Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF party repeatedly assert that the collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy is the result of Western–especially American–sanctions. He repeats it enough that African public opinion may start to believe it. Mugabe used sanctions as the pretext for refusing to allow U.S. election observers in Zimbabwe during the July elections this year. Hence U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, Bruce Wharton did a service by addressing U.S. sanctions in a radio interview on September 20. He highlighted the limited reach of the sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe, including travel restrictions of 113 individual Zimbabweans and financial restrictions on seventy entities linked to the ruling party. U.S. sanctions are designed “to bring pressure to bear on those people we believe have the power to make decisions that either strengthen or weaken Zimbabwe.” Sanctions, Ambassador Wharton said, are in fact a means by which the United States supports Zimbabwe, and will remain in place until democratic reforms are achieved. The ambassador said that the reforms the United States looks for include “bringing the new constitution into full force, clarifying how the indigenization program is to work to build confidence in investors, continuing with some reforms suggested under the previous unity government and ensuring the Human Rights Commission is robust and effective.” Such reforms, the ambassador said, “will elicit a positive response from my government.” There are few if any signs that such reforms will be forthcoming anytime soon. In fact, U.S. sanctions are highly limited and have little effect on Zimbabwe’s economy. Rather than being the result of sanctions, the collapse of Zimbabwe economy was directly caused by Mugabe and his ruling party’s policies, including its wholesale violation of the rule of law and the employment of violence targeted against their political enemies.

Apartheid-era Foreign Minister Pik Botha, known for his bluster, recently set the cat among the pigeons by saying that South Africa’s education system is “the worst in Africa.” He went on to say that Mugabe’s Zimbabwe has a better system. He also said that South Africa spends more per student than any other African country. Many South Africans resent criticism from apartheid-era figures like Botha, seeing it as implying the blacks are incompetent at governance. Kate Wilkinson has published a rejoinder to Botha in "Africa Check." She provides a useful introduction to the complexities of education evaluation in Africa. Her bottom line: South Africa’s system is not the worst in Africa–but its performance is relatively poor. South Africa is among the fifteen countries in the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ). Of these, South Africa’s average student reading score placed it tenth. Tanzania’s was the highest. South Africa’s math score placed it eighth. Wilkinson also shows that South Africa’s per pupil expenditure (US$1,225 per primary pupil) is not the highest; that honor goes to the Seychelles (US$2,089) and Botswana (US$1,228), both of which have tiny populations. She does confirm that Botha’s assertion that Zimbabwe scores better than South Africa. This conversation appears to be about primary education and covers the entire pupil population of the fifteen countries in eastern and southern Africa. The South Africa educational reality is complex. There is a high quality education system left over from the apartheid era that runs through all levels. Access to it, once restricted to whites, is now in effect restricted by the ability to pay the fees. Schools remain “white” in character, though they now include substantial enrollment from other races. They provide education for elites, with some exceptions. But, the vast majority of South Africa’s children are educated in the successors to the former black-only township and homeland schools. It is widely recognized in South Africa that the education system for most South Africans is not meeting their needs–nor the needs of the country. The unemployment rate ranges from 25 to 40 percent, depending on how the counting is done, yet there are chronic shortages of skilled labor. Under apartheid, there were separate school systems for whites, blacks, coloureds, and Asians. In addition, there were separate systems in the independent and self-governing homelands. One estimate is that there were altogether some seventeen different school systems. Consolidating and rationalizing these systems on a non-racial basis has been an immense challenge. Nevertheless, there has been substantial progress, especially at the tertiary and secondary levels. But, the provision of high quality primary education for the impoverished mass of the population still has a long way to go.

