tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/zimbabwean-economy-58335/articlesZimbabwean economy – The Conversation2019-01-22T09:09:00Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1101972019-01-22T09:09:00Z2019-01-22T09:09:00ZFantasy that Mnangagwa would fix Zimbabwe now fully exposed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254899/original/file-20190122-100261-p4boy9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa with Russian President Vladimir Putin.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Sergei Chirikov</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As of January 18, more than 12 people had died, no less than 78 had suffered gunshot injuries, and at least 240 had been beaten and tortured by the Zimbabwean state. More than 466 had been arbitrarily arrested and detained, while hundreds are displaced or in safe houses in and <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-01-19-revolt-and-repression-in-zimbabwe">outside the country</a>. </p>
<p>Added to that is the <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/zimbabwe-shuts-down-all-internet-connectivity-again-18869497">shutdown</a> of the internet and social media. All this points to a vicious authoritarian state showing its true face, this time in response to a stay-away protesting a <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/zimbabwes-president-hikes-fuel-prices-to-tackle-shortages-20190113">massive petrol price rise</a>. </p>
<p>The latest events are happening in the context of years of economic crisis, and the government’s months-long legitimacy crisis.</p>
<p>The last few days have wiped out any trust people might have had in the ability of the <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/703839/pdf">November 2017 coup</a> that toppled former President Robert Mugabe to bring democratic and socio-economic rights to Zimbabwe’s long-suffering people.</p>
<p>Yet one wonders: is this a vicious repressive state or the accumulative effect of institutions that decayed under the doddering Mugabe; now disintegrated, dead and disinterred thanks to <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/economic-turmoil-is-unavoidable-in-mnangagwas-zimbabwe">diminishing dollars</a>?</p>
<p>Will Zimbabwe’s future be even worse than its terrible past? Can its neighbours bang some heads together to create a “transitional authority” of some sort, as Zimbabwean scholar and activist Professor Brian Raftopoulos <a href="https://player.fm/series/the-karima-brown-show-2342437/unpacking-the-violence-and-killings-in-zimbabwe-as-it-enters-its-3rd-day-of-protest">suggests</a>?</p>
<p>That’s needed, clearly. But it would not be advisable to raise one’s hopes.</p>
<h2>Mugabe’s legacy</h2>
<p>A veteran of many struggles against Mugabe once said that the old tyrant’s main problem was his inability to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304869932_Robert_Mugabe_An_Intellectual_Manque_and_His_Moments_of_Meaning">abide people smarter than him</a>. So he surrounded himself with sycophants, and the odd idiot savant. </p>
<p>As another astute Zimbabwean observer put it to me, Mugabe was good at playing the country’s many opposing groups against one another. He would grant one the hope of ascendance, then pull it away in favour of another grasping gang. It created a precarious balance. Now one of the groups has the levers of state in hand, the awkward equilibrium is no more – and the winners are split in all directions too.</p>
<p>With Mugabe gone, the victors – <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Lacoste,_Zanu-PF_Faction">Mnangagwa’s faction of the ruling Zanu-PF</a> – have no idea how to police themselves, let alone an economy, their subjects and the opposition. Harvard professor and emeritus president of the World Peace Foundation, Robert Rotberg, has politely called their plans’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/bold-steps-mnangagwa-should-be-taking-instead-of-fiddling-with-the-petrol-price-109890">“barmy”</a>. </p>
<p>My guess is that the men and women in charge are following some of the advice of their <a href="https://nehandaradio.com/2018/09/15/who-is-professor-mthuli-ncube/">financial guru</a> Professor Mthuli Ncube. He’s one of those mathematical geniuses whose ideology of short term pain producing fantastical gain needs either a lesson or two <a href="https://news.pindula.co.zw/2019/01/15/chief-justice-luke-malaba-condemns-mthuli-ncube-austerity-measures-says-they-threaten-the-rule-of-law/?_ga=2.38229859.1398503167.1548007307-1613363783.1531465861">in politics</a> or an iron fist. He has the latter.</p>
<p>It’s likely that those charged with implementing “austerity for prosperity” so zealously are fighting among themselves while their soldiers loot and kill on their own, as well as their officers’, will. </p>
