Zimbabwe Fast Facts

Capital City: Harare

Population: 11,392,629

Size (Area): 390,580 sq km (slightly larger than Montana)

Average Life Expectancy: 45.77 years

HIV/AIDS Adult Prevalence Rate: 15.3% (2007 est.)

People living with HIV/AIDS: 1.3 million (2007 est.)

Languages: English (official), Shona, Sindebele, other tribal dialects

Administrative Divisions: 8 provinces and 2 cities* with provincial status; Bulawayo*, Harare*, Manicaland, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West, Masvingo, Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, Midlands

President: Robert Mugabe
Political Party: Zanu-PF

Prime Minister: Morgan Tsvangarai (since February 11, 2009)
Politcal Party: MDC (Movement for Democratic Change)

Type of Government: Parliamentary “Democracy”

Gained Independence: April 18, 1980, from Great Britain

Outlining the Crisis in Zimbabwe

The main cause of all Zimbabwe’s current problems is in the corrupt government.

Robert Mugabe has been in power since April 18, 1980. On this day, Zimbabwe, a country formerly known as Rhodesia, received its independence from Great Britain. Mugabe was declared President on December 31, 1987, and has been ever since.

Raised a Catholic, Mugabe grew to sympathize with Communist ideals. When he came to power, however, he did not seem to be the leader the white Rhodesian farmers dreaded. Zimbabwe, it seemed, was on the threshold of an era of great promise, born out of civil war but now bursting with new ambition. Mugabe himself was widely acclaimed a hero: the revolutionary leader who had embraced the cause of reconciliation and who now sought a programmatic way forward. Western governments lined up with offers of aid. He called for stability, national unity, and law and order…and pledged that private property would be protected. He said himself, “There is no intention on our part to use majority to victimize the minority. We will ensure there is a place for everyone in this country….Let us deepen our sense of belonging and engender a common interest that knows no race, colour, or creed.”

Very quickly the sentiments of the new President changed, or perhaps were voiced for the first time. It was as if Mugabe and his inner circle had come to regard Zimbabwe as the spoils of war, for their own use. And while nepotism flourished in his cabinet, Mugabe’s only concern seemed to be for power—as opposition to his rule mounted, Mugabe struck back with ever-increasing ruthlessness, determined to stay in power whatever the cost.

Mugabe and his henchmen threatened the lives of any person who opposed his regime—or even any person thought to. If you did not hold a Zanu-PF card, signifying membership to the party, you were at the least not allowed to vote in elections. At worst, you were beaten, tortured, and even killed. White Zimbabweans also found themselves in great danger. Mugabe considered them still loyal to Great Britain and symbols of the colonial rule Mugabe hated.

Terror & 5 Brigade

Before Independence, colonial rule had given most of the land in Zimbabwe to white farmers. Instead of paying for the land, leaders simply displaced the black populations living there. Therefore, when Mugabe took office, one of his key goals was to reverse the land distribution problem. His rule was—and is—characterized by terror. Any land that Mugabe wanted, he took, forcing the white farmers to either leave the country or die with their farms. But Mugabe did not give the land to the majority of the black population. Instead, he gave the land to people in his inner circle, determined to sway them into doing his bidding. Or the land was left unoccupied.

In fact, as part of his land redistribution program, even more blacks lost land, as well as their lives. In Matabeleland, Mugabe accused the people of wanting to overthrow the government. As a response, he sent a new army, called 5 Brigade, trained by North Koreans. The new brigade was called Gukurahundi, a Shona word meaning “the rain that blows away the chaff before the spring rains.” But in Matabeleland, it grew to mean, “the sweeping away of rubbish.” “From the moment it was deployed in Matabeleland North at the end of Jaunary 1983, 5 Brigade waged a campaign of beatings, arson, and mass murder deliberately targeted at the civilian population. Villagers were rounded up and marched long distances to a central location, such as a school, where they were harangued and beaten for hours on end. The beatings were often followed by public executions. The main targets initially were former Zipra soldiers or Zapu officials whose names were read out from lists, but often victims were chosen at random and included women. Villagers were then forced to sing songs in the Shona language praising Zanu-PF while dancing on the mass graves of their families and fellow villagers killed and buried minutes earlier."

These atrocities were not just limited to Matabeleland North, but spread through other parts of Zimbabwe—to any people group thought to be a dissenter. This included newspaper journalists and radio and television broadcasters. The perpetrators of the violence were always given presidential pardons for their activity.

In a ceremony on December 30, 1987, Mugabe was declared executive president by parliament…with powers to dissolve parliament and declare martial law and the right to run for an unlimited number of terms of office. Throughout the years, threats and violence continued, especially around election time. In the 1990 elections, television ads left no doubt: “One television advertisement , watched by many viewers with astonishment and disbelief, featured the screech of tyres and the crushing of glass and metal in a car accident, followed by a voice warning coldly: ‘This is one way to die. Another is to vote ZUM. Don’t commit suicide, vote Zanu-PF and live.’ Another advertisement showed a coffin being lowered into a grave followed by the warning: ‘AIDS kills. So does ZUM. Vote Zanu-PF.”

