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