ZIMBABWE:AFTER 37 YEARS,WHAT IS MUGABE'S LEGACY?

A DICTATOR OR A REVOLUTIONIST

 

 

 

 

 

 

He is clearly no Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko ,Yoweri Museveni or  Sani Abacha but who is he now???

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot has happened in the past few days in Zimbabwe, where the world’s oldest head of state tries to remain in power even under military house arrest. Thousands of giddy Zimbabweans are in the streets to demand his departure, tired of a collapsing economy that once was one of Africa’s strongest. Here’s a quick guide to the key events and players

The 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe has been under house arrest since Tuesday, when the military moved in. That decision was sparked by Mugabe’s firing of his longtime deputy, leading to fears that the president was positioning his unpopular wife, Grace, to succeed him. Mugabe is said to be asking for more time amid negotiations on his departure. The military has been taking pains to refer to him as president and allowed him to make a public appearance Friday at a graduation ceremony, where he received polite applause.

 

Several thousand people are in the streets of the capital, Harare, to demand Mugabe’s exit as Zimbabweans giddily explore the rare freedom of expression amid the political limbo. Saturday’s demonstration was approved by the military and has participation from across the political spectrum, from Mugabe’s once-staunch loyalists among the liberation war veterans to opposition activists long-used to police crackdowns.

 

Zimbabwe’s army commander on Monday threatened to “step in” after Mugabe fired Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, and the next day he did. In an extraordinary image later in the week, state-run media published photos of Gen. Constantino Chiwenga shaking hands with a smiling Mugabe at the State House as negotiations with regional leaders continued. The military is trying not to project the image of a coup, which could bring regional sanctions and further harm the country’s standing with international investors.

 

The state-run broadcaster on Friday night devoted its nightly news to footage of ruling ZANU-PF party leaders across the country calling on Mugabe to step aside and calling him old and incapacitated. All 10 provincial party branches have passed no-confidence votes and asked for a Central Committee meeting within two days as the party moves to recall Mugabe and possibly press for impeachment when Parliament resumes Tuesday.

 

Grace Mugabe has been out of the picture, literally, since the military stepped in. Once ever-present at her husband’s side at public events, she has not been seen in days. The quick-tempered first lady, deeply unpopular among Zimbabweans for her lavish spending, did not accompany the president at Friday’s graduation ceremony. She was not pictured in the photographs of the State House negotiations. Despite rumors that she has fled the country, she is thought to remain under house arrest. In one example of Zimbabweans’ anger at the idea of her becoming their next president, one sign at Saturday’s massive demonstration read: “Leadership is not sexually transmitted.”

 

 Mr Mugabe's actions have led to a widespread view at home and abroad that the Zimbabwean government no longer considers itself bound by the rule of law - that the president is, in effect, a dictator. 

There are not many, even among his opponents, who would compare Zimbabwe's president to Africa's most notorious rulers.

He is clearly no Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko or Sani Abacha. Zimbabwe's press is still among the most vigorous and outspoken in Africa, as demonstrated by the newspapers' constant denunciations of Mr Mugabe.

And yet more and more Zimbabweans view their president as anything but a democrat.

Mr Mugabe's supporters ask how a man elected with an overwhelming majority of the ballot in an indisputably free election just three years ago can be called a dictator.

He may be unpopular, they say, but that is wholly different from being an illegitimate leader. And Mr Mugabe's opinion poll ratings, at somewhere around 25% support, may be low but they are no worse than Margaret Thatcher at her most disliked.

Mr Mugabe's critics point out that Mrs Thatcher, whatever her authoritarian tendencies, did not repeatedly defy the courts, give blanket amnesty to people who murdered her political opponents, order the police not to enforce the law and use a private army of thugs against an array of targets.

Such critical views of Robert Mugabe are relatively recent even if his abuses of power are not. In the early Eighties, the Zimbabwean army murdered tens of thousands of civilians in Matabeleland in a bid to suppress dissent. But over the years that crime came to be seen as the exception to Mr Mugabe's otherwise popular rule.

Now he has returned to the tactics of the past. His use of the self-styled independence 'war veterans' to seize white-owned farms and to harass dissidents inside the ruling party horrifies but does not surprise many Zimbabweans.

