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Zimbabwe: Crisis Deserves Top Billing
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Zimbabwe Standard (Harare)
OPINION
5 July 2008
Posted to the web 7 July 2008
AT the oldest English university, Oxford, a group of Zimbabweans - some in exile, others formerly citizens and others still, legally resident in the country - gathered to discuss researching and reporting on their country.
For me, it was a crowning achievement: in the 1970s, I had been to Cambridge. Now, I was a confirmed "Oxbridge" person.
Just a slight detail: at neither of the universities was I studying. At Cambridge, I had gone to see David Bonavia, a Reuters correspondent studying Chinese in preparation for his new assignment in Hong Kong.
We had worked together in Zambia, where I was the Reuters stringer and he the resident correspondent.
We had become close and on my visit to the UK, he invited me to visit him at his "digs" at Cambridge, where we chewed the fat and compared notes on the state of the world.
David died young of complications from diabetes a few years later. At Oxford, I was reunited with another old acquaintance, Terence Ranger. We first met in 1960 or thereabouts at the Harare community centre in what is now Mbare.
He was a lecturer at the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and I was a reporter on The African Daily News. In 1963, he was deported from Southern Rhodesia. He did return after independence.
Incidentally, in 1964, I was declared a prohibited immigrant from Malawi, but returned a free man after Kamuzu Banda lost an election. The professor and I had a lot to talk about at Oxford.
But one thing struck me about our lively discussions on the state of Zimbabwe.
A number of speakers suggested our "crisis" was being blown out of proportion. There were far more serious upheavals in the world, deserving far more attention than our "little domestic tiff" in which the West was butting in, selfishly, needlessly.
But the piece de resistance for me had to be this: Robert Mugabe did not deserve this incessant demonisation. He had clung resolutely to his position on the land reform programme and for that he was being punished.
What about the killings of unarmed civilians? Well, there were African leaders who had killed more people.
There were attacks on the Western media, focusing on their "inordinately excessive" coverage of the Zimbabwe situation. There were far more explosive political and economic stories in the world than the Zimbabwe one, it was argued.
Later, as we watched coverage of the African Union summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, we saw both the president and George Charamba robustly reinforcing the "leave us alone" tone we had heard at Oxford.
That this demonstrates the government's state of denial is most eloquently illustrated by the intemperate response to any questions relating to free and fair elections and the murder of unarmed civilians.
All this cannot be justified with any bombastic rhetoric laced with the customary conspiracy accusations against the Western media.
There may indeed be a regime change agenda, but it was never hatched in the West.
The clearest indication of how close it came to fruition was the outcome of the harmonised elections last March. If the "first past the post" formula had been adopted for the presidential poll, Mugabe would no longer be president.
The reason for the murderous campaign before the run-off presidential poll was clearly to ensure voters were reminded how they ought to vote to avoid being killed or maimed.
It was such a callous reminder of Zanu PF's capacity for brutality not many outsiders would have hesitated to defend even the local media's extensive coverage of the violence against civilians.
And what about the reports that a "hit list" of journalists had been prepared by someone, either in Zanu PF or the war veterans? With the murder of Edward Chikomba to back them up, why would journalists not conclude that such a list did exist and that the chances of it being carried out were plausible?
The world could keep its hands off Zimbabwe's affairs if there was any tangible evidence that Zimbabweans themselves were in a conciliatory mood, that there were as anxious as the rest of the world, to end the carnage which has led some commentators to compare Mugabe with Idi Amin.
And what are even his supporters to make of his declaration that "only God can remove me" from office? Yes, this could be an example of electoral rhetoric, but those aware of Mugabe's past excesses are not persuaded: they believe he means every word.
What leaves many Zimbabweans with only a faint hope of salvation from the political catastrophe to which we seem inexorably destined is Mugabe's and Zanu PF's incapacity to treat the opposition with even a semblance of respect.
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One day, it may dawn on the opposition to win the argument by adopting Zanu PF's methods.
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