It's all coming back to me now (Part 2)

Memories of days gone by kept coming back to me on that day when I was in a rare state of mind. I was thinking deeply about the pathetic economic and political situation that Zimbabwe is in at present. In the sheer frustration caused by the situation in this country, recollections of the politics in this nation over the years which I thought had been blotted out of memory started to come back to me bit by bit.

I remembered how for a whole week in January 1998 riots broke out in the early morning hours in the high density suburbs of Harare. Human chains formed as early as 8:45am across streets south of the city centre, marching towards the central business district (CBD). Rioters, who were mostly women and unemployed youths, threw up barricades on all major roads leading into the city centre. Zimbabweans were demonstrating against the 30% food price hikes that had been implemented the previous week. The riots started in Mabvuku and Tafara townships, where people gathered early in the morning at the main shopping centre in the Mabvuku/Tafara area. A small group of women, around 6 am, began demonstrating against the recent price hikes by turning away a bread truck. First it was all peaceful then for some reason things suddenly got out of hand and tensions rose. The demonstration turned violent and looting began. People went into supermarkets, pharmacies, and butcheries taking things from the shelves and refrigerators. At least one doctor’s surgery was broken into and cleaned out of everything. Steel window and door screens and burglar bars were wrenched out of the walls. One bakery was broken into and glass display cases and refrigerators were destroyed. One man was seen with a whole hind quarter of a cow. A Coca-Cola truck driver escaped before the angry residents stoned his truck before looting the soft drinks he was carrying. At Tsokachena, the biggest shopping centre in the area, residents stoned shops and looted mostly essential goods such as mealie-meal, sugar, and cooking oil. They also broke into shops such as Bata Shoe Company, Power Sales and Marowa bottle store. The looters were youths and women, some with babies strapped to their backs. Bread was strewn all over the place as demonstrators chanted anti-Government slogans. In Chitungwiza a different crowd of demonstrators rioted in the same manner the next day as if on cue. Residents of the area converged at Makoni Shopping Centre early in the morning and turned away delivery trucks of bread, mealie-meal and other commodities. The crowds turned rowdy and overturned a bread delivery truck belonging to Aroma Bakeries and threw away all the bread. A marketing car and a Lobels truck were also attacked. All of the shops in Makoni and Chikwanha were destroyed as were the shops at the Town Centre, a large shopping complex owned by Old Mutual Pension Fund. People looted groceries, furniture, food, and small electrical goods. Surgeries were also broken into and cleaned out of drugs and equipment. The rioters sang revolutionary songs and chanted slogans against the recent price increases. The very same rioting was happenning in Mufakose, Glen View, Kuwadzana, Highfields and Mbare. Police in riot gear were dispatched to contain the situation and they fired teargas into the crowd. A police truck was destroyed when it was turned on its side and set on fire at the Tafara Post Office. In Chitungwiza the police couldn’t hold off the rioters and were forced to leave the area. In Glen View, an Air Force of Zimbabwe helicopter was summoned to spray teargas as looters invaded the area’s shopping centre, Tichagarika, clearing out a dry cleaning shop and breaking into a Spar retail outlet. Residents said that the helicopter hovered in the air for more than three hours and teargas filtered into their homes, causing untold pain for their children who did not understand what was going on. Police put up roadblocks around the city centre and barred commuter omnibuses entry into town. Workers either walked or caught lifts with passing cars. This only worked in the morning however, because by the afternoon rioters were forcing people out of their cars. Motorists were stoned and their cars burnt, while other vehicles were overturned if they failed to heed calls to turn back. Thousands of workers were stranded as they failed to get transport back home. They could be seen walking home on foot by the early evening hours on roads leading to Highfield, Mufakose, Chitungwiza, and Mabvuku. Most commuter omnibuses were stranded in town, and only a few were still running their routes by night time. Many feared facing the rioters.
This happened when Morgan Tsvangirai was the leader of the ZCTU.(Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions) Can you believe that it is Zimbabweans I am talking about here and not South Africans. Zimbabweans who are now being trampled on, being treated like door mats by their leaders, amid a record high hyper-inflation and not doing anything about it. Are you not wondering like I am doing, what caused their complete turnaround from being a no nonsense people in 1998 to being so passive, docile and cowardish. I will tell you what my memory remembers as the events that killed that Zimbabwean courageous spirit. A week after these riots, troops of soldiers were dispatched into all the high density surburbs where there had been rioting and they moved from house to house searching for what had been looted from the shops and beating all residents of the different surburbs irrespective of whether they had found any loot or not. Men, women, boys, girls, children and the aged where all brutally beaten up the same, no one was spared. That was how Zimbabweans were cowered into submission and turned into a passive and docile people. This is the reason why when soldiers started rioting in Harare in early December last year civilians didn't join them. They couldn't understand how soldiers who had beaten them up so brutally back then in 1998 for rioting could be genuine in their rioting, they suspected it was a ploy of some sort to trick them into joining in and then turn against them later on. If in the future there is going to be any effective rioting in Zimbabwe it has to be very well-organised with a lot of mobilisation were civil society leaders actually move around garnering support and making Zimbabweans believe in the cause and its capabilities to provide a solution to the extend that people get so dedicated to the cause that they are willing to do the rioting inspite of memories of the beatings they got from soldiers in 1998 after rioting. The solution in this country probably lies in the Zimbabwean civil society reclaiming their right of freedom of expression and raising their voices through actions meant to chase away leaders who have practically killed their nation. Could we please be locusts called Zimbabweans and advance in ranks towards determining our own destiny.

