The last few years have witnessed the ‘Zanufication’ of the public service, traditional leadership structures, youth training centres and the militarisation of public institutions. Serving and retired military, police and intelligence officials have been deployed to key public service positions.
These include the electoral commission, strategic grain reserve, the judiciary, prison services, permanent secretary positions in government ministries and heads of state enterprises. Some have also joined politics and now serve as members of parliament, ministers and provincial governors.
The militarisation of public institutions confirms Zanu (PF)’s increasing lack of trust in professional public servants to guarantee the entrenchment project. An example of this was the accusation that public servants, who were seconded to the electoral commission during the 2008 elections, rigged the elections in favour of the MDC.
This was the first time in the history of Zimbabwe that such accusations had been made by a governing party, which controls all facets of the electoral process.
Indoctrinated
National youth service training centres have also been converted into places where young people are indoctrinated with anti-MDC and pro-Zanu (PF) rhetoric. In 2008 in particular, some of the national youth training centres were converted into torture camps, where opposition supporters were raped and beaten.
Together with indoctrinated youths, groups of veterans of Zimbabwe’s war of liberation – including some who were far too young to be called veterans of anything – had earlier been at the forefront of the violent land dispossession campaign, with the support of the state security sector. The youth militia-state security alliance was confirmed by interviews conducted in August 2003 with former militia members, who declared that, “we are Zanu (PF)’s ‘B’ team. The army is the ‘A’ team and we do the things the government does not want the ‘A’ team to do”.
Diamond Economy
The discovery of diamonds in the eastern parts of the country has proved to be both a blessing and a curse for Zimbabwe. It was a blessing because it came at a time when the country was on its knees and desperately needed a massive capital injection to breathe life into its crumbling economy. The discovery happened in a season of ultra-high inflation, a worthless currency, violence and forced removals in towns and on commercial farms, hungry women fleeing to neighbouring countries with babies on their backs, and prisoners dying of disease and starvation.
Much was expected from this natural resource. But the discovery became a curse when the state security sector, the military and police in particular, turned the diamond areas into torture and killing fields, where local villagers were subjected to child labour, forced labour and wanton violence (Katsaura, 2010).
Launching a seminal 62-page report entitled, Diamonds in the Rough: Human Rights Abuses in the Marange Diamond Fields of Zimbabwe, Human Rights Watch noted: “The police and army have turned this peaceful area into a nightmare of lawlessness and horrific violence. Zimbabwe's new government should get the army out of the fields, put a stop to the abuse, and prosecute those responsible.” Predictably, like all matters involving securocrats and human rights in Zimbabwe, no prosecutions followed.
Although the military has officially withdrawn from the diamond fields, and the Kimberley Process has approved the sale of some of Zimbabwe’s diamonds, resulting in a motley collection of private companies involving themselves in the business, transparency and accountability are concepts altogether alien to the diamond trade in Zimbabwe.
Allegations of the military’s involvement in the illicit extraction and trafficking of diamonds through Mozambique, among other avenues, are still rife. To demonstrate the blatant lack of transparency in the trade, on 30 March 2010, a 13-member parliamentary portfolio committee on Mines and Energy was denied access to the Chiadzwa diamond fields. This begs the question: if elected representatives constitutionally vested with the legislative authority of the country are not allowed to assure themselves and the nation that the country’s precious resources are in good hands, who retains that mandate and by what authority?
Bizarre dispute
Recently, a bizarre dispute erupted between the Ministers of Finance and Mines, with the latter stating that $174 million worth of diamond auction proceeds had been deposited with the Treasury, while the former argued that only $62 million had been received. Apparently, even the president could not make sense of what had happened.
Just how $112 million could disappear between these two ministries and how the discrepancy could not be sorted out by two colleagues who sit together at cabinet meetings every Tuesday boggles the mind, and raises the question: who, if not the fiscus, is benefitting from the diamond economy? Could it be that the diamond economy has become a new vehicle for subverting the Treasury and funding extra-legal operations?
Speculation is rife that the lack of transparency in diamond trading and the secrecy associated with the auctioning of precious stones and ongoing illicit exportation may in fact be feeding into Zanu (PF)’s war chest in preparation for the next elections. It has been argued in some quarters that apart from the president’s failing health and related succession battles in Zanu (PF), and the quest to rid the government of the MDCs, one of the key factors motivating Zanu (PF)’s desire for elections is the freedom from bankruptcy occasioned by the opaque diamond trade.
Indeed, the diamond proceeds have been an unprecedented political aphrodisiac for Zanu (PF). The recent upsurge of violence especially in rural areas aided and abetted by war veterans and ‘boys on leave’ – who are in fact military personnel executing an intimidation-filled pre-election campaign – falls within the JOC’s grand plan of retaining Zanu (PF) at the ballot box and with it, preservation of the new-found wealth of the elite. – www.osisa.org
Takawira Musavengana is the Human Rights and Democracy Building Manager at the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa in South Africa. His forthcoming publication is entitled: The Case for a SADC Parliament: Old Wine in New Bottles or an Ideal Whose Time Has Come?
Post published in: News