<p>As the spoils’ scarcity worsens and power’s centre cannot hold – all in the shadows cast by the near dead – stories of <a href="https://news.pindula.co.zw/2019/01/21/breaking-ed-impeachment-plotters-tried-to-kill-me-mayor-justice-wadyajena/">post-coup coups</a> and impeachments pop up. Police spokesperson Charity Charamba even believes the soldiers looting and torturing are people who have stolen their uniforms, so any “retired, deserted, and AWOL” soldiers must</p>
<blockquote>
<p>immediately hand over uniforms either to the police or the <a href="https://www.sundaynews.co.zw/government-warns-rioters-1-fare-buses-introduced/">Zimbabwe Defence Forces"</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A good excuse to round up suspected mutineers? </p>
<h2>Chilling warning</h2>
<p>President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced the gargantuan increase in fuel prices and then took his begging bowl to the oligarchic remnants of the Soviet ruins. His next stop was due to <a href="https://www.bigsr.co.uk/single-post/2019/01/19/Big-Saturday-Read-Davos%E2%80%99-shame-as-Zimbabwe-burns">be Davos</a> where he hoped to charm those with money by repeating his “open for business” mantra. But a <a href="https://www.techzim.co.zw/2019/01/president-mnangagwa-not-going-to-davos-hes-coming-home-to-deal-with-crisis">60,000 strong petition</a> helped keep him away. </p>
<p>Mnangagwa has <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/zim-president-mnangagwa-returns-amid-economic-crisis-crackdown-20190122">returned from his travels</a> with power retained, although now more tainted than before. He’s likely to be at his crudest. Presidential spokesperson George Charamba promises that so far there has been only seen a “foretaste of things to come”, and that Zanu-PF would <a href="https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/news/mdc-and-allies-will-be-held-accountable/">“revisit”</a> the sections of the constitution protecting rights of association and expression, “which we now know are prone to abuse by so-called proponents <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/01/20/world/africa/20reuters-zimbabwe-politics.html">of democracy”</a>.</p>
<p>As this week began, an eerie calm settled. But many civil society and political opposition activist members are still in hiding, lest the fate of teachers’ union president Obert Masaraure, abducted in the early hours of 18 January, tortured, and dumped at Harare’s Central Police Station, befall them. </p>
<p>The Zimbabwe Human <a href="http://www.hrforumzim.org/news/zimshutdown-violations-updates/">Rights NGO Forum</a> also chronicles the torture of Rashid Mahiya’s mother and his pastor. He is the chairperson of Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition and Executive Director of Heal Zimbabwe Trust, and is accused of “masterminding” last week’s protests. </p>
<p>Movement for Democratic Change member and former Minister of Education Senator David Coltart has accused the military and those it has hired of <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-01-20-blocked-internet-in-zimbabwe-hides-government-crimes-against-humanity/">crimes against humanity</a>. In personal communication from Bulawayo he writes that last week’s debacle was a “deliberate campaign to punish the working class people” in his city. </p>
<h2>A dream deferred</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/a-false-new-dawn-for-zimbabwe-what-i-got-right-and-wrong-about-the-mood-100971">The nightmare of August 1 last year</a> – when the military brutally clamped down on opposition supporters protesting against the announcement that Mnangagwa had won the presidential election, killing at least six – started to dash the post-Mugabe leader’s dream of legitimacy.</p>
<p>Economic revival might have done the trick: now there’s no chance of that. Last week’s events have exposed the fantasy in full finality. The only Zimbabweans still in the trance are its supposed leaders. </p>
<p>Their neighbours seem caught in it too. They had better wake up before the maelstrom mauls them in the morning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110197/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 Zimbabwean government’s brutal response to protests has dashed hopes for democracy under President Mnangagwa.David B. Moore, Professor of Development Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1098902019-01-15T15:10:32Z2019-01-15T15:10:32ZBold steps Mnangagwa should be taking instead of fiddling with the petrol price<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253840/original/file-20190115-152986-1z00z45.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwe erupted in violent protest after the government doubled the price of petrol. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When economically challenged rulers try to run nations, especially fragile ones, they can easily make mistakes. </p>
