Has Mugabe lost his touch?
      Has Mugabe lost his touch? February 18, 2000

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Cameron Duodu

LETTER FROM THE NORTH

Who are Robert Mugabe's political strategists? He ought to fire the lot of them. There is no country in the world in which you can hold a referendum - and expect to win - when there is a fuel shortage.

A fuel shortage is like no other economic deprivation, especially in a country where public transport is not a priority on the rulers' list, because the rulers have their own private means of transport (plus free and assured supplies of fuel).

Ghana ran short of petrol in the early 1980s and I tell you, it was terrible. We also had a shortage of food, simultaneously. Petrol dominated all our thoughts, for without petrol, you couldn't make the rounds to find out what you could buy for your family to eat; you couldn't do your work well if it depended on contacts with people in a country whose telephone facilities were not reliable. As for personal pleasures, the less said about them, the better.

No; however popular you think you are; however desirable you think the promises you are offering in a referendum may be; never hold a referendum when there is a shortage of fuel. Zanu-PF, an organisation that once had its finger on the pulse of the people of Zimbabwe, seems not to know what the people think or want any longer. And it's just found out that if you ask people to vote when petrol queues have made them angry, they will ditch you.

Perhaps the Zanu-PF strategists thought they were being slick, by tucking into the constitutional proposals the emotive question of land redistribution. Who could refuse to say yes to a Constitution which promised to give back to the people the lands appropriated by force for whites by the ruthless Rhodesian Land Apportionment Act?

But in the end what this Zanu-PF over- cleverness has succeeded in crafting is a perception that the land reform question is only of interest to the rural communities (who voted yes) but not to the urban workers (who voted no).

This emerging dichotomy is a terrible disservice to the Zimbabwe people. Throughout their struggle against white racism, they never allowed urban and rural interests to divide them. Both the rural and urban communities fought against the injustice of having the lands that had once belonged to their ancestors seized by force and given to whites.

Now, it appears as if people are asking: "Who will get the land even if it is taken from the whites? Will it be Zanu-PF officials and their cronies?"

Such cynicism is widespread in Zimbabwe, and the Zanu-PF chaps ought to have realised that so long as they had not successfully dispelled the notion that the land reform programme was some sort of a platform into a gravy train whose doors were only open to the party faithful, the people, in general, would most certainly care less whether the lands remained in the hands of the whites or not.

Will Zanu-PF's leadership now have the self-confidence to implement land reform, despite the referendum debacle? Sadly, it could well be that by incorporating such an important proposal into a draft Constitution patently aimed at strengthening the president's position and allowing him to rule a lot longer, Zanu-PF has succeeded in betraying the people of Zimbabwe in the one area of policy where it could have expected to receive the near- unanimous support of blacks.

Zanu-PF can therefore expect to pay a bitter price in the parliamentary elections due in April. If the people arrive at the conclusion that the party has sacrificed the land reclamation issue on the altar of political expediency, it may even lose in the rural areas where it gained a majority in the referendum.

Zanu-PF ought also to reassess its approach to Zimbabwe's involvement in the Congo war. It is no use merely saying in a high-minded tone of voice: "We owe it to our Congolese brothers to save them from themselves. We also ought to help save them from the Ugandans and the Rwandese." Such sentiments may impress people who think of Africa as a unit, whose interests are intertwined. But in politics, pleasing the home constituency counts infinitely more than the approval of foreigners. So a government that involves itself in foreign affairs, to the extent of sending troops abroad, must spare no effort to explain itself to the people.

Even where one fully appreciates the need to sell the idea to the public, one's task of explaining can become well-nigh impossible if rumours are flying around that soldiers are smuggling parrots and minerals back to enrich themselves, or that powerful politicians are trying to use the Zimbabwe army to protect mining operations they have embarked upon in the Congo.

Is Zanu-PF aware of these rumours? What has it done to dispel them if they are not true? Granted that it is difficult to try to prove a negative, has any conscious effort actually been made to take journalists to go and see all aspects of the Zimbabwe army's participation in the Congo war, so as to kill the rumour mill by flooding it with transparent reporting?

Having said that, I do congratulate Comrade Bob and his government on organising a clean referendum and not interfering with the result, even when it was going against them. Few African countries can claim a similar credit and I am really very proud of Zimbabwe for having a government that is prepared to lose, and to accept defeat in the right spirit. I hope they will use this sorry episode to reassess their policies, in order to bounce back to become once more the heroes of the people who used to greet them with: "Chimurenga!"

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