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.

Zim Asset will not solve our problems

Zimbabwe’s economy is on the brink. A report by the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries says capacity utilisation for the manufacturing sector has markedly declined since the July 2013 elections. In 2012 it stood at 44.9% and is now down to 39.6%. Another report by the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) says between July 2011 and July 2013, 711 companies folded in Harare alone, resulting in 10 000 job losses. But perhaps the grimmest sign that the economy is off the rails was the failure by Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa to make a budget statement as was expected after President Mugabe set up a new government. Chinamasa told members of parliament at a workshop in the resort town of Victoria Falls that the government was broke and that he would not be presenting a budget to parliament. Zimbabwean citizens would have found the MPs’ lampooning of Chinamasa as the ‘minister of finance without the finance’ funny but they did not. This is because this is a matter of serious national concern and Zimbabweans have had enough of this life of penury.

Faced with this harsh economic reality, one would have expected ZANU (PF) policy wonks that drafted the Zimbabwe Agenda for Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) document to think outside the box in crafting a blueprint that would chart a path towards creating a conducive environment for recovery and sustainable growth. What many Zimbabweans expected was a framework for industrial revival and job creation. Sadly Zim Asset fails this simple test and will not get Zimbabwe’s economy out of the rut.

The biggest problem is that Zim Asset is predicated on self-serving propaganda that ZANU )PF) has been feeding Zimbabweans ad nausea. What the drafters of the document seem to forget is that  elections are over and Zimbabweans are expecting food on the table and not excuses. The assertion that ‘Zimbabwe experienced a deteriorating economic and social environment since 2000 caused by illegal economic sanctions imposed by the Western countries…’ is a red herring that must be rejected with the contempt it deserves. While such blatant lies are tolerable in in a party campaign manifesto, it is unacceptable to have them in a national policy document that is supposed to help extricate a country from economic collapse. Serious Zimbabweans who are committed to making this country work again will know that Zimbabwe began experiencing economic decline in the second half of the 90s, the zenith of which was the so called  “Black Friday’ of November 14, 1997, when in one day, the Zimbabwean dollar lost more than 70% of it value. International financial institutions had already raised the red flag on Zimbabwe, thanks to Mugabe’s populist policies of awarding unbudgeted for gratuities to veterans of the liberation struggle and participating in a costly war to prop up Laurent Kabila in the Democratic republic of Congo.  Sanctions were only imposed after the violent elections of 2000 and 2002. It is therefore shameful for the drafters of ZIM ASSET to tell blatant lies in a document that purports to be enunciating national public policy. 

Let us for second go with the ZANU (PF) lie that sanctions are at the center of the myriad challenges that confront us today. One would have expected that Zim Asset would spell out a plan for countering the sanctions or limiting their damage. Sadly there is no such plan except a single sentence that makes reference to Zimbabwe pursuing ‘import substitution industrialization’. For the record, import substitution industrialization (ISI) means the country would reduce its import bill by producing products that it would ordinarily import. So instead of spending billions on importing tractor spares from China for instance, we would make our own, a herculean task given the perilous state of our manufacturing capacity. The reason why the drafters of Zim Asset do not go beyond that single sentence in their reference to import substitution industrialization is that they know that Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector is dead and we are importing even paper clips and rubber bands from other countries. Was it not George Charamba himself who was excoriating the CZI in his abusive Nathaniel Manheru column for failing to invest in new technologies in Zimbabwe’s manufacturing sector?

Another problem is that Zim Asset is not grounded in empiricism as its drafters glossed over important key statistics. Take the growth projections for example. Zim Asset predicts a very ambitious average growth trajectory of 7.3%, which  is not backed by any explanation of how it will be achieved. One wonders how a government that currently cannot pay its bills will achieve 3.4% growth in 2013, 6.1% in 2014 and 9.9% by 2018. A table with thumb sucked growth rates for various sectors of the economy is presented but no one bothered to explain how those figures were derived.  

