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CURRENT EVENTS ARTICLES
Zimbabwe
N.Y.
Times April
27, 2008
How to Show a Dictator the
Door
By
GRAHAM
BOWLEY
ZIMBABWE’S
political crisis lurched on last week as President Robert
Mugabe, the strongman who has ruled the California-size country in
southern Africa
for the past 28 years, refused to release the results of the March 29
elections. In old-fashioned autocratic style, the government’s police began to
round up opposition supporters.
The
world is losing patience, but Mr. Mugabe is only the latest example of
dictators in Africa
and elsewhere — some more bloodthirsty than others — who have overstayed their
welcome, and whom the West have tried to winkle out of power.
What
lessons can be learned from past attempts to oust seemingly immovable
oppressors? Do the lessons apply in the case of Zimbabwe?
What are the options for dealing with Mr. Mugabe?
PAY
OFF AND EXILE
This
strategy has worked, sort of, before.
In
1997, President Mobutu
Sese Seko of Zaire,
now Congo,
the very model of an African dictator dirty with corruption as his country
collapsed around him, was promised safe passage by his former ally, the United
States, and
flew to Morocco.
(He died of prostate cancer in exile soon after.)
In
July 2003, leaders of the African
Union bribed Charles
Taylor — a murderous warlord with folllowers who would hack off the hands
or feet of civilians — to leave Liberia for an early retirement in Nigeria. In
similar fashion, the United
States got
Ferdinand Marcos to quit the Philippines
by allowing him refuge in a Hawaiian villa.
Gov.
Bill
Richardson of New Mexico, who as ambassador to the United
Nations under President Bill
Clinton helped ease Mr. Mobuto from Zaire, said he believed the same
strategy could be used with Mr. Mugabe.
“Maybe
if he is offered safe passage we will rid ourselves of this despot,” he said.
Yet
Congo
and Liberia
are hardly good examples. Congo
has tipped further into chaos since Mr. Mobuto left. And, despite promises, Nigeria
returned Mr. Taylor to Liberia,
which handed him over to an international tribunal to face charges of war
crimes in Sierra
Leone.
That sequence of events may make autocrats like Mr. Mugabe think twice before
they head for the airport.
SANCTIONS
AND ISOLATION
A
popular response to noxious regimes (think Castro or early Saddam). But they
only work if the sanctions hurt.
“The
greater the ties to the West, the greater the degree to which the elite is
educated in the West and has career prospects in the West, then the greater
the likelihood the coalition behind a regime will crack,” said Steven
Levitsky, professor of government at Harvard
University, who has studied conditions under which autocracies crumble.
(Another condition is a weak internal security apparatus with little stomach
for a long fight against its people — hardly a description of Mr. Mugabe’s
battle-hardened forces, which came of age in a guerrilla liberation war.)
Unfortunately,
it’s not clear what extra pain sanctions could exact on Zimbabwe,
where 8 out of 10 people are unemployed and the annual inflation rate is more
than 100,000 percent.
MILITARY
INTERVENTION
In
1979, armies from Tanzania
invaded Uganda
and chased out Mr. Amin, a tyrant said to have sanctioned the murder of close
to 300,000.
Yet
regime change is perilous, as the United
States
discovered following its toppling of Saddam
Hussein in Iraq.
In
Uganda,
the man who replaced Idi
Amin — Milton Obote — was arguably worse. Mr. Obote may have murdered more
Ugandans even than his predecessor.
“Intervention
is always very difficult in Africa,” said Michael Holman, former Africa
editor of The Financial Times. “If you don’t have a well-drilled army and
decent civil service to fill the gap that threw up the problem in the first
place then you are going to have a disaster on your hands.”
POPULAR
UPRISING
In
1998, President Suharto
of Indonesia
was forced to end his brutal and corrupt tenure after an economic meltdown,
nationwide rioting and the withdrawal of government and military support. (He
went into internal exile in a modest house in Jakarta,
the capital, until his death earlier this year.)
One
hope among Zimbabwe
watchers is that the moderates in Mr. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party turn against him,
dissent breaks out in the military, or ordinary Zimbabweans finally take to
the street.
Earlier
this year, in the election crisis in Kenya, opposition supporters streamed
from Nairobi’s slums to challenge President Mwai
Kibaki’s declaration of victory in a flawed vote, until he was finally
persuaded to share power with the opposition leader Raila
Odinga.
But
that may be too much to expect from embattled Zimbabweans. “In Zimbabwe,
extreme poverty has bred utter lethargy,” said Michela Wrong, author of “In
the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz,” about Congo,
and who is writing a book about the Kenyan crisis.
