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Phantom Surpluses and No Ink for Passports: The Human Cost of Zimbabwe’s Coup

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TINASHE L. CHIMEDZA explains why the November 2017 military coup in Zimbabwe and the ouster of Robert Mugabe failed to deliver democracy and sound financial management to a country that has yet to overcome the debilitating effects of authoritarianism and hyperinflation.

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Phantom Surpluses and No Ink for Passports: The Human Cost of Zimbabwe’s Coup
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Bukhosi is missing. BHUKOSI IS MISSING. Bukhosi is missing.”

These stabbing words are from Zimbabwean writer Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s book House of Stone. The words are written firstly in italics for emphasis, then repeated boldly in capital letters to let them hit you like a sledgehammer, and then repeated again so the text slowly seeps into and clings to mind. After that, every page I open of the book, my mind begins by reading this text into every page – BHUKOSI IS MISSING.

Taken together in one thought, these words deliberately disrupt the grandiose unstable, if not simmering, surface of Zimbabwe’s slippery nation-state construction project, which is acutely unravelling. Africa’s post-colonial nation-state construction projects have often collapsed with catastrophic impact. To understand how this possibility of collapse is playing out in contemporary Zimbabwe, one has to read these words by Novuyo Tshuma over and over again because in a bold way it lays bare the torturous trajectory of Zimbabwe’s post-colonial failures or helps us to ask the question “What happened?”, as posed by the Ethiopian writer, Dinaw Mengestu in a review of House of Stone published in the New York Times on March 8, 2019.

But Novuyo Tshuma’s House of Stone does much more because the writer’s words profoundly conjure the complex and ever unwinding threads of a liberation project gone wrong: continued state brutality, disappeared dreams, mass emigration, missing bodies, torture and state impunity, the trauma of doubted belonging and citizenship, the unrested ghosts of spirits packed into unmarked graves, and the lingering quests for human dignity and justice that are now stretching to secession. Because of its commitment to subversion, to counter-hegemonic narratives, the book has no local publisher in Zimbabwe.

But for now let us turn to the ways in which Zimbabwe’s political class has been gripped by the ghosts of the coup of November 2017 that carted off long-time leader Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

Currency battles

In an abrupt and highly unexpected policy move, the Minister of Finance in Zimbabwe, Professor Mthuli Ncube, announced that Zimbabwe’s multi-currency regime was over and stated that going forward, all domestic transactions must be carried out in the local currency – the Zimbabwe Dollar ($ZWL). Through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ), the minister issued Statutory Instrument 142 of 2019 (SI 142/2019), which stated that “with effect from 24th June 2019, the British pound, United States dollar, South African rand, Botswana pula and any other foreign currency whatsoever shall no longer be the legal tender alongside the Zimbabwe dollar in any transactions in Zimbabwe”.

SI 142/2019 has been buttressed by other measures by the RBZ, including the hiking of interest rates to a whopping 50 per cent in an economy where the government has been the largest borrower. The Minister of Finance’s policy was supported by the President of Zimbabwe, who stated the following:

It has always been clear that for our economy to truly take off, we need our own currency. While the multicurrency regime helped to stabilise the economy, it did not give us full control monetary policy and left us at the mercy of the US Dollar pricing which has been the root cause of inflation…As a result, yesterday we passed a Statutory Instrument to abolish the use of multiple currencies, and make the Zimbabwe dollar the sole legal tender with immediate effect (President Emerson Mnangagwa, 25th of June 2019)

SI 142/2019 effectively re-introduced the Zimbabwe Dollar ($ZWL), taking Zimbabwe back to the dreaded days of hyperinflation, last measured in November 2008 when it was at 89.7 sextillion per cent. At the height of that madness, the Central Bank turned the printing press up and went to issue the largest ever recorded denomination of $ZWL: 100,000,000,000,000.

