2>
<p>In Zimbabwe Mugabe has sought to arrange that his wife will <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/fall-from-grace-mugabes-wife-was-his-weakness-20171116">succeed him</a>. But <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/gucci-grace-from-benoni-robert-mugabes-biggest-mistake-12024383">Gucci Grace</a> and Robert made the mistake of trying to ensure this by <a href="https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2017/11/07/vp-mnangagwa-fired">firing</a> Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa. </p>
<p>Though at the time of writing, the 93-year-old Mugabe remains president both of the country and of the ruling Zanu-PF party, it’s widely expected that he will soon be relieved of both positions, probably by Mnangagwa, with the assistance of the army.</p>
<h2>Changes for the better?</h2>
<p>New leadership in Angola and Zimbabwe will have an impact on the region as a whole. </p>
<p>Given Mnangagwa’s record as a long serving member of government in Zimbabwe, and his <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41995876">involvement</a> in the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">mass killing of Ndebele</a> in the early 1980s, it is hardly likely that he will emerge as a champion of democracy. </p>
<p>In Angola, Lourenço is still finding his feet as head of government. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195185/original/file-20171117-7529-16thsny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195185/original/file-20171117-7529-16thsny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195185/original/file-20171117-7529-16thsny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195185/original/file-20171117-7529-16thsny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195185/original/file-20171117-7529-16thsny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195185/original/file-20171117-7529-16thsny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195185/original/file-20171117-7529-16thsny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fired Zimbabwean Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is therefore unrealistic to hope that either country will soon move from decades of repressive rule and lack of transparency to greater constitutionalism and closer adherence to the rule of law. </p>
<p>But if we are witnessing the end of an era in which dictators stayed <a href="https://theconversation.com/africas-old-mens-club-out-of-touch-with-continents-suave-burgeoning-youth-48618">in power for decades</a> and tried to secure their continuing influence through their families, and if we are seeing the diminishing importance of liberation movements turned political party, this must be good not only for Angola and Zimbabwe but for the southern African region as a whole. </p>
<p>It should also hold lessons for those who rule in neighbouring countries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87689/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Saunders does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Are we witnessing the end of an era in which dictators stayed in power for decades? If so this must be good not only for Angola and Zimbabwe but for southern Africa as a whole.Chris Saunders, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/876462017-11-16T16:25:34Z2017-11-16T16:25:34ZMnangagwa and the military may mean more bad news for Zimbabwe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195045/original/file-20171116-15428-u8p65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The military has taken control of the national broadcaster, troops are in the streets and the president is being held in a secure environment. All military leave is cancelled and a senior general has addressed the nation. Yet the Zimbabwean military continues with the pretence that this is <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-15-zimbabwe-army-in-control-of-state-institutions-but-insists-not-a-coup/#.Wg2PqE27LL8">not a coup d’etat</a>. </p>
<p>The obvious response to this is: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then the chances are it’s a duck. And the sole reason the Zimbabwean military is not acknowledging this as a coup d’etat is to avoid triggering the country’s automatic suspension from the <a href="https://au.int/">African Union</a> and the Southern African Development Community <a href="http://www.sadc.int/">(SADC)</a>. Both bodies frown on coups.</p>
<p>A perfect storm formed ahead of these events and made military action predictable. The country had once again entered a steep economic decline (not that its “recovery” had been anything of note). A clear and reckless bid for power was being made by the so-called <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2016/03/18/what-does-g40-want/">Generation 40 (G40) faction</a> around Grace Mugabe in direct opposition to the Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the standard bearer for the so-called <a href="http://www.pindula.co.zw/Lacoste,_Zanu-PF_Faction">Lacoste faction</a>. </p>
<p>This culminated in <a href="https://www.africa-confidential.com/article/id/12164/Mugabe_drops_the_crocodile">Mnangagwa’s dismissal</a> by President Mugabe: a clear indication that Grace Mugabe was now calling the shots. It also served as a follow up to the 2015 Grace-engineered dismissal of another Vice President and rival, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30400178">Joice Mujuru</a>. </p>