<p>In the past few weeks demonstrators have taken to the streets of Khartoum and Omdurman to protest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s removal of subsidies that have long kept <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/sudan-official-death-toll-protests-rises-24-190113065645372.html">bread and fuel affordable</a>. </p>
<p>Now it’s Zimbabwe’s turn. Just before flying off to Russia last weekend, President Emmerson Mnangagwa <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/zimbabwes-president-hikes-fuel-prices-to-tackle-shortages-20190113">doubled the price of petrol</a>. Doing so brought already impoverished urban Zimbabweans out onto the streets of the capital Harare as well as Bulawayo and a dozen other cities and towns. Protesters blocked roads with tyres, trees and rocks, stopped bus transport, attacked the police, threw canisters of tear gas back at security forces and <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/deaths-in-zimbabwe-fuel-protests-says-security-minister-20190115">generally ran amok</a>. </p>
<p>At least five people <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/military-deploys-in-zimbabwe-fuel-hike-protests-5-killed/2019/01/15/d44875f6-18aa-11e9-b8e6-567190c2fd08_story.html?utm_term=.2af9f13b1349">were reported</a> to have been killed. Flights into Harare <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/africa/2019-01-14-fastjet-cancels-flights-as-zimbabwe-unrest-continues-countrywide/">were cancelled</a> and the government <a href="https://www.techzim.co.zw/2019/01/econet-and-telone-shut-down-the-internet-completely-now-its-darkeness/amp/?__twitter_impression=true">closed down the internet</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1085088020640997376"}"></div></p>
<p>Mnangagwa’s excuse for raising prices so abruptly is not clear. Possibly he thinks that more costly petrol will bring more cash into national coffers that are mostly bare. Or perhaps he believes that more petrol will pour into the country via the pipeline from Beira in Mozambique if it is more valuable. Both ideas are barmy. </p>
<p>Before flying off to Russia, Mnangagwa said that the fuel price rise was intended to reduce shortages of fuel that, he indicated, were caused by rises in the use of fuel and what he called <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/anger-as-mnangagwa-raises-gas-prices-in-zimbabwe-20190113-2">“rampant” illegal trading</a> – accusations that make no sense whatsoever. Making petrol purchasing more expensive for poor Zimbabweans – the majority of the nation’s people – simply adds to their hardship and further slows an already crippled economy.</p>
<p>Instead Mnangagwa should do everything his government can to reduce the shortage of real (rather than fake) cash that is crippling the local economy, reducing local production and corporate and consumer cash flows, and driving an already weakened economy <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2019/01/12/zimbabwe-plans-new-currency-as-dollar-shortage-bites-finance-minister">further into recession</a>.</p>
<p>He should also be focused on taking a number of other bold steps to try and reverse the collapse of the country’s economy. Among them are bringing state looting to a halt.</p>
<h2>The cash crisis</h2>
<p>The US dollar is the official currency of commerce. But because Zimbabwe’s economy has essentially ground to a halt, it has few means of bringing new dollars into the country. That, and the steady money laundering of real dollars by high-level officials of the ruling Zanu-PF party, has drained the country of <a href="https://www.newsday.co.zw/2018/10/looting-of-state-resources-to-blame-for-economic-crisis/">currency</a>. </p>
<p>The government has printed $1 bond notes — known as <a href="https://businesstimes.co.zw/dollars-vs-zollars-zim-puts-accounting-standards-to-test/">zollars</a> – for Zimbabweans to use instead of real dollars. They are supposed to be exchangeable at par, but in 2019 they are worth as little as a third of a paper dollar. Many merchants refuse to accept zollars at all.</p>
<p>Bond notes now trade on the black market at 3.2 per dollar, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-14/no-currency-just-a-currency-crisis-zimbabwe-s-woes-deepen">according</a> to the Harare-based ZimBollar Research Institute.</p>
<p>The stress has also spread to financial markets, with locals piling into equities to hedge against price increases. </p>