Emily Mellgard co-authored this post. Emily is the Africa research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. Robert Mugabe retains his grip on Zimbabwe for another five years. The swearing in ceremony for his seventh term as the nation’s leader took place on August 22 at a stadium in the capital Harare. It was attended by forty visiting heads of state and busloads of supporters brought in from the provinces to show their loyalty to the “fearless revolutionary.” The elections on July 31, which drew scathing criticism from many western nations and human rights activists based on election observers’ documented evidence of rigging, allegedly gave Mugabe a two-thirds majority. Stretching credulity, his Zanu-PF party also succeeded in winning in regions that have previously solidly supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). There are now little to no constraints on Mugabe, and he has already announced his intentions to continue implementing his controversial “indigenization” policy, the essence of which is to transfer ownership of the few remaining foreign-owned enterprises to black Zimbabweans. The Southern African Development Community (SADC), after working with Zimbabwe following the violence of the previous, 2008, elections to ensure freer and fairer elections in 2013, has proved a paper tiger. At the post-Zimbabwean elections summit in Malawi, not only did they not discuss the accusations of voting irregularities, but they elected Mugabe as the deputy chairperson of SADC. They also called on western nations to lift the sanctions regime targeted against Mugabe and Zanu-PF elite. Malawi’s president Joyce Banda said “Zimbabweans had suffered enough,” perhaps conflating the elites with the people. There is, however, no basis to lift the sanctions against Mugabe or his inner circle. The evidence is clear that he rigged himself into power for what will probably be his final term. It is uncertain what will develop over the next five years. Mugabe struck a more conciliatory note to his rivals–who boycotted the ceremony–in his inaugural speech than in his first public appearance after the elections. His comments toward the west however, remained hostile. Significant political change in Zimbabwe will have to wait until Mugabe, who is eighty-nine years of age and reportedly suffers from cancer, leaves the scene. When he does, the subsequent jockeying for position among his inner circle may open up the political space.

Only weeks after he won Zimbabwe’s sham elections, Robert Mugabe was elected deputy chairperson of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Malawi’s president Joyce Banda was elected chairperson. After she completes her one-year term, Mugabe will become the chairperson. SADC, for the time being, has embraced Mugabe. Opposition groups, human rights organizations, non-governmental organizations in Zimbabwe, and the government of Botswana–a SADC member–have called on the SADC summit to discuss the recent Zimbabwe elections, but it declined to do so. Zimbabwe’s chief opposition figure, Morgan Tsvangirai, earlier said his party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), would challenge the election results in the court. However, he formally withdrew his challenge on August 15.  According to the MDC spokesman, the party withdrew because it was clear that the constitutional court was in Mugabe’s pocket.  Further, the Zimbabwean Elections Committee, also in Mugabe’s pocket, refused to make available material pertaining to the elections that would be key to the MDC case. So, for now, Mugabe looks unchallenged at home and abroad. But, South African human rights activists are reporting growing numbers of Zimbabweans entering South Africa and Botswana because of increased tension and fear. They are also reporting shortages in Zimbabwe of staples such as cooking oil. Both of these were signs of unrest after the elections in 2008 as well, which later led to violence. It remains to be seen what Tsvangirai and the MDC will do next, and what the Zimbabwean people (or some of them) will do.

Party operatives in Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party are claiming victory in yesterday’s elections. According to some observers, ZANU-PF swept constituencies that have consistently voted in the past for the opposition MDC by huge margins. Similarly, well-known and popular opposition figures have been allegedly defeated by unknown ZANU-PF candidates. Such a massive shift toward Mugabe and ZANU-PF is not credible. The Zimbabwe Elections Support Network (ZESN) is an indigenous coalition of civil society organizations formed to observe the elections. Its chairman, Solomon Zwana, summed it up to the media: “The credibility of the 2013 harmonized elections is seriously compromised by a systematic effort to disenfranchise urban voters. Up to a million voters were disenfranchised.” He continued, “when compounded by the massive bias in the state media, the campaign of intimidation in rural areas, the lack of meaningful voter education, the rushed electoral process, and the harassment of civil society leaves the credibility of these elections severely compromised.” Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition and longtime rival of Robert Mugabe, issued a statement: “This election has been a huge farce. Its credibility has been marred by administrative and legal violations which affect the legitimacy of its outcome.” He called it a sham election “that does not reflect the will of the people.” Meanwhile, according to the media, Africa Union and Southern African Development Community (SADC) election observers are being quoted saying the elections were credible. (Mugabe prohibited any western election observers.) This should be no surprise. African election observers are reluctant to criticize elections in other African countries. The head of the AU observers, former Nigeria president Olusegun Obasanjo, was himself involved in three rigged elections at home, as some Zimbabweans observed when the AU announced his appointment. South Africa dominates SADC; as I blogged earlier, South African president Jacob Zuma threw over his Zimbabwe point person, Amb. Lindiwe Zulu, when Mugabe demanded it. It looks like SADC and the AU wanted the elections to “go away,” rather than insist that they be credible. Both organizations are likely to experience further issues of credibility with respect to elections in the future. The question is what will Tsvangirai and the MDC-T do now. Will there be protests and/or violence, or will MDC-T supporters simply switch off from the political process and wait until the eighty-nine year old Mugabe leaves the scene.

