Bulletin N°80 - Winter 2008 Special Issue on Zimbabwe (II) Edited By Timothy Scarnecchia and Wendy Urban-Mead Table of Contents 1 - 4 Introduction Timothy Scarnecchia and Wendy Urban-Mead 5 - 17 A Tale of Two Elections: Zimbabwe at the Polls in 2008 Jocelyn Alexander and Blessing-Miles Tendi 18 - 20 Waiting for Power-sharing: A False Promise? Norma Kriger 21 - 27 The Glass Fortress: Zimbabwe’s Cyber-Guerrilla Warfare Clapperton Mavhunga 28 -35 Reflections on Displacement in Zimbabwe Amanda Hammar 36 - 42 Zimbabweans Living in the South African Border-Zone: Negotiating, Suffering, and Surviving Blair Rutherford 43 - 46 Anti-Imperialism and Schizophrenic revolutionaries in Zimbabwe Tamuka Chirimambowa 47 - 58 The Zimbabwean Working Peoples: Between a Political Rock and an Economic Hard Place Horace Campbell 59 - 64 Zimbabwe: Failing Better? David Moore 65 - 68 Review: Heidi Holland’s Dinner with Mugabe Sean Jacobs 69 - 75 Editorial: In the Shadow of Gukurahundi Timothy Scarnecchia TIMOTHY SCARNECCHIA ‘EDITORIAL : IN THE SHADOW OF GUKURAHUNDI’ Introduction: analysis of what the Memorandum of Understanding represents. As her informed analysis Special Issue on Zimbabwe 2 of the limits of electoral politics showed last time, her understanding of power politics in Zimbabwe Tim Scarnecchia (Kent State University) once again raises doubts about whether “power Wendy Urban-Mead (Bard College) sharing” can achieve anything close to what some claim possible. Our last Special Issue on the Zimbabwe Elections th Our last issue was full of the immediacy of asking came out two weeks before the June 27 run-off for intervention of some sort to stop the violence presidential election. This was before opposition against the MDC and its supporters. The level of leader Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC announced that violence is still being documented, and the his decision not to contest the run-off election excellent collection of reports on the Sokwanele- because of the extreme violence used against the Zvakwana (“Enough is Enough”) website suggests MDC candidates, supporters, and alleged over 2,000 separate incidents of violence during the supporters. This issue of the ACAS bulletin is election, and these have not completely stopped. concerned with the aftermath of the elections of Our sharpest criticisms in the last issue were for the 2008, offering analysis of the outcome of the South African government of Thabo Mbeki. We parliamentary election results of the March asked for South Africa to take a more direct elections, the ways in which the political violence approach, as it is the only regional power with a during May and June have fundamentally altered direct influence over Mugabe. Once Mugabe made the possibility of a non-violent political himself president after the flawed June elections dispensation in Zimbabwe, and, perhaps of most and headed off for the African Union meeting in current interest for readers, the unfolding of “power Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, it was clear he expected it sharing” negotiations that began with the September to be “business as usual” assuming that regional and 11, 2008 signing of a Memorandum of AU leaders welcomed him back into the “club of Understanding between Mugabe’s ZANU(PF), dictators”. The meeting did not turn out the way Tsvangirai’s MDC-T, and a smaller splinter group Mugabe expected: in fact, there were outspoken led by Arthur Mutambara, (the MDC-M). criticisms from some African leaders, notably from Liberia, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, Botswana, and Our first article, written by Oxford University Zambia. Many other leaders remained quiet. In the scholars Jocelyn Alexander and Blessing-Miles weeks that followed, Mbeki did manage to push the Tendi offers a very insightful narrative of the negotiations toward a “power sharing” solution to events surrounding this year’s elections and the the impasse. It would appear Mbeki hoped Mugabe ways political alliances and interests began to would accept negotiations toward power sharing as unravel as the ZANU(PF) insiders came to grips the best way to “normalize” the situation and allow with the reality that they had suffered a stunning Mugabe and his associates to continue in power as electoral defeat in March. Alexander and Tendi before. On the MDC’s side, Tsvangirai had to provide the specific details so often lacking in the convince his supporters that power sharing would polemical characterization of the events of the be transitional, leading to fresh elections in no less summer in the mainstream media. than two years. Once again, Mugabe let Mbeki down by at first ignoring Tsvangirai and naming his Norma Kriger, one of the foremost analysts of own government. After all Mbeki, as the leader of Zimbabwean political violence, militarism, and the the SADC negotiating team on Zimbabwe for the state, who also wrote a detailed summary of the past six years, has consistently claimed to have had March elections in our last Special Issue (ACAS the situation under control. But every time he left Bulletin 79), follows up in this issue with a brief CONCERNED AFRICA