<p>Mnangagwa may be <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/with-president-mnangagwa-in-russia-zimbabwe-descends-into-chaos">attempting to obtain loans</a> from Russia and from shady Central Asian countries <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2016/02/04/kazakhstan-at-twenty-five-stable-but-tense-pub-62642">like Kazakhstan</a>. But what the president should be doing is prosecuting and imprisoning his corrupt cronies. That could limit the flight of dollars from Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>He also needs to trim the bloated civil service of excessive patronage appointments. Most of all, if he dared, he should be cutting military expenditures. Zimbabwe has no imaginable need for its large and well equipped a security establishment.</p>
<p>Such bold measures could return confidence to the country’s corporate and agri-business sectors. If coupled with reduced military and other expenditures, and bolstered by funds no longer being transferred overseas, Zimbabwe’s long repressed economy could take off from a very low base.</p>
<h2>Poor leadership</h2>
<p>Raising petrol prices in a land where but a few months ago supplies of petrol were short and motorists <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-27/zimbabwe-suffering-worst-economic-crisis-in-a-decade/10433028">queued for hours and days</a> outside stations is neither politically nor economically wise. The newly aroused protesters will not readily melt away. Putting such a hefty extra charge on an essential commodity, and doing so just when Zimbabwe’s parlous economy was beginning to show signs of stability, shows few leadership skills and little common sense.</p>
<p>Inflation has soared since the national election in July, almost reaching the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=sudan+70%25+inflation&rlz=1C1NHXL_enZA711ZA711&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiwn7u4oO_fAhVMUBUIHVJzAKEQsAR6BAgEEAE&biw=1283&bih=638">Sudanese level of 70% a year</a>. Foreign capital and domestically reinvested capital is avoiding the country. </p>
<p>On top of this, exporters are struggling under draconian Reserve Bank regulations. Only Chinese purchases of ferrochrome, other metals and tobacco, keep the economy ticking over, albeit in an increasingly dilatory manner.</p>
<p>A further drain on confidence and economic rational thinking is the Reserve Bank’s allocation of whatever hard currency there is to politically prominent backers of the president. That is how arbitrage during President Robert Mugabe’s benighted era helped to enrich his entourage while sinking the Zimbabwean economy and impoverishing its peoples.</p>
<h2>Work that needs to be done</h2>
<p>Mnangagwa’s regime has much more work to do to stimulate sustainable economic growth. He will need to restore the rule of law, badly eroded in Mugabe’s time, put some true meaning into his <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/africa/2018-11-20-socialites-laying-low-as-zimbabwes-government-cracks-down-on-big-spenders/">“back to honest business”</a> promise, and widely open up the economy. That would mean eliminating most Reserve Bank restrictions on the free flow of currency and allowing the entire Zimbabwean economy once again to float.</p>
<p>Most of all, Mnangagwa needs to rush home from Russia and Asia and rescind or greatly reduce the price of petrol. After so many years of repression and hardship, Zimbabweans are out of patience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109890/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Rotberg 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>President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s decision to double the price of petrol shows very poor judgement and bad leadership.Robert Rotberg, Founding Director of Program on Intrastate Conflict, Harvard Kennedy SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1022142018-08-28T08:49:08Z2018-08-28T08:49:08ZZimbabwe: a future finely balanced between democracy and militarisation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233680/original/file-20180827-75972-16eekkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Emmerson Mnangagwa being sworn-in as the second president of Zimbabwe.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo4V9qjvQ04">inauguration</a> as Zimbabwe’s second president and commander-in-chief consummated power for the main beneficiary of the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/20/africa/zimbabwe-military-takeover-strangest-coup/index.html">November 2017 coup</a> that forced Robert Mugabe’s long delayed retirement.</p>