<p>The coup means that Mugabe’s long and disastrous presidency is finally over. The only questions that remain are the precise details and mechanics of the deal which secures his departure.</p>
<h2>Why the coup</h2>
<p>Mnangagwa is a long time Zanu-PF stalwart and is clearly closely integrated with the military high command and the intelligence services. Both institutions are concerned that the succession is being arranged for a faction led by people with no liberation credentials but who have been skilled in manipulating Mugabe himself and in making him do their bidding. The G40 now appear to have overreached, perhaps believing that their proximity to the “old man” made them invincible.</p>
<p>This coup’s explicit purpose is twofold. First, it’s trying to definitively kill off Grace Mugabe’s ambitions to become president and to set in place a ruling dynasty akin to the Kims in North Korea. Second, it’s a bid to clear Mnangagwa’s path to power, first in Zanu-PF and then within the state itself (over the last three decades these have been virtually one and the same thing). </p>
<p>What we do not yet know is what counter force, if any, the G40 can bring to bear against the military. The calculation of the military hierarchy appears to be that Grace and company are paper tigers who will have few cards to play against such force majeure and who lack the popular appeal to bring angry and disillusioned masses out onto the streets.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195047/original/file-20171116-15428-9jvnwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195047/original/file-20171116-15428-9jvnwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195047/original/file-20171116-15428-9jvnwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195047/original/file-20171116-15428-9jvnwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195047/original/file-20171116-15428-9jvnwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195047/original/file-20171116-15428-9jvnwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195047/original/file-20171116-15428-9jvnwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Could this be the end of President Robert Mugabe’s 37 year reign?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The coup has formally stripped away the façade that Zimbabwe is a constitutional state. This is clearly a militarised party-state where the military is a pivotal actor in the ruling party’s internal politics. It is not simply a neutral state agency subordinate to the civilian leadership. And the idea that this military intervention is an aberration – a departure from the constitutional norm – is misplaced. </p>
<p>Zimbabwe is a de facto military dictatorship. It serves as a guarantor of Zanu-PF rule rather than as a custodian of the constitution. It has helped Zanu-PF rig elections. And it was central to the state terror which was unleashed against the population to reverse Mugabe and Zanu-PF’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/2170138/Zimbabwe-Death-toll-rises-in-Robert-Mugabes-reign-of-terror-before-election.html">electoral defeat in 2008</a>. The military has always been a key political actor. The only difference this time is that its intervention is designed to control events within Zanu-PF rather than to crush opposition to it.</p>
<p>But, a highly politicised military is a major impediment to the re-establishment of a democratic order in Zimbabwe. It has nothing to gain, politically or financially, from democratic rule given the lucrative networks of embezzlement and plunder it’s put in place over decades. Most recently it seized and siphoned off of the country’s diamond wealth for military officers and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/12/zimbabwe-diamonds-mugabe-marange-fields">party hierarchy</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195048/original/file-20171116-15400-1d2c5r8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195048/original/file-20171116-15400-1d2c5r8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195048/original/file-20171116-15400-1d2c5r8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195048/original/file-20171116-15400-1d2c5r8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195048/original/file-20171116-15400-1d2c5r8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195048/original/file-20171116-15400-1d2c5r8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195048/original/file-20171116-15400-1d2c5r8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This intervention is designed to secure the presidency for Mnangagwa. So it is hard to avert our eyes from the elephant –- or in this case the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41995876">Crocodile</a> –- in the room. Mnangagwa is the Mugabe henchman who helped enable the misrule and tyranny of the last 37 years. He was one of the principal architects of the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false"><em>Gukurahundi</em></a> -– the genocidal attack on the Ndebele – in the early to mid-1980s which left at least 20 000 people dead.</p>
<p>He has also been instrumental in rigging elections and crushing all opposition to Zanu-PF rule, including the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-11-15-after-mugabe-what-next?utm_source=Mail+%26+Guardian&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily+newsletter&utm_term=https%3A%2F%2Fmg.co.za%2Farticle%2F2017-11-15-after-mugabe-what-next">atrocities of 2008</a>. </p>
