Prospects For 2004 And The Way Forward.
Address To Members Of The European Parliament By Mdc Vice-President The Hon. Gibson Sibanda Mp.
Brussels, January 27 2004.
Honourable Members of the European Parliament,
You stood by us during the most difficult times in our country. You continue to stand by us during this, our darkest hour. For that we are eternally grateful.
The events of the past four years have now culminated in a violent and repressive political culture the specific details of which are a matter of international public record and therefore well known to you. Repression is now a permanent feature of governance in Zimbabwe.
The Mugabe regime continues to defy both local and international opinion and through the unilateral withdrawal from the Commonwealth, Mugabe and his associates believe that they have won themselves a permanent reprieve from international scrutiny and accountability for their various crimes against humanity.
The pillars of repression continue to be strengthened and diversified as the economic and humanitarian crisis worsens by each passing day. Unemployment and poverty continue to destroy lives and households, thereby creating the social circumstances of hopelessness, misery and despair that have nourished dictatorships throughout history.
Deliberately manufactured poverty, together with violent rule has therefore become a cardinal strategy for perpetuating the Mugbabe dictatorship.
In this context the question that Zimbabweans ask their friends in the international community is as simple as it is painful:
To what deeper level should the Zimbabwe crisis descend before the international community takes concerted action against the Mugabe regime? Is the international community waiting for a greater body count of the dead and the spilling of much more blood before the crisis merits determined international intervention?
Too often we hear the same old refrain that Zimbabwean problems are for Zimbabweans to resolve. Granted, we accept our responsibility to invent our own future. We recognize the role that all the broad democratic forces must collectively play in the struggle to free ourselves from oppression. As a result of this recognition we continuously search for new strategies to liberate ourselves. In pursuit of this objective, at the MDC annual conference in December 2003, we resolved that in 2004, the regime must be confronted by a broad alliance of all democratic forces in the country. This will bring together in a purposive alliance, the MDC, labour, civic groups, the churches, students etc. The aim is to embark on a rolling process of peaceful mass action to force the Mugabe regime to return to the negotiating table.
The alliance will seek to engage and win the support of a broad range of democratic forces regionally, continentally and internationally.
But how does a political party like the MDC or such a broad democratic alliance, which is built on a philosophy of non-violence, confront a dictatorial regime with a formidable array of weaponry ready to unleash them on a defenceless people and determined to provoke a violent confrontation as a pretext to crash all democratic opposition?
While Zimbabweans must be the key players in forging their own destiny, we believe that democratic governments in the international community have a duty to assist in the creation of an international political environment, which will set the stage for internal processes leading to meaningful and peaceful negotiations. This is not a unique request from Zimbabweans; it has international precedents. There is such a historical precedent in our own country and indeed in the Southern Africa region. The tragedy is that those in our region who hide behind the refrain of Zimbabwean solutions for Zimbabwean problems end up openly supporting the Mugabe outrage and they conveniently forget about the role of the international community in the origins of their present circumstances. They end up giving comfort to the Mugabe regime. It is precisely this kind of deceit and political expediency that has actively contributed to the deepening of the Zimbabwe crisis.
To complement our new strategy of a broad democratic front, we are convinced that there is need for new forms of international pressure that will demonstrate to the Mugabe regime and those who support it throughout the world that dictatorship and support thereof, are costly exercises and that there are easy dividends in democratic governance.
Countries in the Southern Africa region that have courageously stood up to condemn the repressive activities of the regime must be encouraged and supported; and there must be a clear demonstration of the costs associated with blind solidarity with and active support of the Harare regime.
All our overtures for a peaceful resolution of the crisis through dialogue have been contemptuously dismissed and interpreted as a sign of weakness. Because of this arrogance, there are no talks of any kind going on in Zimbabwe at the moment. Statements from certain quarters and projections that a solution is in sight inside six months are not supported by events and facts on the ground, and must therefore be dismissed contemptuously as cynical and cruel to the people of Zimbabwe. They are a clear attempt to deceive and mislead the world.
The existence of political dialogue must go beyond rhetoric and be verifiable. Any meaningful intentions and commitment to negotiations must be translated into clear benchmarks and progress must be measurable. All legislation that criminalizes and proscribes free political activity must be removed; the rule of law must be respected and democratic space expanded. This is not happening in Zimbabwe.