Indeed,
a nationwide strike called by Zimbabwe’s
chief opposition party earlier this month fizzled quickly as people went about
their normal routines, and the party’s leader, Morgan
Tsvangirai, isn’t even in the country, suggesting he may not be prepared
to fight or be imprisoned again.
TALK
TO HIM
Wary
of intervening in a continent where some Africans still perceive Mr. Mugabe as
a liberation hero in the struggle against colonialism, the United
States and the
West have largely left the job of negotiating with him to South
Africa, Zimbabwe’s
big neighbor and regional power.
Some
critics think South Africa has not been sufficiently muscular with Mr. Mugabe
but President Thabo
Mbeki says that his “quiet diplomacy” has won results: the elections went
ahead in the first place, and the government agreed to post the outcome of
each count on the outside of local ballot stations, though the government has
withheld the overall results.
Mark
Ashurst, director of the Africa Research Institute in London,
said that South
Africa
also subtly promoted an alternative candidate, Simba Makoni, a breakaway
member of Mr. Mugabe’s party, but that this effort failed after Mr. Makoni won
too few votes.
Gugulethu
Moyo, a Zimbabwean lawyer who works for the International Bar Association in London,
said it was time for the outside world to go beyond hand-wringing and critical
statements. Instead, she said, the United Nations should be sent to scrutinize
the actions of the security forces and monitor any future elections.
One
idea is for Kofi
Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, to be
dispatched to broker an agreement just as he negotiated the Kenyan deal.
Maybe
he could persuade Mr. Mugabe to stay for now but to agree to step down in two
years and hold new elections — a sort of “government of national unity” trial
balloon that was floated by Zimbabwe’s state-run newspaper, The Herald, this
week.
But
will Mr. Mugabe take Mr. Annan’s call? Some think not.
Heidi
Holland, author of “Dinner With Mugabe: The Untold Story of a Freedom Fighter
Who Became a Tyrant,” argues that the only power he will speak to now is
Britain, Zimbabwe’s former colonial master under whose rule he spent half his
life.
Ms.
Holland, who first met Mr. Mugabe in 1975 and interviewed him again last year,
said he was a remote, emotionally immature, dogged, bookish man who is
obsessed with Britain as a kind of parental figure. She said he felt
humiliated because, in his view, Britain
reneged on financial commitments he believed were made at the time of
independence in 1980.
For
her, the way out of this mess may be more psychological.
“Revenge
is a key word for Mugabe,” she says. “He says, I don’t have a quarrel with the United
States,
or the United Nations. He wants Britain
to come to him and say: ‘O.K. We will now talk.’ All he wants is recognition.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________
April
21, 2008
Human Wave Flees Violence in Zimbabwe
By
THE NEW YORK TIMES
ALONG
THE SOUTH
AFRICA-ZIMBABWE
BORDER — Sarah Ngewerume was driven to the river by despair.
She
said she had seen gangs loyal to Zimbabwe’s
longtime president, Robert
Mugabe, beating people — some to death — in the dusty roads of her
village. She said Mugabe loyalists were sweeping the countryside with chunks
of wood in their hands, demanding to see party identification cards and
methodically hunting down opposition supporters.
“It
was terrifying,” said Ms. Ngewerume, a 49-year-old former shopkeeper.
Last
week she waded across the LimpopoRiver,
bribed a man fixing a border fence on the other side and slipped into a nearby
South African farm.
She
was among the latest desperate arrivals in what South Africa’s biggest daily
newspaper is calling “Mugabe’s Tsunami,” a wave of more than 1,000 people
every day who are fleeing Zimbabwe across the Limpopo to escape into South
Africa.
When
a shallow, glassy river and a few coils of razor wire are the only things
separating one of Africa’s
most developed countries from one of its most miserable, the inevitable result
is millions of illegal border jumpers. But South African and Zimbabwean human
rights groups say that the flow of people into South
Africa has
been surging in the three weeks since Zimbabwe’s
disputed election and during the violent crackdown that followed. One
Zimbabwean named Washington, who goes back and forth across the border
ferrying Super Sure cake flour and Blazing Beef potato snacks, said the
government was now using food as a weapon and channeling much of the United
Nations-donated grain to supporters of the ruling party.“As we speak,” he
said, “people are starving.”
He
seemed more defeated than anything else. “People hate the government,” he
said. “But they are too scared to fight it.”
Commercials
are now running on Zimbabwean TV showing grainy images of captives from the
liberation war in the 1970s and reminding citizens not to disobey their
leaders, recent arrivals said.
In
the past, countless Zimbabwean men escaped to South
Africa
to drive cabs or work on construction sites and send money home. But these
days, many of the Zimbabweans fleeing are women and children willing to take
considerable risks to get out for good.
