The Afrobarometer survey findings: Power of fear and propaganda

Public opinion surveys can be useful planning tools for political strategists and policy makers. This is especially so in well established democracies where public policy is informed and instructed by citizens’ voices. In times of elections political strategists use opinion polls to craft electoral messages that will strike a chord with the electorate on key public policy issues. Opinion polls are also a useful indicator of the likely outcome of an election.

But opinion polls can also get it wrong. Take the recent election in the United Kingdom for instance. Opinion pollsters had predicted a hung parliament, which would have meant another coalition government akin to the Conservative-Liberal Democrats power sharing government of 2010-2015. As we now all know this did not happen. David Cameron’s Conservative party cruised to a comfortable win and is now governing alone. This has obviously caused some discomfort in the UK market research industry, which is estimated to be worth over £3bn a year.

The recent Afrobarometer survey on Zimbabwean citizens’ attitudes on democracy and governance, the economy, civil society and other issues conducted by the Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI) has ignited fierce debate, not least because of its findings, which many have wrongly interpreted as meaning rising support for President Robert Mugabe and his party ZANU (PF) and declining support for the opposition MDC and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Many of the commentators and so-called ‘analysts’ have interpreted the findings of the survey at face value and have failed to contextualize them in the broader political economy of the country. As a result most of the analysis has been flawed and the conclusions reached misleading. Some have gone as far as questioning the veracity of the survey on the basis of the research methodology used.  Because I had the privilege of heading research teams at MPOI on Afrobarometer surveys, I know that their methods are thorough and their field interviewers are rigorously trained.

For me there are two key determinant variables that I think influenced the outcome of the survey and most of the analysis proffered so far has missed them. First is the issue of fear among respondents. Because Zimbabwe has a well-documented history of state sanctioned political violence, most communities, especially in rural areas, live in constant fear and to them anything political is considered as highly risky. The ruling party has maintained a sophisticated and very efficient intelligence system in which it has informants at the lowest level of Zimbabwean society. Asking people in such communities whether they trust President Mugabe or Morgan Tsvangirai and expecting them to answer truthfully is illogical. They do not even trust that the person who is interviewing them is just a researcher who has not been sent by the state. A careful analysis of past MPOI surveys will show a high percentage of ‘I don’t know/Refused to say’ and ‘my vote is my secret’ responses to questions on candidate or party preference in elections. The late founder and director of MPOI Professor Masipula Sithole used to jokingly say that our surveys had a ‘margin of terror’ and not a margin of error, as is the standard in research surveys.

Let me illustrate my point on fear. The survey asks a series of questions to measure the incidence of lived poverty and its findings paint a very gloomy picture. Of the 2400 randomly selected respondents, 33% of urban residents said they had gone without food at least once while 56% of their rural counterparts said the same. On medical care 52% of rural respondents said they had gone without, while 59% of rural respondents said the same. Nearly 6 in 10 urban respondents (59%) said they had gone without water while about 4 in 10 rural respondents (42%) said the same. A majority (76%) of urban respondents said they had gone without cooking fuel while 40% of rural dwellers said the same. The most fascinating statistic is that on access to income. An overwhelming majority in both urban (86%) and rural (94%) areas said they had gone without a cash income. Overall, close to two thirds of the respondents said the country was going in the wrong direction that unemployment is the biggest problem the government should address and that foreign direct investment is a better option compared to indigenisation of the economy in creating jobs.

It is almost a contradiction that the same people would say they trust the man who is presiding over the system that is responsible for these grim conditions. But they will say so if they know saying otherwise will invite the wrath of the party militia that burnt down their homes and confiscated their cows and goats not so long ago. To further buttress my point, over two thirds of the people surveyed said corruption has increased over the last year and they rate various government departments such as police, senior government officials, tax authorities, judges and magistrates etc., as highly corrupt.  But they also said they will not report incidents of corruption because they fear the possible consequences of doing so.

The second factor that I consider key in influencing the findings of the survey is what I would call the power of propaganda. The media plays an important role in shaping mass public opinion. The survey finds out that a majority of Zimbabweans relies on radio as a source of news and information. What it does not tell us is that there are half a dozen or radio stations that are state owned and two private radio stations that are owned by entities and individuals with close ties to the ruling party.

