partially explains the common attitudes of regional leaders who have opted for quiet diplomacy rather than criticize his Government openly.27 During the 1990s, a number of civil society organizations, especially the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), emerged as pressure groups to oppose the dominant rule of ZANU-PF, challenging emerging corruption, human rights violations and poor governance in general. This political space for civil society also allowed for the emergence of strong leadership28 that ultimately led to a powerful alliance of forces that mobilized Zimbabwe’s public opinion. By the time the Government tabled a draft constitution for a popular referendum in 2000, which, among other things, proposed to strengthen presidential powers and to allow the government to expropriate white commercial farmland without compensation, a segment of civil society organizations were successfully mobilised to vote against the constitutional draft29. Against the foregoing, the 2000 referendum marked the first political defeat for the leadership of ZANU-PF and became a watershed year in Zimbabwe’s political history. It prompted a fierce campaign for the legislative elections in June that year. As ZANU-PF was fighting for its political life, the campaign period provided the perfect opportunity for the war veterans to consolidate their interests in order to augment their political power. It was in this charged political context that land reform became a tool for economic redistribution and political mobilisation. The ‘fast-track land reform programme’ became an integral part of the campaign process. Many people, including the MDC were supportive of the land acquisition and redistribution exercise. It was, however, expected that the Government would ensure an orderly and fair process, free of corruption30 . Yet, as a pay-off for their electioneering role, the war 27 President Mugabe is part of that exclusive club of African statesmen, including the likes of Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Samora Machel etc who fought colonialism and racial discrimination. A long serving member on the OAU Liberation Committee informed that President Mugabe’s own contribution to South Africa’s independence is especially important. Apparently, had it not been for South Africa’s liberation, land acquisition might have come much earlier in Zimbabwe and independently of MDC politics. However, President Nyerere of Tanzania is reported to have prevailed over this issue, arguing that “a forced land take over in Zimbabwe would forever jeopardize the South African liberation project and that Zimbabweans must wait before they could get back their land”. With Nelson Mandela free, South Africa out of Apartheid and with promised donor assistance to buy back the land not forthcoming, a forced acquisition of land in Zimbabwe was inevitable. 28 Morgan Tsvangirai was then Secretary-General of the ZCTU. 29 There are conflicting views on the constitutional process. At least 2 independent scholars maintained NGOs are believed to be “Donor stooges” because of their rejection of the 2000 draft constitution. It claims, the constitutional process had involved nation-wide consultations, including with NGOs, which had more or less endorsed the contents of the draft constitution until the President, when the draft finally reached him, realizing that it was completely silent on the land question, decided to introduce “the land acquisition without compensation article” himself. They further submitted that it was the rejection of the 2000 draft constitution that kept President Mugabe in office. This view claimed that of the two, Joshua Nkomo, Zimbabwe’s First Vice-President and former leader of ZAPU, had been especially anxious to see the land issue settled, and that at his death bed, he asked President Mugabe to promise him that he would not leave office before solving the land question. Following the rejection of the referendum, the President, infuriated by the rejection of the 2000 draft constitution which, in his view, would have launched the final stage of his ‘independence mission’, announced that the Government would still expropriate land without compensation. This would eventually become the ‘fast-track land re-distribution programme’, which legalized land acquisition by the state with compensation only for improvements on to the land. The opposing view obtained was that the President had deliberately launched a constitutional review exercise knowing that it would not be approved in the timeframe given thus paving the way to create a crisis and rerun for re-election. None of this could be confirmed. 30 In the end, the major beneficiaries turned out to be senior ruling party officials, ministers and their families. A number of these are not using land intensively if at all, and there have been concerns that it is a virtual return to the “feudal system”. 18