BRENNA MATENDERE
POLITICAL commentators say five years after President Robert Mugabe breathed his last, Zanu PF’s draconian rule is continuing while paranoia and grand corruption have largely eaten into his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa’s leadership style.
Mugabe died an angry man on 6 September 2019 at Glen Eagles Hospital in Singapore, two years after he was toppled in the 2017 military coup.
Reflecting on the five years’ anniversary of Mugabe’s death, analysts said although the current regime regards itself a “second republic”, the multifaceted political and social economic crisis left by the late long-time ruler persists.
“The starting point is to understand that November 2017 marked a change in leadership without a change in the regime i.e., there was leadership change without a change in the Zanu PF system of governance. Mugabe exited power but the system he had crafted remained. In short, the Zanu PF way of doing things remained and is intact,” said University of Zimbabwe political scientist Professor Eldred Masunungure.
Masunungure added that Mnangagwa’s leadership style has moved a step further from Mugabe’s iron clad heavy-handedness to use of brawn.
“However, there has been a change in style of leadership and emphasis. Mnangagwa is more inclined to use brawn – ndichakusvasvangai nemboma inemunyu (We will beat you up with a sjambok laced with salt) – and patronage than Mugabe, hence the quick and rather unrestrained resort to coercive instruments to get citizen compliance even where it is not necessary. Moreover, Mnangagwa also has a more expansive definition of national security where even innocuous areas fall under his purview of threats to national security,” said Masunungure. When a whether Mnangagwa has brought in changes after Mugabe, he retorted:
“Policy-wise, Mnangagwa has emphasised some grand infrastructural projects, particularly roads and the Manhize Steel Plan stands out in this respect. That’s the credit side of his balance sheet but, unfortunately, grand corruption dominates the debit side with little beyond symbolic actions being taken to decisively and sustainably deal with the problem.”
Vivid Gwede, a 2023-2024 Hubert Humphrey Fellow in Public Policy Analysis and Public Administration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told The NewsHawks that the post-Mugabe era has seen the Zanu PF government entrenching its undemocratic character.
“What was supposed to be a turnaround opportunity for the country’s political governance has been missed. The citizenry still yearns for an inclusive governance culture in which dissenting voices of the ordinary people, opposition and civil society are respected,” Gwede said.
“The new constitution remains imperiled by violating of its stipulations and regressive amendments. On the economic front, there has not been much movement. Corruption remains a big issue. With the economy stagnant, unemployment remains rampant among the youth. We have seen rehabilitation works on the country’s aging infrastructure, especially roads, but with questions raised about the transparency of the projects.”
Political analyst Rashweat Mukundu said what Zimbabwe is seeing is a continuation of Mugabe’s disastrous rule in Zimbabwe.
“During the 40-something years of Mugabe’s rule, he destroyed the state by ruling through subjugation, through violence. And the instruments and infrastructure of violence that he left Zimbabwe are is still very much in place and being abused,” Mukundu said.
“So, whereas Mugabe maintained a tight grip using violence, what the Mnangagwa government has done unfortunately is to destroy state institutions especially the security services and the police, the military, the judiciary and Parliament, who are now all subjected to the political will of Zanu-PF, if not a few people in Zanu PF. So, Mugabe started the project of destroying Zimbabwe and the Zanu PF government is simply completing that task. So, if we don’t rescue the state structures from the control of Zanu PF, then the Zimbabwe state is going to be in serious trouble.”
When Mugabe died he divided opinion. Admirers feted him as a principled revolutionary who sought to economically empower the black majority through education and deliberate policies such as indigenisation laws.
But detractors despised him as a dictator who vandalised one of Africa’s most promising countries to a laughing stock.
In his 37 years at the helm, Mugabe built an authoritarian regime which brutally suppressed opposition political activism, civil society and human rights defenders.
The free media was not spared as Mugabe entrenched his grip on power. He is also remembered for implementing the controversial land reform programme in which productive white commercial farmers were violently evicted from farms and replaced with elite Zanu PF politicians, bureaucrats and activists.
This led to economic collapse as the farms suddenly became derelict.
When Mugabe was eventually toppled by his lieutenants in a coup, many Zimbabweans celebrated amid high hopes his successor, Mnagangwa, would catapult the country to exciting heights.
But far from being the expected messiah, Mnangagwa has presided over a crippling political and economic meltdown which has left many Zimbabweans nostalgic over Mugabe’s era.
Although the Mugabe era was ruinous, the current political and economic grindlock is engendering the sense that he was a better leader than Mnangagwa.
Political crisis
The political crisis reached unprecedented levels after the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) election observer mission, for the first time, condemned the conduct of the 24 August 2023 polls.
This never happened under Mugabe despite numerous contestations by the opposition MDC then led by the late opposition nomic sanctions against the country party icon, Morgan Tsvangirai.
Sadc regarded Mugabe as a statesman and held him in high esteem, but under Mnangagwa the reverence that Zimbabwe enjoyed in the regional bloc has now suddenly evaporated.
Under Mnangagwa, more repressive laws, which have shrunk the democratic space, have been enacted as the 81-year-old strongman redoubles efforts to entrench his authority.
Mnangagwa signed the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Amendment Act 2022, also known as the “Patriotic Bill”, in a move that was described by civil society groups and pro-democracy activists as the death of democracy in Zimbabwe.
It was the latest in a raft of measures, which included the banning of opposition political rallies and the use of legal instruments to disqualify political nemesis such as the disqualification of presidential hopeful Saviour Kasukuwere, ahead of the 23 August elections.
The Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Amendment Act 2022 Act criminalises any Zimbabwean citizen or national caught “willfully injuring the sovereignty and national interest of Zimbabwe” and those who participate in meetings with the intention of promoting calls for economic sanctions against the country.
Some of its provisions are:
• Criminalising any citizen caught “willfully injuring Zimbabwe’s sovereignty, dignity and independence as a nation”;
• Criminalising those who participate in meetings with the intention to promote, advance, encourage, instigate or advocate sanctions or trade boycotts against the country and;
• The death penalty for those perceived to have conspired to unseat the government, including individuals acting as agents or proxies for such entities.
Some legal experts said the law was ambiguously worded, complicated, and difficult to understand.
Therefore, it is susceptible to misunderstanding and law enforcement agents can interpret it broadly to fit their targeted agenda.
That trajectory has seen dozens of opposition activists and civil society leaders being arrested, with the latest being Jameson Timba and 77 others as well as the trio of Namatai Kwekweza, Robson Chere, Vusumuzi Nyoni and Samuel Gwenzi, who were dragged out of a plane, tortured and thrown behind bars over protest allegations.
