‘I can’t wait until these stupid elections are over and we can just get on with our lives.’ Those were the words of a Zimbabwean acquaintance—and they reflect the attitude of many, perhaps the majority, as the country approaches another round of elections on 23 August. It’s not political apathy; it would be more accurately described as resignation. The elections are likely to be another pointless exercise of ‘voting without choosing’, as a commentator once described it—another poll in which the playing field is tilted and the numbers tweaked.

The 43-year-old predominance of the ruling party, Zanu-PF, derives from its stranglehold on the rural areas, where nearly 70% of the population live. That, in turn, draws its strength from the security services and an asphyxiating array of supporting structures whose task is to ensure that few will dare to vote for the opposition on election day.

In this and many other respects, Zanu-PF is nothing if not predictable. For an entity that is fixated on the past and has successfully deployed the same strategies time and again in defence of power, a change would be regarded as a dangerous folly. Given that such strategies always depend, in the last analysis, on brute force or the threat of it, Zanu’s version of an old adage would be, ‘If it still breaks, don’t fix it.’

Another feature of the party’s covert coercive measures is that they’re often poorly disguised—and yet exposure makes little difference. The publicity given this year to the activities of a faux non-government organisation called Forever Associates Zimbabwe (FAZ) is a case in point. The media and opposition have asserted that FAZ is a creature of the state and is interfering with voter registration and other aspects of the electoral process.

No visit to the countryside is required to confirm those allegations; a trip to the FAZ website is more than enough. A bungling attempt by ill-equipped apparatchiks to adopt the language of civil society, the site is instead a transparent treatise on Zanu’s customary electoral gambit: driving fear into the marrow of voters and creating no-go areas for the opposition.

FAZ is ostensibly a friendly ‘affiliate’ of the ruling party ‘aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the Electorate [over] to the continuance, in perpetuity, of the revolutionary governance of … ZANU PF’—a laudable civic objective, in the minds of its authors, which just happens to square with the president’s oft-repeated claim that Zanu will ‘rule forever’.

The tactical elements show up soon after in the not-so-fine print: ‘The mainstay of this [2023 election] campaign is door-to-door intimate voter contact’, a method that allows FAZ ‘to move from house-to-house and workplace-to-workplace, talking to individual voters one at a time’, which ‘in turn, enables [FAZ to] … gauge their level of support for Party and Candidate’. Such ‘visits must not be once-off but must become regular to help the Party to dominate and saturate the environment while denying the same to opponents’. FAZ ‘volunteers’ are tasked with ‘keep[ing] in touch with registered voters through texting and phoning’, something that ‘must be done almost intrusively, as a way of maintaining intimacy’.

One of the ways in which Zanu attained ‘intimacy’ with the electorate during the war of liberation—and the violent independence election campaign of 1980—was through the use of ‘pungwes’, clandestine nighttime ‘politicisation’ meetings at which alleged ‘sellouts’ were selected for instant retribution. The terror of such bloody assemblies, where alleged collaborators were randomly chosen to underline the party’s power over life and death, remain etched in minds across Zimbabwe. It can be no mistake, then, that FAZ lists ‘Pungwe movie shows’ as one of the opportunities for ‘imparting the Party’s campaign message’. The mere mention of the word is enough to send shivers down the collective spine, the more so because it is juxtaposed by the assurance that FAZ personnel will, naturally, only ‘engage in political violence … in self-defence’.

FAZ is by no means the only apparatus being used to coerce voters. Other time-honoured levers include traditional leaders, war veterans’ organisations, food aid, the allocation of land and business opportunities—the list goes on. Much of the vote is stitched up well in advance; further adjustments can be made courtesy of the regime’s effective control of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. In such a scenario, the main opposition party, the Citizens Coalition for Change, is likely to be reduced after the elections to (yet again) mere amplification of its already-loud protests about the impossibility of a free and fair poll in Zimbabwe. The short odds on its winning in a landslide if such were not the case is moot.

Another implication of this vice-like grip is that change, if it comes, will probably issue from the ranks of Zanu-PF. The ruling party has always been riven by internal fissures, but they have become deeper than ever over the past decade, and have plumbed new depths since the coup of 2017 that ousted Robert Mugabe. The simultaneous elevation of his second-in-command, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was itself a function of the most significant split in the party since 1980, and the battle for its poisonous soul with those who were purged has not abated.

