Zimbabwe: Two Years On

When Robert Mugabe was first elected prime minister of Zimbabwe in 1980 after the Rhodesian Bush War against white minority rule, he was hailed as a national hero. From 1975 to 1979 Mugabe had led efforts to oust the government and having won a landslide victory in the first election, the country was full of hope that things were going to change for the better. Yet it took Mugabe barely three years to show his true colours. From 1983 until 1987 he sanctioned massacres of the minority Ndebele tribe by the Zimbabwean National Army. Mugabe’s party Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) received most of its support from the Shona tribe, which had a majority in the country while its rival party Zimbabwean African People’s Union (ZAPU) was predominantly supported by the minority tribe, the Ndebele. In 1984 Mugabe overhauled the parliamentary system with the aim of making Zimbabwe a one-party socialist state while, having made peace with his rivals in the Ndebele tribe in 1987, he merged his party ZANU with ZAPU creating the Zimbabwean African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), maintaining full control and declaring himself the country’s first executive president on 31st December 1987. In 1990 he was elected president in an election with several other candidates, but it was a campaign dominated by coercion. Unrest grew in the late 90s and white landowners continued to emigrate in huge numbers as the economy worsened and Mugabe’s land reform plans forced them out. In 1998, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was created with Morgan Tsvangirai as its leader. This party was to become the biggest official opposition to Mugabe for the rest of his career as president.

Throughout the next seventeen years the situation was to remain depressingly familiar until it became clear that a replacement for the aging Mugabe would soon be needed. The coup which took place in 2017 was in response to a series of political manoeuvres by his wife Grace Mugabe, who had risen high within ZANU-PF and, with support from her husband, was looking to become the president after him. In 2014 the then Vice-President Joice Mujuru, a hero of the liberation like Mugabe, was heavily discredited by Mrs Mugabe to the extent that he was dismissed from his position in the December of that year and replaced with Emmerson Mnangagwa. Again, Mrs Mugabe managed to discredit the Vice-President such that he was dismissed from his post and forced to flee the country on 6th November 2017. Now that Mrs Mugabe was the heir apparent to the presidency and had had two heroes of the War of Liberation removed from office, the military decided she had become too powerful and staged a coup on 15th November 2017, keeping President Mugabe under house arrest and arresting several cabinet ministers and politicians who supported her. The military leaders maintained that it was not a coup d’état and that after the accused individuals had been apprehended the situation would go back to normal. With the country in economic disarray and Mugabe clinging to power mainly through military might, anti-government sentiment was high in the country and people came out to protest peacefully for President Mugabe’s resignation. Although he refused to do so at first, on 24th November 2017 Emmerson Mnangagwa was sworn in as president for the rest of Mugabe’s term in office and was re-elected in 2018.

Once again, many thought that this might just be the good luck Zimbabwe needed – a new president who would rejuvenate the country and bring about positive change. Yet, as so often happens, international media scrutiny has receded and the regime in Zimbabwe has continued[SB1]  much as it did before with corruption and poverty still rife throughout the country. In November 2019 supporters of the MDC were fired at with teargas and attacked with batons when attending a speech given by Nelson Chamisa, the party leader and only pro-government rallies have been allowed in recent months. Despite the promises of Mnangagwa to improve life in the country, Chamisa claims that he instead becomes more dictatorial. There are even those who claim that the situation in Zimbabwe is just as bad, if not worse than it was under President Mugabe.

Not only is opposition to the government suppressed and the results of the most recent elections under dispute, the country is suffering yet another economic crisis with inflation at 300%, second only to that of Venezuela. This, coupled with a horrific drought which has seen Victoria Falls on the border with Zambia decline to its lowest levels since 1995, means that the country faces starvation with 60% of the population facing food insecurity according to a UN envoy Hilal Elver. Factors such as poverty, corruption, a lack of agricultural productivity, unemployment and hyperinflation all contribute to the worsening humanitarian crisis, in the country where 90% of children aged from 6 to 24 months eat just enough to survive. According to the envoy, the severe food insecurity facing the country could well pose a threat to national security if the government does not alter its approach by changing its agricultural policies and making the country more self-sufficient.

There is no doubt that the story of Zimbabwe is a sad one and all the more so when one compares its situation now with the way it was forty years ago. Once the breadbasket of Africa, its people can now barely feed themselves and there seems to be little chance of the substantial change hoped for on the resignation of Robert Mugabe. Businessmen supportive of ZANU-PF continue to be favoured while ordinary people queue for petrol and cash, which, with the introduction of the Zimbabwe Dollar and the ban on use of foreign currency, is becoming harder and harder to come by. Two years ago, one might have hoped that an article such as this could outline the progress and improvement made by the government but the situation in Zimbabwe remains as bleak as ever.