Elections in the years following have seen similar circumstances. Threats and violence precede the years and months leading up to both parliamentary and presidential elections. But the Zimbabweans have been brave and resilient. They have risked their lives to go to the polls in order to vote out the dictator who has caused them great suffering. However, this has been to no avail. Knowing he faced a loss, Mugabe ensured that he won all subsequent elections by changing voting regulations, by setting up blockades so that only Zanu-PF members could vote, by adding to and deleting from the voter registration list, and by stuffing the ballot boxes in almost every district.

Genocide Watch--Stage 6

As recently as June 27, 2008, Zanu-PF militias, the Zimbabwe army and police, and Zanu-PF mobs have pushed Zimbabwe to a Stage 6 on the Genocide Watch, the Preparation Stage immediately preceding political mass murder. Families of Zimbabwe’s opposition leaders were targeted for brutal execution. In two months time, 100 people were killed in political assassinations, and hundreds more were beaten and tortured. Murder and torture victims had their ears, lips, and sexual organs cut off. Mutilation of bodies is one of the surest signs of the de-humanizing of target groups during genocide and politicide. With military support, Zanu-PF marauders swept through villages at night, killing, torturing, and raping MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) supporters.

Inflation and Starvation

Currently, Zimbabwe is a country in crisis. Mugabe blames the problems on the white farmers, but the people of Zimbabwe know the truth.

Most of the white farmers, as well as black commercial farmers, have been driven out of the county due to increased violence. According to the Vice President, “whites are not human beings.” But their “role was regarded as crucial to the economic welfare of Zimbabwe They accounted for three-quarters of the output of the agricultural industry....They grew 90 percent of marketed maize, the main staple; 90 percent of cotton, the main industrial crop; and virtually all tobacco and other export crops, including wheat, coffee, tea, and sugar, accounting in all for one-third of total exports” (Mugabe, 111). A country once known as the “breadbasket of Africa” is now starving and totally dependent on foreign aid to survive.

Zimbabwe's children now.
Zimbabwe in better times--1984.

The forced exodus of the farmers has caused the economy of Zimbabwe to all but collapse. Inflation rose to an unbelievable 231 million percent—the world’s highest—before the Zimbabwe dollar was scrapped in favor of the US dollar. Inflation has now decreased 3% since the implementation of the US dollar as the main currency.

Deaths and Birthdays...

Local schools have shut down due to lack of funds to pay teachers. And, more critically, the two main hospitals have also shut down due to staff refusing to work without medicine and supplies. Further, there is very little clean water available to the masses. This has led to one of the worst Cholera outbreaks the world has seen. Most recent data (March 23, 2009) show 92,432 cases of cholera reported, and 4,072 deaths. This adds to the already widespread HIV/AIDS pandemic that has ravaged Africa the past several years. The average life expectancy for a typical Zimbabwean is only 44 years. Mugabe just recently celebrated his 85th birthday. It is clear that, in Zimbabwe, the “chefs,” or ruling elite, live in the lap of luxury while the “povos,” or the masses they rule, live in complete destitution.

Murambatsvina

Also, today, the land redistribution program continues. Zimbabweans are being thrust from their homes and forced to live in the bush. Mugabe feared a peasant uprising. So he used the pretext that the slums and shantytowns in Zimbabwe were havens for criminals. Mugabe ordered armed police and youth militias to evict their inhabitants and raize them to the ground. The campaign was called murambatsvina, a Shona word meaning, “Drive out the rubbish.” Using bulldozers and sledgehammers, police squads obliterated one community after another. In Hatcliffe Extension, a shantytown of 30,000 residents on the northern outskirts of Harare, nothing was left but rubble; among the buildings destroyed were a Catholic refuge for AIDS orphans, a secondary school, a World-Bank funded public lavatory, and two mosques. His ministers insisted that people had been moved ‘to an appropriate place.’ The reality, however, was that thousands of destitute families were dumped in ‘transit’ camps on farms or dispersed into rural areas. The UN has called this a “humanitarian crisis of immense proportions.”

PORTA FARM BEFORE--Population 6-10,000

PORTA FARM AFTER--Population 0

Amnesty International has said, “These satellite images are irrefutable evidence — if further evidence is even needed — that the Zimbabwean government has obliterated entire communities — completely erased them from the map, as if they never existed,” said Kolawole Olaniyan, Director of Amnesty International’s Africa programme.

Unity Government in Zimbabwe?