Zimbabwe’s special elections on July 14-15 for the security forces did not go well. Lindiwe Zulu, former ambassador to Brazil and current international relations adviser to South Africa president Jacob Zuma, had the temerity to say so. She commented publicly that the July 30-31 polling would be challenging. In response, Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, who previously called Zulu “an idiotic street woman,” demanded that President Zuma “stop this woman of [his] from speaking on Zimbabwe.” Whereupon President Zuma, through his spokesman, promptly disavowed Zulu, as did the governing African National Congress. Knuckling under to Mugabe recalls the Zuma government’s failure to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama for fear of offending the Chinese. How to account for it? Greg Nicolson writing in the South African Daily Maverick provides a credible explanation. Zuma has consistently followed a “soft diplomacy” approach to Mugabe, appeasing him in public while (presumably) talking sternly in private. The thrust of Nicolson’s piece is that South Africa and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have failed to reform Zimbabwe politics in the aftermath of the 2008 post-elections bloodbath. Looking toward the upcoming 2013 Zimbabwean elections, if South Africa and SADC want to stay involved, they will need to work with Mugabe. So, “Lindiwe Zulu was sacrificed on the altar of diplomacy.” The South Africa official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA) sent election observers to Zimbabwe for the special elections. The observers reported serious irregularities in the July 14-15 polling, including the police and the army campaigning for Mugabe’s ruling party. In response, the DA argues that Zuma should abandon his diplomatic soft approach: “It is clear that the South African government’s quiet diplomacy has done nothing to curtail poor pre-election preparations and continued aggression towards voters, especially in rural constituencies. It is now time for President Zuma to consider a hard line approach.” What happens in Zimbabwe has consequences for South Africa. Not least because, if there is widespread violence following the upcoming elections, there could be refugee flows from Zimbabwe to South Africa, as there was in 2008.

The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) special summit on the Zimbabwe elections went ahead on June 15 in Maputo, Mozambique, despite press reports that Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe had sought its postponement. Mugabe had unilaterally proclaimed that elections would go ahead on July 31, as mandated by the Zimbabwean constitutional court. The opposition parties, led by Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T, strongly objected to elections that soon because a package of reforms designed to prevent a repeat of the 2008 electoral violence has not been legislated or implemented. SADC, led by South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma, has called for such a Zimbabwe “road map” that would promote free and fair elections. The upshot of the Maputo summit is that Mugabe agreed to ask the constitutional court to allow a delay in the elections for about two weeks. Mugabe also apparently agreed to regularize through parliament some amendments to the electoral act that he had already implemented using presidential powers. In addition, the Zimbabwean security forces are to restate their commitment to the rule of law. SADC further urged the Zimbabwean parties in parliament to agree on legislation concerning a number of proposed reforms that remain outstanding. Mugabe also agreed to a greater role for SADC than he had wanted. A SADC facilitation team will sit in with the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC); this is a Zimbabwean multiparty body established in 2009 to ensure that the Zimbabwean parties adhere to the letter and spirit of the Global Political Agreement that SADC negotiated. Mugabe, however, had wanted the SADC facilitation team to merely receive JOMIC reports. Mugabe also apparently confirmed that SADC could deploy election observers. Up to now, Mugabe had rejected foreign election observers—although it was unclear whether that included SADC’s. Apparently, the ban still holds with respect to European or American observation teams. The Zimbabwean media is talking about how Mugabe was “humiliated” at Maputo. Still, he seems to have gotten most of what he wanted. SADC has agreed to elections before the passage and implementation of reforms that might have resulted in free and fair elections. A two-week delay seems to be little more than symbolic, and few doubt that the court will agree to Mugabe’s request for the delay. SADC’s success in having its observers allowed into Zimbabwe and its facilitators in the JOMIC, however, will allow SADC a better view of what is actually happening in Zimbabwe than otherwise would have been the case. In the aftermath of the Maputo summit, there continue to be few positive scenarios and many negative ones with respect to Zimbabwe’s elections. Absent a comprehensive reform package, pre-electoral and electoral processes remain vulnerable to rigging, violence, and intimidation. The struggle within the dominant ZANU/PF ruling party over the succession to the eighty-nine-year-old Mugabe continues to be a wild card. And the opposition parties may boycott the elections—or a runoff—as they did in 2008 in the face of violence and intimidation.

