Security leaders back Mugabe to keep power in Zim

It is uncertain if Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is a free agent or merely a tool of his security services as he moves to form a new government in defiance of a floundering power-sharing agreement with the opposition.

What is not in doubt is that Mugabe, 84, to remain president, is now utterly dependent on the support of the seven-member Joint Operations Command of senior officers in the country’s security services.

The JOC’s importance to Mugabe has increased as the president’s authority and Zimbabwe’s economy and social order have collapsed 28 years after he came to the leadership.

Some regional analysts and intelligence services contend Zimbabwe is now a military state with Mugabe as no more than a front man for the JOC junta.

This is a reasonable contention, but it is also evident that Mugabe and the JOC have common reasons for clinging to power. If they fall, all face being called to account for their abuses of human rights going back to the massacre of tens of thousands of suspected opposition supporters in Zimbabwe’s southwestern Matabeleland in the early 1980s.

And it was by violence and intimidation of voters that Mugabe was able claim victory in the lopsided race against Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), in June.

Tsvangirai withdrew from the run-off because of the violence after he beat Mugabe — but did not a win a clear victory — in March elections when the MDC won parallel parliamentary elections.

The campaign of violence between March and June in which scores of people were killed was orchestrated by the JOC, some of whose members said publicly they would not allow Tsvangirai or the MDC to take power, whatever the election results. The JOC is also known to have objected to the introduction of a government of national unity, with Mugabe and Tsvangirai sharing power, and urged the president not to even engage in talks.

The idea of a unity government has been promoted by South African President Thabo Mbeki, in concert with the heads of neighbouring countries, as a way out of the Zimbabwean political impasse.

But when, at the end of July, Mbeki persuaded Mugabe and Tsvangirai to negotiate a compromise, there was little hope it would come to fruition.

So it proved. Mugabe was willing to see Tsvangirai appointed prime minister, but rejected transferring any real authority to govern to the MDC leader.

Tsvangirai walked out of the talks and it is unlikely they can be revived.

MDC officials say there can be no further discussions if Mugabe forms a new government that does not include MDC members wielding real administrative authority.

But Mugabe’s officials say he intends to go ahead and form a government without Tsvangirai or the MDC.

Quite apart from pressure from the JOC to take this course, Mugabe will be driven by what happened in parliament this week. On Monday the MDC used its parliamentary majority to elect one of its members Speaker of the house. It was the first time Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party has lost a parliamentary vote in 28 years.

And when Mugabe spoke to parliament on Wednesday he suffered the indignity of being jeered and heckled, a humiliation broadcast live on television.

Mugabe may try to give some thin but ultimately unconvincing semblance of legitimacy to forming a new government by enticing Arthur Mutambara, leader of a small but purchasable breakaway faction of the MDC, to join.

The JOC would probably agree to that, knowing Mutambara would have no real power.

In theory the head of the JOC is senior Zanu-PF member Emmerson Mnangagwa. But several foreign intelligence services believe the real power in the JOC and Zimbabwe is Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, commander of the defence forces.

Another member is air force commander Air Marshal Perence Shiri, who orchestrated the 1980s killings in Matabeleland. Then there are army commander Lt.-Gen. Philip Sibanda and Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri.

Like Chihuri and Chiwenga, the head of the prison service, Maj.-Gen. Paradzayi Zimondi, publicly instructed his officers to vote for Mugabe in the last election.

And finally, there’s the surprisingly chatty Happyton Bonyongwe, head of the much-feared Central Intelligence Organization.

This article was written by Jonathan Manthorpe and published in the Vancouver Sun on Friday 29 August 2008.

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