Foraging for food: Zimbabwe’s citizens struggle to eat in economy with inflation of 231 million%
THE MAN is nervous. He’s from the “President’s Office”, and that doesn’t mean he serves tea to Robert Mugabe. It’s Zimbabwe’s version of the KGB: the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO).
He says all his phones – cell and landline – are bugged, so we’re meeting in secret at a house belonging to a go-between in suburban Harare. His voice is barely audible, and he can’t sit still. As loyalty to Mugabe wanes, disillusioned insiders such as the CIO man are becoming more willing to speak out. Still, he’s worried that talking to a foreign journalist could land him in serious trouble.
In Zimbabwe, even the spies are watched.
I’m worried, too, that the meeting might backfire. Mugabe’s regime routinely denies foreign journalists entry to Zimbabwe, so I have no option but to work here illegally, undercover. There’s always an element of risk.
The CIO casts a long shadow. Small, everyday encounters become fraught with fear. Common coincidences are magnified into something sinister.
Everyone knows how the CIO guys work: you never notice them until you spot a car behind you, then drive around the block a few times and find it’s still there.
There are plenty of terrifying stories about what happens to the people who are arrested, ranging from lengthy interrogation to torture. So I’m a little taken aback by the man from the President’s Office. He turns out to be in his 30s, educated, articulate and urbane. Had he been born in any other country, he might have found a career at a bank, a think tank, a law firm. Instead, he learned about dirty tricks and disenchantment. For years, the Mugabe regime has used the CIO to undermine and frighten the opposition, keep an eye on journalists and neutralise threats. But these days the name “President’s Office” is a misnomer, says the senior officer, who, it’s no surprise, speaks on condition of anonymity. He estimates that 60 to 70 per cent of CIO officers – all but the hard-line ideologues – no longer back Mugabe.
That the heart of Mugabe’s web of fear is abandoning him underscores how tenuous his grip on power has become.
Like most of the population in this country, besieged by inflation of 231 million per cent – from starving rural unemployed to hungry soldiers and bureaucrats whose pay doesn’t cover their bus fares – CIO staffers want change.
“There are a lot of professional ) people who feel opposed to what’s going on,” the senior officer says. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t conform, or don’t obey your instructions, see what I mean? It’s disgruntlement, not rebellion.
“The current system has ceased to be functional. When you come to that stage, you obviously want change. Service delivery is dismal. Education is worst affected. There are no drugs in public institutions,” he says, reeling off problems like an opposition speech writer.
CIO headquarters, a drab, nine-storey red-brick building on Selous Avenue in central Harare, has many small windows, like eyes gazing at the city.
Just walking by evokes a chill.
Members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change obsess about the organisation. They avoid mention of meeting places in phone calls, talk in code, use encrypted e-mail and drive circuitous routes with an eye on the rear-view mirror.
Several years ago, MDC supporters said they were certain the party had been infiltrated by CIO spies determined to undermine the opposition by sowing discord among members. They are right to be concerned, the CIO officer says: “Infiltration is the name of the game.” He guffaws at the idea that the MDC might find that shocking. “It’s to be expected. It’s very normal.” His term for it is “information management”.
“With the opposition and some influential members of society, there is a standard procedure. It’s keeping an eye on everything they do. You want to know what’s happening and where, so that you can win.” Likewise, he says, the opposition should expect plenty of dirty tricks in any power-sharing government.
If such a government comes to pass, that is. Even though Mugabe was forced into a power-sharing deal after African observers rejected results of the June presidential election, it’s an idea that neither the regime nor the opposition embraces comfortably, as witnessed in the tortuous negotiations about who gets control of economic posts and security forces.
Meanwhile, Mugabe holds on. The only solid obstacle he faces is the economy, which is in such chaos that there’s not a lot of governing he can do.
In years past, the officer says, the CIO higher-ups saw opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as a buffoon. They poked fun at his chubby cheeks and looked down on his lack of education. To them, he was no match for Mugabe, with his numerous degrees and stinging rhetoric.
But most people in the CIO don’t joke about Tsvangirai anymore. They poke fun at Mugabe.
“People talk openly in the organisation. There are certain things you would not have said openly, like statements against His Excellency, the President. Ah, but, these days, people even say that. They say the old man should go. They even use, in a derogatory way, the term mudhara. It means ‘old man’, but it’s not a respectful word.”
Tsvangirai is “not seen as very bright, but he’s accepted because of the leadership change that everyone wants to see. There’s no alternative. He is the alternative to the system. By virtue of that, he’s accepted.”
The CIO has always been one of the best-funded agencies. But “you start having situations where you are fighting for resources. We are looking at a situation where you are supposed to do A, B and C in a specific time. But where there are no resources, you can’t do A, B and C.” He sees the violence unleashed during the recent elections as primitive, crude and counterproductive. The securocrats, he says, “are not so intellectually gifted; they’re short-sighted. It’s not easy to align yourself with a diabolical or cruel way of doing things.”
When he joined the CIO, he was hoping for a speedy political trajectory in the ruling Zanu-PF party – and by that measure he has been successful. But he’s come to despise the deadening political conformity and the stifling of criticism in the party.
To him, that’s the systemic flaw that is killing Zimbabwe: the crushing of ideas. “What has always happened – which, I think, is the weakness in the system – is that when a decision is taken, wrongly or rightly, you will have to end up conforming if you want to remain part of the group.” – (LA Times-Washington Post service)