President Robert Mugabe on June 13, set July 31 as Zimbabwe’s election day. The chief opposition leader and current prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, flatly rejected the date and said he would challenge it in the courts. Earlier in the month the Zimbabwe constitutional court ruled that elections must be held by July 31 under the provisions of the new constitution. Meanwhile, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has postponed a planned summit in Maputo to consider a Zimbabwe road map for free and fair elections at Mugabe’s request. According to South African media, that meeting could be rescheduled for as early as June 18. What is going on here? Zimbabwe’s last elections, a contest principally between Robert Mugabe’s ZANU/PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC, were deeply flawed and were followed by serious violence. (Many credible observers believe that Tsvangirai’s party won the most votes.) SADC stepped in and cobbled together a government of national unity with Mugabe as president and Tsvangirai as prime minister. The government of national unity stabilized the country and under pressure from SADC adopted a new constitution and a package of reforms designed to preclude a repeat of 2008. The new constitution was approved in May 2013; however, many of the other associated reforms are not in place. Broadly speaking ZANU/PF wants early elections while the opposition wants them delayed until the reform package is in place. ZANU/PF’s enemies claim that Mugabe’s party wants early elections—before all the reforms are in place—so that it can guarantee victory; through violence and intimidation if necessary. However, following the constitutional court’s latest ruling, Mugabe can now say that not to hold the elections at the end of July would be unconstitutional. There are many cross-currents. As Mugabe fades (he is eighty-nine and allegedly suffers from cancer), rivalries within ZANU/PF over succession are intensifying. Tsvangirai is not unchallenged within his own camp. Hence there is more political space now than in 2008, and the outcome of an election is less predictable, with or without widespread violence. Elections preparations are under way, but the process is ragged and slow. Mugabe and his allies have said that foreign election observers will not be admitted to the country, raising the question of just how free, fair, and credible they plan to be. U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, Bruce Wharton, issued a statement on June 12 that strongly calls for free and fair elections, outside election observers, and emphasizes the fact that Mugabe himself is calling for peaceful elections; a change from elections past. SADC under the leadership of South Africa has a crucial role to play. South Africa president Jacob Zuma has been deeply engaged in the search for a solution for Zimbabwe. It is difficult to see how elections could proceed at the end of July in the teeth of SADC opposition. On the other hand, it would be difficult for SADC to block elections from going forward in a sovereign member state. Nevertheless, SADC continues to insist on a Zimbabwe road map for credible elections. Mugabe asked that the SADC meeting be postponed so that he could get his house in order—presumably including a credible road map. Given ZANU/PF history of electoral violence and Tsvangirai’s flat rejection of a July 31 date, if elections go forward as Mugabe intends, there are few positive scenarios and many negative ones. Absent the so far unimplemented reforms, the pre-electoral and electoral processes are vulnerable to rigging, violence, and intimidation. Credible voter registration and preparation of a voters’ roll will be particularly problematic. One or more opposition parties might boycott the elections, further bringing into question their legitimacy. Mugabe’s exclusion up to now of foreign election observers is not a good sign. As Tsvangirai is saying, Zimbabwe may be in for a repeat of 2008.

