Zimbabwe: liberation nationalism – old and born-again

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Notes

See for example, the collection of critical essays in Mandaza (1986).

Raftopoulos (1992), p. 64.

See Bond and Manyanya (2002).

See Saunders (2000).

See for example, Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, and Legal Resources Foundation (1997). The report, based on research of security forces, ruling party and dissident activity in two districts in Matabeleland in 1982–87, reported 2000 civilians confirmed or presumed killed by state agencies and estimated the total number of those killed at approximately 10,000. It notes that at least 10,000 were detained and that no less than 7000 were tortured or seriously wounded, the vast majority by security forces and ruling party agents.

See Saunders (1999).

Raftopoulos and Phimister (2004), p. 356.

The MDC, a party formed in 1999, was established under the patronage of the labour movement and other leading membership-based civil-society organisations. The bulk of its initial leadership and organisational capacity came from the labour structures of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and its affiliates, although it soon grew substantially to include a broad range of social forces.

See Bond and Saunders (2005).

Moyo and Yeros (2007). For a contrasting view which considers ZANU-PF in the 2000s in the context of fascism, see Scarnecchia (2006).

For example, the ‘Public Order and Security Act’, which replaced the draconian Rhodesian ‘Law and Order (Maintenance) Act’, and the ‘Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act’, which targeted media houses, journalists and the communication of information. Both were rushed through Parliament by ZANU-PF in advance of the 2002 presidential elections (as were other Acts amending and restricting citizenship and voting rights, rights of monitoring agencies to observe and report on voting, and so forth).

Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2006).

UN Special Envoy on Human Settlements Issues in Zimbabwe (2005). See also reports by a range of local civil-society and academic researchers, including Bracking (2005), Solidarity Peace Trust (2005) and Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2005).

Supreme Court Justices and High Court judges were harassed into resignation and replaced by overtly partisan appointments by President Mugabe, while defence attorneys, public prosecutors, paralegals and other frontline justice workers were targeted for attack – in many instances by the police themselves; ‘disloyal’ civil servants were threatened, marginalised or irregularly and sometimes violently removed from their posts; the state security agencies' officer corps was politically audited; opposition parliamentarians were besieged (more than half of the MDC's Members of Parliament were reportedly detained at one time or another in this period); and the public media were ruthlessly brought under the direct control of Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, who forced the closure of five privately owned newspapers as he moved to criminalise critical journalism. Ranking defence force and Central Intelligence Organisation personnel increasingly were placed in senior management positions in the government bureaucracy and parastatals, and long-standing structures established to facilitate tripartite consultation were gutted.

All GDP, wage and poverty figures in this section from LEDRIZ (2006).

Saunders (2010). See also recent published reports documenting the role of security forces and political interests in Marange, including, Partnership Africa-Canada (2010), Global Witness (2010), Human Rights Watch (2009), and the Zimbabwe civil society coalition on blood diamonds (2009).

The orgy of violence perpetrated in support of ZANU-PF between the March and June polls saw more than 150 opposition supporters killed and thousands assaulted and displaced from their home voting areas (Human Rights Watch 2008, Solidarity Peace Trust 2008). Coupled with extraordinary post-vote interventions by the Mugabe-appointed electoral commission, including its delay of more than a month in announcing the results of the first round of presidential voting while ZANU-PF violence raged, dispelled any notion that a second round of voting for President in June could be legitimate. Tsvangirai, who had officially polled 47.9% to Mugabe's 43.2% in March, subsequently withdrew from the second-round run-off, leaving Mugabe to ‘win’ with 86% of the vote. The June vote result was widely rejected – including by official African observer teams including the Pan-African Parliament Election Observer Mission, African Union Observer Mission and SADC's own team.

Research and Advocacy Unit (2010). This paper includes a critique of another position more supportive of sustaining the GPA, by the Solidarity Peace Trust (2010).

In June 2010, Farai Maguwu, director of the Centre for Research and Development, a key organisation investigating Marange diamonds, was arrested and held for passing on information critical of the Zimbabwe government. This latest attack, designed to silence a leading critic and his organisation in the midst of a KP review of Marange's export-worthiness, reflected ZANU-PF's extreme sensitivity on the issue of the lucrative illegal diamonds sector – as well as the benefits of its hardline approach. At the KP Intercessional Meeting in late June 2010, where Zimbabwe was the centre of debate, ZANU-PF's international friends and allies again saved Marange's criminalised mining regime from suspension.