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The myth of mass action in emerging democracies
By
Omar
D. Kalinge-Nnyago
STAYING next door
at the time, I keenly followed the opening days of Zimbabwe's opposition
leader's trial.
On 3rd February 2003, Movement for Democratic Change, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, party Secretary General Welshman Ncube and shadow Minister for agriculture in the MDC, Renson Gasela were charged with conspiring to murder President Robert Mugabe, a charge that carried a maximum sentence of death.
According to the prosecution, the trio had contracted a Canadian company Dickens and Madson, to assassinate Mugabe ahead of the 2002 presidential elections. Dickens and Madson was headed by a former Israeli secret agent, Ari Ben-Menashe. The trio denied the charge. Ari insisted that his company had been hired and had received $ 100,000 as deposit from the accused, on the $500,000 contract to kill Mugabe. It was not clear whether the company was in the business of killing presidents.
Morgan and his friends said they had actually paid the said amount to the company, yes, but for public relations work. As part of his evidence, Ben-Menashe produced clearly audible and visible video recordings in court, of a series of meetings he had held with the accused in London and Montreal. He said the CIA and Britain's MI6 was involved, and had promised Sterling pounds 6.5 million to pay for Mugabe's assassination. He added that on occasions, the accused were escorted to the meetings by a CIA officer called Edward Simms.
The US embassy in Harare declined to comment on the implication of the CIA in the alleged assassination plot, citing standard procedure of not commenting on intelligence matters. Several months later, Morgan and his friends were acquitted of the charges. Morgan is a free man now, but not before losing his party's support, which is now split into two factions.
The Zimbabwe opposition leaders' case sounded every bit sophisticated and could not ordinarily be dismissed as a fabrication. Western diplomats took a lot of interest in it. The detail was intricate. The evidence was overwhelming. Video recordings can be powerful evidence. Everyone waited. I for one knew Morgan was dead! As the days went by and the trial unfolded, it became clear that the charges were fabricated, a high tech lynching project where an opposition leader in search of international attention had fallen into a trap. He had thought he was procuring PR services. Technology turned it into an assassination plot.
The moral of the story is that it is very dangerous to be an opposition politician in a reluctant democracy. And that it is possible for the state to fabricate the most believable evidence against an accused, strong enough to alienate even your own closest friends and supporters. In fact, except the first day of their trial which attracted a few hundred MDC supporters, subsequent appearances gradually turned into non-events, leaving the trio isolated.
Security was even later reduced to normal deployment levels at the high court. Even without the evidence, public interest does wane, as a trial drags on. The timing of the trial coincided with the Cricket World Cup that was taking place in Zim. MDC's strategists had called Mugabe silly, for choosing the 'wrong' date. They thought the moment was a godsend. The plan was that Morgan's trial would spark off mass demonstrations that would disrupt the World Cup, thus embarrassing Mugabe. No demonstrations took place. Instead it was MDC which lost face. The World Cup passed off without incident.
Like Museveni who had flown out of the country before Besigye's arrest, Robert Mugabe flew to Addis Ababa for an African Union meeting as the trial opened. Mugabe looked fully in charge. Indeed he was, until today. The MDC was demoralised, it nearly crashed. The other moral here is that the so called masses are very hard to harness and galvanise. Therefore making strategies on their basis can be fatal. They should never be taken for granted. As they are ordinary people struggling to have ends meet on a daily basis, it is difficult to keep them from work for days on end. Mass action can only be successful if planned long in advance. Trade unions can spend several months saving money for a planned sit down, so that they can hold out for some time, before hunger and other needs strike their striking workers families. Spontaneous demonstrations die out as fast as they were ignited.
Besigye's riots didn't go into the third day. By the fourth day, it was life as usual. There is now less interest in his court appearances from the public. Christmas celebrations went on normally. Apart from his family and a few party diehards, no one really remembered Dr Besigye's plight. Mass action is also sustainable if an event concerns the masses directly, like food or fuel shortages, job losses and the like.
An opposition leader being harassed is a remote concern. Mugabe's intention to charge Tsvangirai, Ncube and Gasela was not to hang them. It was to disorganise, demoralise and divide their party. He just achieved it after two long years. A section of MDC has defied Morgan and ignored his call for a boycott of elections. This month, an MDC delegation travelled to South Africa to meet Thabo Mbeki.
Tsvangirai was not
one of them. Now humbled and confused, I would not be surprised if he
struck a deal with Mugabe one of these days. Moses Ali spent some time
at the government prison. Today, he is one of the most decorated military
officers in Uganda, a cabinet minister and one of Museveni's vice presidents
in the NRM. Are there any lessons here? Have a thoughtful new year,
folks.
This article was first published in the Ugandan Monitor newspaper
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