Most recently, Zimbabwe has declared a “Unity Government” between members of Zanu-PF and the MDC. This government was formed on February 14, 2009. This comes after the first run of 2008 elections found Morgan Tsvangirai receiving more votes than Mugabe, but neither one receiving the “majority vote.” In the second round, Mugabe decisively “won” in the polls, but these results were severely flawed and internationally condemned.

The New Government has promised, in a power-sharing agreement signed September 15, 2008 that they will, among other things, be:

DEDICATING ourselves to putting an end to the polarisation, divisions, conflict and intolerance that has characterised Zimbabwean politics and society in recent times.

COMMITTING ourselves to putting our people and our country first by arresting the fall in living standards and reversing the decline of our economy. We will give priority to the restoration of economic stability and growth in Zimbabwe. The Government will lead the process of developing and implementing an economic recovery strategy and plan. To that end, the parties are committed to working together on a full and comprehensive economic programme to resuscitate Zimbabwe’s economy, which will urgently address the issues of production, food security, poverty and unemployment and the challenges of high inflation, interest rates and the exchange rate. And we will create conditions to ensure that the 2008/2009 agricultural season is productive.

RESPECTING the rights of all Zimbabweans regardless of political affiliation to benefit from and participate in all national programmes and events freely without hindrance.

DETERMINED to build a society free of violence, fear, intimidation, hatred, patronage, corruption and founded on justice, fairness, openness, transparency, dignity and equality.

FURTHER RECOGNIZING the need to ensure that all land is used productively in the interests of all the people of Zimbabwe. And to ensure that all Zimbabweans who are eligible to be allocated land and who apply for it shall be considered for allocation of land irrespective of race, gender, religion, ethnicity or political affiliation;

FORMULATING policies and putting measures in place to attract the return and repatriation of all Zimbabweans in the Diaspora and in particular will work towards the return of all skilled personnel.

GURANTEEING, in times of need, every Zimbabwean regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, political affiliation and religion is entitled to request and receive humanitarian and food assistance from the State.

Not There Yet...

But even in these positive moves, there is an air of caution surrounding the new government. In September 2008, when the agreement was first signed, Mugabe called upon his party to revive itself so that it could achieve a smashing electoral victory and he would never again have to suffer the "humiliation" of working with Tsvangirai.

In addition, in a report published April 9, 2009 by Celia W. Dugger, President Robert Mugabe's top lieutenants are trying to force the political opposition into granting them amnesty for their past crimes by abducting, detaining and torturing opposition officials and activists, according to senior members of Mr. Mugabe's party.

Mr. Mugabe's generals and politicians have organized campaigns of terror for decades to keep him and his party in power. But now that the opposition has a place in the nation's new government, these strongmen worry that they are suddenly vulnerable to prosecution, especially for crimes committed during last year's election campaign as the world watched. "We wanted to find out if it would be possible to have amnesty dating back to 1980s," the official said. "The M.D.C. did not sound very forthcoming." Indeed, the opposition has so far offered no such assurances. "I'd rather rot in hell than agree to anything like that," said Roy Bennett, the opposition's third-highest ranking official. He was recently released on bail after being held for almost a month on terrorism charges based on testimony from a man whose doctor and lawyer say was tortured and forced into giving a false confession.

Last year, close to 200 people were killed, mostly before the June presidential runoff between Mr. Mugabe and the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, and thousands were tortured in state-sponsored attacks, but so far no one has been prosecuted, according to a State Department human rights report released in February.

Last year, as it did in the 1980s, Mr. Mugabe's loyalists cut off food aid to hungry areas, blocked access to foreign journalists, sent party youth brigades to terrorize the countryside, charged their rivals with treason and used abduction, torture, arson and killings to silence critics.

Tensions rose after Mr. Tsvangirai's wife, Susan, was killed and he was injured in a March 6 car crash that many of his supporters believe was an assassination attempt. Though Mr. Tsvangirai has called it an accident, his party is conducting its own investigation.

For days afterward, thousands of mourners gathered at the Tsvangirais' home in Harare. In the glow of lights strung across the yard, to the driving beat of drums, party workers swirled in circles, stamping their feet and chanting, "Robert Mugabe killed Susan Tsvangirai," and "Tsvangirai beware! ZANU-PF will finish all M.D.C."

Their fear was as palpable as their rage. Approached for interviews, their eyes darted around as they searched for ruling party spies and begged not to be quoted by name. "They will kill us," one woman said. "They are everywhere."

Furthermore, on April 8, Robert Mugabe once again moved to condone the fresh wave of farm attacks across the country, saying the land reform will continue. Mugabe's comments meanwhile have once again shown a clear divide in the so-called 'unity' government, with the MDC on Thursday calling for an end to the attacks. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has previously condemned the land invasions and warned that the perpetrators of the attacks would be arrested. But there has been no further action, mostly due to the fact that police officials and magistrates have been instructed by the Attorney General to support the land offensive. The MDC on Thursday said the invasions "are a threat to the rule of law, to decency, to hope and to economic recovery."