The Cleansing Of Zimbabwe

This column was written by Roger Bate.

Mugabe's thugs have become more visible in recent weeks, but they shy away from any naked show of force, especially in daylight. This convoy was traveling under a pathetically transparent disguise. According to independent reports confirmed by Martin, the troop carriers were masquerading as U.N. peacekeepers, with 'UN' letters on the doors of their trucks. But the soldiers carrying heavy weapons in the back were wearing Zimbabwean army uniforms, and they were dispatched to enforce Mugabe's new policy of pushing urban slum-dwellers back to the rural parts from which they come.

Mugabe has lately been looking East for trade and financial support, but also for pointers on oppressing his people, as he follows the lead of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, which gutted towns to make for a more pliant populace. After Mugabe handed over white-owned farms to his cronies who didn't know how to farm, a million jobs were lost and the workers and their families migrated to cities and towns. There are now more people in the towns than in the countryside. This aggregation in urban centers has helped these rural people become more politically aware, and diminished the power held over them by the chiefs, headmen, and political councils -- all people Mugabe has bought off.

The current attacks on urban centers are part of a corrective strategy to drive perhaps two million people back onto the land. Once there, they will be cut off from the rest of the country and at the mercy of government-controlled food supplies. It is more difficult to starve people in urban areas where the outside world might catch wind of what's going on. As one displaced farmer puts it: "The people don't want to go back to the rural areas because they are afraid and also they know the hardships they will face. In summer, it would be easier for people -- even those who have lost the skills -- to live off the land from berries and wild mushrooms -- but it's the height of winter now and there is nothing."

But controlling this population becomes easier all the time, as millions have fled over the past few years, over 3,000 people die every week of AIDS, and most college graduates, many of whom are activists, leave the country. The result has been an astonishing decline in the population, which is down to around 10 million from over 13 million a few years back. Not that the government minds. In August 2002, Didymus Mutasa, today the head of the secret police, said: "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle."

For those who remain in Zimbabwe, a Cambodian experiment awaits. Thousands of people made homeless in the government's clean-up campaign are being herded into reeducation camps and told they can have a housing plot if they swear allegiance to the party of President Robert Mugabe. Those who refuse are loaded onto trucks and dumped in remote rural areas where food is scarce. Human rights workers say they are deliberately being left to die in an effort by the Mugabe regime to exterminate opponents.

"This is social cleansing to try to eradicate the opposition," says Trudy Stevenson, an opposition MP whose Harare North constituency includes Hatcliffe, where the homes of 30,000 people have been demolished along with an orphanage for children whose parents have died of AIDS. "It's horrific. They are dumping people in rural areas to get rid of troublesome elements to make sure they can't challenge the regime," she adds.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, called a nationwide two-day strike in early June to protest the destruction of 30,000 dwellings and the arrests of nearly as many people. The strike was not a huge success, because people are too poor to miss an opportunity to trade, but anger is rising among many who have literally nothing to lose -- no homes, no jobs, and no food. A senior official in the Bulawayo mayor's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, says the situation has reached the point where a single event or gathering could lead to serious clashes. "They [the government] have deliberately provoked the situation, because they want to have an excuse to declare a state of emergency, get rid of the rules, and deploy the arms they spent millions buying."

In the townships outside Bulawayo, the atmosphere is tense. Police have set up roadblocks to close exit routes. Anyone with a camera, or gathering in a group of three or more persons, faces arrest. On every street corner, plainclothes police and soldiers are on the lookout for any sign of opposition activity.

At the flea market in Emgwamin township, locals recently made a stand, defying the police by setting up stalls only days after hawkers were chased away by baton-wielding police, their produce stolen by the state. On the walls nearby, anti-Mugabe graffiti declared what most were too scared to say: "We need fuel, maize and sugar, let's fight now. Mugabe must go."

But Mugabe's grip on the country is tightening. With arms shipments from China, including heavy assault rifles, military vehicles, riot equipment, and tear gas, Mugabe isn't going anywhere. One opposition figure sounded a note of caution for those considering an uprising. "Remember these towns were built by white colonialists who were expecting insurrection and planned very effectively to counter it," she told a local newspaper. Perhaps the saddest part of the arms sales to Mugabe is that South Africa, which suffered under the kind of apartheid that Mugabe is inflicting upon his opponents, is supplying important spare parts for helicopters that will be used to suppress any significant local uprising.

When will Mugabe's neighbors, as well as the United States and the United Kingdom, intervene? By the end of this year, Mugabe may be well on his way to halving his population.

Roger Bate is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
By Roger Bate
By Roger Bate
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