Terror campaign explains Mugabe’s “never ever” vow
When war veterans and their hangers-on launched their violent campaign to forcibly occupy white-owned commercial farms early last year, quite a sizeable proportion of Zimbabweans were taken in by President Mugabe’s glib explanation for the unlawful actions. Mugabe said then it was a legitimate demonstration to press his government to speed up land acquisition. The land-hungry black majority, he said, were angry at the slow pace the government was going about resettling them.
However, the marauding invaders soon started intimidating and assaulting not just the white farm owners – who, ironically, had never resisted the occupations of their land – but also their black workforce and forcing everybody to chant Zanu PF slogans. It was then that even those who had been duped by the “anger-of-the-land-hungry-peasants” lie realised the move was not as innocent as it was claimed to be. Everyone started wondering why anyone would want to harass farm workers, who had nothing to do with the land ownership argument, if all the war vets wanted were white-owned farms.
In fact, people started to have strong suspicions that there was a hidden political agenda; that it was a thinly-veiled election campaign – a violent one at that – for the ruling party. Those suspicions were soon confirmed when the campaign was extended to the communal farming areas, where villagers were violently “persuaded” to support and vote for Zanu PF in the June 2000 election. And when, after the election, the terror was further extended to Harare’s high-density suburbs where, assisted by their State security machinery, the ruling party descended on residents with a vengeance for having rejected it at the polls, it became obvious Zanu PF was determined to literally beat everyone into submission.
In its warped logic, out of sheer fear of the consequences, everyone would troop back to Zanu PF, thus ensuring it remains in power until, as Vice-President Simon Muzenda put it, “donkeys grow horns”. Warped as it may be, though, it is most probably the only sensible explanation for Mugabe’s oft-repeated “never ever” vow with regard to the possibility of an MDC government in the near future. He is banking on this evil Zanu PF scheme to terrorise the whole population into accepting its rule for eternity to turn his wish into reality.
The current invasion of companies and private institutions is supposed to be the final act in that evil scheme to whip everybody into line – behind Zanu PF. All this, however, is exactly the opposite of what governments are supposed to be there to do – which is to do everything possible to make every citizen’s life as comfortable as possible. That is what legitimises the levying of taxes on all citizens regardless of political affiliation. It is both immoral, criminal as well as a gross abuse of power for the Zanu PF government to use taxpayers’ money to pay its party thugs to terrorise the very people who pay those taxes and, in the process, turn their lives into a virtual hell on earth.
Further, it is self-destructive to use taxpayers’ money to pay those same thugs to destroy the source of that money. That is precisely what the invasion of companies by the so-called war veterans is doing. Through their unlawful interference in various companies and institutions, on the pretext of settling labour disputes, “at the request” of supposedly wronged current or former employees, they are forcing companies to close down. Soon there will be no companies left. Without companies there can be no workers. Without workers there will be no one to levy taxes against. A perfect case of killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
Somehow, the international community must find a way to end the anarchy and lawlessness, now gripping every facet of Zimbabwean life, before this country goes up in flames. The government is driving everyone to the wall. And, unless it is stopped in time, everyone whose life is threatened will have no choice but to do whatever is necessary to protect themselves. In short, they will take the law into their own hands. Such a scenario could easily spark off a civil war. No one wants that to happen. The United States, the Commonwealth and the European Union must act now and come to the assistance of the majority of Zimbabweans, who are now prisoners in their own land. Foreign diplomats, who now also stand threatened by the lawlessness, have it in their power to stop the slide into a full-scale conflagration. They should implore their countries to rein in Mugabe.