Zimbabweans took to the streets repeatedly, posing a mounting threat to the Robert Mugabe administration.
Three years after his resignation, the sense of another failed promise of true freedom runs deep.
“Free, free, free at last,” read the handwritten poster on a piece of
cardboard held jubilantly aloft by one of the thousands who had flocked
into the streets of Harare to dance in joy and relief -- at long last,
President Robert Mugabe, popular as ‘Uncle Bob’ -- was gone.
It was mid November 2017, when decades of failed dreams of uhuru in
Zimbabwe turned from a collective nightmare of political and economic
subjugation – this time imposed not by white colonial settlers, but by
Zimbabwe’s very own liberation movement leaders – into what seemed to be
a new dawn of hope.
At their wits end, exasperated and deeply frustrated, Zimbabweans in
their millions took to the streets repeatedly, posing a mounting threat
to the Mugabe regime, in power since independence in the autumn of 1980.
When at last their voices were heard, and Mugabe finally gave in to
pressure -- even from those closest to him -- to step down after nearly
four decades in power, protests turned into wild celebration at the
departure of the man who had come to embody both the hope and ruin of an
independent Zimbabwe.
People celebrate with Zimbabwe Defence Force soldiers in the streets
of Harare, Zimbabwe after Robert Mugabe's resignation in November 2017.
Tony Karumba | AFP
Three years on and the same sense of another failed promise of true
freedom runs deep through Zimbabweans, both in those who have stayed
behind and the millions who have fled in one of Africa’s largest
diasporas.
According to United Nations data, Zimbabwe’s current population is 14,862,924.
But at least three million have fled, legally or illegally, to South
Africa alone, with millions more going elsewhere in Africa or overseas
to Canada, the USA, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
After losing a key constitutional change referendum in 2000, Mugabe had become increasingly despotic.
His police and military had become ever-more prone to violence
against civil disorder or even peaceful protests, especially after
highly contested elections seemed to have repeatedly been stolen by the
Mugabe regime.
Oppression became the order of the day, with opposition politicians
being arrested, beaten, detained without charge or prosecuted on
trumped-up charges. Independent media and critical voices were under
constant assault.
Unemployment rate
Meanwhile, the economy was stuttering to outright collapse and
employment, once among the highest per capita in Africa, was falling
until, by the time Uncle Bob left, official unemployment was over 90 per
cent.
It was shattered dreams for a country once described as a “jewel of Africa”.
By the time Mugabe was forced from power by his own party, backed by
the military, Zimbabweans had endured runaway inflation at over 1
million per cent, with bank notes denominated in the billions only able
to buy a loaf of bread – if one could be found.
Hunger had stalked the land, and had been cynically used by elements
in the ruling Zanu-PF party to ensure voter support, especially in rural
areas.
A wild land-grabbing spree had destroyed Zimbabwe’s main economic
powerhouse, its commercial agricultural sector, leaving thousands of
white farmers homeless and traumatised. Once a breadbasket of the region
Zimbabwe was no longer food-secure.
Now, again, Zimbabweans are staring over the cliff – this time potentially at the complete collapse of the state.
Despair captured
The image of gaunt job-seekers taking refuge from the sun under a shade in the country’s capital Harare captures the despair.
Unemployment, economists suggest, is about 95 per cent and climbing.
With hyper-inflation rendering its currency worthless, Zimbabwe has been forced to embrace the US dollar or South Africa’s Rand.
That worked for a while, but with fewer exports against surging
imports, as had been the case prior to Mugabe’s departure and
subsequently under his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa’s tenure, soon,
foreign currency will run out.
Zimbabweans have struggled to beat government control of all currency.
Thousands have daily crossed the border to South Africa, increasingly
illegally through a newly-built but essentially useless border fence,
using their little SA currency to buy goods for their own consumption
and for sale back in Zimbabwe to other desperate countrymen.
This has created a thriving cross-border black market, which has
become an essential lifeline to what remains of the Zimbabwean economy,
hit harder by the Covid-19 pandemic. People queue at money transfer service in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in
March 2020, on the second day of a lockdown to curb the spread of the
novel coronavirus.
Zinyange Auntony | AFP
Starvation looms, with the World Food Programme (WFP) saying 8.6 million Zimbabweans 'will be hungry' by the end of 2020.
Children, the elderly, those with serious medical conditions and even
healthy young adults are dying of hunger, according to aid agencies
such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).
On the ground, it is clear there is no hope under the current regime,
with South Africa and the African Union once again taking a soft
approach – quiet diplomacy – as was done repeatedly and without impact
with the Mugabe regime.
Mnangagwa, known as “the crocodile” for his fierce role as Mugabe’s
main bully-boy for more than three decades, has proven to have earned
his nickname, his forces routinely brutalising anyone who opposes his
increasingly dictatorial rule.