<p>Expecting such a person to now make a deathbed conversion to the democracy, constitutional government and good governance he has spent an entire career liquidating is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/15/mugabe-gone-zimbabweans-decide-future-mnangagwa">dangerous nonsense</a>.</p>
<h2>Dilemmas to come</h2>
<p>Mnangagwa will soon have to confront a series of dilemmas. How can he put in place an administration which has the appearance of a national unity government, can secure international approval and the financial assistance required to help rebuild a shattered economy – but avoid ceding any meaningful power or control? Can this circle be squared? </p>
<p>The best hope for Zimbabweans is that the international community uses its leverage wisely and sets stringent conditions for such assistance: free elections closely monitored by an array of international organisations, the establishment of a new electoral commission, free access to the state media and the right of parties to campaign freely. </p>
<p>There should also be a role here for South Africa to restore its badly tarnished image as a champion of democracy in Africa. It has followed a malign path over the last two decades, facilitating Zanu-PF authoritarianism in the name of a threadbare and increasingly degenerate “liberation solidarity”.</p>
<p>Such a combination of pressures will severely restrict Mnangagwa’s room for manoeuvre. Anything short of that will deliver an outcome which is essentially Mugabeism without Mugabe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87646/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Hamill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The coup in Zimbabwe means Mugabe’s long and disastrous presidency is finally over. The questions that remain are the precise details and mechanics of the deal which secures his departure.James Hamill, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/875282017-11-15T10:20:54Z2017-11-15T10:20:54ZA military coup is afoot in Zimbabwe. What’s next for the embattled nation?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194773/original/file-20171115-19836-oyw8n1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace have become increasingly divisive figures in Zimbabwe.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nobody is safe from the rages of Zimbabwe’s First Lady, “<a href="https://www.thestandard.co.zw/2014/09/21/grace-mugabes-doctorate-uz-remains-mum/">Dr</a>. Amai” Grace Mugabe. There was the young <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/special-features/zimbabwe/grace-mugabe-split-my-head-open-claims-joburg-woman-10788605">South African model</a> Grace lashed with extension cords. 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe’s longtime and usually trusted ally <a href="https://www.africa-confidential.com/article/id/12164/Mugabe_drops_the_crocodile">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>, was next in the firing line: he was sacked because his supporters allegedly <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/an-ordinary-man-after-all-mugabe-fires-right-hand-man-mnangagwa-20171106">booed</a> her at a rally. </p>
<p>The consequences of her vengeance may have <a href="http://nehandaradio.com/2017/11/14/live-updates-situation-zimbabwe/">led to a coup</a> headed by Zimbabwe’s army chief General Constantino Chiwenga, who is commonly perceived to be Mnangagwa’s protégé. But <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/who-is-emmerson-mnangagwa/4115612.html">ex-freedom fighter Mnangagwa</a> has his own presidential aspirations.</p>
<p>Mnangagwa has been exiled from the party in which he has served since he was a teenager. But he is not just skulking in the political wilderness. On arrival in South Africa he issued a statement calling those who wanted him out <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/full-statement-im-not-going-anywhere-zanu-pf-is-not-your-personal-property-mnangagwa-tells-mugabe-20171108">“minnows”</a>. He promised to control his party “very soon” and urged his supporters to register to vote in the national elections next July.</p>
<p>As if to back Mnangagwa, on November 13 General Chiwenga announced that he and his officers could not allow the “counter-revolutionary infiltrators”, implied to be behind Grace Mugabe, to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/13/zimbabwe-army-chief-warns-mugabes-party-military-may-intervene/">continue their purges</a>. </p>
<h2>Factions and purges</h2>
<p>Chiwenga <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41992351">declared</a> that the armed forces must ensure all party members attend the extraordinary Zanu-PF congress next month with “equal opportunity to exercise their democratic rights”. He flashed back through Zanu-PF’s history of factionalism, reminding his listeners that although the military “will not hesitate to step in” it has never “usurped power”. Chiwenga promised to defuse all the differences “amicably and in the ruling party’s closet”. </p>
