<nettime> Wilf Mbanga: Even if Mugabe has gone, Zimbabweans won’t be dancing in the streets (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

Original to: 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/15/mugabe-gone-zimbabweans-decide-future-mnangagwa

Even if Mugabe has gone, Zimbabweans won’t be dancing in the streets
By Wilf Mbanga, The Guardian, November 15, 2017

What we want is to decide our own future, and who will lead us. But 
Emmerson Mnangagwa is every bit as iron-fisted as the man he’d like to 
replace


Should Zimbabweans be rejoicing today? Robert Mugabe, 93, has ruled them 
with an iron fist since 1980. He is the only president an entire 
generation aged under 40 have ever known. Admittedly, the fist was not 
so iron in the early years – but to millions of Zimbabweans it has 
become increasingly oppressive since the mid-1990s.

Thousands of people from the Ndebele ethnic group were slaughtered in 
the Gukurahundi purge of the early 1980s, and in the intervening decades 
many thousands more have paid with their lives. Women and children dying 
in childbirth at a faster rate than anywhere else in Africa; opposition 
activists beaten and tortured to death; journalists kidnapped and never 
seen again: it is a long and bloody list.

So surely Zimbabweans should be rejoicing at the news that Mugabe is now 
under house arrest, reported to have done a deal with the military in 
which he will resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country for 
himself, his wife, Grace, and his family.

But there is no dancing in the streets. The millions of Zimbabweans in 
self-imposed exile (estimated at 25% of the population) are glued to 
their screens, swinging between hope and despair at every tweet, every 
morsel of news, every rumour. Those back home, who have borne the brunt 
of Mugabe’s jackboot for the past decades, are huddled in their houses, 
hoping their phone batteries won’t die before the erratic power supply 
is restored. A desperate few ventured out to stand yet again in the 
endless bank queues, to draw their daily allowance, worth under 20 US 
dollars.

So why no dancing? The man believed to be their next president – the 
former vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa – is every bit as iron-fisted 
as the man he is replacing. He has been Mugabe’s right-hand man since 
the beginning. He was minister in charge of the intelligence services at 
the time of the Gukurahundi massacres. He honed Zimbabwe’s ever-watchful 
Central Intelligence Organisation into an elite dirty tricks team feared 
throughout the land. Over the years, like his master Mugabe, he has been 
accused of masterminding election violence, kidnappings, extortion, 
plundering national resources, and other crimes.

He has never enjoyed popular support. He lost his seat twice in general 
elections before finally being elected only when he changed his 
constituency to his home area. Even then, there were many accusations of 
violence and intimidation. For 10 years he sat in parliament as a Mugabe 
appointee – not by popular choice. And if he does indeed take over as 
president now, it will be as an appointee of the military.

What Zimbabweans want, what would really make us dance in the streets as 
we did in 1980, is the chance to decide our own future – and who will 
lead us into that future.

We want to be able to cast our ballots without fear of retribution. 
Mugabe’s 37 years in office has seen the rigging and stealing of 
elections, the murder and torture of his opponents, the seizure of 
productive farm land, the worst hyperinflation in history, and the 
unbridled looting and plundering of the nation’s resources by his 
supporters. And the man taking over from him was his chief election 
agent through it all.

Zimbabweans have endured a kakistocracy (run by the worst, least 
qualified or most unscrupulous citizens) for three decades. And with the 
army and Mnangagwa in the driving seat, there is little hope that this 
will change any time soon.

However, there is still a chance that we can salvage a dance from all 
this. If Mnangagwa would heed the many voices in and outside Zimbabwe 
calling for a national transitional government – involving all parties, 
and all good men and women across the political, economic, racial and 
other spectrums – that would give hope for the future. A future beyond 
the confines of Zanu-PF and its violence – of which Mugabe often 
boasted, and Mnangagwa was the executioner.

• Wilf Mbanga is editor of the Zimbabwean  
(http://www.thezimbabwean.co/)

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