Michael Hartnack in Harare

Obsession with security leads to envoy being held

AN ineffectual attack was made on one of President Robert Mugabe’s many residences, Zimbabwe House, shortly after 1980 independence, when the semblance of unity between his Zanu-PF party and Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu broke down for seven years. In Mugabe’s absence, a lone gunman fired a few shots at the outer walls.

The only serious threat to his life since then was an attempt by one of his catering staff to put powdered glass in his cereal, so he told us.

Nonetheless, an arterial road, Chancellor Avenue (between Zimbabwe House and another official residence, State House) was sealed off from dusk to dawn, with fatal results for four motorists who crashed into the barriers, or were shot by guards.

A 2km distant hilltop in the National Botanical Gardens was declared out of bounds to the general public because, presumably, it would make a good mortar launch point. A few signs were erected, and illiterate notices were scrawled on rocks “Save your life do not come up here”, but it was not fenced off.

There have been ugly incidents with people who let their dogs run off-lead, and tried to retrieve them. The Presidential Guard seem to love any excuse to stick bayonets at the throats of unarmed civilians.

Monday, October 10 was the Columbus Day national holiday in the US and with his embassy closed, ambassador Christopher Dell went for an afternoon stroll in the gardens. Diplomats say a warning was shouted to Dell by two soldiers near the “prohibited area ”, which he had inadvertently approached, but as he was walking away a third soldier called him back and “created a scene”.

The ambassador appears to have been alone, but readers may guess he had “high-tech” means of communicating an alert to his driver, waiting nearby, or to US embassy security, even if he was forbidden, initially, to make a cellphone call.

It took 90 minutes for Zimbabwe’s Foreign Affairs Ministry to get Dell released. That night he received an apologetic call from the chief of protocol and the following day one from the permanent secretary.

Both apologies were accepted, and Dell regarded the matter as closed until Thursday when a protest letter was delivered to the embassy. Mugabe’s chief press spokesman, George Charamba, told state radio Dell deliberately engineered the episode to provoke a “diplomatic standoff” between Washington and Harare.

Charamba said that, in the US, Dell would have been shot. He owed his life to the Zimbabwe National Army’s “restraint” and “professionalism”.

The proliferation of “bodyguards”, who believe themselves above the law, has been one of the saddest features of African nationalist politics here over the past 50 years. Every prominent personality seemed to feel their number and nastiness a measure of his importance.

Mugabe’s predecessor, Zimbabwe-Rhodesian prime minister Bishop Abel Muzorewa, had party “heavies” who regularly threatened journalists for asking nasty questions.

Rival African nationalist leader James Chikerema (a close relative of Mugabe but briefly an ally of Muzorewa) in 1979 pulled out a handgun to menace his critics.

The late Joshua Nkomo’s overbearing, blustering manner and tactics made him many enemies in the African nationalist movement, seriously damaging his cause. Herbert Chitepo, murdered in Lusaka in 1974, had opponents ruthlessly eliminated, so even the most admiring biographies now admit.

PLIGHT NO BETTER

It is, therefore, hard to believe that had any of them obtained the hold on the country Mugabe did at 1980 independence, our plight would have been any better today either as regards individual liberty or the economy. The two are intimately linked.

Much graver long-term issues are at stake in the row that rocked the MDC last week than whether or not it should contest senate elections scheduled for November 26.

After six hours of intense but amicable discussions, the MDC’s 66-member national council took a secret ballot which decided 33-31 to contest, with two spoiled papers which were in the “yes” column (one had an asterisk instead of a cross).

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai stormed out, calling a press conference and declaring that the MDC had decided contesting the 50 seats would be “a farce, under present conditions”. He claimed to have a “casting vote” by which he had resolved the matter.

One MDC leader commented to me: “That is exactly how Mugabe would have behaved.”

It is also, alas, how Muzorewa, Chikerema, Chitepo and Nkomo would have, too. That is one among many reasons why we had 50 years of bloodshed.

Ian Smith, ironically, went to the other extreme and was far too nervous of his Rhodesian Front executive. Smith, who had only to appear at a window for white Rhodesians to gather and start cheering, under-played his hand until it was too late.

He under-estimated his ability, particularly at the 1968 RF party congress, to force through comparatively liberal racial measures that would have made feasible an early resolution of the 1960-1980 independence dispute with Britain.

---