<p>Although this airbrushed more than it <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2014.956499">revealed</a> about the party’s rough patches when leadership vacuums appeared, the statement appeared more as a cautionary note than a clarion call to arms. It’s not often a coup is announced before it starts; but once in motion direction – and history – can change. Grace Mugabe may have unleashed a perfect storm and her own undoing.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194774/original/file-20171115-19772-qfet4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194774/original/file-20171115-19772-qfet4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194774/original/file-20171115-19772-qfet4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194774/original/file-20171115-19772-qfet4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194774/original/file-20171115-19772-qfet4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194774/original/file-20171115-19772-qfet4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194774/original/file-20171115-19772-qfet4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194774/original/file-20171115-19772-qfet4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soldiers stand next to a tank on a road in Harare.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All the “shenanigans” that have inspired the generals to consider a coup have set the stage for an extraordinary Zanu-PF congress this December instead of in the expected 2019: that is, <em>before</em> rather than <em>after</em> the July 2018 national elections.</p>
<p>This suggests some people were in a hurry to settle the succession issues for the president, who is now showing every one of his 93 years. Maybe Robert Mugabe won’t rule until he is <a href="http://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/product.php?productid=2114&freedownload=1">100-years-old</a>. If not, and <a href="https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/mugabes-zimbabwe-has-an-angry-population-and-a-potentially-violentfuture/article36934238/">members of his family</a> or party wanted to keep their dynasties alive, they had to work quickly lest some similarly inclined contenders are in their way.</p>
<p>These contenders include Mnangagwa and a slew of his <a href="http://www.pindula.co.zw/Lacoste,_Zanu-PF_Faction">“Lacoste” faction</a> consisting of war veterans and the odd financial liberal. The best-known of these is Patrick Chinamasa. This former finance minister tried to convince the world’s bankers he could pull Zimbabwe <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-financial-system-is-living-on-borrowed-time-and-borrowed-money-86159">out of the fire</a>. He was demoted to control cyberspace and then fired. Perhaps he may make a comeback in the wake of the semi-coup.</p>
<p>The pro-Grace faction includes the members of <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2016/03/18/what-does-g40-want/">Generation 40, or “G-40”</a>. Many are well over 40. But in Robert Mugabe’s shadow they appear young, as does the 52-year-old First Lady. Without a base in the liberation-war cohort, they resorted to working with the Mugabe couple: sometimes their ideology appears radical, espousing indigenous economics and more land to the tillers. </p>
<p>If the history of their best-known member – the current Minister of Higher Education <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Jonathan_Moyo">Jonathan Moyo</a> – is indicative, however, they are pragmatic; or less politely put, opportunist. </p>
<p>But with Grace Mugabe sans Robert, they would have to muster inordinate amounts of patience and manipulation to steer the sinking ship to the shores of stable statehood and incorporate yet <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Search-Elusive-Zimbabwean-Dream-Autobiography/dp/0994707924">younger generations</a> who cut their political teeth as Robert Mugabe’s rule faltered. </p>
<h2>Perfidious ‘saviours’</h2>
<p>Yet the possible plan for the upcoming congress – to create a third vice-president – appears not to move far beyond the cold hands of the old. <a href="https://www.news24.com/Tags/People/phelekezela_mphoko">Phelekezela Mphoko</a> would be pushed to third vice-president status. Grace would be the second vice-president. </p>
<p>The current defence minister, <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2017/11/10/mnangagwas-great-escape-details/">Sydney Sekeramayi</a> would be first vice-president and so, next in line for the presidential palace. He is a quiet but no less tarnished member of the Zanu-PF old guard; especially when one remembers the massacre of thousands of Ndebele people during the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false"><em>Gukurahundi</em></a>. </p>
<p>When performing the calculus necessary to rectify Zimbabwe’s graceless imbalances, remember that Mnangagwa was perhaps the key architect of the nearly genocidal <em>Gukurahundi</em>, now chronicled in archival detail in historian Stuart Doran’s <a href="https://www.sithatha.com/books">Kingdom, Power, Glory: Mugabe, Zanu, and the Quest for Supremacy</a>. Among the scores implicated therein are the British, condemned by Hazel Cameron, another meticulous archivist, as exercising <a href="https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2017/zimbabwe-cameron/">“wilful blindness”</a> during what Robert Mugabe has dismissed as a “moment of madness”.</p>