In an abrupt and highly unexpected policy move, the Minister of Finance in Zimbabwe, Professor Mthuli Ncube, announced that Zimbabwe’s multi-currency regime was over and stated that going forward, all domestic transactions must be carried out in the local currency – the Zimbabwe Dollar ($ZWL).

The contradiction that was lost in this statement by the president was that the people of Zimbabwe and businesses are actually worried sick if the ruling military-nationalist class take “full control of monetary policy” and the Zimbabwe dollar becomes the “sole legal tender”. This zig-zags of monetary policy are evidence of a currency war currently raging. On the one hand, the citizen, local businesses and investors would rather store their money and do business in stable foreign currencies, while on the other hand, the government would prefer a local currency that it can easily manipulate.

These “currency battles” betray a larger complex political-economic contest at play in Zimbabwe. First, the country’s political landscape, which remains largely polarised. Second, an agrarian political economy, which collapsed, wiping off over 35 per cent of GDP. Third, the ruling party’s authoritarian rule, which puts the military and the security class at the centre of political and electoral contests. Fourth, an economy that has virtually become a South African supermarket. But beyond these structural impediments in the political economy is the way the political and military elites have captured and raided the national treasury as often as they want, which has forced the Minister of Finance to admit that he will have to issue a supplementary budget.

The President and the Minister of Finance have been very quick to boast about “month to month surpluses” since they started implementing what they have called the Transitional Stabilisation Plan (TSP). The political class has ignored that the surplus has no relation to productivity in the economy; rather, it is linked to a 2 per cent tax, a fuel duty and a directive where car importers have to pay duty and customs in foreign currency. Importantly, they do not consider the catastrophic cost of austerity or “shock economic therapy” without social protection. The policy experiments under “Austerity for Prosperity” have taken their toll on the ordinary citizen. Tendai Biti, a former Minister of Finance and Vice President of the opposition, has argued that the current political elites are committing “a slow genocide”. There is a case for such a horror summation.

Firstly, social services like health have collapsed; medical staff are routinely on strikes and politicians, including the Vice President, are routinely chartering flights to India or South Africa for medical attention. Secondly, the morbidity rate from non-communicable diseases is running riot as the cost of health is now beyond the reach of many. Thirdly, in the education sector, the drop-out and failing rates are so high that a former Deputy Minister from the ruling party charged his fellow elites with “killing a generation”. Furthermore, the country is currently experiencing extreme load shedding under which Zimbabwe has no power for up to 19 hours a day. The lack of power is a systemic issue that points to the collapse of planning, especially in the Ministry of Energy and Power and more especially in the power company that has been stripped by successive waves of senior managers and board members. And those who plan to leave Zimbabwe, like the mass exodus in the early 2000s, have to wait for a long time. The passport office can only print “5 to 10 passports a day” and some citizens are being asked to come back in 2021 (Business Day, 30 June 2019).

The ghosts of hyperinflation

Anyone going through the e-commerce platforms of E-bay, Amazon and other websites can buy the Zimbabwe Dollar Bills for a price. Some of these dollar bills have denominations that are just dizzying. On E-Bay a seller in Australia is selling a bundle of 10, 20, 50 and 100 trillion dollar denominations of the Zimbabwe Dollar (that’s $ZWL10 trillion, 20 trillion, 50 trillion and 100 trillion, respectively).

People’s savings, investments and pensions have been wiped off to almost no value. When the local currency was printed by the RBZ and inflation shot to quintillion levels, an estimated US$5billion of pensions were wiped off. In 2016, when the government introduced another surrogate currency called Bond Notes, pensions that had been saved were also lost and the government routinely raided foreign currency accounts at will. With this latest announcement, savings and pensions are also getting wiped off as inflation erodes value.

Moreover, the stability of the currency is in doubt simply because for close to two decades the political elites have used the RBZ as a looting apparatus and they have grown accustomed to periodically dipping their fingers in it. At the heart of Zimbabwe’s currency crisis is a rogue political system that has used the Central Bank and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe as looting vehicles to reward patronage. The political elites have been relying on an authoritarian system of rule that can simply order the printing of money with impunity and disregard economic fundamentals.

