Posted on 06/27/2002 5:45:23 AM PDT by Clive
A NERVOUS Zimbabwe government has put its opponents under siege in what analysts this week said was a futile effort to thwart swelling public anger and agitation over the administra-tion’s failure to end a worsening economic and food crisis.
They said the government was panicking at the prospects of mass protests threatened by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
"The strategy is to thoroughly terrorise the population into submission as a way of neutralising the impending MDC-led mass action," University of Zimbabwe (UZ) political analyst Masipula Sithole told the Financial Gazette.
The MDC has threatened to call mass protests soon to force President Robert Mugabe, who it accuses of stealing a presidential election earlier this year, to re-stage the ballot.
In a show of force unprecedented since Mugabe and his ruling ZANU PF party wrested power from British colonialists 22 years ago, armed police have in the past few weeks swooped on the opposition, arresting nearly 100 MDC activists.
The law enforcement agency has also broken up social gatherings and university student meetings, arguing that they could be used to mobilise support for the proposed strike.
The government has also intensified a crackdown on the country’s independent media by arresting and sending several journalists to the courts for alleged contravention of sections of a tough media law passed earlier this year.
Sithole said by publicly wielding the iron fist, the government was sending a clear message to ordinary Zimbabweans on the cost of joining any protest against it.
UZ Institute of Development Studies associate professor Brian Raftopoulos said the government’s high-handed approach was an admission it did not have any solution to the deepening political, economic and food crisis.
Nearly half of Zimbabwe’s 12 million people face starvation because of poor rains last season but largely because ZANU PF supporters disrupted agricultural production when they seized land from large- scale producing white farmers.
International isolation of Zimbabwe’s government, which intensified following Mugabe’s controversial election victory in March, has only helped quicken the meltdown of a crumbling economy already sapped by lack of foreign aid, hard cash, runaway inflation and unemployment and mass poverty.
Said Raftopoulos: "They (the government) have no solution to the crises facing the nation and they see suppression of all voices of dissent as a way of consolidating their hold on power. What we are seeing are the typical signs of dictatorship."
The police force, accused by many Zimbabweans of partisanship, two weeks ago shot and killed Harare taxi driver Lloyd Midzi at a road block because he did not stop when ordered to.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena later regretted the killing but said the road blocks had been put up in most of Harare to counter the MDC’s threatened mass action.
A week later armed police forcibly broke up an MDC-organised meeting in central Harare, which was being held to commemorate the Day of the African Child.
The police said they feared the gathering posed a threat to public peace.
Several MDC activists, including some of the party’s legislators and journalists covering the meeting, were severely assaulted by police.
But even more revealing of how insecure the embattled government has become was the police’s reaction to UZ students innocently celebrating Senegal’s extra-time victory against Sweden at the ongoing World Cup soccer in Japan and South Korea.
In no time, armed riot police had descended on the college’s campus grounds, where the celebrations were taking place, mistakenly thinking that the students were protesting against the government.
The police also dispersed a meeting of UZ students seeking to elect a new leadership.
A few days later, police in Harare’s Mabvuku township broke up a crowd watching social soccer because they suspected it was an MDC meeting to mobilise for mass action.
"Every little thing is a cause for strong reaction from the authorities. It just shows how insecure the government feels," Raftopoulos acknowledged.
But Sithole said the government’s use of strong-arm tactics amid worsening social and economic hardships among citizens would not silence opposition against it.
"It can only achieve the opposite," he noted.
"We have seen this in other countries where governments have attempted to quell discontent by using force against the people," Sithole said.
"In the long run, these governments have failed and there is no valid reason to believe the government of Zimbabwe will succeed where others have failed."
By following these two simple rules Robert Mugabe's life will be so much easier. And after all itn't that what we all want?
Well, if they don't do some real protesting they'll starve. For some reaason I keep thinking about Ukraine, 1931.
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