When religious beliefs clash with journalism principles- part four

Barely a year after winning the 2002 presidential elections which extended his term of office to 2008, pressure began to mount on President Mugabe to go. The pressure came from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change which claimed Mugabe had stolen the election and was challenging the result.

Pressure also came from within his own party. His lieutenants felt he should go but no one dared say this except Eddison Zvobgo, the man who had crafted the constitution that made Mugabe executive president and made his succession so vague that anyone could replace the president provided that that person stood in an election 90 days after the president’s departure.

Whispers said that the Harvard-educated Zvobgo had deliberately crafted the succession clause this way so that he too could contest because he had presidential ambitions but was not in the top five of the party. He was very popular in Masvingo and his Karanga sub-group constituted a third of the population.

Another source of pressure was the Western governments, especially Britain and the United States which were piffed by Mugabe’s fast track land reform programme in which he had expropriated nearly five million hectares of land from mainly white farmers without any compensation.

The United States was now funding several non-governmental organisations to speak out against Mugabe. It also launched Studio 7, a broadcasting arm of the Voice of America, which beamed to Zimbabwe in all three of the country’s major languages- English, Shona and Ndebele.

The first crucial test for Mugabe came through the mass stay-away by the MDC which it dubbed the Final Push. It started on June 2, 2003 and ended on June 6. The stay-away had two major aims: to force the government to get the two major political parties- the MDC and ZANU-PF-to sit and try to solve the economic and political problems facing the country, and to force President Mugabe to resign.

The stay-away recorded a 90 percent success in terms of getting workers to stay at home. But it was difficult to attribute this to heeding the call by the MDC. Some observers said workers simply stayed at home because they did not have money for transport.

A report by the Zimbabwe Peace Project, a non-governmental organisation formed by church and civil society organisations in 2000, confirmed this. It said: “To some workers the call was a blessing in disguise in that although Zimbabweans were yelling that the President has overstayed, some were happy that for that whole week they were able to save on transport and any other expenses incurred whilst at work.”

The week-long stay-away was, however, a total failure in getting the people to march on the streets in protest against the government. Even the United States embassy in Harare described it as a failure and attributed this to lack of a culture of violence in the country.

The embassy said the disappointing turnout for the planned street marches “illustrated definitively that the population was not yet prepared to suddenly undertake high-risk activist behaviour in defiance of the regime”.

Although the Zimbabwean President had five more years in office, this did not stop the embassy from preparing for a post-Mugabe scenario. In a cable released by Wikileaks seven years later, the embassy said while it was uncertain whether President Robert Mugabe would depart in the “next days or months” the embassy felt it prudent to offer policymakers “day after” recommendations.

The embassy said if Mugabe went and was replaced by a reformist government, the United States would have to fund democracy programmes through institutions like The Voice of America which was already broadcasting to Zimbabwe through Studio 7, the State University of New York which was training Zimbabwe’s Members of Parliament, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute which were working with several non-governmental organisations.

The embassy even saw business opportunities for some US companies. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the Export-Import (Exim) Bank could consider loan guarantees for projects that promoted US exports. General Electric could rejuvenate locomotives for the National Railways of Zimbabwe. Caterpillar could provide machines at coal-miner Wankie. Boeing could provide jets to Air Zimbabwe. And Zimbabwe would be admitted to the African Growth and Opportunity Act sessions.

But all this came to nought as Mugabe appointed his personal banker Gideon Gono as central bank governor in December 2003. Gono, a self-made man, had made his name when he took over at the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe, a former subsidiary of the collapsed Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and consolidated it to become the country’s largest bank. He had also bailed out the country from its fuel crisis on a number of occasions.

Gono came at the right time because Mugabe had just lost one of his most trusted lieutenants, Vice-President Simon Muzenda. Though only a carpenter by profession, Muzenda had been the voice of reason in ZANU-PF. While Mugabe was considered to be aloof, Muzenda was a man of the people. He could dance with the ordinary villagers, drink traditional beer with them, but more importantly he kept the vociferous Karanga, especially Eddison Zvobgo in check.

Gono came on with a bang and was bolstered by the free rein that he was given by his principals. The economy which was in shambles in 2003 began to recover in 2004. Inflation dropped from 623 percent to 133 percent. Fuel became readily available. To add further to Mugabe’s relief, squabbles started in the MDC. The party was caught in between whether to participate in the 2005 elections or to boycott them because of the uneven playing field.

Mugabe regained his confidence and announced more than a year in advance that parliamentary elections for 2005 would be held in March. The ZANU-PF congress came but instead of stepping down Mugabe decided to stay-on and insisted that one of the vice-presidents had to be a woman, thus forcing the party to elect Joice Mujuru, wife of the powerful former army commander Solomon Mujuru. A group of disgruntled lieutenants tried to stop the election of Mujuru but Mugabe thwarted it and she prevailed.

Six provincial chairmen were expelled from the party for being party to the foiled mutiny. His propaganda chief, United States educated Jonathan Moyo was expelled from the party when he refused to back down from his Tsholotsho seat after the party decided it was reserved for a woman. This was widely viewed as a way of punishing Moyo because he was reportedly the mastermind behind the foiled internal coup where he was allegedly backing then Speaker of Parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Four months later, ZANU-PF won 78 of the 120 elected seats. The MDC fell from 57 to 41 seats. With the 30 seats the president appointed to make the 150-member house, Mugabe had secured a two-thirds majority that allowed his party to change the constitution without the support of the opposition.

This is the fourth chapter of my kindle book: When religious beliefs clash with journalism principles,which is available only through Amazon. The book is not about the church or about Mugabe but about my experiences in the Zion Christian Church. If,  in the process, this helps to spread the word about the ZCC then I would have done my part because the church and its leader Bishop Mutendi are not only preaching the Word of God in Zimbabwe and across the World but they are also promoting the development of Zimbabwe, which former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere said was the Jewel of Africa. As it is said in Isaiah 2 vs 2 "that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it" so will the ZCC and Zimbabwe. For my fellow Zimbabweans who have no means of buying this book online, I will be serialising it on this blog, bit by bit. So follow this blog.