While there has been a notable rise in the uptake and usage of social media, which has given citizens new platforms to generate and share content with minimum state interference, the survey results show that social media remains the least used source of news and information with only 10% of respondents saying they use it to get news every day. Mobile technology presents opportunities for the free flow of information as a building block for democracy but its efficacy has been hampered by poor connectivity and high cost of usage especially in rural communities that offer low market value for technology companies. In addition the government has realized the liberating power of social media and senior apparatchiks have publicly grumbled about it.

It is therefore conceivable that citizens are unlikely to trust an opposition leader whose political mission, they are reminded everyday, is ‘to bring back white rule’ and are likely to trust a President whose party, they are reminded everyday, ‘liberated them from white rule’. I agree that the opposition has a long list of sins that it needs to attend to if it is to offer formidable opposition to ZANU (PF) hegemony. However, the results of the Afrobarometer survey are not a measure of those sins. They are a reflection of a deeply fractured society in which citizens fear authority and are manipulated by propaganda. In the end what we should be questioning is not the validity of the survey’s findings but the efficacy of opinion polling in an authoritarian context.

The Irony of Mugabe’s AU Chairmanship and ZANU PF’s Prolonged Infighting

I am making this presentation on the backdrop of a very significant incident that just happened in neighbouring Zambia where a new President Edgar Lungu has been elected in a tightly contested by-election. Many of us have been watching that election enviously, not least because this is now the sixth post-colonial leadership transition that Zambia has gone through and we are still stuck with one leader since 1980.

The significance of the Zambian election to many Zimbabweans is not so much its outcome, but the reception that President Mugabe got, which in my view underscored the disdain of many in the region towards the incoming AU Chairman who is also the SADC Chairperson. I am referring here to the booing that the SADC and AU Chairman was subjected to when he was greeted by “Mugabe must go” chants at the Radison Blu Hotel where opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema’s supporters were camped. Despite feeble attempts by ZBC and other state-run media houses to create the impression that Mugabe got a ‘rousing’ reception, many neutral observers who have seen footage of the jeering would agree that this a significant departure from the usual applause that Mugabe has always been greeted with when he graces regional capitals.

Although it is probable that Hichilema’s supporters were frustrated by what they considered to be a rigged a election, it is clear that their attitude towards Mugabe symbolises the resentment that many in the region and on the continent, particularly among the young generations, have towards Mugabe. The fact that Mugabe also had the temerity to show up for an official inauguration of a new head of state when the results of the election had not fully been announced also did not help matters as it raised suspicion that he knew Lungu would win, itself a source of national consternation given Mugabe’s well documented history of rigging elections in his own country.

The reason I am raising these matters is that as Mugabe assumes the Chairmanship of the AU, there is an expectation that he will carry the monumental responsibility of dealing with the myriad challenges that the continent faces and therefore his stature and integrity will be very critical in determining the extent to which he is able to do. In my view the Zambian incident, which as I have argued above, symbolises some kind of collective resentment of Mugabe, is a good measure of his reputation and stature in the region, which has obviously been dented by his continued stay in office and his brutal response to growing especially in the period 2000-2008.

I want to make the point that Mugabe is assuming the role of Chairman of the AU at a time when the continent faces innumerable challenges, one of them being threats to human security especially in West Africa and in particular in Nigeria where the radical insurgent group Boko Haram has killed thousands of Nigerians, with the state showing very little capacity to deal with the problem. I think that the Boko Haram crisis has been a clear indicator of the AU’s inability to effectively deal with African problems and to me it is shocking that up to now there has not been a single emergency summit of the AU to deal with the Boko Haram crisis. When one looks at the West’s response to the Paris terrorist attacks targeted at the publishers of Charlie Hebdo magazine in which 12 people were killed by ISIS linked militants, it becomes clear that the continent still has a long way to go in showing decisive leadership when its citizens are in harm’s way. But the global outpouring over the Paris attacks also betrays the skewed nature of world politics, and in particular the West’s ambivalent commitment to human peace and security, the reality of which is that when the West is under attack then we are we have a global crisis but when thousands of Nigerians are massacred the global response is a Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, which in essence is more of a celebrity craze than a serious commitment to bringing to book the perpetrators of these heinous killings and abductions.