But it is Mr Mugabe's repeated defiance of the courts that has raised greatest concern because it opens the way to almost any abuse, including an attempt to cling to power beyond the 2002 presidential election that he is almost certain to lose.

When the high court ordered the police to remove 'war veterans' who illegally occupied white-owned farms, the president told his police chief to ignore the court .Then

 

"Mr Mugabe granted amnesty to ruling party supporters who murdered 30 people during the run up to June's parliamentary election, and to the killers of a white farmer. The message was clear. Those who murder for the president will not be punished".

At the weekend, Mr Mugabe issued a decree ending any legal challenges to the results of the parliamentary ballot which, in some constituencies, was marred by violence, intimidation and rigging.

Mr Mugabe's actions have led to a widespread view at home and abroad that the Zimbabwean government no longer considers itself bound by the rule of law - that the president is, in effect, a dictator. 

One of the ruling party's powerful politburo members and former cabinet minister, Nathan Shamuyarira, is dismissive of such charges.

"This government has been guided by the rule of law for the past 20 years. We have had the high court rule against us before and we have obeyed. But we don't think the land is a legal matter, we think it is a political matter and it should be dealt with between the farmers and the government. We have refused to send the police for that purpose because we believe they should be resolved in another way. There is a fundamental difference between us and the courts on this," he said.

Mr Shamuyarira paints legal challenges to vote rigging as part of an international conspiracy against Mr Mugabe.

"The opposition is continuing to do this to harass us and tie us up in expensive legal processes so they can bankrupt us. They have a lot of money coming in from the British and American governments so they can afford to pay the lawyers. We can't afford to pay the lawyers," he said.

But the ruling party has not limited its scorn of the judiciary to defying court rulings. Senior officials have called for the expulsion from the country of white judges, who still dominate the higher reaches of the judiciary, on the grounds they are really British and have allegedly been serving Britain's interests.

Former allies of Mr Mugabe - such as Moses Mvenge, a founder member of the ruling party and its chief whip in parliament until the election - have no doubt what the man they once supported has become.

"I have never seen a country where one arm of government, the executive, goes all out to discredit another arm, the judiciary. It really is becoming a dictatorship because one man thinks he can make every decision and ignore every other arm of government," he said. 

 

MUGABE AND THE ECONOMY OF ZIMBABWE  

The country was forced to abandon its own currency at a rate of Z$35 quadrillion to US$1.

It appears that Mr Mugabe wants to deflect attention from Zimbabwe's economic crisis, especially worsening unemployment and the closure of firms, our correspondent says.

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has called on the country's remaining white farmers to cede land to black people.

"We say no to whites owning our land and they should go," Mr Mugabe told his supporters at a rally.

The white farmers union said it was regrettable that racial tensions were flaring up again. 

The president's critics say his policy of seizing most of Zimbabwe's white-owned farms caused the country's economic collapse from 2000-2009.

Mr Mugabe, 90, has governed Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.

He was re-elected president last year with 61% of the vote, defeating his long-standing rival Morgan Tsvangirai. 

The president's Zanu-PF party also gained a parliamentary majority of more than two-thirds, winning 160 of the 210 seats.

 Zimbabwe analyst Stanley Kwenda says Mr Mugabe's comments are surprising, as the government officially ended its land reform programme about two years ago. 

It appears that Mr Mugabe wants to deflect attention from Zimbabwe's economic crisis, especially worsening unemployment and the closure of firms, our correspondent says. 

'Disturbance

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"Don't be too kind to white farmers. Land is yours, not theirs," Mr Mugabe said at a rally in Mashonaland West province, a stronghold of Zanu-PF . 

"They should get into industries and leave the land to blacks," he added.

Mr Mugabe's comments had caused anxiety among white farmers, said Commercial Farmers Union director Hendricks Olivier. 

"We'd like to move forward and work with the government of the day," he said.

There were only between 100 and 150 white farmers left in Zimbabwe, Mr Olivier said. 

Several thousand of them were forced to abandon farming after the government launched a controversial land reform programme nearly 15 years ago. 

The country was forced to abandon its own currency a year later at a rate of Z$35 quadrillion to US$1.