There are also murmurings among those who seem to be loyal. Within the military’s officer corps, there’s a perception that Mnangagwa has run Zimbabwe like a Karanga tuckshop—a slipshod plaything of his ethnic subgroup—and that he has done so in a manner exceeding anything Mugabe dared. Certainly, much of Mnangagwa’s provocative beneficence has been showered upon a sub-subgroup that hails from the narrow confines of his home area near the town of Shurugwi. And much of the resentment revolves around those potent destabilisers, greed and the distribution of ill-gotten gains. Throw into the mix rumoured tensions between the president and his deputy, former military supremo Constantino Chiwenga, and it’s clear that electoral stagnation does not equal political stasis.

FAZ’s status as both a repressive tool and a function of intra-party division and suspicion illustrates that point. Formed to suffocate the opposition, it has also been deployed internally to exclude undesirables from party primaries and watch carefully for signs of ‘bhora musango’—attempts to ‘kick the ball into the bush’ by members who seek to ‘decampaign’ Mnangagwa from within.

FAZ is reportedly run by elements in the Central Intelligence Organisation whose intra-party activities are said to have displeased factions associated with Chiwenga and the military. Deciphering Zanu’s factions is a dark science at the best of times, but there’s ample evidence that the schismatic dynamics in the ruling party continue to spin away in the background. The hysterical response to an announcement of a tilt at the presidency by Saviour Kasukuwere, a former acolyte of Mugabe’s exiled during the coup, is but one more sign that nerves are stretched taut.

Change from within Zanu-PF provides few grounds for immediate optimism. The party’s disunity doesn’t stem from fundamental ideological disagreement. Theirs is not a contest over the structure of the political or economic system. After all, the need for the opposition and a liberal democratic transition to be cut off at the knees is one aspect on which there remains broad consensus. Rather, the factions fight because they desire the same fruits, but where the lust for money and power reign supreme, there is not enough to go around. That’s why the coup threw up more of the same, and that’s why any open rupture in Zanu is likely to be a repeat, with little to offer those yearning for real change. For those outside the snake pit, the mantra is as it was: keep your head down and get on with it.

A year on from the coup that ousted Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe remains perched between piecemeal reform and old ways that are as intractable as they are destructive. That’s because the country is ruled by a clique with a partial and conditional commitment to change—and a total, obdurate determination to retain and enjoy power.

The ‘new’ regime can be viewed from different angles, but the nub of it is this: there’s a recognition that the economic fiasco of the last 20 years was suboptimal, but Emmerson Mnangagwa and his fellow travellers will burn the house down if they feel it necessary. Make no mistake, their will to power is every bit as intense as Mugabe’s—as is their belief that they own the country’s choicest fruits by right of conquest.

There’s no comprehending Zimbabwe without an appreciation of that mentality. Yet many fail to get it because they don’t read the country’s history. In 1979, at the height of the struggle against white rule, a diplomat who mixed frequently with Mugabe and other leaders of his party observed that ‘ZANU does not seem to attach much importance to the destruction caused by prolonged war’. They said they were content to see Zimbabwe ‘totally’ demolished if that was the price to be paid for preventing others from ruling it. That attitude has not changed an iota, notwithstanding the passage of 40 years and Mugabe’s departure. After all, the men who now rule wielded his hatchets for most of that period.

Therefore, the key question does not revolve around the prospect of a gradual transition to democracy, as the naive appear to hope. Rather, it is, in the first place, whether economic modernisation and international reengagement will be achieved without nudging the hypersensitive Zanu threat meter into the red. And that is not a matter of abstract rationality, but of perception—subjective responses that are also rooted in history and are shot through with not insignificant levels of paranoia, prejudice and entitlement.

The second red zone to watch is the margin between growth-compatible grand corruption of the type favoured by the Chinese and avarice of the nuclear variety for which Zanu has had an affinity since the 1990s. It’s not a question of whether Mnangagwa and company will continue to view Zimbabwe’s resources as a God-given right, but whether they can walk the line between controlled greed and madness.

The 12 months since Mugabe went have been a reflection of the attempt to marry limited change with non-negotiable stasis. Zanu’s dalliance with reform is as awkward as a politician’s jig, incorporating umpteen uncoordinated movements and unsightly contradictions.

The election campaign last August was largely violence-free, yet the vote count had numerous anomalies—and the evisceration of opposition protests was swift and brutal. The shooting of unarmed civilians and a roundup of opposition activists was a harsh reminder—in time-honoured, disproportionate fashion—that dissent would not be tolerated. It jarred horribly with Mnangagwa’s slick public relations effort, yet squared perfectly for those suckled on the nationalist iteration of monarchical absolutism—Zimbabwe’s alter ego to Europe’s divine right of kings.

