V.

Recent Events

In 1990 a struggling economy forced Zimbabwe to adopt a World Bank Structural Adjustment Program, which called for Zimbabwe to move away from Marxism in favor of a freer economy. Mugabe dropped ZANU-PF’s Marxist rhetoric while retaining a general commitment to socialism. He was reelected in 1990. In 1989 and again in 1994 Mugabe was forced to dismiss ministers and party associates when corruption was revealed at the highest levels of government. In spite of unrest resulting from drought, unemployment, and the slow progress of land reform, ZANU-PF won elections in 1995 and Mugabe was reelected president in 1996. Both opposition candidates withdrew from the 1996 elections, maintaining that election regulations unfairly favored the ruling party.

In October 1997, Mugabe announced the renewal of his plans to seize white farmers’ lands, but international opposition forced him to stall their enactment. Sithole was jailed for two years that December after being found guilty of planning to kill Mugabe in 1995. He was released on bail because of ill health. In 1999, while facing increasing domestic hostility and criticism, Mugabe cut Zimbabwe’s links with the World Bank, which opposed his land redistribution policies. He blamed a “white conspiracy” directed against him and Zimbabweans for losing a referendum in 2000 that would have reformed the constitution and given him expanded powers. Mugabe sanctioned (although never officially) the forcible illegal occupation of white-owned farms. Incidents against white farmers became increasingly violent. With this issue as a backdrop, legislative elections were held. With support from predominantly rural areas, ZANU-PF defeated the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which garnered support from urban areas.

Despite increasingly vociferous international opposition, the land seizures continued; the political opposition and foreign media faced increasing restrictions. With an approaching presidential election, the European Union imposed targeted sanctions on Mugabe and the Zimbabwean leadership in February 2002 after its team of election monitors was refused entry to the country. Following the election in March—in which Mugabe claimed victory over MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai after a poll that was criticized as flawed by most international observers—Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations. Following the decision of the Commonwealth summit in Nigeria in December 2003 to extend the suspension indefinitely, Mugabe announced that Zimbabwe had left the organization.

While Western opinion toward Mugabe’s regime continued to harden, he retained the tacit support of several southern African leaders including South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki. In October 2004, Tsvangirai was found not guilty on charges of treason but MDC members continued to be harassed. They eventually decided to compete in the parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2005, in spite of continued concerns about the supposed fairness of the ballot. ZANU-PF won the elections, which were widely condemned for voting irregularities, and thus controlled over two-thirds of the seats in the legislature, placing Mugabe in a position that allows him to make changes to the constitution.

Operation Murambatsvina (“drive out the rubbish”) was launched in May 2005 and saw the removal of some 700,000 people from urban areas. Meanwhile fuel and food shortages increased. In April 2006 inflation officially reached a rate of 1,000 percent prompting the printing of notes worth 100,000 Zimbabwean dollars, officially worth U.S.$1. In August the currency was adjusted, with three zeros removed from its value.

Mugabe’s opponents have accused him of not adequately dealing with corruption and of failing to meet the needs of both the poor and the business sector. Despite this he had succeeded in steering Zimbabwe relatively smoothly through the years of crisis, reconciling political enemies and avoiding a civil war that at one time seemed inevitable. Under Mugabe the economy had, until recently, prospered modestly, in spite of the severe disruption caused by war and drought. However, his increasing determination to hang on to power at all costs has dragged Zimbabwe into a period of economic decline and increasing civil unrest.