Nelson Mandela is an international icon for the politics of reconciliation and the rule of law. Since the transition to non-racial democracy, South African elections have been credible, following the pattern of the first all-race elections in 1994. Mandela voluntarily stepped down after a single term as chief of state. Most South Africans regard him as the father of democratic, non-racial South Africa. Robert Mugabe is notorious for shredding the rule of law, uncountable human rights violations, and resorting to violence to maintain his power. He has been chief of state for more than thirty years during which Zimbabwe evolved from being one of Africa’s most successful states to one of the worst in terms of international social and economic indicators. (Zimbabwe’s standing has improved of late.) He faces national elections this year. Zimbabwe’s electoral track record over the past decade does not bode well for them to be non-violent. For many, he is the iconic “big man” African tyrant. This background provides some context for an astonishing, soft-focus television documentary by Dali Tambo on Mugabe, the first part of which was aired in South Africa over the weekend. The documentary is focused on a State House lunch that humanizes the Mugabe family and provides the chief of state with a platform to comment on personalities ranging from Margaret Thatcher (favorable) to Tony Blair (unfavorable). Mugabe says that Mandela “was too much of a saint” with his emphasis on reconciliation. According to Mugabe, Mandela did not do enough for black people: “Mandela has gone a bit too far in doing good to the non-black communities, really in some cases at the expense of (blacks)…” according to Agence France Press. Tambo’s soft-focus treatment of Mugabe has predictably generated hostile comment. The Cape Town media presenter Kieno Kammies criticized Tambo’s glossing over Mugabe’s human rights violations and land grabs. In a shouting match between the two presenters, Tambo replied that his program, “People of the South,” is about people, not politics: “I present the man as he actually is, and you must take what you want from it.” Dali Tambo, widely regarded as “charismatic,” is the son of Oliver and Adelaide Tambo, leaders of the anti-apartheid struggle who were also close to Mugabe. The Johannesburg airport, South Africa’s principal international hub, was renamed for Oliver Tambo in 2006. Mandela and Mugabe together are symbolic of the contradictions of southern Africa. For, if many regard Mandela as a democrat and a healer and Mugabe as a thug, others see the latter as an African liberator who drove the whites out and restored the land to black Africans. In post-Mandela South Africa, most blacks remain impoverished and land reform has proceeded very slowly. Accordingly, Mugabe has many admirers in South Africa. Perhaps the best known is the now officially-disgraced former leader of the African National Congress Youth League, Julius Malema, who famously called for the nationalization of the mines and of white-owned farms without compensation. Still, Mugabe’s criticism of Nelson Mandela will not go over well with many South Africans: as one blogger commented: “What’s next, vacations with Hitler?”

South Africa is much larger and more developed than its neighbors in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Economically, it dominates the entire region. Apartheid South Africa regularly intervened militarily outside its borders during the struggle against the African National Congress and other liberation movements, thereby highlighting their neighbors’ weaknesses. A consequence of South Africa’s disproportionate power and influence is that it is often resented by other Southern African nations. Occasionally this breaks out into the open. That happened in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral in London when, upon returning to Lusaka, Zambian vice president Guy Scott publicly compared South African president Jacob Zuma to F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid South African head of state, according to The Guardian. But, he did not stop there. He also said South Africans are “arrogant.” Further warming to his subject, he continued: “The South Africans are very backward in terms of historical development…I hate South Africans. That’s not a fair thing to say because I like a lot of South Africans but they really think they’re the bees’ knees and actually they’ve been the cause of so much trouble in this part of the world.” He went on to say that South Africa’s blacks model themselves on white behavior now that they are in power. Saying out loud what many Africans say only after a few drinks , he continued, “I dislike South Africa for the same reason that Latin Americans dislike the United States, I think. It’s just too big and too unsubtle.” He also denounced South African membership in the BRICS, a major Zuma policy initiative: “Nobody would want to go in for a partnership with Brazil, China, India, and South Africa for Christ’s sake.” He concluded with a bouquet for Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe: “I’m sure any good African nationalist admires Mugabe.” He also said that Mugabe would like to retire from the presidency. The South African government says it is demanding an explanation for the remarks from the Zambian high commissioner in Pretoria. In contrast, Zimbabwe is playing down the incident, commenting publicly that Mugabe is “close” to Scott and Zambian president Michael Sata. Zimbabwe insists that it will not allow “the media” to shape the Zambia/Zimbabwe bilateral relationship. The immediate cause of Scott’s ire appears to have been Zuma’s maneuvering over Zimbabwe’s upcoming elections in his capacity as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) designated mediator. While Zuma is ostensibly operating with the mandate of SADC, of which Zambia is a part, in Scott’s view the South African president is trying to keep the other SADC states out. Scott is hardly a typical southern African politician. Born in 1944, he is of Anglo-Scottish origin with a degree from Oxford. However, his father was involved in anti-colonial journalism and Scott has liberation credentials. He is a fierce critic of white racism in southern Africa. He compared fellow students at a school he attended as a youth in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as having the attitudes of the Hitler Youth. Scott, also a journalist like his father, established an important agribusiness and later served as the Zambian Minister of Agriculture. He became vice president in 2011.  