The decision of Commonwealth and European Union election observers to withhold endorsement of the elections had much to do with the aftermath. Mnangagwa’s announcement of a commission of inquiry was meant to place the PR wreck back on its tracks, yet the process has also exposed the unreconstructed mindset that underwrites the regime. The commission was appointed unilaterally by the president—making it illegal under the constitution—its mandate appeared to prejudge the outcome, and its membership was a mix of well-regarded outsiders and clearly compromised insiders.

The hearings themselves have resulted in the subpoenaing of senior military commanders, but have also seen those whose hands are usually hidden flip a collective bird at Zimbabweans by providing explanations that expanded the boundaries of arrogance and implausible deniability. The chief of the defence forces, Philip Sibanda, told the inquiry that soldiers had ‘fired in the air but I do not believe any could have aimed shots at the civilians’. The tactical commander of the soldiers who pulled the triggers suggested that ‘militant’ members of the opposition had shot their own.

On the economy, away from the spheres in which farce and faux reform reign supreme, there are signs of genuine engagement: businesspeople report that it has never been easier to talk to government ministers, who are bending over backwards to attract investment; there’s a bid to apply laws governing the financial system more consistently; and there are indications that exports are beginning to increase in some sectors.

Yet there are no elements of life in Zimbabwe that can remain untouched by Zanu’s impunity and the ghosts of the ruling party’s past excesses. The government is living beyond its means, as it did under Mugabe, spraying about its largesse in order to keep the faithful happy and buy votes from the masses. The party’s backbone—the army and police—were given a 20% pay rise shortly before the elections.

The budget deficit has ballooned—and the government’s answer is a version 2.0, virtual variety of the profligate money printing that occurred a decade ago. It’s attempting to manage its overspending by issuing treasury bonds to the banks, ‘IOUs’ that are mirrored by electronic ‘dollars’ which are used to pay wages and buy goods.

Unsurprisingly, the effects have stoked—and been stoked by—fears of a return to the world-record hyperinflationary psychosis of 2008. Despite the government’s insistence that e-dollars (or RTGS, as they are known) hold parity with the US dollar, their value has plummeted and nervousness has skyrocketed among a population whose skittishness in the face of monetary shifts is as acute as Zanu’s sensitivity to political change.

Panic buying was sparked in October when the finance minister appeared to be preparing for an official devaluation of RTGS bank deposits. Meanwhile, many were confronted with an existential crisis when the purchasing power of the RTGS collapsed, rendering medicines and other basic commodities unaffordable. Zimbabweans’ sense of déjà vu was further fuelled by a near-simultaneous outbreak of cholera, which infected 8,500 people and killed 50 in the capital, Harare.

In mechanical terms, the only way Mnangagwa’s administration can climb out of its economic hole is to take the pain and slash expenditure while increasing revenue in ways that don’t sting investors. But the economic conundrum is not simply a question of top-down mechanics. The turmoil of October is a reminder that relational factors from bottom to top matter, too.

Just as the domestic market is dubious about promises to repay government bonds and assurances over the value of RTGS deposits, foreign investors fear that their hard currency imports will be converted to RTGS or that they will be prevented from remitting their profits. The government needs to rebuild trust, in addition to imposing fiscal discipline.

That’s a tough ask for the same group of individuals who have shredded the country since 1980—a fraternity that will continue to loot, will continue to be tetchy about the merest hint of dissent, and will continue to patently despise the notion that it requires the consent of the people to govern.

Another Zimbabwean election, another Zanu-PF victory, another cry of ‘foul’. And another pile of bodies. The more things change, the more they stay the same in the southern African nation. Or so it seems.

As the dust and gun smoke settle, two very different narratives are emerging, as a number of commentators have noted. There’s nothing new in that, to those familiar with Zimbabwean electoral ritual. For the opposition MDC-Alliance, bitter anger has replaced naive euphoria, its expectations smashed by this latest drubbing at the hands of the ruling party, Zanu-PF. The only explanation, it contends, is massive rigging by an ossified regime that hasn’t really changed, bar the absence of Robert Mugabe. The brutal reaction of security forces to street protests over the vote, during which (officially) six civilians were killed and 14 injured, is grist to this well-worn storyline.

Naturally, Zanu-PF’s version of events may be found in its traditional place at the opposite pole: this was a clean break from the Mugabe era, brought about by a clean vote—one underwritten by electoral reforms (such as biometric voter registration) and strenuous efforts to create a peaceful campaign environment. It was tarnished only by the MDC hooligans who took to the streets and the ‘tragedy’ that resulted.