“It’s like Uncle Bob all over again,” said one Zimbabwean in South
Africa, who identified himself only as ‘Adam’ for fear his family would
be targeted. He fled the harsh economic times during the Covid pandemic
and is illegally in South Africa
I love my homeland. I hate its leaders.
“Anything is better than Zimbabwe. I love my homeland. I hate its
leaders. All of them. They are killing us. They have taken the bread
from us. They have taken everything from us,” said a bitter Adam.
“I’d rather starve here (South Africa) than there. At least here, I
may be robbed or arrested, but people have something to eat and they
help me. There’s no help in Zim, only sorrow and death,” concluded Adam,
tears welling in his eyes.
Zimbabwe today, more than any time in its past, is a country facing complete failure.
The conditions for the vast majority of ordinary Zimbabweans have worsened.
And Covid-19 is making life even harder.
As of 20 August, 5,745 Covid-19 cases had been confirmed, with 151 deaths, mostly in heavily-populated urban and rural areas.
The WFP projects that the number of food-insecure citizens will rise
to 3.3 million from 2.2 million in urban areas, and to 5.3 million from
3.7 million in rural areas from October to December 2020.
Water deficit
Dams that supply Bulawayo, the country’s second city, are at just
25.6 per cent capacity, with a deficit of 17 million litres of water a
day for the city’s residents, according to international aid agency
reports.
In Harare, power and water supply are unreliable and long outages are frequent.
The country’s ageing major power-producing hydroelectric plant at
Kariba dam, on River Zambezi, which forms the northern border with
Zambia, is barely running.
But there is no money to buy power from outside the country.
Eskom, SA’s troubled and debt-ridden power-producer, was owed US$33
million by Zimbabwe for imported electricity until over a month ago.
A $10 million payment was made in early July, according to Zimbabwe’s
Energy Minister Fortune Chasi, allowing Zimbabwe to import power again.
But it is hardly enough.
With no economic relief in sight as other countries are reluctant to
intervene and government systems like health under increasing strain,
many fear the country is on the brink of collapse.
The agricultural sector, which is key to recovery, is hampered by the history of land-grabs.
Desperate to revive successful commercial farming, Mnangagwa recently
signed an agreement to pay out US$3.5 billion to the 4,500 white
farmers for their seized land.
No money
But there is no money to make those payments or to help ad hoc
efforts by the remaining commercial farmers – some having been asked by
local communities to return to the very land from which they were
violently evicted.
No longer interested in fighting Mnangagwa’s repressive regime on its
own terms, many Zimbabweans have lost all hope in their political
systems and full-scale revolt is in the air, though heavily tempered by
decades of deep exhaustion.
Also, with Islamic militants already active in northern Mozambique,
there are concerns in strategic intelligence and security circles that
Zimbabwe may become a breeding ground for regional and international
instability driven by expanding Islamic militant insurgency.
For a country whose economy has collapsed with “80 to 90 per cent of
all activity having moved into the parallel or ‘black’ economy”, says
one Zimbabwe expert, the disruption occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic,
along with restrictions on personal movement, has caused untold misery.
“Many people are now being pushing into absolute poverty,” says the analyst. Wheat in Glendale, Zimbabwe.
Paul Cadenhead | AFP
A senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, based in
Pretoria, South Africa, and whose specific expertise is Zimbabwe, said
WFP and other aid agency assessments on potential starvation were
accurate.
“But Zimbabweans have been there before,” said the ISS researcher, who declined to be identified.
“You have to remember there have been two decades of trauma,
oppression and suppression, which have been stepped up in the past two
years to almost absolutely unrestrained brutality against anyone who
stands up to the Mnangagwa regime.
“And with Covid restrictions on movement, together with constant
state monitoring, there’s little chance that people are going to be
gathering on the streets in protests such as were seen previously – most
are just trying to hustle the most basic living, merely surviving,”
said the analyst.
'Failed state'
As to whether Zimbabwe is becoming a ‘failed state’, open to
infiltration by insurgent elements already active in northern
Mozambique, this expert said that the Mnangagwa regime had sufficient
money – or would make sure that it did, by whatever means – to keep
paying police, army and security forces, as these were the only way to
keep itself in power.
“You could say Zimbabwe became a failed state back in 2006. But there
had been some recovery due to economic reform in recent years, now gone
again.”
Another long-term Zimbabwe-watcher said: “It’s both interesting and
terrifying. The confluence of forces operating in Zimbabwe at present is
unprecedented. It could easily lead to another change (in leader),
though whether that will mean the end for the governing Zanu-PF is
another matter.”
“But widespread hunger is already apparent on the ground and mass
starvation is likely without enormous and immediate foreign donor aid.
As Bob Marley wrote: ‘A hungry man is an angry man.’ It is unclear
whether the anger of starvation will create enough desire for change to
generate another unstoppable wave of protests, but something has to
give, or a great many people, millions maybe, will suffer and die.”
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