Opposition to Mugabe escalates

President Robert Mugabe's stunning fall-out with war veterans and his panicking Zanu-PF government's savage crackdown on the restless former freedom fighters is proving to be a substantial early Christmas gift for the nonagenarian's growing band of critics.

Disaffected Zanu-PF supporters, opposition parties and pro-democracy activists who spoke to the Daily News yesterday all made it clear that the fall-out between Mugabe and war veterans was an unexpected political boon for them.

This comes as the ex-combatants - whose leadership is reeling from a brutal crackdown by the government after they served divorce papers on Mugabe about two weeks ago - have overnight found favour with Mugabe's critics despite their hitherto long and close association with the increasingly isolated Zanu-PF strongman.

In an unprecedented show of solidarity with the under-fire former freedom fighters, both opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC and former FROM P1

Vice President Joice Mujuru's Zimbabwe People First (ZPF) joined hundreds of civic society leaders in attending the bail hearing of war veterans' spokesperson Douglas Mahiya on Monday - following his arrest last week after Mugabe had said the government would punish the vets for issuing a damning communiqué which ended their long relationship with the nonagenarian.

"The war veterans' fallout with Mugabe represents the collapse of the last pillar of support for Mugabe and a massive disintegration of Zanu-PF which creates a turning point opportunity for various groups to build national consensus on the need to end Mugabe's rule and initiate national dialogue on a roadmap to credible, free and fair elections.

"There is no time to waste. Zimbabwe is on the precipice and needs Zanu-PF to admit failure and engage key stakeholders to retrieve the country from the brink of civil war and total collapse," said senior researcher with the New York-based Human Rights Watch, Dewa Mavhinga.

The MDC said now was the time to unite and bring to an end Mugabe's rule.

"As a nation, we need to holistically look at this horrific abuse of the citizenry and objectively calculate how far we can go at this rate," said MDC vice president Nelson Chamisa, who was at the court on Monday to support Mahiya.

"The courts are supposed to be the oasis of effective justice, the last pillar of self-defence by a tormented people, but it would appear that this pillar is being tested and shaken. I have come to the conclusion that as a people, we have lost everything we possibly could in this country.

"We have lost our dignity, our legacy, identity and livelihood. More fundamentally, we have lost a country as we have also lost a lot of time. We need our nation back.

"We need our pride back and with it, our Ubuntu. We are a great people, but we have been driven to a point where we have nothing else to lose. And I mean it," he added.

Mujuru's spokesman, Gift Nyandoro, said the crackdown on war veterans could not go unchallenged as ZPF believed that attacking one war veteran amounted to an attack on all former freedom fighters.

"She (Mujuru) has been very clear that Zimbabweans have to believe in inclusivity, she believes that there is strength in unity and she believes that if we can join hands we can enjoy a better Zimbabwe and remove this monster (Mugabe and Zanu-PF) from power," Nyandoro told the Daily News yesterday.

"The reason why she went to the court on Monday is self explanatory because what is being attacked is the essence of a true war veteran. Those war veterans are genuine war veterans who are failing to get the reason why they went to war in the first place. The war veterans fought a bitter struggle against the colonial regime for one man one vote and to ensure that all Zimbabweans enjoy their rights. The prosecution of war veterans shows that Mugabe has lost the direction of the liberation struggle and why that war was fought.

"She had to go and stand together with fellow colleagues in their time of persecution. She believes that if you attack one war veteran, you would have attacked all of them," Nyandoro added.

Pro-democracy groups also said Mugabe's fight with the war veterans signalled the end of a political marriage which at its peak was formidable in crushing all opposition to the ruling party.

"The Mugabe regime has been tough to beat for the opposition precisely because it was built not just on patronage and repression, but on solidarities, ties and ideologies forged during the shared experience of both colonisation and the liberation struggle," said civic leader McDonald Lewanika.

"The collapse of these historic bonds means Zanu-PF is weaker, and while it can still rely on patronage and repression, both have thresholds and are not as strong as the historical post bonds with veterans.

"It might not really be open season yet on Zanu-PF, but a real opportunity exists and can be leveraged, but only if the opposition doesn't have the same weaknesses as Zanu-PF," the former Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition executive director added.

"What is needed at the moment for forces opposed to Mugabe is a principled unity of purpose that puts the country first before egos. Is this the right time? Yes, there is no time like the present," Lewanika told the Daily News.

Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in April 1980, is facing the biggest challenge of his political career, amid swelling public anger and the nasty fall-out with the former freedom fighters, the bulwark of his rule for many years.

The ex-combatants last month issued a damning communiqué ending their relationship with their patron, in a move which rocked the nonagenarian and Zanu-PF to their foundations.

The panicking government has responded to this by swooping on the war veterans' leadership, in a brutal crackdown which has drawn outrage and widespread condemnation not just in Zimbabwe, but also around the world.

"The former freedom fighters, accused of killing and harassing opposition supporters and aiding and abetting violence which kept Mugabe in power in past elections, are now seen as important cogs in ending Mugabe's rule by the nonagenarian's political foes.

Zimbabwe is currently in the middle of an economic meltdown which has seen thousands of companies closing down and hundreds of thousands of employees losing their jobs in the process.

Banks are also running out of cash, prompting Mugabe's desperate government to plan the introduction of bond notes which will start circulating in October.

The mass action against the long-ruling Zimbabwean leader and his under fire government also comes as thousands of unemployed university graduates, some of whom are trying to eke out a difficult living as street vendors, also plan to protest in the capital today - demanding the 2,2 million jobs that Zanu-PF promised in the run up to the hotly disputed 2013 national elections.