SCHOLARS BULLETIN N°80 - WINTER 2008 1 TIMOTHY SCARNECCHIA ‘EDITORIAL : IN THE SHADOW OF GUKURAHUNDI’ Harare with “Mugabe’s word”, Mugabe would do Professor Clapperton Mavhunga of the as he pleased. It was no wonder that Tsvangirai Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston grew tired of Mbeki as mediator, and that Mbeki addresses to a key issue in Zimbabwe--press and himself seemed hesitant to return to Harare once he Internet censorship. As ZANU(PF) has tried to keep had been stripped of the presidency of the ANC and a tight control on the press, ever since passage of South Africa at the end of September. the media laws banning most foreign press and closing media critical of ZANU(PF), the All of these diplomatic efforts, while better than proliferation of high quality Internet news sources accepting Mugabe’s war against his own people as have flourished. Much like the battle over the radio legitimate, has done nothing to bring the economic, waves in the Rhodesian days, new technologies health, and social crises in Zimbabwe under control allow for new ways to get information in and out of and the most telling evidence of this has been the the country. The Zimbabwean government, displacement of Zimbabweans into the greater however, has also turned to new technologies of southern African region. As each day passes and the Internet censorship and spying, and, as Mavhunga economic and political situation inside Zimbabwe argues, opponents of the Mugabe regime have continue to worsen, these migrations have become retaliated with their own cyber-guerilla tactics. an act of survival. The next three articles in this issue reflect in their Amanda Hammar, program coordinator at the own way the great frustration among activists and Nordic Africa Institut in Uppsala, Sweden, provides scholars over the contradictory messages and an important overview of these displacements political categories these “power sharing” talks have beginning with the farm invasions and evictions in brought to the fore. A common theme among all 2000, the urban removals under Operation three is the way rhetoric and action have reached Murambatsvina in 2005-6, and electoral ‘cleansing’ new heights of hypocrisy in Southern African and punishment in 2008. Hammar’s article politics, and the need for scholars to understand and provides a way for scholars and students to gain respect the history of progressive movements in the access to the important research currently underway region. Such progressive traditions need to be by international scholars on the impact of these reaffirmed and reconstituted in order to support displacements for Zimbabweans and for the region. those on the front lines in such difficult times. Blair Rutherford, a professor of anthropology at The first, by Tamuka Chirimambowa, is a Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, provides a denunciation of the ZANU (PF) regime under look into his ongoing research project in the Robert Mugabe, exposing the disjuncture between Limpopo Province of South Africa, a province the ruling party’s anti-western, anti-imperial bordering Zimbabwe where many migrant workers rhetoric and two factors which undermine the have come over the past 8 years, and in increasing legitimacy of this rhetorical strategy. First, numbers over the past 3 years. The status of historically, Chirimambowa itemizes a variety of Zimbabweans in Limpopo province, their instances over the past 20-odd years when Mugabe precarious position as illegal farm workers, and or the ruling party were in fact eager seekers of the their vulnerability to criminals and the state, gives funding and markers of respectability offered by an insight into the difficulties Zimbabweans western institutions, from the World Bank to confront in South Africa, even those who were not universities granting honorary degrees. Second, victims of last summer’s violent attacks in South with an eye to the present, Chirimambowa Africa. foregrounds the crushing poverty of the majority of Zimbabweans and the desperate out-migration of millions of Zimbabweans, leading him bitterly to CONCERNED AFRICA SCHOLARS BULLETIN N°80 - WINTER 2008 2 TIMOTHY SCARNECCHIA ‘EDITORIAL : IN THE SHADOW OF GUKURAHUNDI’ note that no food is left for people to serve their Jacobs, a professor of communications at the hungry families for dinner. All that remains to put University of Michigan and Co-Chair of the on the average Zimbabwean’s dinner plate is the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars. Jacobs cold comfort of the regime’s anti-imperialist reviews Heidi Holland’s Dinner with Mugabe, a rhetoric, which originally had borne so much best-selling book that has received a lot of attention promise for better days ahead for the black majority for her portrayal of Mugabe. Jacobs’ review offers at the dawn of Zimbabwe’s independence. insights into Mugabe’s personality, while also Chirimambowa, who is currently a graduate student arguing that there is more to the Zimbabwean crisis in South Africa, and who was a former student beyond what is often attributed to one man’s leader at the University of Zimbabwe, has lived psychosis.