In the unfortunate country, where a protected lion named Cecil met his fate at the hands of a trophy hunter, voters braved intimidation to elect members of parliament and a new president on July 30, 2018. But violence began tearing up the country days after the election. Not only losing candidates and their supporters protested the less than free and fair election, but winners in the Zanu-PF party and the military also split into competing factions.
A rise in fuel prices on January 12, 2019 again set off protests, sent soldiers into the streets to kill 8, and blocked internet access until January 16. At the same time, President Mnangagwa departed for Moscow, where he agreed to give the Russian company, Alrosa, access to Zimbabwe's diamond mines.
After World War II, Great Britain grouped Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia), and Malawi (then Nyasaland) into the Central African Federation. London's plan made perfect sense economically, but not politically. Located within Northern Rhodesia, valuable exports from the Copper Belt, shared with the Congo's Katanga Province, already traveled south by rail through Rhodesia to ports in South Africa. Rhodesia, named for Cecil Rhodes, whose guns defeated Chief Lobengula of the Ndebele people who inspired the costumes for Black Panther, had a developed agricultural economy with farms capable of feeding the region and generating tobacco and chinchilla pelt exports. Yet to be mined rich deposits of gold and platinum still exist. Migrant workers from Nyasaland were used to working Rhodesia's farms. They would consult their lists of good and bad employers before agreeing where to work.
The two most prosperous countries in the former federation, Zambia and Zimbabwe, struggle to get back on track. Zambia, one of the African countries that received debt forgiveness in 2005-2006 began spending freely just when copper prices tanked and a new regime increased the number of districts where it could reward leaders with graft. By 2018, Zambia defaulted on a Chinese loan repayment, and immediately Beijing was ready to begin talks to takeover ZESCO, Zambia's electric company, even though President Edgar Lungu claimed the Cabinet would have to approve such a measure. China already owns Zambia's national broadcaster, ZNBC.
Black majorities in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland broke away from white-ruled Rhodesia. Ian Smith, like South Africa's white leaders, clung to power, and, in 1965, he unilaterally declared Rhodesia's independence from Britain. Later, Zimbabwe also would leave the British Commonwealth.To wrest control from Smith, blacks, led by Robert Mugabe's Zanu party, launched a successful civil war in 1972. Mugabe would exercise dictatorial power in Zimbabwe from 1980 until a military coup led by his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, ousted him in 2017.
Mugabe failed to follow the advice of Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president after apartheid. (See Mandela's advice in the earlier post, "How to React When You've Been Wronged."). Doing unto Zimbabwe's white farmers what they had done to blacks, Mugabe's government seized the farms of white owners in 2000. The economic prosperity envisioned by Britain's plan for the Central African Federation disappeared, when whites quickly emigrated. Following the 2017 coup, Mnangagwa left Zimbabwe for a charm offensive designed to lure back white farmers who could feed the estimated 1.1 million to 2.5 million people starving in his country.
To avoid a runoff, a president in Zimbabwe needed to win over 50% of the vote. After a delay, 16 different polling stations reported exactly the same number of votes, and Mr. Mnangagwa won a slim 50.8% majority. His Zanu-PF's party candidates also won 145 of the 210 seats in the National Assembly. Rather than support a Zanu-PF leader who overthrew him, Robert Mugabe, who would die at age 95 on September 5, 2019, backed Nelson Chamisa from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, who received 44.3% of the vote, while the remaining votes were split among 21 presidential candidates. Six died, when the military quelled rioting in the capital, Harare, following the announcement of National Assembly votes. MDC voters, who are concentrated in Zimbabwe's cities, called the election unfair and a fraud. When the Constitutional Court rejected MDC's election challenge, members fled the country to escape violence.
Most Zimbabweans live in rural areas where they depend on foreign food donations. By distributing food at rallies, the Zanu-PF military and traditional chiefs intimidate villagers to vote "the right way." Before the 2018 election, Catholic Church leaders attempted to counter fear, apathy, and violence used in past elections by recognizing the need to protect voters and by stressing a vote for the common good was a human right. Sister Mercy Shumbamhini took it upon herself to go to the streets to ask citizens what the common good meant to them. They answered: having enough to eat, health services, a job, a clean environment, dignity, good roads, and security. In other words, they wanted what citizens everywhere want.
Zimbabwe entered a new election cycle starved for food, tourist and export dollars, and business investment to cover unpaid debts to the World Bank and African Development Bank. Initially, Mugabe's incompetent party loyalists, used to collecting bribes in their civil service positions, retained their jobs. But in an effort to demonstrate his determination to stabilize Zimbabwe's faltering economy and gain much needed IMF, British, and Chinese loans, President Mnangagwa replaced cronies with technocrats, including Ncube, his new finance minister.
Funding still remains in doubt, since post-election violence caused lenders to back away from support for the new government. Inflation has soared. Everyone wants payment in US dollars instead of unbacked, government-printed zollars subject to devaluation. Goods, such as generators and building materials, and staples like sugar, maize, and gasoline, are in short supply as customers purchase everything they can before their money is worth even less.
A 5G pilot project in rural Zimbabwe stands as a vestige of a once hopeful new beginning. Offering new hope, however, is the Friendship Bench organization founded by Zimbabwe psychiatrist, Dr. Dixon Chibanda. According to an article in TIME magazine (February 18-25, 2019), Dr. Chibanda's organization grew out of his advice to those with mental problems: Visit grandmothers. Friendship Bench trains grandmothers, who have time and a natural tendency to listen and guide, rather than tell people what to do, to use role playing and other behavior therapies. The medical journal, JAMA, published the positive benefits of the Friendship Bench approach.
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