People’s savings, investments and pensions have been wiped off to almost no value. When the local currency was printed by the RBZ and inflation shot to quintillion levels, an estimated US$5billion of pensions were wiped off.

Under Robert Mugabe, especially under the RBZ Governor Gideon Gono, inflation became unbearable and the ordinary citizens started using foreign currencies to transact. Slowly citizens are going back to storing their money in foreign currencies – money has become a commodity to be bought, stored and sold for itself without ay relationship to production. Zimbabwe is now a speculator’s paradise and each night the proceeds of the arbitration find themselves in the vaults of the political class. A minister of the government recently had a worker who fled from her house with about U$25,000 in cash.

Glowing rhetoric, grand corruption and no reforms

When the current President took over, he began an intensively orchestrated, some say British- based, serious social media blitz on Facebook and Twitter. The intention was to counter the dominance of government critics on online platforms but also to present the new President in a different light, especially considering his controversial role in Zimbabwe’s dreaded security apparatus, corruption in diamond fields in the DRC and his involvement in the collapsed ZANU PF state companies.

At the heart of Zimbabwe’s currency crisis is a rogue political system that has used the Central Bank and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe as looting vehicles to reward patronage.

But critics have been quick to correctly point out the glaring disconnect between what social media handles say and what is actual government policy on the ground. It was recently disclosed that the government has signed on two lobby firms in the US to convince the US Congress to remove Zimbabwe from a targeted sanctions list so that the country can access funding from multilateral financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The US government has been able to see through this rhetoric of talking reforms and continuing on a clampdown, including ongoing arrests of civil activists for “treason”.

To fully comprehend how the political class in Zimbabwe is affecting a grand heist of public resources, one just has to focus on two institutions: the RBZ and the Ministry of Finance. Through the RBZ, the political elites, the military who’s who and government managers have been administering a very opaque system of “foreign currency allocation” often to their cronies, especially in the fuel sector. The fuel industry in Zimbabwe has fallen under the control of business elites directly linked and deeply networked either to the military or to ruling party officials such that the government has refused to liberalise the sector. A glaring example is the cartel run through Green Fuel, which is has a legally protected monopoly of selling ethanol in the market. (The businessman who owns Green Fuel is linked to the President. Here are the words of a “government advisor”:

The result is that we have spent probably US$2 billion in secret premiums on the purchase of fuel on the world market. Much of it banked externally. So while our neighbours had fuel at world market rates, we paid a premium. Fine while fuel prices on world market were at historically low prices from 2014 onwards. But the result is that we spend over US$100 million a month on bulk fuel supplies when the actual cost today should be about US$70 million (Eddie Cross, May 2019)

In a recent press statement, the ruling party’s Youth League paraded a list of “corrupt” government officials, including an ally of the President, the RBZ Governor and the party’s powerful Secretary of Administration. The accused simply dismissed the statement as a side show, and the President announced yet another Commission of Inquiry. The President proceeded to appoint the wife of the Minister of Foreign Affairs as the Chair of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) and the new commission includes a “retired” army senior officer. But there is also a rift running much deeper that points to lack of cohesion among the political elite and a competition “to eat” within the ruling party networks. Here are the words of a former student radical leader now turned into a political class praise singer:

We have normalised corruption and regard it as par for the course. Provincial lands officers run around like fief lords, dishing out offer letters for land in exchange for cars and private school fees, and nothing gets said. We take pride, including headlines even, that we have managed to suspend some VID officers in some nondescript town for taking bribes in exchange for licences and no-one stops to say: really? Like that is why we have been robbed blind on infrastructure tenders and sales of diamonds and such? (Tinomudaishe Chinyoka, Nehanda Radio, 2019)

In a country in which the economy has come to a standstill, business is now highly speculative and trading in favours and arbitrage have become the mainstay of the elites. This is bound to create an explosive factional war to get access to state largesse. A Member of Parliament seen as an ally of the President recently boasted that he has imported a Lamborghini at a whopping US$410,000. It was recently revealed before a Parliamentary Committee that the Ministry of Finance cannot account for about US$3billon disbursed for the Command Agriculture programme, which was run by the military and the current President in the two years preceding the coup of November 2017. This makes it possible that the taxpayer actually funded the coup of November 2017.