Zim Asset’s proposals for the agricultural sector are a sick joke. The same failed strategies that have resulted in the country going from Africa’s bread basket to a basket case are recycled. Instead of addressing the biggest problem confronting the agricultural sector, which is that of land being rendered dead capital by the absence of security, the authors of  Zim Asset regurgitate the same tired mantra of ‘government support to agriculture’. This was tried under Gedoen Gono’s profligate farm mechanisation programmes and it yielded nothing.  Zimbabwean legendary musician Thomas Mapfumo called it ‘kurima nzara’. What the agricultural sector desperately needs is a framework that will restore its status a business. A business requires capital to be viable and banks are only going to provide capital where there is security of tenure. ZANU (PF)’s 99 year leases have not done so.  

The drafters of Zim Asset seem unsure whether this is a national policy document or a party campaign manifesto. Their inclusion of a “presidential inputs support scheme’ in a national policy document is baffling. We know for a fact that in the run up to the elections Mugabe used the same scheme to source money from his dodgy allies to shore up his support. That the same scheme is now contained in a national policy document is scandalous. If public resources are being allocated to agriculture, why should they be part of a presidential program that benefits only ZANU (PF) members and supporters? If resources for the scheme are privately sourced why should they be included in a public policy document that is supposed to benefit all citizens regardless of political affiliation?

More worrying is Zim Asset’s deafening silence on the democratisastion and reform agenda. One would have expected that this government would put in place measures for building a social contract with the citizens but it seems ZANU (PF)’s hubris and triumphalism have blinded it to the need for a governance framework that gives citizens a voice. 

Finally Zim Asset is shrouded in ideological ambivalence. On the one hand the document espouses the idea of using ‘its own local resources, which are in abundance and readily available for full exploitation and utilization’, while on the other it proposes engaging bilateral and multilateral funding partners for support. The same incongruity is evident in the badly drafted indigenisation policy which has been interpreted differently by ZANU (PF) officials. This ideological ambivalence has confused investors and this has not been helped by other populist pronouncements, including the banning of foreign investment in sectors that are said to be reserved for locals only.  

After reading Zim Asset one gets the impression that those in charge of running this country are clueless about what is wrong with it and what needs to be done to get it working again. The drafters of Zim Asset skirted the real problems and as a result the solutions they prescribe are anachronistic. This is hardly surprising given the recycling of the same old and tired brains we witnessed when the President announced his cabinet four months ago. Until the ZANU (PF) government demonstrates a commitment to democratic reform by fully implementing the new constitution, reforming state institutions and putting in place measures for fair and equal political participation, it will remain a pariah and will not attract international support and investment, which are critical for the country’s recovery. 

Zimbabwe's Diamond Curse

Last week I attended a National Endowment for Democracy (NED) roundtable discussion on Africa’s resource curse led by eminent scholar Larry Diamond. The Council on Foreign Relations recently published Diamond’s article Petroleum to the People, co-authored with  Jack Mosbacher , in which they explain how Africa’s vast oil deposits could be a curse as politicians and those connected to them collect rents and use them to entrench their power at the expense of social and economic development. They make a number of poignant observations, which I found compelling as I reflected on Zimbabwe’s diamonds.

A point that they make is that Africa’s rich oil endowment has become a curse as it has fuelled corruption and bad governance in countries that are already reaping revenues from it and that those countries that are yet to exploit their deposits are likely to suffer the same fate unless there is a change in the way the revenues are used.   They cite the case of Equatorial Guinea to illustrate their point. Blessed with one of Africa’s  richest oil deposits estimated at one billion barrels, Equatorial Guinea started selling oil in 1995 and has earned billions of dollars but its citizens remain poor, thanks to massive corruption by the President and those close to him. Teodoro Obiang Mangue, son to the country’s president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo lives like a rock star. In the United States he has a multi-million dollar mansion in Malibu, California, a fleet of luxury cars, a collection of speedboats worth millions of dollars and Michael Jackson memorabilia valued at $3.2 million dollars.

I remember reading somewhere last year that French authorities had seized a $200 million property in a wealthy Paris suburb that belonged to the Nguema dynasty, where a collection of art, antiques and fine wines was found. Ironically three quarters of citizens of this country subsist on less than $2 a day and those opposed to the regime have found themselves at the notorious ‘Black Beach’ prison where torture, beatings and starvation are the order of the day.  Nguema is one of Africa’s most vile dictators and counts Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe among his closest allies. Nine years ago a group of mercenaries led by Simon Mann was intercepted and captured at Harare International Airport as it attempted to make its way to Malabo to depose Nguema’s government in a coup. Mugabe promptly handed Mann and his gang over to Nguema who sent them to ‘Black Beach’. Since then the two have become close allies. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) alleges that Nguema has doled millions of dollars to Mugabe and his party in times of need, including for the 2013 election campaign. 