“We
were hoping for change and waiting to see what would happen in the election,”
said Faithi Mano, one of more than a dozen Zimbabweans interviewed after they
had crossed the border last week. “Now, I have decided to quit that place.”
It
does not look as if Mr. Mugabe, an 84-year-old liberation hero who has ruled Zimbabwe
for 28 years, will leave office without a fight. After early election results
from the March 29 vote indicated he was losing to the opposition leader, Morgan
Tsvangirai, the election commission put the brakes on announcing results.
The presidential results still have not been released, and a recount begun
Saturday in 23 Parliament races is now threatening to drag things out further
— the opposition has deemed it “illegal.”
If
there is a runoff between Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai, many fear it could
get even bloodier. Human
Rights Watch issued a report on Saturday saying members of Mr. Mugabe’s
party were running “torture camps” where they took opposition supporters for
nightly beatings.
On
Sunday, the leading opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said
more than 400 supporters had been arrested, 500 attacked, 10 killed and 3,000
families displaced. The party released a detailed, day-by-day chronicle of
violence that listed huts being burned, people getting cracked in the head
with bottles and farms being invaded. The party blamed Mugabe supporters and
sometimes government soldiers.
The
government has denied any wrongdoing and accused opposition leaders of
treason. Mr. Tsvangirai has said it is too dangerous for him to stay in Zimbabwe
and has been spending time in South
Africa.
The
border between South
Africa and Zimbabwe
stretches about 150 miles, and it is headache-hot out here. “Beware of
crocodile” signs shimmer in the sun, the grass is yellow and crisp, and at
night, the trees churn with clouds of heat-crazed insects.
For
the people who make it through, there is a pipeline of sympathy waiting on the
other side. Fellow Zimbabweans living in South
Africa — often
perfect strangers — have taken in border jumpers, giving them a safe house and
a warm cup of porridge, and helping them along their way to Messina,
about 10 miles south, and then onward to the bigger cities of Johannesburg
and Cape
Town.
Joyce
Dube, director of the Southern African Women’s Institute for Migration
Affairs, which tracks the border issue, said the only reason more people were
not crossing was the recently beefed-up security on the South African side.
“It’s getting tougher to get through,” she said.
South
African military helicopters thunder over the Limpopo
and soldiers prowl the border roads, searching car trunks for human cargo.
Crews of men in red jumpsuits drip with sweat as they fix the fences. But it
is a cat-and-mouse game. No sooner have they patched a hole than it is punched
through again.
The
fence runs for miles, a shining metal snake going up and down the tawny hills.
It used to be deadly, electrified by a high-voltage current. That was in the
1980s, when South
Africa and
newly independent Zimbabwe
were practically at war. Back then, many people were going the other way,
fleeing South
Africa’s
repressive apartheid government to escape to Zimbabwe.
At
the time, Zimbabwe
was one of Africa’s
stars. Mr. Mugabe had turned a relatively small, landlocked country into an
economic powerhouse that produced beef, grain and tobacco.
“Bob
Mugabe was my hero,” said a white Zimbabwean farmer who drove into Messina
the other day for supplies. He did not want to give his name because he went
on to criticize Mr. Mugabe’s more recent policies and said he was afraid he
could be evicted from his farm for doing so. “I know it sounds funny, but it’s
true. You have no idea how beautiful Zim was.” Zim is the affectionate
nickname for Zimbabwe.
But
in the late 1990s, Mr. Mugabe felt he needed to deliver on long-promised land
reforms, and Britain,
the former colonial ruler, was stalling on paying for them. Mr. Mugabe then
encouraged blacks to seize white-owned farms. Whites fled, industrialized
agriculture crashed, and today the inflation rate is more than 150,000
percent. Supermarkets often have no food, and 80 percent of the people have no
jobs.
The
Movement for Democratic Change ran on these woes, and in 2002 it nearly won
power, though the elections were marred by violence and intimidation.
This
time there was hope that things would be different. Recent arrivals say that a
few weeks before the vote, the bullying suddenly seemed to let up — perhaps,
some thought, because the ruling party was sure it would win. But when the
first results showed Mr. Mugabe losing badly, the government went silent.
There were some talks about Mr. Mugabe stepping aside. Then the crackdown
began.
Ms.
Ngewerume, the escaped former shopkeeper, said opposition supporters in her
village in central Zimbabwe
became easy targets because they had danced and sung in the streets after
early results were tacked up on polling station doors. When the final results
did not come, they went into hiding. But the thugs found them anyway, she said.
“I
can’t see how Mugabe could win again after all this,” she said.
But,
she added, many opposition supporters probably would not take the chance again
to cross “the old man,” as Mr. Mugabe is often called.