Every year the Auditor General diligently produces reports on copious amounts of irregular expenditures, outright fraud, related party contacts, and outsourced services. In the latest report of 2018, there are references to huge amounts siphoned for political gain and debts incurred to feed the rentier class. There is the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC), the President established a Special Anti-Corruption Commission, the Chief Justice recently opened Anti-Corruption Courts and yet there are no cases of elites getting investigated, fired, and or convicted. This is a weaponised smoke and mirror game to settle factional political wars.

The crisis of militarism

In a previous opinion article, I argued that Zimbabwe’s political system is now domineered by a typical comprador class that took power forcefully on the 17th of November 2017 and this “military-nationalist class” is now in total command of state power, party structures and by implication the shambles of what remains of the economy. At the apex of Zimbabwe’s political system now sits an anti-democratic, anti-reform looting machinery composed of a powerful network of military-nationalists who are not answerable to the governed but to their own rabid accumulation whims.

The nationalist liberation movement in Zimbabwe had previously operated comfortably under a very thinly veiled authoritarianism in which “politics commanded the gun”. But the coup of the November Days in 2017 opened the floodgates for “politics that is commanded by the gun”.

However, the crisis of militarism is not only in Zimbabwe. In Sudan, the military has stepped in to protect its interests. The same has happened in Algeria, Egypt, Malawi and recently in Ethiopia. The army in politics is now the proverbial elephant in the room with the military commanders routinely commenting on political issues in a country which is not at war. The youthful and rejuvenated MDC Alliance has been talking tough, especially about political reforms that are needed in the country and this is deepening lines of potential conflict. In response, the security state apparatus has been parading robo-cop-like police uniforms to intimidate the citizens and the President has continued holding what he calls “political dialogue” that excludes the major opposition, rendering the dialogue a travesty.

The nationalist liberation movement in Zimbabwe had previously operated comfortably under a very thinly veiled authoritarianism in which “politics commanded the gun”. But the coup of the November Days in 2017 opened the floodgates for “politics that is commanded by the gun”.

***

In a recent comedy skit by Zimbabwe’s top all-female comedy team called Bus Stop TV, the cast members commonly known as Gonyeti and Maggie are engaged in a tussle in which Gonyeti is fuming that she must undo a scarf that has not brought anything to her. She engages furiously in “kududunura scarf”, which is an intelligent jibe directed at the President’s now-infamous scarf that he wears even in inappropriate weather.

Civil servants, even after two pay increases, have put the government on notice. Nurses, teachers, and banking employees have seen their incomes collapse to below US$50 a month. Pensioners are now living in penury as some of them earn an equivalent of about US$10 a month in a country which imports all the basics. With inflation estimated at 196 per cent, the country is heading for social strife. Economist Godfrey Kanyenze argued that the “Zimbabwe Dollar is dead on arrival”. The ruling class elites are engaging in open spats on social media. Factions are competing to get hold of the national treasury. The Commander of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA), which carried out the coup of November 2017, has been urging “soldiers to be patient”. This betrays the uneasiness within the ranks.

There is growing discontent across the country. The literary scene has been exploding too with a direct challenge aimed at displacing choreographed historical narratives of the nation, triggering debates on nation-state construction and opening up to scrutiny (perhaps justice?) the vagaries of violence and trying to re-imagine the country. Witness the books by an all-female cast: We need New Names (NoViolet Bulwayo), These Bones Will Rise Again (Panashe Chigumadzi) and House of Stone (Novuyo Rosa Tshuma).

