Mugabe’s Fortunes Shift as Land Crisis Widens

The political crisis in this southern African nation has turned history upside down, transforming heroes into villains, sinners into saints.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, once a respected statesman and liberation fighter, has become an international outcast for plunging his country into turmoil and shunning suggestions from Western nations about how to reverse the chaos. Meanwhile, white farmers who prospered from decades of injustice and inequality under former white rule are winning sympathy for the malicious way in which they are being driven from their land.

Mugabe has sanctioned the invasion of hundreds of white-owned farms by black veterans of the country’s 1970s liberation war and other pro-government supporters. He has argued that the squatters are justified in their actions because distribution of land remains grossly distorted in favor of the country’s white minority, which makes up less than 1% of the country’s 12 million people.

The land-grab violence has left at least 10 people dead, among them farmers, farm laborers and members of the political opposition. After a meeting with farm officials Friday, leaders of the war veterans said they will order their followers to refrain from violence but won’t demand that the squatters vacate the land.

The president’s supporters praise Mugabe for what they insist is proof that he cares first and foremost about the country’s black majority, and they commend him for standing his ground against Western imperialists, whom they view as trying to bully an African head of state and undermine his leadership. But political opponents, diplomats and local analysts argue that Mugabe’s recent deeds are the actions of a desperate man--one politically on the rocks but determined to stay in power.

Onetime supporters of the 76-year-old Mugabe, and even opponents, expressed disappointment at the steady decline of a man once viewed as one of Africa’s most promising leaders.

“What we are seeing [today] is an explosion of political incompetence and corruption,” said Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. “People see this as a great betrayal from the liberation of the 1980s. There is disappointment that this old man has allowed his legacy to be destroyed.”

The regret is particularly poignant because Mugabe had gotten off to a good start. After spending 10 years in jail for fighting the white rule of Prime Minister Ian D. Smith’s then-Rhodesia, he defeated rival liberation leaders in 1980 to become prime minister. A seven-year bush war ended in a negotiated settlement with colonial power Britain.

Even his opponents give Mugabe credit for the strides he made in the early 1980s in developing Zimbabwe. A Jesuit-educated guerrilla chief who holds seven university degrees, he introduced free education and health care, built new roads and opened the doors to blacks into the formerly white-only economy.

He also promised reconciliation with former enemies in the hopes of fostering a nonracial society that would set an example for neighboring South Africa, then still under apartheid rule.

“He was a father [figure]. He was a statesman. He was a darling of the international world,” said Margaret Dongo, an independent member of parliament who fought in the liberation struggle alongside Mugabe while still a teenager.

In 1987, Mugabe became president after rewriting the country’s independence constitution, and he consolidated power by crushing an armed rebellion in Zimbabwe’s western Matabeleland province. There was a world outcry over alleged atrocities against civilians, and estimates from members of the clergy and lawyers indicate that as many as 20,000 died before Mugabe signed a unity pact with Joshua Nkomo, leader of the rival Zimbabwe African People’s Union.

The agreement created a virtual one-party state under which white parliamentary representation was abolished and the government was allowed to nominate 20% of the 120 members of parliament. Today, there are only three opposition seats.

“When we created an executive president, we created a monarch . . . a king who alienated himself from the whole society,” opposition leader Tsvangirai said.

A Western diplomat based in the capital, Harare, said the ruling party’s undoing is “a bull-headed determination to find their own way. They will not be dictated to.”

Mugabe has blamed “sabotage” by whites and his political enemies for his country’s poverty and economic demise. But the record shows that he has continued to commit many financial blunders.

The Zimbabwean dollar has crashed. Inflation, interest rates and unemployment are all well above 50%. The budget deficit is 12% of the country’s gross national product. Foreign debt stands at $4 billion. Thousands of export industry workers have lost their jobs, while others have been put on three-day shifts. In recent months, the country has seen gasoline shortages and food riots.

“We are heading to a standstill anyway, without throwing in the land issue,” Zimbabwean economist John Robertson said. “If we carry on the way we are going, we are going to be heading on a self-destruct course.”

Analysts said Mugabe, knowing that he has stumbled and that his popularity is waning, realizes that his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF, party must win still-to-be-scheduled upcoming parliamentary elections in order to maintain its grip on power.

The Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, offers the most legitimate challenge the ruling party has faced since independence. Tsvangirai said the party promises stability, economic revival and an end to rampant corruption. If his party won a majority in parliament, it could also push measures to change the constitution and could call early presidential elections.

With his political survival at stake, Mugabe--whose presidential mandate expires in 2002--has chosen the action of a typical hardened combatant: a fight.

His main ammunition is the land issue--which critics say he has had 20 years to resolve--and race. Analysts said the president was keen to paint the MDC as a white-controlled party and was using the race card to stir up anti-colonialist sentiment.

“This is a scapegoat,” Tsvangirai said, noting that although many whites were supplying financial and logistical support to the MDC, their numbers--just 30,000 voters--are too small to have any significant impact. “People who have lost political legitimacy always use gender, racism, regionalism and tribalism to cover up their mistakes.”

Michael Auret, a white MDC candidate, said whites had “regained their national fervor” and that “their love for the country had taken them into politics.”

But government sympathizers were skeptical about the sincerity of what they view as a newfound concern of whites for the black working class.

“If you look at some of the squalid conditions in which farm workers live, you wonder where the sudden love of their workers comes from,” said Nhlanhla Masuku, president of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce.

Chenjerai “Hitler” Hunzvi, the war veterans’ leader, claimed that farmers were intimidating their field hands into attending MDC rallies by threatening to fire them.

The growing tension and violence could frighten many rural residents into staying away from the polls altogether, allowing ZANU-PF to win a majority in parliament by default.

Some young Zimbabweans, though disappointed with Mugabe’s reign, said they are still torn over which party to support.

At 28, Douglas Dickson has never had a full-time job. He still lives in his father’s house with six other people and says he doubts he will ever be able to afford to get married and start a family.

“I was really fired up to vote for MDC because I wanted some changes,” Dickson said. “But when [ZANU-PF] talks about the land issue, I realize I do need land. I want one day to have my own place. If I have land, whether or not I have money, I will be able to survive from day to day.”

Also, if it were not for Mugabe’s 1980s education reform program, Dickson acknowledged that he probably would never have had the opportunity to finish high school.

But critics warned against being too nostalgic about Mugabe’s “good old days.”

“He wasn’t showing his true colors then,” said Ray Choto, 38, a senior writer and news editor at the Standard, an independent Sunday newspaper. “But if you look at even the way he maneuvered his way to the top, he wasn’t all that clean.”