Ms.
Ngewerume was visibly pained just talking politics as she stood under a tree
on a farm near the border. “I just want to go there,” she said, stabbing her
finger vaguely south, in the direction of Johannesburg.
“I’m just struggling to go forward to get something better.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________
N.Y.
Times April
27, 2008
In Zimbabwe
Jail: A Reporter’s Ordeal
By
BARRY
BEARAK
HARARE,
Zimbabwe
— I had never been arrested before and the prospect of prison in Zimbabwe,
one of the poorest, most repressive places on earth, seemed especially
forbidding: the squalor, the teeming cells, the possibility of beatings. But I
told myself what I’d repeatedly taught my two children: Life is a collection
of experiences. You savor the good, you learn from the bad.
I
was being charged with the crime of “committing journalism.” One of my
captors, Detective Inspector Dani Rangwani, described the offense to me as
something despicable, almost hissing the words: “You’ve been gathering,
processing and disseminating the news.”
And
I’d been caught at it red-handed, my notes spread across my desk, my text
messages readable on my cellphone, my stories preserved by Microsoft Word in
an open laptop.
At
one point, 21 policemen and detectives milled about my room at a small lodge
in Harare,
the capital. They knocked against one another as they ambled about, some
kneeling, some on tiptoes, searching for clues in the cabinets and drawers.
Men with rifles guarded the door.
They
immediately found my two United
States
passports, ample evidence of subterfuge. One contained work papers indicating
I was a reporter; the other, the one with my visa, said I had entered the
country as a tourist.
“But
you’re actually a journalist?” I was asked.
“Yes,”
I answered.
“And
you are not accredited in Zimbabwe?”
“No,
I’m not.”
I
had concerns well beyond myself, for certain Zimbabweans had been assisting
me. Messages between us lived on in the phone. Whatever bad times lay ahead
for me, I imagined things would undoubtedly be worse for these others, these
friends.
One
of the cops gripped the phone. “You’re in terrible trouble,” he admonished.
His tone was menacing but there was also an odd curl to his smile that I took
to be an invitation.
“Can
you help me?” I whispered.
His
right thumb was nimbly working the keypad of the phone, but then it dropped to
his side and he used it to massage his forefinger, sign language for the
universal lubricant of the greased palm. In a few minutes, I negotiated safe
passage to the bathroom and left him $100 in my shaving kit.
Then
we stood shoulder to shoulder. “What’s this?” he’d demand accusingly as we
scrolled through the messages. Each time I’d nod yes, he’d hit delete.
The
crowded room was hot. Already, I felt jailed. I needed a breath of air, but
when I moved toward the door, Detective Jasper Musademba, a well-built man in
a jacket and tie, stopped me. He had been the most threatening of the police.
“If you try to go outside...” he said sternly, stopping in midsentence. He
made his hand into a gun and pulled the trigger.
“You’ll
kill me?” I asked.
“Good,”
he remarked wryly. “Then you’ve seen that movie.”
An
Electoral Limbo
I’d
come to Zimbabwe
to cover the March 29 elections, momentous times in a contentious country.
History was taking a gallant turn against long-shot odds. Robert
Mugabe, the enduring political chameleon who’d led the nation since its
liberation from Britain
in 1980, seemed on the cliff edge of defeat.
Day
after day, Zimbabwe
languished in a peculiar limbo. While the government refused to release the
results of the presidential race, totals already had been posted at every
polling station and there were solid reasons to think that Mr. Mugabe, the
84-year-old president, had suffered an unexpected comeuppance.
This
must have come as a shock to the “old man,” as Zimbabweans call him, not only
since the election apparatus was so slanted in his favor but because he
considered himself the father of his people. Knowledgeable sources told me the
rebuke had at first left President Mugabe depressed and ready to concede.
His
power had flourished through methodical cruelty, including the murder of
thousands of people in the dissident stronghold of Matabeleland.
As he and cronies then acquired lavish mansions and enormous bank accounts, he
thrust the nation into a calamitous economic meltdown, the main precipitator
being a misbegotten takeover of productive farms from white landowners.
Mr.
Mugabe, who holds the genuine bona fides of a liberation hero, likes to
present himself as one of freedom’s great champions. Maintaining a veneer of
democracy is important to his image. Civic groups are permitted to meet so
long as their messages fail to reach the masses. Courts can convene so long as
Mr. Mugabe reserves the right to sweep aside inconvenient decisions. Elections
can be held so long as political adversaries survive beatings and jailings and
torture — and the results can be reliably rigged.