Other challenges confronting the continent include terrorist threats in East Africa that have seen hundreds being killed in terrorist attacks in Nairobi, Mombasa and other places. The Ebola crisis, although it seems to be abating now, is another continental challenge that threatens to decimate the significant progress that the continent has made over the last decade. But more importantly Africa faces the challenge of a growing population, which is increasingly becoming young, but has not enjoyed the fruits of independence for more than four decades now.

The biggest problem today is that of a ruling class that seems so distant from the citizens, a ruling class that has used the state as an avenue for personal and factional elite accumulation at the expense of economic and social progress for a majority of the citizenry. The growing gap between the rich, who are in most cases a comprador bourgeoisie class deeply embedded with the ruling class, and the poor citizenry has spawned growing resentment, hence the wave of unrest we have seen over the last five years, whether it is the so called Arab Spring in the North or the more recent citizen revolt against kleptocrats like Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso.  President Mugabe himself is a good example of this ruling class given the fact that he presides over an economy with 85% unemployment and in which half the country’s skilled personnel is in the Diaspora. Many on the continent, who are oblivious of scale of Mugabe’s brutality, wonder why Zimbabweans have not occupied Africa Unity Square and sent him packing to Zvimba.

I want to come back to the issue of the irony of Mugabe’s Chairmanship of both SADC and AU in the context of events that we have seen unfolding in ZANU PF over the last three months, which culminated in the purging of one time presidential aspirant and now former Vice President Joice Mujuru and her allies. Undoubtedly the purge has precipitated a serious crisis in the ruling party and one can safely make the conclusion that there is now a split in the party of revolution. Hitherto ZANU (PF) had exhibited a façade of elite cohesion but the fissures finally resulted in an implosion that is unprecedented in the party’s fifty-year history. It is highly unlikely that those who have now assumed control of the party apparatus will be able to reach out to those that were purged to rebuild elite consensus. It is also highly probable that Mugabe’s departure will take away any pretense of civility and bare knuckles fight will ensue as soon as he exits the stage, itself a threat not only to the party but also to national peace and stability.

The question therefore becomes whether Mugabe will be able to deal with the myriad challenges that I cited above when he is faced with an imploding party back home. I submit that the fight to retain control of the party will consume Mugabe, who in any case is exhibiting signs of frailty, so much that he will not be able to offer the kind of leadership that is required to tackle the multiple crises the African continent faces. As a shrewd power player Mugabe will be cautious to avoid the experience of former ANC and South African President Thabo Mbeki who became so consumed with his mediation role in the Zimbabwean crisis by the time he got off his private jet in Johannesburg Luthuli House had recalled him from his position as President of the Republic.

This is an abridged version of a paper presented at a Zimbabwe Democracy Institute (ZDI) Public Forum in Harare on 27 January 2015

Mnangagwa's coalition of the unpopular and it's strategy for 2018

Now that the dust is slowly settling after the political high drama we witnessed in ZANU (PF) in the lead up to its December congress, it is imperative to fathom deeper into what transpired and its implications for our national politics. It is now common cause that the Mai Mujuru camp has been decimated and is unlikely to have a Lazarus moment of resurrection at least for the foreseeable future. It seems to me that Mai Mujuru’s biggest undoing was her failure to give sufficient guarantees to the Mugabes that she would protect their vast business empire and young family after Mugabe is gone.

Another problem is that the Mujuru camp invested too much in democratic processes in a party that loathes democracy. Their assumption was that rules and procedures would be followed and they underplayed Mugabe’s hand in the succession conundrum. This, against Emerson Mnangagwa, a wily tactician surrounded by Machiavellian schemers. The sucker punch was their ability to rope in First Lady Grace Mugabe into their camp by raising her fears of a Mujuru presidency. My suspicion is that Mai Mujuru revealed too much to some of her advisors and that cost her dearly.

But what are the implications of Mnangagwa’s preeminence to ZANU (PF) and to our national politics, particularly in the context of elections in 2018? More importantly, has the succession issue in ZANU been settled once and for all? I submit that Mnangagwa’s elevation was a kneejerk reaction to what the Mugabes thought was a Mujuru plot to unseat the President. Mugabe considers the succession issue as work in progress and elevating Mnangagwa was a way of stopping Mai Mujuru and buying more time to deal with it. This has been his modus operandi in dealing with ambition within his party. Witness his obliteration of the Mnangagwa group in 2004 when he felt they had become too ambitious.

