Despite his apprehension, the police officer was determined to expose a
growing disenchantment within the ranks of Zimbabwe's police and suggested
that many of its members might stand aside if the people rose up against
their 83-year-old President.
That he was prepared to take such an enormous risk is a measure of how Mr
Mugabe’s grip on power is weakening. It also helps to explain why the
Zimbabwean President wants to import 2,500 Angolan paramilitaries to shore
up his regime.
Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo added to the pressure on Mr Mugabe
yesterday. Sensing his growing vulnerability, he called on Zimbabweans to
“stand up and fill the streets and demand this man stand down”. He promised
to take the lead, declaring: “The pastors must be the ones in front of the
blazing guns.”
The police officer used his clandestine interview to offer an unprecedented
insight into the deteriorating strength and morale of a force on which Mr
Mugabe depends heavily for his survival.
He said that the President was afraid to arm the police in case some of them
turned on him. He claimed — though there is no way of checking —
that Mr Mugabe recently changed the army unit guarding the national armoury
because he did not trust it. The officer said he had joined the force more
than 20 years ago. “That was a time when a policeman was really a
policeman,” he said. “When you woke up in the morning and it was time to get
into your uniform you would feel proud. You would cycle to work feeling
happiness. Today it’s totally different. It’s like you are in a prison.”
Political cronies who were happy to do the regime’s bidding were being
promoted over the heads of senior officers. The force was being turned into
an instrument of repression, not law and order. Officers were being ordered
to use brutality, and were side-lined or punished if they refused. “Today
they may say. ‘We want you to control the crowd at such a place’. If the
command comes to assault, you have to assault,” he said.
The officer said that men were leaving the police, the army and the air force
because conditions were so bad. He had lost as many as a third of his own
men. The pay — 150,000 Zimbabwean dollars (less than £5) a month for a
constable — was derisory and barely covered the cost of travelling to
work. Some routinely extorted bribes to make ends meet. “They are forced by
the situation to do what they are doing,” he said.
His station had no working vehicles — they had either broken down or been
commandeered from above. It had no rubber batons, riot shields or teargas
masks, and he even had to cadge paper from businessmen.
Asked if he would try to suppress a popular demonstration against Mr Mugabe he
replied: “How do you do it if you don’t have the manpower or equipment?”
Pressed, he admitted his that heart would be with the demonstrators. “You
try to appear you are following orders and come up with whatever excuses you
can.” The officer said his views were widely shared by officers of his rank:
“A big number of us are not performing as expected. It’s not as though we
don’t know what to do, but because of the situation. It’s maybe better to
keep quiet.”
If even his security forces are growing restive Mr Mugabe really is in
trouble, and Archbishop Ncube added to his problems yesterday with his bold
declaration at a meeting organised by the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance. The
gangly, loose-limbed Archbishop had prefaced his remarks during a twilight
interview with The Times earlier this week in a small garden next to his
cathedral. “If we can get 30,000 people together even Mugabe’s army would
not be able to control it,” he said, and indicated that he was thinking of
stepping into the leadership vacuum caused by infighting within the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Yesterday he did so. “It’s time for a radical stance, not soft speeches and
cowardice,” Father Ncube, 60, declared to cheers from the assembled clerics.
“I am willing to stand in front. The time is now.”
It is indeed. Richard Mills, the Times photographer, and I spent the past week
travelling secretly around Zimbabwe. Foreign journalists face two years’
imprisonment if caught. We variously posed as aid donors, priests and
chemical salesmen, and were passed from one trusted contact to another.
What we found was appalling. In rural areas of a nation that was once the
pride of Africa, children are now dying of hunger. Families are abandoning
their dead because they can no longer afford funerals. Young girls are
turning to prostitution as their only means of survival.
Hyperinflation is rendering the currency, salaries, savings and pensions
virtually worthless. Prices are doubling every month. The day we arrived in
Harare we were taken to a suburban home where a black-market dealer gave us
12,000 Zimbabwean dollars for one US dollar. Seven days later the rate was
Z$21,000. In one week the price of petrol — in the few stations still
open — rose from Z$14,000 a litre to Z$21,000. Anyone without access to
foreign currency faces destitution. Even whites are now begging.
