Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa promised to “flush out” political opponents on Tuesday, as activist groups said that scores of campaigners and protesters have been arrested in an expansive clampdown over the past week. Analysts say repression is amplifying in Zimbabwe, nearly three years after Mnangagwa helped oust his former mentor Robert Mugabe.
Advertising
Read more
In an unexpected speech to the nation on August 4, Mnangagwa declared that his government is facing “many hurdles and attacks” and that “the bad apples who have attempted to divide our people and to weaken our systems will be flushed out”.
“We will overcome attempts at destabilisation of our society by a few rogue Zimbabweans acting in league with foreign detractors,” the president continued.
The same day, activist group Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said it was representing at least 20 people arrested since the government thwarted protests planned for the previous Friday – including Fadzayi Mahere, spokesperson for the main opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, and Booker Prize-longlisted novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga, who were accused of inciting public violence.
Covid-19 used as a pretext
Mahere took to Facebook Live to film police wearing helmets and bearing truncheons coming to arrest her at a restaurant on Monday. Dangarembga, who is currently on bail, told Reuters on Tuesday that “its like the people of Zimbabwe are in a chokehold”. On Monday, the hashtag #ZimbabweanLivesMatter trended on Twitter across the globe.
“Public repression is indeed intensifying, and it is being applied as a first resort,” Stephen Chan, a Zimbabwe expert at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, told FRANCE 24.
Last week Mnangagwas government sent soldiers and police to shut down the capital Harare, thereby blocking the protests planned by Jacob Ngarivhume, leader of the small opposition party Transform Zimbabwe – citing Covid-19 as the reason for the lockdown.
“The Zimbabwean government has used the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext to strengthen its grip on power and curtail the freedom of expression of the opposition and civil society movements,” Virginie Roiron, a Zimbabwe specialist at Sciences Po Strasbourg University, told FRANCE 24.
The demonstrations were intended to decry corruption and mismanagement of the countrys imploding economy – as well as marking two years since the disputed election that cemented Mnangagwas grip on power.
Ahead of the suppressed protests, Ngarivhume was arrested with inciting violence on July 20, along with Hopewell Chinono – a prominent journalist and documentary filmmaker who in June helped uncover the “Covidgate” scandal, in which the health minister was sacked and arrested for over alleged corruption in a $60 million deal to procure supplies for the fight against the coronavirus.
A further financial scandal was uncovered in early July, when it was revealed that the Zimbabwean public funds were used to buy luxury cars such as Range Rovers for senior civil servants – costing millions of dollars collectively.
Meltdown in health services
Covidgate emerged amid recurrent health workers strikes over low pay and a lack of equipment; public hospitals are in such a poor condition that “unborn children and mothers are dying daily”, the Zimbabwe Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists told Reuters.
“In the time of Covid, the steady meltdown in health services has now become not just a bad dream but a nightmare, and stands in stark contrast to the wealth of the oligarchs who, it seems, are prepared to steal even from the embattled health sector,” Chan said.
The broader economic outlook is similarly worrying. Inflation is running at 737 percent – the second highest in the world, behind Venezuela – while the UNs World Food Programme projects that 60 percent of Zimbabweans will suffer from food insecurity by the end of the year.
Mnangagwa introduced a reform package with IMF support in May 2019, including a new currency – seeking to turn a new page after economic crises racked Zimbabwe during the last two decades under Mugabe. But in March 2020 – by which point the new Zimbabwean dollar had lost most of its value – the IMF declared that the country was facing an “economic and humanitarian crisis” and that Mnangagwas programme was “off-track” because of “missteps” in its implementation.
“The worsening repression is linked to the macroeconomic instability the country is going through,” said Marisa Lourenço, a southern Africa analyst at consultancy firm Control Risks. “The government keeps changing its monetary policy, which is not good for the economy, as it doesnt address the high inflation rate and limited currency reserves” she told FRANCRead More – Source
[contf]
[contfnew]
france24
[contfnewc]
[contfnewc]