Moreover, there is no consensus in Mnangagwa’s camp that he should be the one to succeed Mugabe. Jonathan Moyo was quick to pour cold water on suggestions that Mnangagwa had been anointed to the throne. Furthermore, Silas Hungwe’s ludicrous eulogy of Mnangagwa as ‘son of God’ and Faber Chidarikire’s introduction of Mrs. Mnangagwa as the ‘acting First Lady’ were both met with scorn in the public media.  It therefore seems to me that these people were only brought together by a common desire to stop Mai Mujuru. Beyond that there is no common ideological persuasion or political road map that binds them.

In spite of all this, I submit that Mnangagwa’s appointment places him in a strategic position to succeed Mugabe given the latter’s age and health. Mugabe has increasingly become frail and the speed with which both the First Lady and the hawks in the Mnangagwa camp moved in cajoling the President to purge Mujuru raises the suspicion that they probably know something about the President’s health that the public does not. In other words Mugabe has inadvertently promoted Mnangagwa to succeed him. If indeed Mugabe departs the political stage and Mnangagwa takes over the party leadership, what is likely to happen and what chances does he stand for 2018?

The biggest challenge Mnangagwa will face is how to reach out to those who have been purged in order to rebuild consensus. While Mujuru and her allies will not form their own party or go into a coalition with the opposition given that they are entrapped in Mugabe’s vast patronage network, they pose a serious risk to ZANU (PF) if they quietly regroup and become an opposition within the ruling party. This would present another ‘bhora mudondo’ scenario akin to the one of 2008. Moreover, as the scale and reach of the purges have shown show, Mujuru has control of the party social base and Mnangagwa will find it hard to break that.

The other problem for the Mnangagwa group is that most of its public faces are extremely unpopular and therefore unsellable to the voting public. Mnangagwa himself lacks mass appeal and has a tainted history. Perhaps a measure of his dearth of popularity was his defeat to the MDC’s Blessing Chebundo, a political lightweight, in 2000 and 2005 in a parliamentary seat contest. The humiliation forced him to abandon the Kwekwe constituency for a gerrymandered Chirumanzi-Zibagwe constituency.

Mnangagwa also has the ignominy of having been state security minister in the 1980s when over 20 000 ethnic Ndebeles were butchered in what is now commonly referred to as the Gukurahindi massacres. For that reason he will find it very difficult to draw voters from the southern part of the country where the Gukurahindi issue is still emotive. His role in Zimbabwe’s participation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) war in the late 90s is yet another blight on his name. A clique of Zimbabwean military elites, dodgy businessmen, and senior ZANU (PF) officials were named as having participated in the pillaging of what was perhaps Africa’s richest country and a UN Panel of Experts report named Mnangagwa as one of the culprits.

 Other key figures in his camp are also not beyond public reproach. Zimbabweans have not forgiven Jonathan Moyo for his perceived role in the creation of a fascist state post-2000. To many Zimbabweans Ignatius Chombo’s name is synonymous with corruption. Since 2000 Oppah Muchinguri has been occupying key positions at Mugabe’s benevolence. Saviour Kasukuwere’s role in the creation of the ‘green bombers’ that terrorized villagers in the 2000s is well documented. I could go on. The point I am making is that this is a coalition of the unpopular and they will struggle to win the hearts and minds of the electorate.    

So what is their strategy? Their plan is to use their control of the state machinery to manipulate elections in a smart and subtle way, as happened in 2013, which will guarantee them some degree of legitimacy. They will introduce some spasmodic political reforms, as a way of securing much needed foreign funding but will not democratize the political space. Moreover, they hope that fissures in the MDC will deepen so that there are very little prospects of a stiff challenge from the opposition in 2018. Mnangagwa has been credited as being the brains behind the June 2008 presidential election runoff and the 2013 elections, both of which were critical game changers for Mugabe and ZANU (PF). If he rigged elections for Mugabe before, it is only logical that he will double the effort for himself.