In a country where three-quarters of the population are dependent on foreign food aid, a Mercedes is a luxury of almost unimaginable proportions. But the fleet of expensive sedans was quickly accepted by opposition activists such as Nelson Chamisa who were elevated into Zimbabwe’s new unity cabinet last month.
Mr. Chamisa, 31, says he is cheered and celebrated by ordinary people who see him in his luxury car. "It’s a symbol of authority and power," he says. "If you don’t have it, people will think you don’t have power. They feel good when they see one of their own in power."
In truth, many Zimbabweans have questioned the costly limousines that were adopted by their new cabinet ministers. But it’s also true that the new government has given a sense of hope and optimism to the vast majority of Zimbabweans for the first time in years.
While the autocratic Robert Mugabe remains President, long-time opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has become Prime Minister and fully half the ministers in the new cabinet belong to his Movement for Democratic Change.
The new "inclusive government," as it is known, has racked up some impressive achievements already. It has given wages to teachers and soldiers, halted the world’s worst inflation rate, dumped the worthless Zimbabwe dollar and replaced it with foreign currency, cut the cost of food by issuing new retail licences and boosting competition among grocery stores, reopened schools and hospitals that had been closed for months and freed many of the activists who had been imprisoned by the old regime.
Yet the ZANU(PF) party of Mr. Mugabe has kept a tight grip on key institutions such as the military, the judiciary, the central bank and the state media. It continues to imprison many opposition activists, violating the unity agreement. Not a single person has been prosecuted for the estimated 200 deaths inflicted in a wave of brutal attacks on the opposition last year.
Suspicion and paranoia are still rife. When a car crash injured Mr. Tsvangirai and killed his wife Susan this month, many Zimbabweans assumed it was a plot by the state security agents who are supposed to be guarding the Prime Minister, despite Mr. Tsvangirai’s statement that it was an accident.
Even after entering cabinet, Mr. Chamisa was unwilling to be seen talking to a foreign journalist, with state spies watching everywhere, so he drove his Mercedes to a private home for his interview with The Globe and Mail.
Mr. Mugabe himself has boasted that he is "still in control" of the new government. The MDC says it is waging a tough battle inside the government to weaken the grip of the President’s loyalists. Reforms have been further delayed by the death of Mr. Tsvangirai’s wife, a major blow to the MDC leader.
"This is going to be a very slow and painful process," says Alec Muchadehama, a prominent human-rights lawyer who defended many of the opposition members in court after they were imprisoned last year.
Only about half of the 40 activists who were abducted and imprisoned last fall have been released so far, he noted. "ZANU(PF) will continue to do what it wants, as if nothing has happened, to show that they’re still in control," he says.
"They did not willingly enter the inclusive government. They had no choice, because things had gotten so bad. There were no salaries, no water, no electricity, and soldiers were looting. There would have been chaos very soon. They desperately wanted the MDC to fix it by getting international money. Mugabe is the biggest beneficiary."
Foreign donors are sympathetic to the new government, but they are hesitating to give anything more than humanitarian aid until they are convinced that it has broken free from the old regime. "Some of us – most – are very skeptical," says a well-placed Western source in Harare. "It’s a conundrum for us."
The international donors, who are meeting in Washington this week to discuss a strategy to help Zimbabwe, are considering a compromise aid package that would provide wage subsidies to "top up" the salaries of Zimbabwe’s nurses and teachers for the next four to six months.
"This government is Zimbabwe’s best chance in 20 years," the Western source said. "If we don’t help them, the government will fail. That’s what we believe. The risk is enormous. The cupboard is bare – there is nothing."
In fact, MDC insiders confirm that the financial crisis is mounting. The new government is receiving only $10-million a month in tax revenue, while its payroll costs and other expenses amount to $100-million a month.
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have sent a mission to Zimbabwe for the first time since 2006 to see whether conditions are right for major loans to the new government. Analysts expect that it will signal a willingness to help.
The Canadian government, for its part, is reluctant to send financial aid to Zimbabwe because it is not a "country of focus" under a new federal policy that gives preference to 20 developing countries around the world. But Canada instead could send consultants or advisers to strengthen the new government, which is so impoverished that it doesn’t even have Internet access in its ministries.
Before Western donors agree to help the new government, they want assurances that it will respect human rights and get rid of old Mugabe cronies such as central bank governor Gideon Gono, the man who fuelled the world’s highest inflation rate by printing huge amounts of banknotes in denominations of up to 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars.
Mr. Gono remains defiant, still entrenched in his central bank stronghold and showing no sign of leaving. But the MDC has slashed his control of state revenue, halting his gold sales and abolishing the retail licence fees that previously went to the central bank. "We’ve cut Gono’s legs off," a senior MDC official says. "We’ll get his scalp. There’s no doubt."
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says the ZANU-PF loyalists are trying hard to sabotage the unity government. "But we are not going to withdraw from the deal, no matter what happens," he says.
"The Prime Minister’s office is increasingly in charge. It’s like the beaches of Normandy – we’re occupying a beachhead, and now we’re fighting our way inland. It’s like hand-to-hand combat."
TALK AT THE BAR HARARE
The debate over the fate of Zimbabwe’s new government rages nightly at the Quill Club, a dingy drinking establishment in downtown Harare where local journalists hang out.
The giant head of an African buffalo is mounted on the wall above a pool table and a bar where Amos the bartender pours frothy mugs of Lion beer. As the night wears on, the Zimbabwean journalists argue heatedly with a former colleague who is now a top official of the Movement for Democratic Change.
Jameson Timba, an ex-journalist who has become the MDC deputy minister of media and information, sits at a table with a beer in front of him, listening to his journalist friends accusing the new government of not doing enough for press freedom.
Mr. Timba vows that the new government will take steps to free the tightly controlled state media. Within 100 days of its inauguration last month, all banned newspapers will reopen, and the government will call for licence applications for independent radio and television stations, he says.
He admits it’s an uphill struggle. Zimbabwe today has only one daily newspaper and one television network, and both are propaganda organs for the ZANU(PF) party of President Robert Mugabe.
The daily newspaper, The Herald, is slightly less biased than before – it actually gives some coverage to MDC cabinet ministers these days – but a report last week by an independent media-monitoring agency concluded that Mr. Mugabe’s party still has a "stranglehold" on the state media.
Mr. Timba says he is convinced that the new government will succeed in liberalizing the state media. And if there is resistance from the bosses of the state media? "They will be fired," he says.
So far, however, the new government has been reluctant to fire anyone. There has to be a "soft landing" for the leaders of the old regime to avoid the bloodbath of civil war, Mr. Timba says.
Veteran journalists here are not persuaded by Mr. Timba’s claim that the state media are becoming more balanced. "It’s a small shift, and very begrudging," says Bornwell Chakaodze, a former editor of The Herald who is now a columnist at an independent weekly.
"By and large they are still ZANU(PF) mouthpieces," he says. "There’s a little opening up, but no change in mindset. The MDC ministers are covered in The Herald when they reinforce ZANU(PF) policies. When they criticize those policies, they are completely ignored or relegated to the inside pages. The change doesn’t seem to be happening as fast as it should."
A nation in ruins
Zimbabwe’s new ‘inclusive government’ faces a massive task as it sets out to rebuild the country after decades of misrule.
Energy
Four power stations operating at below 50 per cent capacity
Dams
280 large dams neglected for past eight years
Railways
3,000-kilometre rail network runs fewer than 10 trains a day
Health
City streets polluted with sewage. No functioning public hospitals. Life expectancy has fallen to world’s lowest – 34 years for men, 37 for women.
Globe and Mail
Post published in: News