In March, Zimbabwe’s government, headed by Robert Mugabe, announced that no EU or U.S. observers would be invited to the national elections, now scheduled for the end of June 2013.  The official reason for the ban is EU and U.S. sanctions against the Mugabe government. This decision undermines what little confidence many observers (including myself) had that Zimbabwe would have free and fair elections under the aegis of its new constitution. There is much that international observers cannot see or understand about African elections, especially in the rural areas; yet their conclusions about the mechanics of the polling sometimes overly influence the international community’s evaluation of how the elections actually went. But, the presence of international observers provides some cover for local civic organizations to have a broader scope. That makes the presence of international observers highly positive, and perhaps vital to local civic organizations. But, in Zimbabwe, the beleaguered civic sector will now lack that assistance in an environment too often characterized by ruling party (and other) thuggery. The ZANU-PF move against EU and U.S. election observers certainly undermines the pretense that the upcoming elections will advance the cause of democracy and raises questions about whether the ruling party has determined to rig the elections. Recent Freedom House and Afrobarometer public polls indicate that ZANU-PF and Robert Mugabe stand a chance of winning a genuinely free and fair election in Zimbabwe. It is sad that we are unlikely ever to know.

South Africans often assume that since the end of apartheid, and the coming of democracy in 1994, there has been a huge wave of migration into South Africa from the rest of the continent. Stories abound of entire Johannesburg neighborhoods that are now Nigerian or Congolese–and that immigrants have taken over certain crime syndicates. There have been xenophobic riots against Zimbabwean refugees in South Africa who, with the benefit of higher education standards in their home country, are seen by township dwellers as competition for scarce jobs. The Human Sciences Research Council withdrew its earlier estimate that there are four to eight million undocumented migrants in South Africa. Those numbers nonetheless still make their way into the press—and the public consciousness. Statistics South Africa estimates undocumented persons in South Africa to be in the range of five hundred thousand to one million. The South African Department of Home Affairs recently released administrative statistics for 2008/9 that tend to dissolve the myth of a wave of migration. Also, using other demographic data, the Forced Migration Studies Program (FMSP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg has produced the following statistics. Between 1994 and 2009, the cumulative total of recognized refugees migrating to South Africa was 47,596. In 2009, there were 223,324 new applicants for refugee status. Of those, 4,567 were approved and 46,055 rejected—more than ten times the number approved. In addition, 172,702 were added to the backlog of pending cases. In 2007/8 individual work permits were issued to 32,344 economic immigrants. In the same year, 312,733 were deported. FMSP’s bottom line is that the overall foreign population ranges from 1.6 to 2 million, or 3-4 percent of the total population. It also estimates that there are between 1 and 1.5 million legal and illegal Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa. Because of its stability, highly developed infrastructure and first-world amenities, many elites from Nigeria, Congo, and other African countries travel to South Africa, and the wealthiest often have houses there. They are a population of high visibility. So too are the receptionists and others, born in Zimbabwe, who deal with the public. But, South Africa has a total population of more than fifty million, and the numbers of high profile migrants are relatively small. The FMSP data seems to indicate that most of South Africa’s cross border migrants are from Zimbabwe, and not further afield. For sake of comparison, the Center for Migration Studies just published its conclusion that 3.7 percent of the U.S. population is undocumented migrants, while 7.9 percent is documented migrants. Together they make up approximately 11 percent of the total U.S. population. Both South Africa and the United States are historically countries that welcome immigration. But, the percentages are far greater in the United States than in South Africa.  

