CMI BRIEF JUNE 2010 VOLUME 9 NO.3
ZIMBABWE´S MULTILAYERED CRISIS
Economic
hardships
sparked an
increase in
dissatisfaction
among the
country’s working
population and
contributed to
mounting unrest.
President Robert Mugabe decided to authorise
unbudgeted gratuities and monthly pensions
to War Veterans who demanded belated
recognition of their sacrifices in the liberation
of the country. To further compound the
situation, in August 1998, Mugabe unilaterally
decided to send Zimbabwean soldiers into
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in
support of Laurent Kabila’s government. Both
decisions resulted in large expenditures, which
had not been accounted for in the government
budget, thus undermining the country’s fiscal
capacity and economy. Economic hardships
sparked an increase in dissatisfaction among the
country’s working population and contributed
to mounting unrest.
HARDSHIPS AND OPPRESSION
A convergence of interests between workers and
other civil society groups led to the formation of
the MDC. The MDC’s defeat of the government in
the 2000 constitutional referendum precipitated
the current crisis, as the government unleashed
a wave of terror against supporters of the MDC
as well as white commercial farmers.
The chaotic and highly controversial fast track
agrarian reform and the violent campaigns
undertaken by the government resulted in
widespread human rights abuses. Consequently,
Zimbabwe became a pariah state subjected
to boycotts and targeted economic sanctions
by the international community. Traditionally,
agriculture was the backbone of the country’s
economy.
Most of the manufacturing industries depended
on the agricultural sector for inputs and
markets. But that sector was now reeling
from the dire impacts of fast track reform,
boycotts and sanctions. The destruction of the
agricultural sector had numerous negative
effects that rippled throughout the national
economy, resulting in factory closures, declining
outputs and foreign currency earnings and a
massive rise in unemployment.
The erosion
of individual
rights was
accompanied
by the total
disregard for
the rule of law
2
By 2008 the Zimbabwean economy had all
the indicators of a country in severe distress.
Inflation rates were estimated in percentages
of hundreds of millions, while the country’s
currency, now denominated in quintillions, was
virtually worthless. Around 80 per cent of the
Zimbabwean population lived on less than $2 a
day (2005) and 90 per cent were unemployed.
Once the breadbasket of the entire region,
Zimbabwe now imported staple food to feed its
hungry population. Citizens experienced the
meltdown directly through crumbling social
services and infrastructure, frequent power
cuts, factory closures and a worthless national
currency. Perhaps the most life threatening
development followed from the intermittent
domestic supply of water and the simultaneous
breakdown of the country’s urban water system,
resulting in a horrendous cholera outbreak.
To make matters worse, the economic crisis
resulted in a massive collapse of the country’s
social services sector. Health and education
services declined precipitously in the face of
chronic and severe underfunding. Moreover,
since most professionals voted with their feet
by joining the growing Zimbabwean diaspora in
search of better prospects abroad, social service
collapse was accelerated by the debilitating
effect of brain drain. In short, the country’s once
internationally envied health and education
sectors were in tatters by 2008. Life expectancy
rates plummeted 22 years in the span of 15
years - from 63 years in 1990 to 40.9 years
in 2005. Child mortality rates also increased
dramatically.
As if the above challenges were not enough,
Zimbabwean citizens were also faced with
a deepening governance and human rights
crisis. Opposition supporters were subjected
to endless intimidation and violence by
government agents. The state’s penchant for
violence against opposition had already been
demonstrated in the Gukurahundi massacres
in the southwestern provinces of the country
in the early 1980s, when an estimated 20 000
people were killed by government forces in the
so-called anti-dissident campaign. Widespread
and indiscriminate harassment and battering
of political opponents that had previously been
confined to Matabeleland, spread to the rest of
the country after 2000. The erosion of individual
rights was accompanied by the total disregard
for the rule of law, a systematic militarisation
of the state, the subversion of the judiciary and
the deterioration of the country’s courts. The
hallmark of the country’s governance crisis
is seen in the callous destruction of urban
shelters during the controversial Operation
Murambatsvina that left hundreds of thousands
of people homeless and ruined their sources of
livelihood.
REGIONAL POLITICAL CHALLENGES.
The Zimbabwe crisis presents the region with
the challenge of dealing with the political
fallout of the region’s first election loss of a
liberation movement and the movement’s
unwillingness to cede power to the victorious
opposition. This challenge demonstrates the
constraints of Western pressures in the face of
its duplicity around questions of democracy.
The unwillingness of Mugabe to cede power
also demonstrates the limits in the capacity
of regional pressure to deal with states that
confront universalist human rights claims and
global economic inequalities by deploying
anti-colonialist discourses. This is most evident
in the sympathies of the Southern African
Development Community (SADC) toward some
of Mugabe’s anti-colonial rhetoric that prevents
the regional body from taking a stronger stand
against the regime’s widespread human rights
abuses and reluctance to cede power.
SADC indicated an interest in dealing with
Zimbabwe’s political standoff when mandating
South Africa to broker an agreement between