Leaving aside the customary international supporters of Zanu-PF and/or of ‘non-interference’—the African countries, Russia and China, among others (which have already ticked off on the vote)—the MDC’s perspective would ordinarily carry the day in the West. Zimbabwe would drop off the radar again, cast for another electoral cycle into the darkness reserved for other pariah states such as North Korea. And there are some international opinion makers who have been quick to damn the regime in time-honoured fashion.

But things will not be so simple this time around. With the election over, there will now be a real and fierce battle over international legitimacy, rather than usual, pro forma appeals to existing allies. It’s a contest that will impact the country’s short- and medium-term future—and maybe its longer-term destiny, as well. Hopelessly powerless, the MDC’s one remaining card is the sympathy it has in the West, and it has a reasonable prospect of wrecking the reputation of president-elect Emmerson Mnangagwa, just as it worked to undermine Mugabe’s. Mnangagwa, for his part, is determined to secure the Western funds—both private and institutional—that he needs if he is to have any chance of rebuilding Zimbabwe’s economy and lifting Zanu-PF out of perpetual crisis mode.

It is this extended hand that has made the post-mortem so much more complex for the West this time around. Mnangagwa has continued to say all the right things. He dispensed with Mugabe’s black-and-white anti-imperialist stance after his old boss was overthrown in November 2017—and he has held the line since the election, playing the statesman despite the shrill response of the opposition and widespread condemnation of the security forces’ disproportionate crackdown.

Ironically, it is Mugabe who taught Mnangagwa how to beguile the West. It’s easy to forget that the cantankerous 2000s, where there existed no middle ground between the petulant despot and his Western critics, were unlike the early years of Zimbabwe’s independence. For most of the 1980s and ’90s, Mugabe handled the West adroitly—and Mnangagwa, who sat at his side during those years, appears to remember the lessons well. (Indeed, it is in this arena that authoritarian regimes often lick their more democratic competitors; practitioners of politics’ dark arts have frequently been in positions of power for decades—and draw on enormous reservoirs of issue-specific knowledge—while their Western counterparts were appointed five minutes beforehand and often don’t even know enough to know that they don’t know enough.)

The lessons Mnangagwa imbibed were, roughly: keep the doors open, come what may; and touch not their sacred cows. Adhere to these principles, and one can get away with pretty much anything—and be paid to boot.

This strategy works because it intersects with the paradox of altruism and pragmatism that marks the Western foreign-policy culture. A consistent (if ostensible) openness creates a sense of sincerity and integrity, and, in turn, breeds doubt about the negative signals that might otherwise be interpreted more unequivocally. Yes, people were killed in the streets—but was it perhaps the hardliners in the military who issued the order? Hasn’t Mnangagwa ordered an independent investigation? And didn’t opposition leaders contribute by inciting their supporters?

Likewise, there were anomalies in the management of the elections, but where is the concrete evidence of systematic rigging? Is it reasonable to expect the first post-Mugabe elections to meet first-world standards? And isn’t it true that the MDC has demonstrably engaged in hyperbole on many occasions? As indicated by the European Union’s preliminary report on the elections—which contained a bit of everything, from condemnation to praise to cautious neutrality—these are the kind of debates that will now be occurring behind closed doors in the Foreign Office, the State Department and elsewhere.

Where Mnangagwa and co. are definitively caught red-handed—and the occasions will be fewer than the opposition hopes (the evidence is usually buried deep enough to be irrelevant by the time it is unearthed)—Western pragmatism will act as a counter. It is here that some of the sacred cows become a factor. Mnangagwa is a hard man, to be sure; but is he not determined to reform the economy, which will benefit all Zimbabweans—and Western business—after the madness of the Mugabe years? Moreover, the dominance of the security sector is a fact of life, regrettable though it may be—and is there anyone better equipped than Mnangagwa to keep a lid on the wild boys in the military?

The ineradicable tension between values and realpolitik is the schizophrenic voice in the head of Western foreign-policymakers. It is often hard to discern the truth—and, when it is found, it is equally difficult to draw the lines between what is right and what is expedient. That is all the more the case when dealing with those who understand the nature of this tension and how to manipulate it. In the wake of Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections, Western governments need to look long and hard at the evidence—and think long and hard about what matters.

After a bloodless coup and a transfer of power from one Zanu-PF veteran to another, things are settling down in Zimbabwe. Emmerson Mnangagwa’s inauguration as the third president of Zimbabwe last Friday at the national stadium in Harare sealed the end of Robert Mugabe’s despotic rule. But it’s uncertain what the dramatic developments will mean for democracy in the country.