On
April 3, the day I was arrested, my means of observing these mechanisms oddly
shifted from a vantage point outside to one within. My own freedom would
depend on those remnant smidgens of civil liberty still granted the citizenry
— and on the many brave people who carry on unbowed against relentless
intimidation.
The
veneer of freedom Mr. Mugabe permits the press is applied with the thinnest of
coats. Though some independent weeklies are allowed to publish, the state
controls the only daily newspaper and television station. Most Western
reporters are routinely denied entry.
I
was new to Africa.
My wife, Celia Dugger, and I arrived in January as The New York Times’s
co-bureau chiefs in Johannesburg.
With elections coming in Zimbabwe,
I soon made two trips to Harare,
each time taking ritualistic precautions for safety. I left my credentials and
laptop at home, entered the country as a tourist and interviewed people only
behind closed doors. Each night, I destroyed my notes after e-mailing their
contents to myself at an Internet cafe. I wrote my articles only upon
returning to Johannesburg.
But
the presidential election presented new complications. Daily articles needed
to be filed. I had to openly work the streets, then go back to a room with a
reliable wireless link to transmit from my laptop. Over time, normally wary
reporters began taking risks that mocked earlier prudence, announcing their
names and affiliations at opposition news conferences.
Necessity
numbed my own caution. My articles required continuous updating for The
Times’s Web site, so there I’d be in downtown Harare,
a backpack slung over my shoulder, dictating quotes from my notebook and
spelling names into the wavering connection of the mobile phone. Early on, I
had asked that my byline be kept from the articles. But other reporters were
less guarded about revealing themselves in print. I eventually followed suit.
I
was staying at York Lodge, a collection of eight cottages spread around a
lovely expanse of shrubs and lawn. At age 58, after 33 years as a reporter,
I’d like to think I have a nose for trouble, alert to danger like some
frontier cavalry scout who tenses up at the sound of a suspicious birdcall.
But
the police had been at the lodge for 45 minutes before I knew a thing. I was
filing another update for the Web site when I left the room for a breather
about 4 p.m. Maria Phiri, a tall, wiry detective in hoop earrings and a red
dress, called out, “Hey you!” I was stunned.
Several
men hurried my way. Their very first question had me reeling.
“Who
are you?”
A
Land of ‘No Law’
Two
reporters were rounded up at York Lodge; two others were warned away before
returning from the field. The other unfortunate was Stephen Bevan, 45, an able
British freelancer who works for The Sunday Telegraph.
We
were taken in a pickup truck to the Harare Central Police Station, a large
colonial-era complex colloquially known as Law and Order. The detectives’
evident glee at our capture was soon tempered by the arrival of a familiar and
implacable foe, Beatrice Mtetwa, the nation’s top human rights lawyer.
She
is a striking woman with rectangular glasses and a neatly trimmed Afro.
“There
is no crime called ‘committing journalism,’ whether it is with accreditation
or without,” she informed us privately in her exaggerated, lawyerly diction.
This was actually news to us — and quite a relief. In fact, the law had been
amended in January. It was now only illegal to falsely claim to be accredited,
and neither Stephen nor I had done that.
But
Ms. Mtetwa also explained the sinister realities of a woebegone place:
“Ultimately, there is no law in Zimbabwe.
Your governments can’t apply pressure; the British and the Americans have
negative influence here. The police will hold you as long as they want.” She
was president of the nation’s law society. The police had beaten her with
truncheons the year before.
Her
colleague, Alec Muchadehama, had recently spent time in the Harare Central
cells that now loomed before us. “This is one of our worst places,” he told us
gravely. “You’ll need to brace yourselves.”
The
human mind is actually good at such things. It doesn’t take much time to think
of greatly admired people who have been wrongly locked up in the jails of the
world. I already knew a dozen civic leaders in Zimbabwe
with horrid tales of time in custody. Some were beaten, most often around
their torsos and the soles of their feet. Some were simply held in the vile
cells.
I
managed to call Celia with a borrowed phone. My wife somehow knows how to all
at once be emotionally distraught and serenely levelheaded. She was already
strategizing about how to free me; at the same time she was getting ready to
assume the newspaper’s Zimbabwe
coverage from Johannesburg.
“Don’t
worry, whatever the cells are like I can handle it,” I told her, attempting a
tough guy’s bravado. I added a reporter’s inside joke. “Really, anything is
better than having to file four stories a day for the Web site.”
Not
long after midnight, Detective Musademba escorted Stephen and me to the jail.
Electricity no longer works in much of the decrepit complex. The hallways were
entirely desolate and silent but for the squeaking of our shoes and
intermittent drips from exposed pipes.
At
such an ominous time, my senses felt eerily deprived, except for smell. With
every step, the odor of the urine-soaked lockup grew a bit stronger.
