Could war veterans threat to oust Mnangagwa give rise to a new Zimbabwe?

The threat by War Veterans to oust Emmerson Mnangagwa on behalf of the long suffering Zimbabweans follows the 2017 coup modus operandi which was based on abusing people’s trust and goodwill to topple Robert Mugabe and imposing Mnangagwa on the people.

As soon as Mugabe was dislodged, the coup plotters boasted that his removal was an internal ZANU PF issue which had nothing to do with the people.

This recent history of abuse of people’s trust and goodwill requires Zimbabweans to take great caution before deciding whether or not to participate in what seems to be a ZANU PF factional battle.

In my view, they can mitigate public mistrust by incorporating the political ideas on the future of Zimbabwe as espoused by the following three Zimbabwean Scholars, Dr Ibbo Mandaza, Dr Siphosami Malunga and Dr Mike Chipere.

Their respective proposals will be discussed in greater detail in the concluding part of this article.

War veterans and various activists bravely came out in the open calling for the removal of Mnangagwa from power.

The leading protagonists include Clive Malunga an ex-combatant and singer, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) War veterans Association and most prominently, Blessed Runesu Geza a war veteran and ZANU PF central committee member, and Godfrey Tsenengamu a former ZANU PF Youth League Political Commissar.

Their grievances include a strong suspicion that Mnangagwa is making clandestine attempts to extend his term of office to 2030, mismanagement of the economy, nepotism, tribalism, corruption, violence against his perceived political opponents, theft of mineral resources and several others.

Undoubtedly, these grievances resonate with many Zimbabweans who are fearful of openly expressing their discontent.

The War Veterans gave Mnangagwa an ultimatum to resign voluntarily and if he doesn’t do so, they promised to give Zimbabweans a “signal” to kick off his forced removal.

In their respective press conferences, Geza and Tsenengamu do not say much about what they have to offer after their planned ouster of Mnangagwa.

Although they don’t dwell much on the deputy president General Chiwenga, upon analysis it is clear that he is their main consideration as a possible replacement of Emmerson Mnangagwa.

In addition to that, Geza made an appeal to opposition parties and exiled members of the G40, specifically Saviour Kasukuwere, Walter Mzembi and Jonathan Moyo to come back home.

Basically they are offering Zimbabweans leaderless ZANU PF factions and a fractured and equally leaderless opposition that doesn’t have an ideological anchor as a replacement of Mnangagwa.

Surely, this glaring leadership and political vacuum would lead to a level of chaos that’s not worth the effort to oust Mnangagwa.

Professor Ibbo Mandaza proposes the formation of an Eminent Persons Group which will be tasked with the establishment of a transitional government comprised of political parties and major citizens groups, civil society, churches, labour and women’s groups.

In pursuit of this idea, he petitioned SADC (Organ on Politics, Defence and Security). At the time of writing this article, his petition titled “A call for Political Settlement in Zimbabwe” had attracted less than 40 000 signatures out of a population of close to 16 million.

His proposal is problematic on many fronts. In its current form it will lead to another Lancaster House type agreement, an elite-pact which deprived Zimbabweans of meaningful freedom but shunted us from a white European led colonialism to its variant, fronted by fellow blacks.

In his proposal, ordinary Zimbabweans are a sideshow because none of the members of the Eminent Persons Group fully represent the people of Zimbabwe.

For example, Zimbabwean churches have successfully turned God into an instrument of profit, feeding off people’s poverty and destitution right in front of the hapless church regulatory bodies.

Most Zimbabwe based civil society groups are funded by western donor entities and tend to pursue their funders agendas.

The “eminent persons” whom he accords a central role in the formation of a transitional government are the very same elites who sat by while Zimbabwe became what it is today.

In his paper titled “How to fix Zimbabwe’s broken Politics” Dr Siphosami Malunga proposes a Temporary Power Sharing arrangement which incorporates ZANU PF even where it loses power. In his view its inclusion would alleviate the incumbents fear of prosecution and retribution.