Rewinding my memory to another year in the history of Zimbabwe, I remember in 2002, when there was going to be a Presidential election contest between Mugabe and Tsvangirai who led the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions from 1988-2000. As usual Zanu PF militia was going around perpetrating violence on MDC supporters and intimidating villagers to vote for Mugabe and threatening that if they don't there would be a guerilla war again in the villages. Tsvangirai reported the matter to SADC and a SADC summit was scheduled to take place in Malawi to discuss the issue. The Southern African Development Community's summit in Malawi failed to generate sufficient pro-democracy rhetoric and Tsvangirai angrily told the BBC that he expected far more support from SA. To quote his exact words this is what he said, "The threat to undermine the elections by the military, by President Mugabe himself, should actually send shock waves to South Africa and say, under those circumstances, we are going to cut fuel, we are going to cut transport links. Those kind of measures, even if they are implemented at a low level, send the right signals." South African deputy foreign affairs minister Aziz Pahad quickly dismissed the request to turn his government's failing `quietly-quietly' strategy into more concrete solidarity and responded by saying, "We've been working at this for a long time, trying to convince (people), that what is called (for is) quiet diplomacy. Calls for sanctions are misplaced. Effectively sanctions have been applied in Zimbabwe. All foreign aid has been terminated. There is effectively no new development aid. Investment has been frozen and exports from Zimbabwe have been stopped. Sanctions are not the way to go." SA had not applied any sanctions to Zimbabwe so Pahad was talking about sanctions that he knew the West was implememting on Zimbabwe after being asked to do so by Tsvangirai.
Apparently Pahad was a vociferous proponent of anti-apartheid sanctions. The ANC began its sanctions-campaigning during the 1960s, and Pahad and his comrades always argued that even if black South Africans were hurt in the process, the short-term pain was justified by the long-term gain which was removing the illegitimate regime. Was Pahad now merely being self-interestedly hypocritical, or could he have undergone a radical change of mindset, or probably for SADC diplomatic reasons he didn't want to come out in the open about the sanctions SA was imposing on Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai in calling for sanctions against Zimbabwe failed to predict that, firstly, Mugabe would use tightened sanctions as a whitewash excuse for his own economic mismanagement; and secondly that while Zanu can retain power especially through its monopoly of military might, sanctions will mainly disrupt the white-owned business sector, which supports the MDC financially, and employs most of its core working-class loyalists. Was the decision by Tsvangirai to call for sanctions arrived at through as much reflection and consensus as is probably required?
This is the truth about what happened concerning the sanctions issue in Zimbabwe yet Tsvangirai denies ever calling for sanctions. I happen to have a photographic memory and as much as I want Tsvangirai to be given a chance to rule the country since the majority of Zimbabweans voted for him in the March 2008 elections I also would like him to admit his mistake in calling for sanctions instead of completely denying doing so. I do understand that at some stage in a struggle for political justice, political leaders must decide what kinds of pressure points they are willing to ask others, acting in solidarity, to impose upon their enemy, even if there are detrimental side effects but that decision should be reached at only if the ordinary citizens who will be affected the most by the side effects, agree to the implementation of the pressure points.