Significantly, Mugabe, who regularly attended African head of state inaugurations, was conspicuous by his absence. The president of Zambia, Edgar Lunga, was flanked by his country’s founding president, Kenneth Kaunda, who had arrived in Zimbabwe before Mugabe’s resignation and is believed to have played a significant role in persuading him to resign. Also present were Botswana’s leader, Ian Khama; Mozambique’s president, Filipe Nyusi; and two former presidents of Namibia. Prominent no-shows were South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, and the new Angolan president, Joao Lourenco. Great Britain sent a junior minister to the ceremony. North Korea sent its congratulations.

In a sign that could possibly herald a new era, opposition leaders were invited to the inauguration ceremony. Morgan Tsvangirai, president of MDC–T, the largest opposition party in Zimbabwe, was greeted with rapturous applause as he arrived at the packed stadium. After reciting the oath of office, Mnangagwa received salutes and pledges of allegiance from the generals to tumultuous applause. But police commissioner Augustine Chihuri, who is seen as the leading supporter of the faction that backed Grace Mugabe, was loudly booed. War veterans have already asked for his resignation.

Mnangagwa’s speech was crafted with the international community in mind. He began by declaring that the land reform exercise wouldn’t be reversed, which surprisingly elicited no reaction from the crowd. He pledged that his government would compensate white farmers whose land had been seized and implement a land audit—programs that were mandated by the former government of national unity. Mnangagwa also promised to protect international investments and to re-engage with the international community.

On the same day as the inauguration, Zimbabwe’s High Court ruled that the military action leading to Mugabe’s resignation was legal. High Court Judge George Chiweshe found that the military, ‘“in intervening to stop the takeover of Mugabe’s constitutional functions[,]” … ensured that non-elected individuals do not exercise executive functions’—a thinly veiled reference to former first lady Grace Mugabe. Judge Chiweshe also declared Mugabe’s firing of Mnangagwa as vice president illegal.

As reported by AP/Reuters, former minister of higher education Jonathan Moyo, one of Mugabe’s closest allies, tweeted, ‘If these breathtaking High Court Orders granted in Harare yesterday represent what is being peddled as a “new path”, then please pray for Zimbabwe’. And the southern Africa director for Human Rights Watch, Dewa Mavhinga, called the rulings ‘incredible’, declaring on Twitter: ‘Strange, captured judiciary?’

Mnangagwa is hardly a breath of fresh air. Nicknamed ‘the Crocodile’, he’s known for his ruthlessness and has been accused of overseeing ethnic massacres and political violence. The long-time Robert Mugabe ally made his first public comments in his new role last Wednesday in front of the ruling party headquarters. Towards the end of his speech, he changed from English to the vernacular, saying in Shona, ‘Vanenge vasingadi, vachagara vachingovukura, chitima cheZanu-PF chichingoinda, chichingoinda, muchingotonga, muchingotonga, vachingovukura’ (‘Zanu-PF will continue ruling no matter what, while those who oppose it will continue barking’).

What kind of political system will emerge under Mnangagwa is anybody’s guess. It’s important to remember that Mnangagwa is an interim president who must steer the country towards free and fair elections. He has never won an election, and it remains to be seen whether he can win against a united opposition and effectively lead a fractured Zanu-PF party that has had serious purges within its ranks.

The political discourse in Harare suggests that two distinct camps are emerging—those who want elections to be held very soon, and those who say the polls should be postponed and a transitional government established. Contrary to popular sentiment that the coup in Zimbabwe would usher in a new era of democracy, the military intervention was much more about a succession crisis in Zanu-PF.

David Monyae, co-director at the University of the Confucius Institute at the University of Johannesburg South Africa argues that elite pacts or high-level negotiation settlements are a recurrent theme in southern African history, especially in the settler colonies of South Africa, Kenya and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. ‘The key failure in the international community has been in understanding this elite pact’, he says.

In Zimbabwe, the elite pact has been between the military and Zanu-PF. Now the international community must focus on the institutions and levers for democracy and not on the individual. Two UN independent experts, for example, have already called for sanctions to be lifted. This is premature. It would be a mistake to focus on Mnangagwa and not on the constitutional processes towards implementing an environment for free and fair elections.

Zimbabwe isn’t celebrating a new era: it’s celebrating the removal of Mugabe, a dictator. It is now critical that the international community insist on the full enactment of the new constitution approved in the 2013 referendum, together with a reversal of Mugabe’s draconian policies.