<p>Zimbabwean scholar and activist Brian Raftopoulos’ remarks during a public meeting at the University of Cape Town five years ago come to mind. As all were wondering what would happen in the weeks before the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10220461.2018.1474379">much-marred</a> <a href="https://www.up.ac.za/media/shared/85/Strategic%20Review/Vol%2036(1)/05-moore_pp47-71.zp39515.pdf">2013 Zimbabwean election</a>, <a href="http://www.africanbookscollective.com/authors-editors/brian-raftopoulos">Raftopoulos</a> <a href="http://africanarguments.org/2013/06/18/11-theses-with-appropriate-apologies-on-zimbabwes-moment-of-magical-realism-waiting-for-elections-in-2013-by-david-moore/">argued that</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Zimbabwe’s military-economic élite – a new capitalist class at an early stage – will not be removed just with elections.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mnangagwa’s next five years may see this prediction reach its endpoint. His
billboards said he would deliver the new country Zimbabweans want: the promise remains poised on tenterhooks. <a href="https://transformationjournal.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/T84_Part7.pdf">The classic dynamic</a> in politics everywhere – the interplay between militarisation and democratisation – looms large. </p>
<p>Raftopoulos’ proviso that a “partnership to prevent militaristic moves” was necessary in 2013 may be more apposite (and trickier) now than ever. The prospects for the next elections in 2023 (barring constitutional changes – possible because Zanu-PF MPs make up more than the two-thirds in Parliament needed to change that hard-won <a href="http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/democrats/">document</a>) could take stark contours. </p>
<p>The contest is, and will be, far beyond a battle of two parties and their main protagonists. It will be between increasing democratic participation – starting with the classic precepts of free and fair elections – or a securitisation process <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2016/04/08/securocrat-state-zim-transition/">much less stealthy</a> than before.</p>
<p>This is the most important point to consider about Zimbabwe’s <a href="http://sites.clas.ufl.edu/africa-asq/files/Moore-Vol-7-Issues-23.pdf">medium-term prospects</a>. The others are moves within Zanu-PF itself, dynamics within the MDC-Alliance and what happens to the economy.</p>
<h2>MDC-Alliance</h2>
<p>After the Constitutional Court’s ruling confirming Mnangagwa as the “duly” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/zimbabwe-court-to-rule-on-oppositions-election-challenge/2018/08/24/e51d7fdc-a778-11e8-ad6f-080770dcddc2_story.html?utm_term=.aad1db3b10a7">elected president</a>, MDC-Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FAS5WOdZIw">suggested</a> that he and Mnangagwa needed a serious discussion that would lead to the breaking of Zimbabwe’s legacy of violent and jimmied elections. </p>
<p>It’s still an open question whether such a discussion would lead to a coalition government, or the space for the faction-ridden MDC-Alliance to flex the muscles of a loyal opposition and to rebuild. Its bad experience during the <a href="http://weaverpresszimbabwe.com/index.php/store/history-and-%20politics/the-hard-road-to-reform-detail">2009-2013 “government of national unity”</a> might militate against a repeat. But the wider need to cushion the new régime from militarisation is worth considering. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233681/original/file-20180827-75990-19ciyf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233681/original/file-20180827-75990-19ciyf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233681/original/file-20180827-75990-19ciyf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233681/original/file-20180827-75990-19ciyf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=951&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233681/original/file-20180827-75990-19ciyf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233681/original/file-20180827-75990-19ciyf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233681/original/file-20180827-75990-19ciyf3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zimbabwean opposition leader Nelson Chamisa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Yeshiel Panchia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The cautionary note to the MDC-Alliance about any such new dispensation might be: don’t neglect your badly fractured party and its allies needing to be in the fold; and don’t sideline your <a href="https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2018/07/21/chamisa-khupe-in-fresh-war-of-words">enemies within precipitously</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, many among the MDC-Alliance and its supporters fear the Zanu-PF machine is poised to wipe them out permanently.</p>