1 = the tally of leaders in the last 37 years

President Mugabe, who led the country's liberation movement, has been in power since independence in 1980. He served first as prime minister until the switch to a presidential system in 1987.

ut the 93-year-old leader's years in office have been marked by economic crisis and the crushing of dissent. He and his supporters have managed to stay in power for so long by using violence and murder as an electoral strategy.

231 million per cent = inflation in July 2008

Zimbabwe's economy has struggled since land reforms were introduced in 2000.

The programme that saw white-owned farms redistributed to landless black Zimbabweans - and those with good political connections - led to sharp falls in production.

As the country's central bank printed money to try to get out of the crisis, rampant inflation took hold.

Although the World Bank does not have figures for 2008 and 2009, numbers from Zimbabwe's central bank showed annual inflation reached 231 million % in July 2008. Officials gave up reporting monthly statistics when it peaked at just under 80 billion % in mid-November 2008.

The country was forced to abandon its own currency a year later at a rate of Z$35 quadrillion to US$1.

$16.3bn = GDP in 2016

The political and economic crises between 2000 and 2008 nearly halved Zimbabwe's GDP - the biggest contraction in a peacetime economy, according to the World Bank.

A brief period of recovery between 2009 and 2012 has now faltered and the economy faces serious challenges, says the World Bank. Growth has slowed sharply from an average 8% from 2009 to 2012, caused by shifts in trade and a series of major droughts.

President Mugabe has always blamed Zimbabwe's economic problems on a plot by Western countries, led by the UK, to oust him because of his seizure of white-owned farms.

74% = the population living on less than $5.50 a day

The country's political and economic crises have resulted in high poverty rates.

The hard years between 2000 and 2008 saw poverty rates increase to more than 72%, according to the World Bank. It also left a fifth of the population in extreme poverty.

Extreme poverty, estimated to have fallen from 2009 to 2014, is now projected to have risen again substantially.

About 27% of children under the age of five suffer stunted growth, with 9% severely stunted because of poor nutrition, the 2015 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey report revealed.
But poverty in Zimbabwe is still lower than in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, where about 41% of the population were living on less than $1.90 a day in 2013, World Bank data suggests.

90% = one estimate of the unemployment rate

Estimates of the country's unemployment levels vary wildly.
The World Bank's modelled estimates based on the International Labour Organisation data puts the figure as low as 5% in 2016, while Zimbabwe's biggest trade union claims the jobless rate was as high as 90% this year.

However, the World Bank's definition only covers those actively "seeking" work. Many of those not counted may not seek a job despite wanting one because they "view job opportunities as limited , or because

they have restricted labour mobility, or face discrimination, or structural, social or cultural barriers". 

The CIA world factbook estimates the rate was 95% in 2009, but says current figures are not known.

89% = adult literacy rate

Due to large investments in education since independence, Zimbabwe has one of the highest adult literacy rates in Africa, with 89% of the adult population literate, according to World Bank data from 2014.

Globally, the literacy rate stood at 86% in 2016, while in sub-Saharan Africa it was 64% (2015 figs).

13.5% = the adult prevalence rate of HIV/Aids

Zimbabwe has the sixth highest HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa, with 1.3 million people living with HIV in 2016, according to UNAIDS.

However, after a peak in 1997, rates are declining.

According to the UN, this is a result of successful campaigns encouraging condom use as well as programmes preventing the transmission of infection from mother to child. Treatment and support services have also improved.

60 = the life expectancy at birth

Life expectancy fell in the 1990s, with the HIV/Aids epidemic a major killer. It dropped from a high of 61.6 years in 1986 to 43.1 years in 2003.

It is now steadily improving again, but with unemployment and poverty endemic and HIV/Aids rates still high, it remained at just 60 in 2015, according to World Bank data.

81 = the number of mobile subscriptions per 100 people

Mobile devices are the leading communication tool for Zimbabweans.

But while most have a mobile phone, only 43% of households have a radio, 37% have a television and 10% have a computer, according to the 2015 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey.

16.7 million = the current population

After a growth spurt after independence in 1980, a decline in birth rates and a rise in death rates saw population growth slide downwards.

With high outward migration rates also high, the population has not recovered its post-independence growth.