Zimbabwe: A Crocodile's Tears

ZIMBABWE

A Crocodile’s Tears

For the first time, Zimbabweans will vote this month on a presidential ballot that does not include ex-president Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe, who turned 94 this year, was ousted from office in November after ruling for 37 years.

The campaign has been more open than past elections. The Globe and Mail noted how opposition politicians were allowed to broadcast their election manifestos, live and uncensored. Voters had never seen such openness. NPR detailed how activists were returning from abroad to build up their country’s democracy.

Don’t think everything is necessarily changing for the better in the southern African country, however.

“The dictator may be gone, but his machinery of repression is alive and well,” wrote Zimbabwean opposition politician and former finance minister Tendai Biti in a Washington Post opinion column.

A military coup brought incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa into office. He was Mugabe’s right-hand man, nicknamed the “crocodile” because of his “ruthless cunning,” according to the Guardian.

Like his mentor, Mnangagwa routinely targets political opponents and dissidents with “state-sponsored intimidation, imprisonment and torture,” Biti claimed. He also alleged that Mnangagwa had massacred ethnic groups, pilfered state assets, and perpetrated other crimes against his people.

That could be one reason behind a bombing on June 23 during a campaign rally where Mnangagwa was speaking. The Guardian ran a striking video of the incident, which state media have described as an assassination attempt. Two people died. More than 40 were injured.

The BBC reported that Mnangagwa has blamed supporters of Grace Mugabe, the ex-president’s wife, for the blast. Before the coup, the former first lady was suspected of wielding too much influence and jockeying to succeed her husband.

But Jonathan Moyo, a former minister of higher education and an ally of Grace Mugabe, tweeted that the explosion looked like an “inside job”. That conclusion is not so crazy, given how such attacks often divert attention from leaders’ human-rights abuses and instill patriotism and support among the undecided.

Mnangagwa’s main rival, Nelson Chamisa, feared the explosion would give the president cover to steal the election.

“We know that they would also want to use that as a pretext to clamp down on the opposition, they would want to use it to start targeting certain individuals, certain candidates that they perceive to be their credible opposition,” Chamisa told Reuters.

Mnangagwa is walking a fine line. He’s likely to win. He’s also inclined to crack down on dissent. But he needs the election to run smoothly if he wants to prove to the world that Zimbabwe is no longer a dictatorship and deserves foreign investment.

For the sake of his constituents, many hope he understands that.