<h2>Zanu-PF</h2>
<p>Much related to the above and perhaps the key, is Zanu-PF itself. The battle between Mnangagwa and Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/zimbabweNews/idAFL5N1V520O">could be overdrawn</a>, but the <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-zimbabwes-messy-election-get-messier-or-will-a-new-path-be-taken-101196">tragic killings of August 1</a> have thrown it into stark relief. </p>
<p>Can no one in power know who shot the demonstrators and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-07/zimbabwe-army-chief-is-said-to-demand-who-ordered-crackdown">innocent bystanders?</a> Could Chiwenga really say that news of the shootings was <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-07/zimbabwe-army-chief-is-said-to-demand-who-ordered-crackdown">“fake”</a> and aver the MDC-Alliance deployed cadres to do the shooting to <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2018/08/17/zims-cold-blooded-killings-great-leap-to-global-isolation/">discredit Zanu-PF</a>? </p>
<p>In any case, a military unit came in, because - so says “the state” - the police <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zimbabwe-election-police/zimbabwe-police-requested-army-help-to-quell-post-election-protests-spokeswoman-idUSKBN1KM5L3">could not contain the violence</a>. On site observers, however, attest that the police and the demonstrators were enjoying a friendly encounter, including selfies and dancing. Then the soldiers arrived. </p>
<p>The journalists who were there say the men with guns were the Presidential Guard, under Chiwenga’s control: after they arrived and started killing, the violence and car burning ensued.<br>
One analysis says this tragedy has exposed Zimbabwe’s <a href="http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52861&catid=74&Itemid=30">parallel states</a>. Furthermore, the senior soldiers have just had their <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/zim-vp-chiwenga-extends-soldiers-retirement-age-report-20180811">retirements deferred</a>. Perhaps Mnangagwa’s inaugural Freudian slip – when he failed to acknowledge his vice- presidents – revealed his inner desire to be rid of Chiwenga. </p>
<p>One can only hope that the promised <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2018/08/26/watch-live-emmerson-mnangagwa-sworn-in-gives-inaugural-address">commission of inquiry</a> will unearth what happened, and deal with it summarily. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thepatriot.co.zw/top-news/unmasking-csu/">The Patriot</a>, one of the fractured ruling party’s media mouthpieces, reveals some party propagandists’ thinking about democracy and human rights. ‘Unmasking CSU’ (Counselling Services Unit, a long-serving source of succour for wounded democracy activists, as well as an advocacy NGO) paints the CSU and other human rights organisations writing “fake reports” to fan “tribalism and violence to achieve regime change”. Only words? If they turn into bullets Zimbabwe will have stepped down the ladder a long, long way.</p>
<h2>The economy</h2>
<p>Ticking like a time bomb is the ruined economy. No real <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00083968.2017.1411285">money</a> and a gargantuan number of unemployed embedded in the precarious “informal sector”, if they’re not eking out a penurious peasant’s existence. Their situation is so miserable that they are easily bribed – with flour and <a href="https://www.irinnews.org/analysis/2017/12/22/bumper-zimbabwe-harvest-prompts-bigger-bet-command-agriculture">subsidised prices for their maize</a> backed by <a href="http://www.customcontested.co.za/chiefs-and-zanu-pf/.">intimidation from the chiefs</a> – to vote.</p>
<p>Help from elsewhere might not be forthcoming either, or not helpful if it is. The rulers’ faux pas against the demonstrators has worried even its dedicated <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/zimbabwe-edge-ahead-election-results-three-opposition-protesters/">supporters in the wider world</a>, imperilling even the demanding strictures of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank re-engagement. The “West” dangled the slightly less rigorous chalice of <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2018-05-25-how-theres-hope-for-zimbabwe-as-it-starts-tackling-legacy-debt/">Heavily Indebted Poor Country status</a> in front of Mnangagwa’s finance bureaucrats before the elections. Even though Zimbabwe is considered “too rich” for the easier debt-relief packages that comes with the status, broad hints were made. It’s doubtful if those whispers will get louder now. </p>