Zimbabwe’s public account is down to its last $217. The finance minister says the country’s finances “are in paralysis.” How can that be? Zimbabwe’s diamond fields at Marange could hold between two and seven billion carats of raw diamonds, and constitutes a quarter of global diamond output, according to Bernard Chiketo in "Think Africa Press." As I blogged in June 2012, many think that the revenue from diamonds is bypassing the Treasury and going directly to Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu/PF party and its operatives. The four largest companies exploiting the Marange diamond mines are all closely tied to the ruling party. In November, former South African president Thabo Mbeki charged that Zimbabwe’s diamonds were controlled by a “predatory elite.” Opposition politicians claim that Zanu/PF handed over the Marange fields to allied private companies. This was to ensure the party continued to enjoy a stream of revenue even after it lost control of the Treasury and the National Social Security Authority to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) when Mugabe acceded to a unity government under pressure from South Africa and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). And indeed, the current minister of finance, one of the founders of the MDC, has been a vocal critic of the close association between Zanu/PF and the mining companies that hold concessions to the Marange fields, and an advocate of more transparency in diamond revenues. The political temperature is rising in Zimbabwe. A referendum on a new constitution expected soon, to be followed by presidential elections. In this context, Zanu/PF and MDC operatives are accusing each other of lying about Marange diamonds and the state of the country’s public finances. The opposition MDC is calling for the nationalization of the diamond mines, with joint supervision by the mining and finance ministries. The real issue, however, is the utter lack of transparency with respect to what has become Zimbabwe’s cash cow.

For the past five years, Robert Mugabe’s government has, in effect, persecuted the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe.  As I blogged previously in 2011, the ex-bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, a long-time Mugabe supporter, sought to take his diocese out of the Anglican Communion, ostensibly because of Anglican Communion support for gay rights.  The church thereupon deposed him and chose a new bishop, Chad Gandiya. But, Mugabe continued to support Kunonga and a pro-Mugabe judge gave him “custody” of church property pending a high court ruling. Kunonga also ended up with a confiscated, previously white-owned, farm. Pro-government goons over the past five years have, in effect, overseen the transfer of the cathedral in Harare, Anglican schools, orphanages, and parish churches to Kunonga and his supporters. The archbishop of Canterbury protested directly to Mugabe last year. The attack on the Anglican Church appeared to fit Mugabe policy of “Africanizing colonial institutions.” Even though the church is overwhelmingly black African in its membership, it was initially established in Zimbabwe by the British who built the elaborate cathedral in Harare.  At least some of Mugabe’s supporters thought that Anglicans disproportionately supported the opposition Movement for Democracy Change.  They also bitterly resented the criticism of the Mugabe regime by Anglicans worldwide. Hence it is a surprise that the High Court judges–all Mugabe political appointees–ruled against Kunonga and in favor of the Anglican Church shortly before Christmas.  The Anglicans have reoccupied their cathedral in Harare and numerous other churches and schools from which they had been evicted. The process was often accompanied by “cleansing ceremonies” that attracted large crowds, according to the press. To me, it is unclear why Mugabe has apparently reversed himself on the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe, especially amidst the current political debate over a new constitution, and in anticipation of the subsequent elections.

Human rights organizations are charging the Zimbabwe police with accelerating harassment of the gay community as the country approaches the election season.  Robert Mugabe is opposed to provisions in the draft constitution that would dilute presidential authority, and is angling to create popular support against the draft before it is submitted to a voters referendum.  Though the current draft makes no reference to gay rights or gay marriage, Mugabe and his supporters may be using that silence on both issues to rally opposition to it by association. Earlier in the year, Mugabe tied the new constitution to gay rights by saying that there were efforts to insert a same-sex marriage clause in the draft. He is quoted as saying, “we won’t accept that.” Human rights organizations’ charges that Mugabe is manipulating homophobia to advance his political agenda are entirely credible. Homophobia is widespread in Zimbabwe as it is elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.  In traditional societies, marriage and procreation provide for the care of elders.  As homosexual relationships do not do that, they are seen to threaten wider society. Only South Africa’s constitution protects gay rights, but even there populists sometimes try to rally popular homophobia to advance their political agendas.