The
Cell Door Slams Shut
The
uniformed jailers wrote our names in a ledger and asked us to empty our
pockets. I was flush with $4,000 cash, an amount meant to last weeks in a
nation where credit cards were of little use. About $150 of that had been
converted into the ludicrously inflated Zimbabwean currency; crammed in my
pants were bundles of $10 million bills that piled up four inches high.
The
jailers patiently counted the sum before stashing it in a safe. There was
never an attempt at a shakedown. Bribery was more on our minds than theirs.
Stephen doled out $40 for the tenuous privilege of spending our initial hours
on a wooden bench in the admittance area instead of the dreaded cells.
Sleep
was impossible. The bench was hard, the room cold and noisy. Near dawn, one of
the bribed night crew, fearing his supervisors, rousted us from the bench and
hastily herded us upstairs into an unlighted empty cage.
“You
can’t be found wearing your socks,” he warned urgently. “It’s not allowed. You
can’t wear more than one shirt either. Hide these things.”
The
heavy bars then clanged shut; a padlock clicked. We couldn’t really observe
the surroundings until morning, when the first sliver of sunlight pierced the
one narrow window at the ceiling.
The
cell was about 7 feet wide and 15 feet deep. Three bare shelves of rough
concrete extended a body’s length from both of the longer walls. Only the top
slab left enough space for a person to sit upright, albeit with slouched
shoulders. There was a circle of concrete in a corner to be used as a toilet.
Behind it was a faucet. Stephen tried the knob. It did not work.
The
floor was filthy. The odor of human waste infected the air. More bothersome
were the bugs. “Cockroaches the size of skateboards,” I quipped. This was
hyperbole. The insects were mostly tiny and black, others short, white and
wormy. We were soon sharing our clothes with them.
About
7 a.m. the cells were emptied for “the count,” a routine taking of attendance
in a large room farther upstairs. I clumsily hid my socks in my pants and
buttoned one shirt to completely cover the other.
There
were about 150 inmates, many of them staring our way. We were older; we were
the only whites. We joined them on one side of the open room. As names were
called, prisoners were obliged to acknowledge their presence and shift to the
opposite wall. I parroted some of the others, using the Shona word “ndiripo”
when my turn came. The gesture drew some cheers and applause. It seemed an
icebreaker, and before the session was over, we were being tutored in how to
say “mangwanani,” or good morning.
Prison
movies had made me fear predation. But the inmates were instead a forlorn lot,
a fair selection of Harare’s
downtrodden, people who’d once had decent jobs and who’d now been reduced to
scrounging and worse. Two of the more personable ones were car thieves. Only
because their families were starving, they said. Two others, Donald and
Lancelot, were accused of poaching after cutting the hindquarter off a deer
that had been hit by a bus.
We
mingled easily, swapping stories and comparing bug bites. Most were in a worse
fix than we were. None said they’d been beaten; they weren’t political types.
But few had lawyers — and many were jailed without their families knowing.
This had dismal implications. The jail provided prisoners no food. If no one
knew you were there, no one knew to bring you something to eat.
At
breakfast, Stephen and I were allowed downstairs and pointed toward a
well-stuffed wicker bag. The empathetic wife of the British ambassador had
personally overseen preparation of our first meal. Sandwiches of bacon and
eggs were triple-wrapped to hold their warmth. Tea, coffee, cocoa and sugar
were packed in little bags to use with a thermos of hot water. There were
juice boxes, soda cans, chocolate bars, hard candies and breath mints.
Neither
of us had much appetite, but we were enormously grateful. Thwarted as
journalists, we now had renewed purpose.
We
could feed the hungry.
A
Deadline Looms
It
was a Friday, and Fridays held a fateful deadline. If we didn’t get bail, we’d
be locked away all weekend. We were relieved to be sent back to Law and Order,
where we again found Beatrice Mtetwa, our lawyer.
The
night before, I had wanly told her that the case against me seemed hopelessly
open-and-shut. I had written articles, and anyone who Googled my name with “Zimbabwe”
would have all the proof that was needed. She harrumphed at that, insisting
that even a simple database search was beyond the technical expertise of the Harare
police.
I
now realized she might be right. The Criminal Investigations Department had
only a few computers, a shortage of chairs and no functioning toilet.
Detectives who earlier had seemed so competently fearsome now reminded me of
the beleaguered gumshoes on “Barney Miller.”
Detective
Musademba hunt-and-pecked on an antique typewriter, making triplicates with
carbon paper. He’d sometimes shake away his boredom by breaking into song and
pounding out the beat with the palms of his hands.
Detective
Inspector Rangwani, in charge of the investigation, was lamenting his need for
a copy of the updated statutes. “May I use yours?” he asked our lawyer, who
took the opportunity to hector and berate him.