<p>Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that many are suspicious of Mnangagwa’s <a href="http://africanarguments.org/2017/11/08/zimbabwe-the-uks-misguided-role-in-the-rise-and-fall-of-mnangagwa/">relationship</a> with the UK. Many suspect he has been swimming with perfidious Albion for a very, very long time.</p>
<p>Those waters, in the shadow of Mugabe’s heritage, will take a few more generations of hard political work to clear. It hardly seems propitious that a coup, and the same generation that has ruled since 1980, starts it off.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87528/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David B. Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The protracted political crisis in Zimbabwe has worsened since President Mugabe fired vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Now the military has entered the fray, raising fears a coup is imminent.David B. Moore, Fellow, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge; Professor of Development Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/815742017-09-17T10:44:01Z2017-09-17T10:44:01ZBritish policy towards Zimbabwe during Matabeleland massacre: licence to kill<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183734/original/file-20170829-10409-jl5ttt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's clampdown on dissent in Matabeleland claimed up to 20 000 lives. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Aaron Ufumeli/ Pool</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In January 1983 Robert Mugabe’s government launched a massive security clampdown in Matabeleland. It was led by a North Korean-trained, almost exclusively chiShona-speaking army unit known as the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sabelo_Ndlovu-Gatsheni/publication/237426294_The_post-colonial_state_and_Matebeleland_Regional_perceptions_of_civil-military_relations_1980-2002/links/573ddabf08aea45ee842d9ad.pdf">Fifth Brigade</a>. They committed thousands of atrocities, including murders, gang rapes and <a href="http://davidcoltart.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/breakingthesilence.pdf">mass torture</a>. </p>
<p>Mugabe’s government called the operation <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false"><em>Gukurahundi</em></a>. This is chiShona for “the rain that washes away the chaff (from the last harvest), before the spring rains”. </p>
<p>It is estimated that between <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2017.1309561?scroll=top&needAccess=true">10 000 and 20 000</a> unarmed civilians died at the hands of Fifth Brigade.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2017.1309561?scroll=top&needAccess=true">analysis</a> by the author of official British and US government communications relevant to the Matabeleland Massacres has shed new light on the British Government’s wilful blindness to Operation Gukurahundi, including its diplomatic and military team on the ground in Zimbabwe during the atrocities. The information was obtained via <a href="https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-freedom-of-information/what-is-the-foi-act/">Freedom of Information Act </a> requests to various British government ministries and offices and to the US Department of State. </p>
<p>The unique dataset provides minutes of meetings and other relevant communications between the British High Commission in Harare, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s office, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence in London, as well as the US Department of State and the US Embassy in Harare. </p>
<h2>The brutalities</h2>
<p>The attacks’ ramifications continue to be felt by survivors and their families. The children born of rape at the hands of the Fifth Brigade face ongoing discrimination and generally find themselves in hopeless situations.</p>
<p>The catalogue of brutalities committed by the Fifth Brigade include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>One man learned that his child was abducted from school by the Fifth Brigade and forced to catch poisonous black scorpions with his bare hands. He was stung and died before being buried in a shallow grave (interview with survivor TH, 2017). His only “crime” was to be Ndebele. </p></li>
<li><p>Entire families were herded into grass-roofed huts, which were then set alight (interview with survivor AN, 2017).</p></li>
<li><p>In Mkhonyeni a pregnant woman “was bayoneted open to kill the baby”. Also, “pregnant girls were bayoneted to death by 5th Brigade in Tsholotsho”, <a href="http://davidcoltart.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/breakingthesilence.pdf">killing the unborn babies</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>Young Ndebele men between the ages of 16-40 were particularly vulnerable. They were frequently targeted and killed or forced to perform demeaning <a href="http://davidcoltart.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/breakingthesilence.pdf">public sex acts</a>. </p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Unique dataset</h2>
<p>The data provides a unique insight into the British government’s role in Gukurahundi. It also establishes what information was available to the British government about the persistent and relentless atrocities; what the British diplomatic approach was in response to this knowledge; and what the British government’s rationale was for such policies. </p>