Instead events on the ground and the behaviour of the Mugbabe regime all point to the tragic conclusion that the Mugabe regime will not negotiate until it is presented with an international set of circumstances and pressure that leaves it with no other option but to negotiate.
In fact there are active plans to consolidate and further entrench despot rule in Zimbabwe. Mugabe has no intention either to retire from active politics or to negotiate a return to democratic rule.
There are indications that the Mugabe regime is preparing to run the 2005 parliamentary elections using the same draconian anti-democratic legislation and unleashing even more state-sponsored violence than that witnessed in the June 2000 parliamentary polls, the March 2002 presidential election and all subsequent parliamentary by-elections.
The strategy chosen is to drastically reduce the number of urban parliamentary constituencies, the traditional MDC strongholds and where the regime has been finding it difficult to intimidate, rig and stuff ballot boxes. This will be complemented by a corresponding strategy to deliberately inflate the number of rural constituencies where intimidation and rigging have been most effective. Once implemented, this twin strategy would ensure that MDC parliamentary representation is either reduced to single digits or completely wiped out.
Such a situation will create the necessary two-thirds majority in parliament for Mugabe and his associates. This will give ZANU PF a free hand, under the guise of parliamentary "democracy", to either create a completely new constitution or amend the existing one to further entrench totalitarian rule, leaving Mugabe in power for as long as he desires.
These active steps to further entrench despotic rule call for an imaginative and courageous agenda for action on the part of the international community in general and the European Union and the United States of America in particular to force the Mugabe regime to the negotiating table.
It is imperative that our friends in the European Union and the United States remain resolute and act courageously and imaginatively to confront this sinister mutation of the Mugabe dictatorship. This is certainly not the time for the EU and the USA to be sending any kind of signals of accommodation to the Harare regime.
In that regard we would suggest that the targeted sanctions regime must now be broadened and deepened to create a wider catchment area and net in all key players who constitute the regime’s pillars of support. It is critical that more members of Mugabe’s army, police, the paramilitary and secret service be targeted.
It is outrageous and offensive to civilized sensibilities that Mugabe’s army and police are paraded around internationally as peacekeepers when they are waging an incessant war against the people and committing all manner of atrocities and human rights violations against the defenceless people of Zimbabwe. The international community needs to address this situation as a matter of urgency.
It is now almost impossible to distinguish between politicians and businesspeople in the Mugabe regime. The two groups are inextricably interwoven. Authoritarian political power has been used to grab illegitimate wealth, and once acquired such wealth is in turn used as a launching-pad into dictatorial politics. The two groups are mutually reinforcing.
Therefore the international community must not only increase the number of politicians on the targeted sanctions list but must now proceed to target key players in the economy who actively prop the Mugabe regime while hiding behind corruptly and violently acquired business enterprises.
Mugabe now finds himself in exactly the same situation as that which confronted his predecessor, Ian Smith and it is imperative that the same strategy of international response that was triggered by the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) be reactivated to confront the present regime in Harare.
International pressure on the Mugabe regime must now be coordinated into a single laser targeted on the regime. The EU and the USA must now seek to nudge the United Nations to assume a proactive role in the resolution of the crisis of governance in Zimbabwe. It is far cheaper in terms of resources and human lives to intervene now in Zimbabwe, than to wait until the carnage has been intensified.
We suggest that as a matter of urgency, a team of experts from the UN Human Rights Commission be despatched to Zimbabwe on a fact-finding mission as soon as possible. The circumstances in Rhodesia in 1966 when the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning the Smith regime were not different from what is currently going on in Zimbabwe; in fact, in some ways the present situation is even worse. There are therefore legitimate humanitarian reasons for international intervention through the United Nations.
Ladies and gentlemen, our broad agenda is broader than protest and appeals for regional and international support. We are ready to govern. Our policy packages, unveiled and approved at our annual conference in December 2003 are now a matter of public record. The success of an MDC government will depend not only on our own effort but also on the goodwill and support of our friends in the international community. We therefore appeal to you to join us and remain with us in our state of readiness to govern. We are confident that when the time comes our appeals for practical assistance will be met with the same kind of sympathetic response as that so timeously given during these difficult times.
I THANK YOU
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