<p>In any case, as civil society activist Takura Zhangazha <a href="https://www.newsday.co.zw/2018/05/zim-2018-election-trading-democracy-for-neoliberal-foreign-policy/">has written</a>, IMF and World Bank policies are woefully inadequate for Zimbabwe’s problems: it is highly unlikely that its poor majority will be lifted to a decent life under their aegis.</p>
<p>As for private investment: Zimbabwe will again be fair game for <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/18/africa/looting-machine-tom-burgis-africa/index.html">the cowboys</a> - from the east as well as the west these days.</p>
<p>Zimbabwe is in a precarious position. Its immediate future rests under the sword of Damocles. The threads of democracy have to be thickened. One hopes the chronicle of its demise cannot be foretold.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102214/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>Zimbabwe’s new president promised to deliver the country citizens want but the nation remains on edge.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/1016172018-08-21T07:26:42Z2018-08-21T07:26:42ZZimbabwe is still in trouble, but it’s under too little pressure to change<p>Zimbabwe reached a major milestone this year, holding its <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-zimbabwes-messy-election-get-messier-or-will-a-new-path-be-taken-101196">first parliamentary and presidential elections</a> since Robert Mugabe was removed from power after 37 years of continuous rule. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party was led on the ballot by his usurper, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who promised the elections would be free and fair. In a refreshing change, for the first time this millennium, both Western election observer groups and the international media were allowed into the country.</p>
<p>Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission delayed announcing the election results, but eventually declared that the ruling ZANU-PF party had won an absolute parliamentary majority against its main opponent, the MDC-Alliance, giving it the power to change the constitution. It declared a rather closer outcome in the presidential competition, with Mnangagwa besting the MDC-Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa at 50.8% to 44.3%.</p>
<p>The international response was prompt and warm enough – the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, who came into office in February as a representative of a new guard of anti-corruption leaders, <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/ramaphosa-congratulates-mnangagwa-on-zimbabwe-election-victory-20180803">congratulated Mnangagwa</a> as soon as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission declared him victorious. Ramaphosa was joined by an array of African heads of state, and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/SOMNIA-idUSKBN1KS0EF">China’s Xi Jinping</a> sent his congratulations, too. But within Zimbabwe itself, the atmosphere was very different.</p>
<h2>Tension and violence</h2>
<p>The day after the elections, when opposition supporters took to the streets to protest the announcement that the ruling party had won, Mnangagwa <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/02/zimbabwe-tense-calm-in-harare-after-post-election-violence">released soldiers</a> who used live ammunition in the streets of the capital city Harare. Six were reportedly killed, and an unknown number injured. Violence, much of it unreported by the international media, also occurred in other cities.</p>
<p>After riot police <a href="http://nehandaradio.com/2018/08/03/riot-police-disrupt-nelson-chamisa-press-conference-after-fake-zimbabwe-election-results/">interrupted a Chamisa press conference</a>, the government started to clamp down on opposition members, charging that its protesters and leaders were responsible for the post-election violence. Even though international observers concur that the election campaign and the voting itself were satisfactory, what happened during the vote counting is less clear – leading to a challenge in Zimbabwe’s High Court by the opposition.</p>