Although Malunga rightly acknowledges ZANU PF’s inability to reform, he goes on to propose a raft of institutional reforms that would need to be implemented under the temporary power sharing arrangement but as Professor Jonathan Moyo has repeatedly said, ZANU PF will not reform itself out of power.

His position on this is supported by various historical episodes which include the 1987 Unity Accord and most recently the Government of National Unity (GNU).

His suggestions inadvertently skirted around the issue of ZANU PF political violence, genocide and primitive accumulation.

It does so by not demonstrating how victims of violence and misrule would get justice from a transitional government headed by the perpetrators of the heinous crimes mentioned above.

As an Anthropologist, my own approach is bottom-up or centred on common people. I argued in various papers that the future of Zimbabwe must be based on an ideological grounding and not personalities.

I proposed sharing and redistribution as a central ideology, it is encapsulated in the Zimbabwe people’s Charter, composed of twenty pragmatic demands aimed at reclaiming a rightful inheritance, money, wealth, power and humanity stolen by those who colonised Zimbabwe, and by those who claim to have liberated Zimbabwe and its people from colonial rule.

1. All Zimbabwe army personnel above the age of 50 years must be retired with immediate effect and not replaced until the size of the army is 50% of what it was in November 2017.
2. All A2 farm owners must be residents at their farms and must not be in full-time employment elsewhere.
3. The country must debate and set A2 farm sizes to about 150 arable hectares in regions one to three, the first 150ha surrounding the farmhouse must be offered to the owner before the land redistribution.
4. All A2 farms that have not been used to full capacity in the past 10 years must be immediately reallocated but with preference given to people with traceable previous commercial farming experience regardless of their race.
5. Municipal land exceeding 20ha (owned by individuals or registered companies that employ less than 100 permanent staff) must be forfeited to the city council.
6. 99% annual taxation must be charged on the market value of all valuable domestic movable and immovable property that exceeds four municipal houses and four cars.
7. Monthly bedroom tax must be charged on all house rooms exceeding 15 unless the property is registered and operating as a business with auditable tax returns.
8. All beneficiaries of the war victim’s compensation fund must be reassessed by an independent organisation. Funds inappropriately disbursed must be repaid in US dollars or equivalent in both movable and immovable property.
9. All property lost through the indigenisation policies or other means other than a fair market exchange must be returned to its original owners by those who either stole it or benefited by other means.
10. 99% income tax must be charged on a fraction of salaries or wages that exceed $60 000 a year backdated to 2009. $60 000 is 10 times more than the amount required to support a family of five.
11. Constitutional amendment must follow constitutional enactment procedures.
12. All (past and present) donations or payments made to churches, faith and traditional healers must be refundable when demanded by the donor/payer at any time.
13. Compulsory employment of all skilled and qualified disabled people by all Zimbabwe stock exchange listed companies in proportion to their market capitalisation.
14. Multiple directorships of publicly listed companies and other corporations with an annual turnover that exceeds $1-million must be banned.
15. Traditional leadership — chiefs and headmen — must be subject to elections every 10 years.
16. All university degrees awarded by unregistered foreign and local universities and honorary degrees awarded by Zimbabwean universities after 2000 must be respectively invalidated and withdrawn.
17. The Chihambakwe commission Gukurahundi report and the Entumbane report written by Justice Enoch Dumbutshena must be publicised to allow victims to decide on appropriate reparation.
18. A conditional grant must be paid to people over the age of 65; orphans, unemployed disabled and all inhabitants of region five regardless of citizenship five years after the 1923 general elections.
19. Zimbabwe insurance companies must be compelled to comply with the Justice Smith commission, which established that they owe pensioners $4-billion and which they have refused to pay out.
20. Displaced Zimbabweans in the diaspora must be allowed to vote

I think it was imprudent of Job Sikhala, an opposition politician to profess that “we are ready for a signal from war veterans. We fully support any progressive minds that have the people’s interests at large”.

War Veterans and their supporters in and outside ZANU PF should not manipulate the people of Zimbabwe to participate in their factional succession battles, and then reward them with castles in the sky as they did in 2017.

The three ideas discussed in this article are not perfect, but would serve as a good example of what meaningful change capable of mobilising the people would look like.