<p>The data evidences, for example, that the British Foreign and Commonwealth offices were aware that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>there was much talk – and evidence – of widespread brutality by the Fifth Brigade towards [Ndeble] villagers. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a cable forwarded to the US embassy in Maputo and Dar es Salaam, then-US Secretary of State <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/shultz-george-pratt">George Shultz</a> stated:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>what we are addressing is not simply a bad policy choice by the GOZ [Government of Zimbabwe] to deal with a difficult security situation in a section of their country. What is involved is the very fundamental issue of relations between the two parties, between the Ndebele and the Shona.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The West German ambassador to Zimbabwe, <a href="http://www.ohr.int/?ohr_archive=ambassador-dr-richard-ellerkmann-curriculum-vitae">Richard Ellerkmann</a>, thought it “ominous” that “Mugabe, in his latest speech in Manicaland, had used the Shona equivalent of ‘wipe out’ with reference to the Ndebele people, not just ZAPU people, if they didn’t stop supporting the dissidents”.</p>
<p>However, “most poignant for Ellerkmann was the remark of a German Jewish refugee in Bulawayo who said the situation reminded him of how the Nazis treated Jews in the 1930s”. (Cable American Embassy, Harare to Secretary of State Washington DC, 11 Mar. 1983). </p>
<p>There could be no doubt in the minds of the British that Gukurahundi was Zimbabwean government policy. On 7 March 1983 Roland “Tiny” Rowland, a British businessman and chief executive of the Lonrho conglomerate with heavy economic commitments in Zimbabwe, met Mugabe. The documents indicate he subsequently reported to the American ambassador in Harare that he was convinced Mugabe was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>fully aware of what is happening in Matabeleland and it is Government policy. Mnangagwa (Zimbabwean Minister of State Security) is fully aware and he was in the meeting when they discussed the situation in detail. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The author’s analysis provides clear evidence that the British diplomatic and military teams in Harare during Gukurahundi were consistent in their efforts to minimise the magnitude of Fifth Brigade’s atrocities.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185858/original/file-20170913-23100-xerxnu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The remains of a victim of the massacre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anonymous/Supplied by author</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is indisputable that this is the general theme of the available cables that were forwarded from the British High Commission in Harare to London during the period analysed. </p>
<p>The analysis also clearly proves that, even when in receipt of solid intelligence, the UK government’s response was to wilfully turn a “blind eye” to the victims of these gross abuses. Instead, the British government’s approach appears to be have been influenced solely by consideration for the white people who were in the affected regions but were not affected by the violence. </p>
<h2>Rationale for realpolitik</h2>
<p>The rationale for such naked realpolitik is multi-layered. It is expressed clearly in numerous communications between Harare and London. One cables notes that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Zimbabwe is important to us primarily because of major British and western economic and strategic interests in southern Africa, and Zimbabwe’s pivotal position there. Other important interests are investment (£800 million) and trade (£120 million exports in 1982), Lancaster House prestige, and the need to avoid a mass white exodus. Zimbabwe offers scope to influence the outcome of the agonising South Africa problem; and is a bulwark against Soviet inroads… Zimbabwe’s scale facilitates effective external influence on the outcome of the Zimbabwe experiment, despite occasional Zimbabwean perversity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One can but assume that “occasional Zimbabwean perversity” refers to Gukurahundi.</p>
<h2>Accountability</h2>
<p>In a more general sense it is quite clear that, apart from the immediate perpetrators, external bystanders also have to be held accountable at least to some extent for the unbridled atrocities that took place in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>With the end of Mugabe’s long reign drawing ever closer, it is imperative that the international community help develop strategies to help Zimbabweans address the prevailing impunity and lack of accountability for the crimes of Gukurahundi. That is critical for the establishment of truth, justice, and accountability for the victims, survivors and their families.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81574/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hazel Cameron receives funding from the University of St Andrews (a research grant)</span></em></p>The effects of President Mugabe’s post-independence security clampdown that led to the murder of between 10 000 and 20 000 Zimbabweans, known as the Matabeleland massacre, continue to be felt.Hazel Cameron, Lecturer of International Relations, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.