zimbabwe
phillip harvey

“I, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, do swear that I will truly serve in the office of president, so help me God,”
--Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe

Operation Mavhoterapapi most likely went into effect before the last Zimbabwean vote had been counted. Morgan Tsvangirai had received 100,000 more votes than sitting President and international pariah Robert Mugabe and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Tsvangirai’s opposition party, had won a majority of Parliament seats from Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party. For the first time in the 28 years since he defeated the hated Ian Smith and ended ___ years of British colonial rule, Robert Mugabe could envision a time when he wouldn’t be in power. The “Old Man,” as Zimbabweans often call him in the quiet voice, wouldn’t be the “top dog,” the “big enchilada,” the “numero uno.” For the first time in the span of many adult lives, there loomed a day when Robert Mugabe would not be the President of Zimbabwe.

But, of course, the Old Man wasn’t having that, so Operation Mayhoterapapi, or “Who Did You Vote For” in its English translation, went into full effect. Tsvangirai won 48% of the vote to Mugabe’s 43%, the relative closeness of the election mandated that a Run-off contest be held to determine the ultimate victor. The first step in Operation Mayhoterapapi was to delay this run-off election. Election authorities took one month to give the Run-off its official declaration and, once doing so, scheduled it two months into the future. All said three months transpired between the two elections. Delay confirmed.

The second task was to wipe the competition from the public view. Tsvangirai disappeared from mention in the tightly controlled state media. Television networks became ‘All Mugabe, All the time’ as television programming lauding the great Mugabe legacy melded seamlessly into Mugabe for President advertisements. The newspapers were little better. In addition, Tsvangirai’s travel was limited to 1/4 of the nation by government officials thus further isolating his campaign. In the span of weeks, Tsvangirai went from Presidential front runner to missing person. Public view wipe out confirmed.

The third task was to wipe dedicated Tsvangirai supporters from the face of the earth. First came the war veterans that Mugabe had previously employed to run White farmers off the land they had accumulated under colonial rule. The reservist soldiers set up road blocks in the rural areas where the number of MDC supporters had been most concentrated, barring exit or entry. The war veterans than went door to door accessing voter preferences. Mugabe supporters were patted on the head for their clarity. Tsvangirai supporters were beaten, maimed, and burned out of their homes.

Then came the “Green Bomber” brigade, Mugabe’s militia of rural youths. The Green Bombers spread across the north eastern portion of the country like hot flame on dry kindling, burning and looting anything bearing the scent of MDC sympathy in sight. The two groups worked in concert with state police to ratchet up the intimidation and levels of political violence until a host of MDC officials lay dead or in jail, and over 200,000 Zimbabweans were forced from their homes.

On Tuesday, June 24, three days before the scheduled Run-off election, Morgan Tsvangirai officially withdrewhis name from consideration as the President of Zimbabwe. Two days earlier, Tsvangirai had stated his intention to withdraw at a press conference, citing the arresting, displacing, injuring and flat out murdering of members of the MDC as the reasoning. The statement had been tethered from the safe confines of the Dutch Embassy in Harare, the best safe-place he could find. It would be some time before the people of Zimbabwe would even know that where there were once two candidates for the nation's highest office, now there was one. Operation Mavhoterapapi confirmed.

Today, Zimbabwe’s rate of inflation stands at 2,200,000%. This past May, the central bank issued the 500,000,000 Zimbabwe dollar banknote, just enough to buy a tall coffee at Starbucks. Shoppers must hit the stores early in the morning because chances are the price of luxury items such as soap and bread will have increased several times before the sun goes down. The more industrious or exploitive hustle milk in the streets. Zimbabwe, once one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, is now an unequivocal mess.

For his part, Mugabe continues to say that it is the sanctions of former colonizers that have led to his country’s financial misery. The truth is that sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union have come in the form of a travel ban and an assets freeze targeted directly toward Mugabe and other members of the Zanu-PF. Negotiations for a proposed “Government of Unity” between the Zanu-PF and the MDC have begun but many believe that it is pure fantasy that the same authors of Operation Mayhoterapapi are interested in some kind of power share agreement.

No. If anything is to change in Zimbabwe it will have to come from outside pressure exerted by the triumvirate of South Africa, China and Russia— Zimbabwe’s primary trading partners. But as China and Russia’s recent rejection of broader sanctions against Zimbabwe on the United Nations floor demonstrates, it ain’t gonna happen. Even the curious sympathy of George Bush and the anger of British officials still seething over Mugabe’s earlier dispossession of White Zimbabwean farmers amounts to nothing more than wind without rain.

In terms of pure complicity however, a large portion of the blame for Mugabe’s sustained obsolesce lies at the feet of Thabo Mbeki and the government of South Africa. Mbeki’s continued insistence on staying neutral as the Mugabe-induced slow rot continues to eat his neighboring country from within has been negligently irresponsible at best, criminal at worst. Until Mbeki realizes that his old friend, the indefatigable anti-colonialist soldier, has long since been replaced by the Old Man, a despotic power mad monster, he will rightly shoulder the blame for the horrors of Operation Mayhoterapapi and beyond. Zimbabwe is a mess Mr. Mbeki, pleas remove your head from your...