Fearful generals holding Mugabe “at gunpoint” – Chenjerai Hove

Hove, now a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University in the United States, spoke to AllAfrica’s Charles Cobb Jr. These are edited excerpts from the interview.

Cobb: Mugabe was speaking of reconciliation in those first (post-independence) days?

Hove: He spoke of reconciliation at gunpoint… [and that is] what is happening now … The same Joint Operations Command, which Mugabe did not dismantle, is now saying to him, “You cannot go because we ourselves will be vulnerable if you go.”

Cobb: For war crimes, I guess?

Hove: For war crimes – some of them were in charge of the operations in Matabeleland [in the early 1980s]. They are known and the cases are there, and witnesses. Human rights organisations have compiled this information …  I suspect that [after the March 29 elections] he must have negotiated his own exit package, then the army discovered it and said, “… How about us?” …  So he is a hostage really.

Cobb: Are we looking at the beginning of real civil war?

Hove: Now, some army and police officers just go to a region and declare a state of emergency in the district. And then they torture people and nobody arrests the torturers. The sad thing is that the opposition is saying, “No, we cannot have this anymore,” because they have their own youth as well who fight back. So we’re almost on the verge of a civil war … the next few weeks are very dangerous for the country.

Cobb: Do you have any expectation or hope that African nations – particularly those in the region that would have a direct interest in stability in Zimbabwe – will act in any way to ameliorate this conflict or to assure fairness?

Hove: No, in fact I met the former President of Botswana. Festus Mogae, and he said to me in a joking manner, “… You go there thinking that you are going to challenge him and then when you get there you get so weak.” … The same thing with [Thabo] Mbeki …when he goes there, he’s mediating. He’s seen walking around hand-in-hand with Mugabe and smiling broadly. No negotiator does things like that.

Cobb: You said Mugabe was held hostage by his own military people … Does that mean Mugabe actually wants to leave office and cannot?

Hove: Mugabe wants to leave I think. Because I have been told he has been under immense pressure from his wife, who, I’m told, has already taken the children to Malaysia because they  … were taunting them (at school).

So I think he has made enough money … he wants to leave and enjoy his last days, spending money on holidays and all that …  The army generals don’t trust that [anyone] can guarantee their safety …

Cobb: What do you see in the immediate future?

Hove: In the next year or two I think we going to go through a period of real chaos -  political, economical, social disintegration – before we start rebuilding.b In every institution … including the national parks, national railways, the oil companies, there are brigadiers, colonels, lieutenants, military guys. He has militarised all the institutions – prison services, secret police.

These guys are not going to allow themselves to be pushed out easily. They’re going to fight … Even if they don’t get removed they will try to make sure that the new government doesn’t function.

The central bank is now a personal bank. Mugabe just withdraws money whenever he wishes … So to clean all that up and renovate the whole system and make sure the state institutions are once more state institutions, not personal institutions, will take us quite some time.