The Pacification of Zapu

Having had little success against the insurgents, the Zimbabwe authorities responded as have many others confronting guerrilla campaigns. They targeted those allegedly giving succor to the rebels: the ZAPU organization, party leaders, supporters, and inhabitants of Matabeleland, the affected area. The fact that the guerrillas operated in an area where ZAPU enjoys overwhelming popular support seemed to lend credence to the view that the party was in league with the rebels.

Prime Minister Mugabe declared that ZAPU, the United African National Council, and the Conservative Alliance "yielded dissident men who have resorted to subversion in order to overthrow ZANU and its Government."^[141] He accused ZAPU not simply of giving moral support to the armed insurgents but also of training and funding them. It is significant, however, that the only top ZAPU official prosecuted by the Government (for assisting dissidents and plotting a coup), MP Sydney Malunga, was acquitted in July 1986 (other top ZAPU officials arrested and detained without charge were never brought to court). Instead of prosecuting party members for crimes, the authorities chose to disrupt ZAPU's political activities and stifle dissent. This record throws into question the regime's contention that the ZAPU leadership was involved

[137] Herald, 16 June 1988.

[138] Herald, 21 March 1988.

[139] Times, I July 1988.

[140] Africa Watch, Zimbabwe, pp. 22, 25.

[141] Robert Mugabe, speech to the ZANU Women's League conference, 15 March 1984 (Speeches and Documents of the First ZANU(PF) Women's League Conference, Harare, 1984).

in subversive activities· Shils's study of Asia and Africa suggests that "open opposition parties in the new states are seldom dangerous to the ruling parties, either in open electoral campaigns or in parliamentary voting or in conspiratorial activities." In suppressing opposition parties, what the regime "reacts against is more an imputed subversive intention ... rather than a factual probability of subversion."^[142]

One minister argued that the arrest of some ZAPU officers was "evidence enough to warrant banning the party";^[143] other officials threatened to ban ZAPU on numerous occasions. Ministers branded ZAPU a "dissident organization" and a "subversive organization," equating it with the South African-sponsored MNR in Mozambique and UNITA in Angola.^[144] Why, then, did the Government not proscribe ZAPU? A ranking CIO official stated in 1983: "ZAPU is being left free until something drastic happens.... Banning it now can only unite the people in Matabeleland."^[145] One Cabinet minister gave me this explanation in 1987:

The banning of any party has not been on the agenda. Banning is against the spirit of the constitution, the right of political association. Instead we took strong measures against ZAPU leaders, putting pressure on the party as a whole and picking on individuals. We had good security reasons for banning ZAPU and legally good grounds to do it, but politically it's something we didn't want to do.^[146]

In addition, a formal ban would almost certainly provoke a domestic outcry and international protests and would perhaps include a suspension of foreign aid and investment in the country. That the banning of a party may be counterproductive was abundantly evidenced in the 1960s and 1970s. Short of outright proscription, the Government made every effort to undermine ZAPU's ability to function as a political party. If sufficiently crippled, ZAPU might cease its opposition and the regime would avoid the possible fallout from a formal banning.

From 1982 to 1986 the Government waged a campaign to undermine ZAPU. Official harassment took various forms and occasionally precipitated freelance violence by militant ZANU supporters, like the Youth Brigades. ZAPU MPs and city councillors were detained or mysteriously disappeared. ZAPU meetings were closed, forcing members to meet in

[142] Edward Shils, "Opposition in the New States of Asia and Africa," in Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 428–29, 436.

[143] Minister of Mines, Herald, 7 March 1983.

[144] Herald, 19 September 1985; 27 March and 19 April 1983; 22 September 1987.

[145] CIO official, interview with author, 29 June 1983.

[146] Former Minister of Home Affairs, interview with author, 10 June 1987.

private. Almost every party office was at some point closed by the authorities or torched by ZANU militants. Several ZAPU-linked firms were closed and ZAPU property confiscated without compensation. ZAPU members were forced to attend ZANU rallies and purchase ZANU membership cards.