Two fifths of the population are already suffering from malnutrition, and John
Robertson, a respected economic consultant, predicts worse to come. Maize is
Zimbabwe’s staple. This year’s harvest will be poor, South Africa will
produce too little to export any to its neighbour and America’s drive to
convert maize into ethanol is driving up the worldwide price at a time when
Zimbabwe is almost out of foreign currency.
Waiters, guides, gatemen, maids, hitch-hikers — everyone we spoke to
voiced despair. “By the time Mugabe dies there will be nothing of our
country left,” one woman lamented.
It would be rash to assume that Mr Mugabe’s 27-year-old regime is going to
fall in the next few weeks, or even months. While we met nobody who did not
loathe the man, we met few who were not terrified of his still-formidable
security apparatus.
The dreaded Central Intelligence Office has informers everywhere — “even
in church groups”, Archbishop Ncube told us. Opposition activists are
frequently detained and beaten. Landlines are routinely tapped, so text
messages have become the Opposition’s new bush telegraph. Fearful
interviewees mostly insisted on talking strictly off-the-record — one
prominent white begged me not to report his view that Mr Mugabe would not
survive the year as he could be arrested for treason.
In Bulawayo we watched dozens of illegal street vendors vanish like a Mexican
wave when a truckload of police drew up. Driving the 300 miles to Harare the
next day we were stopped at no fewer than six check-points. Our trips into
the closely watched townships had to be covert and fleeting, and organised
by courageous opposition activists.
It is also the case that most ordinary Zimbabweans are too downtrodden, hungry
and preoccupied with day-to-day survival to even contemplate rebellion. They
retain horrific memories of the terrible bloodshed during and after the war
of independence. The three million Zimbabweans who have left their country
include many of the most able and enterprising.
But there are signs of popular defiance that have seldom been seen before. In
the past fortnight there have been riots in townships in Harare, Bulawayo
and Gweru. Two police stations have been petrol-bombed, tyres set alight and
a railway line blocked. Doctors, teachers and university professors have
staged strikes. Tobacco growers are refusing to sell their crop to the State
unless offered a viable price.
An activist with the opposition MDC in Bulawayo spoke of an impending campaign
of civil disobedience that would include nationwide protests. It would
target the police and homes of leading members of Zanu (PF), the ruling
party. “We are now fighting for our pride as a people, and Mugabe must go,”
he said as he sat in our car, watching for watchers.
Given the desperation of the people it is just possible someone such as
Archbishop Ncube could provide the spark that sets Zimbabwe ablaze. The
Archbishop’s promise to lead “changes the whole scope of the crisis, and
gives the struggle a new dimension”, Eldred Masunungure, a political
scientist at the University of Zimbabwe, said.
The Archbishop was well known domestically and internationally. It would be
hard for the regime to “bash” him. “He is emerging in the mould of [Desmond]
Tutu. We need a Tutu in Zimbabwe,” Mr Masunungure said, referring to the
Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town.
The other potent threat confronting Mr Mugabe is the fracturing of his party.
There was a growing consensus within the party late last year that Mr Mugabe
should make way for younger blood after completing his present term next
March. When he made clear his intention to stay on he sparked a revolt, and
a party whose internal machinations used to be as secret as the Kremlin’s is
now engulfed in a vicious semi-public power struggle. At the party
conference last December a faction led by Solomon Mujuru, a former army
chief, blocked Mr Mugabe’s plan to extend his term by two years so the next
presidential election could be held at the same time as parliamentary
elections. Mr Mujuru wants his wife, Joice, the party’s vice-president, to
succeed Mr Mugabe.
A rival faction is led by Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former national security
minister. Mr Mugabe was enraged when Mr Mnangagwa sought to prevent him
making Mrs Mujuru his vice-president in 2004, but he is now seeking Mr
Mnangagwa’s support to beat off the Mujuru challenge.
Mr Mugabe is a great survivor, and even his fiercest critics concede that he
is a brilliant tactician. They also know that he will stop at nothing to
retain power, and predict that things could become even worse before they
get better. “Unfortunately it may come to bloodshed,” Archbishop Ncube told
The Times.“People are upset now. They are angry. If they burn cars Mugabe
will resort to shooting. He will do anything for power.”