The Nguema dynasty’s profligacy will not surprise many Zimbabweans. Since the discovery of diamonds in Marange district in the country’s eastern province of Manicaland, Zimbabwe’s ruling class has developed a taste for the finer things in life. There are reports of luxurious homes with helipads owned by the political class. Harare has more Mercedes Benz vehicles than any other city in the world per capita. Two years ago a Zimbabwean government minister who officially earned $300 a month paid nearly $30 million cash to acquire a majority stake for his family trust in a local bank. Just last year the Mail & Guardian newspaper of South Africa reported that Zimbabwean businessman Robert Mhlanga, Chairman of Mbada Diamonds, one of the companies awarded a mining concession in Marange, had splashed close to $20 million on prime real estate in that country. The paper also reported that Mhlanga was a close associate of the Zimbabwean first family.

Mugabe himself has publicly acknowledged the existence of corruption in the murky diamond sector but has done nothing to curb it. Three months ago he revealed on national television that a former chairman of the government owned Zimbabwe Mining Development Cooperation (ZMDC), a state owned company with diamond mining concessions in Marange, had received a $6 million bribe from a Ghanaian investor and vowed to take action. As I write the said fraudster is a free man.  Investigators must have developed cold feet after realising that the net would catch some really big fish.  In a country where proceeds from crime have been used to buy political influence, it is probable that part of the $6 million bribe found its way into Mr. Mugabe’s party coffers.

A majority of Zimbabwean citizens lives in grinding poverty. Eight in ten of those eligible to work are jobless. Citizens spend hours in darkness as the country has failed to meet its energy requirements. Infrastructure is derelict and companies are closing, rendering thousands more jobless. As I write the government has shelved the announcement of the annual budget that was scheduled for November because it has no money. Ironically in Surat, a diamond trading hub in India, the price of diamonds has plummeted because of an oversupply of the precious stones. The source?  Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond fields. Diamonds are being illicitly exported and the proceeds are lining the pockets of political elites and their networks. 

Another point that Diamond and Mosbacher make, which rings true for Zimbabwe, is that the resource curse breaks the ‘social contract between a population and its government’. When governments no longer have to tax citizens or tax them less because they are deriving revenues from the sale of natural resources, they have no incentive to serve the people. Citizens are unlikely to demand that the government delivers jobs and social services from the tax revenues that they pay. Governments will become less accountable and will use patronage to retain political power.

While in the case of Zimbabwe the social contract was already broken before the discovery of diamonds in Marange, thanks to repression, rapid economic decline, joblessness and citizen despondency, the discovery of the precious gems threw a financial lifeline to a regime that was on the verge of collapse. By the time elections were held in 2008 Mugabe had become so severely weakened that he could not financially sustain the election rigging machinery, resulting in him losing to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the first round of a presidential election.  Forced to share power with the opposition following a sham second round election, Mugabe set out to regain his stranglehold on the polity and to build robust infrastructure for election rigging. He deployed the military to take control of the diamond fields before awarding mining concessions to Chinese companies that went into joint venture agreements with state security linked firms. He then ran a parallel government in which the treasury, now controlled by the former opposition, was bypassed as revenues from diamonds were deployed to strategic institutions such as state intelligence, the military, the police and party structures. Diamond revenues were also allegedly used to buy support from African leaders ahead of the July 31 election. He also paid millions of dollars to an Israeli firm to forge the voter register in his favour. 

Diamond and Mosbacher suggest that African countries can avoid the resource curse by distributing oil revenues to citizens through what they call an ‘oil-to-cash’ system where the government transfers cash to citizens directly and then taxes them a portion of it. The idea is that the pain of taxation will force citizens to demand service delivery and accountability, thereby maintaining the social contract between the population and the government. I add that for such a system to work, it must be born out of citizen agency and must not be pushed from outside. As long as Zimbabwean citizens do not demand accountability in the mining and sale of the country’s diamonds and other natural resources, politicians and their associates will continue to line their pockets and the country will not prosper.