The strategy of linkage the authorities used to associate ZAPU with the insurgents parallels the "destabilization alliance" it alleged between ZAPU and the South African Government.^[147] By dramatizing the alleged connection between internal and external threats, the Zimbabwean regime, like its Rhodesian predecessor and so many others, sought to justify its treatment of domestic elements. One analyst notes that "a great temptation exists for governments to invoke national security in their defense by identifying domestic political opponents with the policies of some foreign state."^[148] Although a number of individuals sympathetic to ZAPU have received training, arms, or other aid from within South Africa, the degree of involvement by the Pretoria regime itself remains obscure. The Permanent Secretary of Home Affairs himself made the distinction: "I don't know whether there is a connection between the South African authorities and dissidents, but they are receiving support from within South Africa.... I've never seen direct proof that the South African Government is funding them."^[149] Moreover, no hard evidence has been presented to prove any pact between the ZAPU hierarchy and strategists in Pretoria. The CIO conceded in 1983 that "there is no connection between ZAPU as a party and South Africa";^[150] none has since been established. Yet ministers persisted in claiming that ZAPU, South Africa, and the insurgents had forged a sinister alliance bent on overthrowing the regime.

For its part, ZAPU repeatedly proclaimed its innocence and condemned insurgents' attacks. Although some dissidents defined themselves as ZAPU's vanguard, this did not mean that they were ZAPU's creation. One observer argues that the "dissidents were not an intrinsic part of ZAPU's organization and strategy,"^[151] and another concludes, "It is plain that the dissidents were not operating as part of ZAPU."^[152] In

[147] Herald, 26 February 1983.

[148] Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), p. 59.

[149] Interview with author, 8 June 1987.

[150] CIO official, interview with author, 29 June 1983; emphasis added.

[151] Hodder-Williams, "Matabeleland," p. 20.

[152] Terence Ranger, "Matabeleland since the Amnesty," African Affairs 88 (April 1989): 165.

fact, guerrillas harassed, beat, and killed ZAPU supporters and local party officers.^[153]

Some security officials privately conceded that they did not know whether the ZAPU hierarchy gave its blessing to the insurgents;^[154] some ministers also raised questions about the ZAPU-dissident link.^[155] Yet the dominant official line persisted until the unity talks between the parties in 1986. To help explain the new interparty rapprochement one minister quipped, "ZAPU now realizes that dissident activity doesn't pay."^[156] After the unity talks fell apart in 1987, however, the regime once again accused ZAPU of supporting the dissidents. The alleged connection may depend less on hard evidence than on the prevailing relations between ZANU and ZAPU.

ZAPU also experienced violent attacks by ZANU militants like the Youth Brigades.^[157] In the months preceding the 1985 election, a wave of mass demonstrations by ZANU loyalists took place; the protesters demanded that ZAPU and UANC be banned and Nkomo hanged, that a one-party state be declared immediately, and that all non-ZANU civil servants be dismissed. The demonstrations frequently ended in vandalism or destruction of ZAPU offices and assaults on ZAPU supporters and officers, sometimes while the police stood by.^[158] ZANU zealots also forced their opponents to attend ZANU rallies, and ZAPU supporters had difficulty obtaining permits for their own rallies.

Three years of violence and harassment against ZAPU had a cumulative crippling effect on its ability to organize and campaign in the 1985 election.^[159] ZAPU nevertheless won all fifteen seats in Matabeleland. Despite its own strong showing in the election, the ruling party was sur-

[153] One hundred to one hundred fifty ZAPU officials had been killed by mid-1984, as well as sixty-eight ZANU officials (Frank G. Wisner, Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Department of State, testimony on 24 May 1984 before the House Subcommittee on Africa, in Zimbabwe: Four Years of Independence [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984] p. 27).

[154] CIO official, interview with author, June 1983; Permanent Secretary for Home Affairs, interview with author, 8 June 1987.

[155] The Minister of Information, for instance, made the surprising comment in January 1984 that "ZIPRA elements are no longer in the field as bandits. Nor are Nkomo and other ZAPU leaders involved in the second phase of terrorism" (Sunday Mail, 29 January 1984).

[156] Former Minister of Home Affairs, interview with author, 10 June 1987.

[157] Jim Cason and Mike Fleshman, "Zimbabwe: Election Campaign Turns Bloody" Africa News, 28 January 1985.

[158] Ibid.; Michelle Faul, "Mugabe's Election Maneuvers," Africa Report 30, no. 1 (January-February 1985).

[159] International Human Rights Law Group, Zimbabwe: Report on the 1985 General Elections (Washington, D.C.: IHRLG, 1986).

prised and troubled by the remaining bedrock of regional support for ZAPU. After the election both disappearances and arrests of ZAPU supporters and officials accelerated, which encouraged a flood of defections to ZANU. The combination of mob violence, police arrests, and mass defections gave ZAPU little choice but to agree to unity talks with ZANU in late 1985. After the talks broke down in April 1987, all ZAPU meetings were banned and all its offices ordered closed. Now in complete disarray, the party was forced either to accept a merger with ZANU on the latter's terms or to vanish altogether from the political scene. It opted for the former; the two parties united in December 1987.