Despite many breaking news stories in Zimbabwe I want to continue to address the proverbial big picture in a bid to retain some perspective about where we are as a nation. This is the third installation of my “Dreaming of Nepal” series where I’m taking principles that undergirded Nepal’s succesfull non-violent protest and evaluating them Zimbabwe through them. Read the first two here and here.

The third step in building towards succesful non violent protest is,

Let there be a build up of protest rallies in many villages and towns to culminate in one decisive protest rally in the capital city. (Take Over Tundikhel) Depending on the local conditions, you might face a military crackdown, or the regime might fall, or you might have to declare the formation of a parallel government that the international community must come forth and recognize.

Our grade: “C-.”

Owing mainly to Zimbabwe’s political heritage which has confined politics and political power mainly in Harare and some of the other bigger towns and cities, the protest movement has been essentially been centralized in Harare and Bulawayo. Even in 1998, when Tsvangirai ground the country to a complete halt, peripheral cities recorded only marginal involvement in the protest. Another way of seeing this is as manifestation of the exclusive nature of Zimbabwean politics; only the rich, powerful and educated feel empowered enough to exert themselves politically.

So if you’re not rich, powerful, highly educated, or resident in one of Zimbabwe’s urban centers you have very little political recourse. Tragically, as a third world country most of Zimbabwe’s citizens are in one these four disadvantaged groups. Not that poor rural people deserve isolation from political involvement; it’s not like they don’t know what’s best for them or that they cannot think for themselves. In Zimbabwe what is wrong with the country is as plain as daylight and people everywhere know this. The fact is none of Zimbabwe’s political movements can do what it takes to restore the country without the involving rural people. Nepal’s success derived not only from efficient planning in high places, but most importantly from the simple involvement of villagers from some of the most remote parts of the world.
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All too wary of their fast deteriorating predicament, Zimbabwe’s ruling party ZANU-PF is desperate to figure out ways to rejuvinate the party’s image. Apparently the latest effort to spruce up the image, a document authored by Patrick Chinamasa the justice minister, has angered Mugabe.

Zimdaily is reporting that a fuming Mugabe ordered the party’s supreme politiburo to return all copies of the document and not discuss it with the press:

The document has angered President Mugabe to such an extent that he has recalled all copies after the meeting and ordered that members of his Soviet-style politburo do not consider it or leak it to the media.

This despite the fact that the author of the document, justice minister Patrick Chinamasa, was requested by the party’s leadership to write and present a discussion paper on the party’s rejuvenation in the face of growing anger against the regime. “It is brutally honest,” said a politburo member speaking on condition of anonymity. “It opened a few eyes and that you can’t change if you want to keep on doing the same thing.”

Chinamasa calls out ZANU-PF tribal’s and “personality worshipping politics” in the document. This is apparently what got Mugabe angry, I wonder why?
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As promised, this is the second of eight posts that critique Zimbabwe’s democratization mechanization inspired by Paremendra Bhagat’s Democracy Spreading Mechanism

The second principle for succesful revolution planning is,

If [there is] more than one party, form a coalition.

Our grade: “F.”

To fully understand how the above statement bears out in Zimbabwe, one must first understand the country’s political heritage. To do this it is imperative to reach back into the nation’s liberation history. There we find that mutual distrust and turgid collegiality were the order of the day. Uninformed peasants had little trust for the leaders of Zimbabwe’s liberation movement; liberation cadres didn’t fully trust the people because they endured immense pressure from the imperialist forces; and there was little trust shared between the different leaders themselves. There really was never such a thing as a coalition in independence attaining process for Zimbabwe. What Zimbabweans came to know and understand as the modus operandi during the days of the armed struggled can best be described as the politics of fear.

During the days of the armed struggle strongmen cowered the people into loyalty through frequent displays of brutality and playing on the ignorance of the people to trump up fear. Likewise, imperialists employed the same predatory tactitics to keep the people from feeding and abetting liberation soldiers. You either supported vanamukoma the liberation war cadres, or where a traitor selling them out to the Rhodesian Armed Forces. People’s actions where for the most part, dictated by their perception of how best to avoid being considered a traitor by either side.

As you can imagine this precipitated unmitigated fear in the people when it came to all things political during the struggle and beyond. What is worse is that Mugabe & Co. did little to mollify said fear in the people when they finally liberated the nation. On the contrary, they ritualized the process of drumming up unwarranted tensions and manufactured volatility particularly through ZANU-PF’s youth wing.

So high was the mass hysteria generated by these scare gimmicks, many Zimbabweans essentially divorced themselves from political involvement. While many across the nation reposed in the paralysis of fear, ZANU-PF’s henchmen rolled their familiar tactics and consolidated their party’s gruff outlook.
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