Abstract
The arrest of a leading author is just one example of how Robert Mugabe’s death has not brought about the hoped-for improvements to rights in Zimbabwe, writes
Instead, just three days after the longlist was released, Dangarembga was among scores of people arrested in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, during anti-government protests. By September, This Mournable Body was on the Booker shortlist and its author’s trial (for inciting violence and breaching health regulations related to Covid-19) had been repeatedly delayed.
To those watching from outside the southern African nation, it beggared belief: in many countries Dangarembga would be hailed by her own government as an icon, her global success a reason to celebrate. But Zimbabwe – whose citizens desperately hoped the military coup that finally deposed Robert Mugabe as president in 2017 would usher in wholesale political, social and economic change – isn’t “many countries”. Under Emmerson Mnangagwa, the current president, the iron fist that defined Mugabe’s 30-year stranglehold on power shows no signs of softening.
Dangarembga told The Guardian in August that she was “afraid”; several opposition politicians and activists had been abducted in the run-up to the protest at which she was arrested. Journalist Hopewell Chin’ono was also languishing in Zimbabwe’s notorious Chikurubi maximum security prison charged with “incitement to participate in public violence”. He recorded police entering his home on 20 July, sharing the video on a Facebook livestream. His lawyer later said Chin’ono had been “abducted” without a warrant. And the “evidence” showing that he incited others to participate in public violence? He had highlighted alleged Covid-19 procurement fraud within the country’s health ministry.
On 3 November, Chin’ono was rearrested at his Harare home. Legal insiders suggested the arrest was prompted by a tweet in late October in which he claimed that Zimbabwe’s chief justice had intervened to initially deny him bail after his detention. One of the conditions of his bail was an effective ban on his use of social media for anything that might be read as critical of the ruling party.
If none of this makes sense to you, you’re not alone. As Tony Reeler, a senior researcher at Zimbabwe’s Research and Advocacy Unit, told Index: “Zimbabwe has been surreal since 2000.”
Reeler, who was formerly the unit’s director, has watched ruling party Zanu-PF lurch from one crisis to the next – and become ever more brutal – for decades. His background in law and psychology led him through academia and eventually into civil society. That is not an easy space in Zimbabwe as its various regimes, both pre and post-independence from Britain in 1980, have never trusted dissenting voices.
In 2000, the Movement for Democratic Change emerged as a new opposition party to challenge Zanu-PF’s dominance. The state responded with violence and suppression. It was a close-run affair but Zanu-PF retained power in what many still consider a stolen election. Since then, polls have been marred by violence and controversies, and allegations of vote-rigging have bedevilled every election, including the 2018 poll that brought Mnangagwa to power.
The surreality that Reeler refers to plays out in daily life. Zimbabwe’s economy has plumbed new depths since Mnangagwa took over; Covid-19 has delivered even more financial misery for ordinary Zimbabweans, hitting the country’s powerful, even vibrant, informal economy hard. And yet, Reeler said, on the streets of cities like Harare “there’s a veneer of functioning”. Much of that veneer is made possible by remittances from Zimbabweans who have left home in search of better prospects. “Remittances are a mask,” Reeler said. “And it’s slipping.”
The situation is especially dire in the rural areas that represent Zimbabwe’s real electoral battlefields. “That’s where the voters are, and it’s the heartland of deep poverty,” Reeler said.
Covid-19, of course, has exacerbated existing crises as well as bringing new ones: “It’s slow. It’s hard. People are hungry. People are dying.”
And people are increasingly fighting back. But many are doing so quietly, behind the scenes, for fear of violent repercussions. A report by research network Afrobarometer ahead of the 2018 polls found that 76% of respondents were always careful about what they said in public, evidence of how chilling government crackdowns on free expression have been. Many activists who Index contacted said they preferred not to engage with the media; most won’t respond to emails because they fear they are under government surveillance and mistrust electronic communication. Still, there is a sense that people’s patience has run out. What, many outside the country might ask, has taken them so long?
Reeler said: “Many Zimbabweans still have memories of the civil war in the 1970s. There were so many deaths. So many people grew up restricted. People want peaceful change through the ballot – but that’s a naive hope.
“Passivity masks an enormous amount that’s going on. Zimbabweans look after each other, that’s how we’ve hung on.”
Journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, who was arrested in July (and again in November), arrives at court in Harare, Zimbabwe in August 2020
CREDIT: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters
Covid-19 is making it increasingly tough for people to support each other as they have always done. Remittances from the diaspora have fallen drastically and, with them, the livelihoods that people have been able to generate for themselves.
The government seems unable and unwilling to respond in a way that might build bridges. Instead, it is cracking down on any acts or statements it perceives as dissent. Legislation is one arrow in its quiver. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists’ Africa programme coordinator Angela Quintal points to two proposed laws as being particularly worrying: the Cyber and Data Protection and Patriotic bills. The latter would bar Zimbabweans from meeting foreign government representatives without government permission.
Quintal told Index that the mooted cyber law was too broad. She said: “As we have seen with the use of cybercrime laws elsewhere, it can be abused by the government hellbent on staying in power and violating the civil liberties of citizens.
“The opposition to the Zimbabwean government is playing out on social media and that’s where the government is taking the fight. Zimbabweans are very active on social media, even though internet penetration is low, so it is obviously of concern to the government. Mnangagwa himself has complained about social media, so none of what we are seeing in Zimbabwe as the government tries to counter what it perceives as subversion should come as a surprise.”
Reeler concurs. The government’s moves to quash any opposition are precisely what you’d expect given that “Zanu-PF has no political trust, and no support base”.
“All they have left is coercion. They know that the moment they take their foot off our necks…” Reeler trailed off. His organisation has offered support and assistance to many activists who’ve borne the brunt of that jack-booted foot in recent years. The ruling party has practised its cruel craft exceptionally well for decades.
“This is one of the most sophisticated thug governments in the world. They use extremely complex mechanisms of torture to manage dissent. [For instance] at the local level there are youth militias that mobilise when anyone speaks up – and then the soldiers move in. The longevity of this system has created a realistic, appreciable fear of elections and of participating in political life.”
Women are particularly vulnerable. In May, three women members of the MDC were allegedly abducted from police custody, tortured and sexually assaulted. They had been arrested while attending a protest and charged with contravening Covid-19 lockdown rules. One of the three, MP Joana Mamombe, was photographed weeping in her hospital bed as she detailed the ordeal. The trio now face more criminal charges: the justice minister says they faked their abduction and lied about being tortured. Mamombe was later rearrested for allegedly violating her bail conditions after she failed to appear in court. At the time, she was in hospital on her psychiatrist’s instructions.
Reeler told Index that attacks on women, especially those involving sexual violence, served as “a warning to women”, reinforcing Zanu-PF’s patriarchal politics.
“It’s a way of saying ‘Why be a politician? The state won’t protect you’.”
Yet Reeler remains optimistic that a change is coming. It will, he believes, be driven by Zimbabwe’s youth. As is the case across sub-Saharan Africa, the country has an extremely young population. “The youth are getting feisty. They will crush Zanu-PF one day.”