“This
is a police state,” Ms. Mtetwa said brassily. “The law is only applied when it
serves the perpetuation of the state. How does it feel, Inspector Rangwani, to
be used this way by the state?”
The
browbeaten cop looked bedraggled, his head sagging from his neck like a wilted
house plant. He replied meekly, “Madame, I agree with you and I have made a
recommendation just as you have stated to drop the charges.”
Suddenly,
the nightmare seemed to be ending with a yielding snap of the finger. The
inspector forwarded the matter to the attorney general’s office, and the
appropriate official there advised the police to set us free.
But
there was then an odd delay, then an abrupt reversal, the pretense of a
working justice system lost in a maddening flicker. “The law only applies when
it serves the perpetuation of the state,” Ms. Mtetwa repeated.
Two
South African television technicians had been arrested the week before on
similar charges. That morning, a magistrate found them not guilty. Yet instead
of being released, they were rearrested. Someone in the government thought
this a useful time to suppress the zeal of interfering foreign media.
Clemens
Madzingo, the police’s chief superintendent, himself gave us the news. He is a
huge, pit bull of a man. He stood in the doorway with a triumphant grin. New
charges were forthcoming, he said. Proof of our misdeeds would soon be
excavated from files in our confiscated laptops.
“Until
then, you’ll be back in the cells.”
The
Hard-Liners Prevail
Things
had turned badly for us; more important, things were more hapless for Zimbabwe.
The government now bizarrely announced a recount of its unannounced election
results. The hard-liners had apparently steeled Mr. Mugabe to fight on. In a
fine Orwellian touch, they had accused the opposition of cheating. They now
appeared set to finagle an election victory.
Did
our incarceration somehow suit such purposes? That possibility set us into
anxiety overdrive. Our wives, our editors, our embassies: they were all
working hard to get us out. And while these welcome efforts supplied hope,
they also left us vaguely embarrassed. If pressure could be applied on Mr.
Mugabe, it ought to be for Zimbabwe’s
sake, not ours.
Jail,
once so forbidding, now seemed merely dreary and depressing. How would we keep
warm? Was there a way to get clean? When will this end?
I
was fortunate to have Stephen as a comrade. I once observed that while we were
amply accompanied by every sort of insect, the jail lacked rodents. “Why would
rats stay here?” he responded with his wonderful dry wit. “There’s no food.
They’ve left the country the same as everyone else.”
More
than a quarter of Zimbabwe’s
13 million people have fled. The nation’s primary income is the cash sent home
by this diaspora. Soon to follow are many inmates and guards from the jail.
They wanted our phone numbers in Johannesburg
— and pleaded with us not to forget them.
We
had befriended a few jailers, but those who allowed us favors would end their
shift, followed by jailers more stern, some wielding lengths of rubber hose.
Our socks went on, our socks came off. Sometimes we were left alone; sometimes
we were stuffed in with many others. I delivered a parental lecture to a young
cellmate who’d cut a man with a beer bottle in a bar fight.
We
continued to share our food. But even this enjoyable gesture of charity could
trigger regret. During the two daily “counts,” we’d try to note who seemed
hungriest: The acrobat? The peddler? The guy in the “69” T-shirt?
At
meals, we were permitted to select only a few inmates to join us downstairs. A
short, emaciated man in a red jersey had meekly asked to be included. “Stay
close to me when they come for us,” I told him. But then I forgot.
“I
was near you,” he later muttered disconsolately, “right near you.”
A
Blanket, Then a Fall
Sleep
escaped me. The concrete was too hard, my body too bony. I had never so craved
a pad and blanket. The insects were most annoying at night. In my wakefulness,
I’d pull my sleeves over my hands but then the stretched fabric exposed my
midriff.
One
time, when able to wander the bleak corridors, I found what once had been a
bathroom, with the remnants of sinks and showers. In one corner was a heap of
blankets, stiff and moldy and fetid. I was tempted to take one but they were
simply too disgusting. I wasn’t yet that cold or tired.
Still,
I had a fixation. Surely, a blanket was obtainable. We hadn’t paid any bribes
since that first night but we decided to raise the subject of contraband
blankets with a favorite jailer. “Yes, this can be organized,” he agreed. The
next day was Sunday; stores would be closed. He’d bring them from home.
That
night, we awaited his footsteps. The jail possessed no flashlights. The guard
used the tentative glow from a cellphone to find the right key. “I’m sorry but
one blanket is very thin,” he quietly apologized. Stephen and I vied in
self-sacrifice for the lesser covering, and I won with quicker hands.
