Bernie Stephens, Harare
The finding by UN Special Envoy Anna Tibaijuka that Operation Murambatsvina (drive out rubbish) — the bulldozing of informal settlements — has left up to 3.3 million Zimbabweans "deeper in poverty, deprivation and destitution" has thrown President Robert Mugabe's government into a state of near panic.
The Zimbabwean government seemed to think that it could fool Tibaijuka about the so-called "clean-up", directed against urban dwellers and small traders, by dressing it up as slum clearance.
The government's response to the UN report has been contradictory. Despite announcing that the operation was over, farm workers in a traditional opposition stronghold, Chipinge, had their houses destroyed in late July.
Operation Murambatsvina coincided with a further deepening of Zimbabwe's economic crisis. The triple-digit inflation is rising and there are crippling shortages of food, essential medicines and fuel.
Despite the chronic shortage of foreign currency, Zimbabwe has increased its repayments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from US$1.5 million to $9 million per quarter.
To pay its debts and overcome the shortages, the government is trying to negotiate a relief package from South Africa and China. While Beijing's support is unclear, South Africa's offer of a $1 billion support package is conditional on the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) holding talks with the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Mugabe balks at this condition. The faction-ridden MDC is hardly in a position of overpowering strength and has not been able to take advantage of the crisis. In a July interview with the Financial Gazette, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced that "stayaways or mass actions are an exhausted strategy", without offering any alternative.
ZANU-PF is split over Operation Murambatsvina. This perhaps explains why some government ministries, and even departments within ministries, have ignored the vice-president's public announcement that the operation is over. At least one ZANU-PF party leader has resigned, while others have reportedly been kept in line by Mugabe's Central Intelligence Organisation.
Even before the March elections there was speculation of a "third force" arising as a result of widespread dissatisfaction with ZANU-PF and the MDC.
The natural leaders of such a third force could be the more radical social leaders like the National Constitutional Assembly's Lovemore Madhuku. However, ZANU-PF renegade and articulate propagandist Jonathon Moyo has become a loud voice of opposition.
A political chameleon, Moyo transformed himself from a Mugabe critic to a Mugabe sycophant. After joining the ZANU-PF government in 2000, he became the president's information minister and de facto prime minister. His anti-democratic media laws and Mugabe image makeover helped ensure that ZANU-PF beat off the MDC challenge.
After Moyo's left-talking nationalist faction lost out in a fight against Mugabe's old guard, he left ZANU-PF to successfully run as an independent candidate in the March elections.
Moyo is now demanding that Mugabe resign and is calling on "individuals, families, businesses, churches, NGOs and communities to go for the common good beyond tribal corners and party boundaries" and become a third force. He is in effect articulating the government of national unity that Mugabe was expected to form after the March elections. This was supposed to bring about a re-engagement with the IMF and imperialism.
While not yet on the ropes, Mugabe's regime is in dire straits. ZANU-PF is in crisis and Mugabe's left-wing base, particularly the radical war veterans, has been demobilised and some of them even evicted from their homes. The economy is in a mess and Operation Murambatsvina has created what the UN describes as a "humanitarian crisis of immense proportions". Mugabe's supporters are becoming fewer and his reliance on the security forces greater. His days are numbered.
From Green Left Weekly, August 10, 2005.
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