<p>After the 2008 elections, numerous allegations of wrongdoing started to surface – for instance, that after the local vote count for some constituencies the results were changed in favour of the ruling party. The MDC-Alliance claims that similar rigging occurred after this year’s presidential vote and has submitted what the opposition considers to be convincing evidence to the court. Their claims have now been legally challenged by ZANU-PF.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/zim-president-mnangagwa-wants-court-to-toss-opposition-challenge-20180815">reports</a> that opposition members are still being beaten and detained, the US has declared that sanctions on Zimbabwe dating from the Mugabe era <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/us-ambassador-to-zimbabwe-sanctions-removal-genuine-reforms/4529865.html">will be extended</a>. They will only be lifted on three conditions: if there is wide recognition that last month’s elections were free and fair, if the opposition is treated with respect, and if the Zimbabwe Defence Forces show regard for human rights. But what are the chances these conditions will be met?</p>
<h2>Holding back</h2>
<p>Zimbabwe’s economy is still stuck at the standstill it hit back in the year 2000. Hyperinflation became so bad that the government eventually abandoned its own currency. With Mugabe gone, the country is slowly attracting foreign investors again. For now, China still controls its significant platinum and lithium deposits, while the future of the long-contested Marange diamond fields is <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/201804240627.html">still unclear</a>. Meanwhile, gold, coal and asbestos mining have been on their knees for 20 years – not to mention the agricultural sector, which has the potential to once again make Zimbabwe the world’s largest producer of tobacco.</p>
<p>With Mnangagwa’s <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/24/africa/zimbabwe-president-emmerson-mnangagwa-davos-intl/index.html">slogan</a> “Zimbabwe is open for business” raising hopes at last, it is easy to see why larger economies have for the most part not made more of this latest political crisis. But it does not explain why African leaders and organisations have not stepped up to protest against the ZANU-PF government’s post-election violence, or why the election observers have been silent about the lack of transparency in the vote counting.</p>
<p>Two days after the elections, the international election observer commissions – including those of the African Union, the Southern African Development Corporation, the Commonwealth Observer Group, the European Union, and the Carter Centre – said in a <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/zimbabwe/joint-statement-international-election-observation-missions-zimbabwes-harmonised">joint statement</a> that they “stand in solidarity” with “the people of Zimbabwe” while calling on all sides to condemn violence and asking the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to release the full election results “expeditiously”. This was followed on August 7 by a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-on-post-elections-human-rights-situation-in-zimbabwe">joint condemnation</a> from the EU, the US, Canada, and Switzerland of “the violence, attacks, and acts of intimidation targeted at opposition leaders and supporters”, urging all sides “to pursue peaceful and legal resolution”. </p>
<p>These are positive moves, but they are far from enough. It is hard to understand why, nearly two decades into the 21st century, the African Union and African heads of state are not standing up to demand democratic accountability from their neighbours. An even more puzzling question is why election observers did not consider it their responsibility to observe the vote counting. Observer groups only deserve their name if they observe the full election process from beginning to end, and that has to include the counting process, too.</p>
<p>In a country like Zimbabwe, where travel is both easy and safe, there is no reason for the international media to focus so overwhelmingly on the capital city, Harare. By the time the election and its aftermath began to wind down, it had become almost comical to see various global news stations sharing the same rooftop view of downtown Harare. But that is what Africa and the wider world offered the Zimbabwean nation: a detached bird’s eye view without any true engagement with the real problems on the ground.</p>
<p>Now all attention is on the High Court, which will hear the opposition’s challenge to the election results on August 22. Whatever the outcome of the legal challenge, the Zimbabwean nation yet again stands alone without the African Union or African heads of state at its side as it tries to heal the wounds of state sponsored violence and human rights abuses.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101617/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heike I. Schmidt 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 messy and violent aftermath of Zimbabwe’s recent elections met with only muted international criticism.Heike I. Schmidt, Associate Professor in Modern African History, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.