The
top shelf in the cell was seven feet off the ground. I climbed up and smoothed
the flimsy material over the concrete, but when I stepped down I lost my
balance and grabbed a swatch of fabric instead of the sturdy ledge. I tumbled
sideways, my hand grasping at empty air. I bounced off one concrete slab on
the opposite side and then fell flat on my back.
That
was how I spent my fourth — and final — night in the Harare
cells, in pain, slapping at bugs, still unable to sleep.
The
Bail Hearing
Detective
Musademba collected us in the morning for a bail hearing. The transport was an
old pickup whose engine required a rolling start. He recruited Stephen to help
push. I was excused because of my backache.
The
courthouse is called Rotten Row, after a nearby street. It’s a circular
five-story structure built around four elaborate saucers that once fed into
one another as a fountain. With the nation insolvent, there’s no money to
maintain either ornamentations or courtrooms. Floors are filthy. Microphone
stands have no mikes. The building’s clocks are each stymied at 7:10.
Our
hearing was pro forma; the magistrate released us each on bail of 300 million
Zimbabwean dollars, about $7, and the police were ordered to surrender our
seized passports into the custody of the bailiffs.
The
real showdown only came later, a hearing when Beatrice Mtetwa would argue we
never should have been arrested at all. I sat fretfully in the “dock,” the
enclosed rectangle reserved for the accused. Across the room in the witness
box stood Superintendent Madzingo, the brawny police chief who’d pledged to
scavenge through our incriminating laptops. What did he have?
Nothing,
it turned out. He testified that “critical new evidence” had caused the
attorney general’s office to reverse its initial decision to let us go, a
hasty fiction that was not even loitering in the rough vicinity of the truth.
When
asked to provide documentation, he tendered the printout of an article scooped
off my desk at York Lodge, something I’d brought to Harare
as background for a possible feature article about a political candidate.
Ms.
Mtetwa proceeded to hang up Mr. Madzingo like a side of beef.
“Who
is the author of that article?” she asked.
The
article wasn’t mine. It had been written by one of the all-time-greats of The
New York Times, Anthony Lewis.
“Can
you tell us the date of that article?”
It
was published in 1989.
Magistrate
Gloria Takundwa first covered her giggles with fingers, then with the loose
sleeve of her black robe.
Freedom,
and Uncertainty
Beatrice
Mtetwa said it was fortunate the case was before a magistrate. Most were
independent, many were courageous. They were leftover gloss in Mr. Mugabe’s
veneer of freedom. Justice was seldom found in higher courts.
The
magistrate announced her decision on April 16. While we had expected it to go
our way, our minds were infused with our lawyer’s admonition: the law only
matters when it serves the interest of the state. We suspected that the
government intended to rearrest us, which turns out to be true.
But
whatever the intentions, we were better prepared. We fled quickly from Rotten
Row, our car pirouetting through the streets until we were sure we weren’t
followed. We waited in the parking lot of a pork production plant until word
came that our passports had been recovered.
Then,
by prearrangement, we rendezvoused with a driver in a fully gassed car,
avoiding the country’s airports and heading northwest through the winding
roads of the MatuzviadonhaMountains,
toward the ZambeziRiver
and a small border crossing into Zambia.
I
had left the cells with a case of scabies, an infestation of microscopic mites
that swelled my hands and wrists to nearly twice their size. But I am better
now, back in Johannesburg,
with Celia, with our sons, Max, 17, and Sam, 12.
In
the meantime, Zimbabwe
is beset with paroxysms of violence. Thuggery, torture and murder are familiar
implements in Robert Mugabe’s tool kit. Political opponents are being
brutalized, as are everyday people whose voting defied him. The presidential
election results are still unannounced.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
N.Y.
Times
April
29, 2008
Zimbabwe
Opposition Reunites
By
BARRY
BEARAK
JOHANNESBURG
— With many of their activists under violent attack and hundreds of their
supporters in jail, the leaders of Zimbabwe’s
divided opposition formally announced Monday that the two groups had reunited,
claiming control of Parliament for the first time in the nation’s history and
demanding that President Robert
Mugabe concede the recent election.
The
leaders of the two factions, Morgan
Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, also called for the United
Nations to send a special envoy to Zimbabwe in an effort to stop what Mr.
Tsvangirai called state-supported attacks that are “tantamount to crimes
against humanity.”
The
joint declaration ends two years of public bickering between competing
factions of the Movement for Democratic Change, but it brings no further
clarity to the political muddle in Zimbabwe,
a nation that held elections on March 29 and still has no official
presidential results.
“Mr.
Robert Mugabe must accept that in a parliamentary democracy, the majority
rules,” insisted Mr. Tsvangirai, appearing at a small commuter airp | 