The political class in Zimbabwe is drunk with power and eventually the game of chance they are playing will come to an end. Given enough chances to pull the trigger in a game of Russian roulette, the drunkard will eventually hit the mark. Such is the current situation in Zimbabwe.

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Tinashe L. Chimedza is an Associate Director at the Institute of Public Affairs in Zimbabwe (IPAZIM).

Politics

The Dictatorship of the Church

From the enormously influential megachurches of Walter Magaya and Emmanuel Makandiwa to smaller ‘startups,’ the church in Zimbabwe has frightening, nearly despotic authority.

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The Dictatorship of the Church
Photo: Aaron Burden on Unsplash.
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In Zimbabwe, the most powerful dictatorship is not the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. Despite the party’s 40 year history of ruthlessly cracking down on opposition parties, sowing fear into the minds of the country’s political aspirants, despite the party’s overseeing of catastrophic policies such as the failed land reform, and despite the precarious position of the social landscape of the country today, neither former president Robert Mugabe, nor the current president Emmerson Mnangagwa, nor any of their associates pose as significant an existential threat to Zimbabweans as the most influential dictatorship at play in the country: the church.The church has frightening, near despotic authority which it uses to wield the balance of human rights within its palms. It wields authority from enormously influential megachurches like those of Walter Magaya and Emmanuel Makandiwa, to the smaller startup churches that operate from the depths of the highest-density suburbs of the metropolitan provinces of Bulawayo and Harare. Modern day totalitarian regimes brandish the power of the military over their subjects. In the same way, the church wields the threat of eternal damnation against those who fail to follow its commands. With the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2020, for example, Emmanuel Makandiwa vocally declared that the vaccine was the biblical “mark of the beast.” In line with the promises of the book of Revelations, he declared that receiving it would damn one to eternal punishment.

Additionally, in just the same way that dictators stifle discourse through the control of the media, the church suppresses change by controlling the political landscape and making themselves indispensable stakeholders in electoral periods. The impact of this is enormous: since independence, there has been no meaningful political discourse on human rights questions. These questions include same-sex marriage and the right to access abortions as well as other reproductive health services. The church’s role in this situation has been to lead an onslaught of attacks on any institution, political or not, that dares to bring such questions for public consideration. But importantly, only through such consideration can policy substantively change. When people enter into conversation, they gain the opportunity to find middle grounds for their seemingly irreconcilable positions. Such middle-grounds may be the difference between life and death for many disadvantaged groups in Zimbabwe and across the world at large. The influence of the church impedes any attempt at locating this middle ground.

Additionally, because the church influences so many Zimbabweans, political actors do not dare oppose the church’s declarations. They fear being condemned and losing the support of their electorate. The church rarely faces criticism for its positions. It is not held accountable for the sentiments its leaders express by virtue of the veil of righteousness protecting it.

Furthermore, and uniquely so, the church serves the function of propping up the ZANU-PF party. The ZANU-PF mainly holds conservative ideals. These ideals align with those of the traditionalist Zimbabwean church. In short, the church in Zimbabwe stands as a hurdle to the crucial regime change necessary to bring the country to success. With a crucial election slated for the coming months, this hurdle looms more threatening than at any other time in the country’s history.

The impact of the church’s dictatorship on humans is immeasurable. Queer people, for example, are enormously vulnerable to violence and othering from their communities. They are also particularly vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and infections due to the absence of healthcare for them. The church meets the attempts of organizations such as the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe to push for protection with cries that often devolve into scapegoating. These cries from the church reference moral decadence, a supposed decline in family values, and in the worst of cases, mental illness.

Similarly, the church meets civil society’s attempts at codifying and protecting sexual and reproductive rights with vehement disapproval. In 2021, for example, 22 civil society organizations petitioned Parliament to lower the consent age for accessing sexual and reproductive health servicesCritics of the petition described it as “deeply antithetical to the public morality of Zimbabwe” that is grounded in “good old cultural and Christian values.”

Reporting on its consultations with religious leaders, a Parliamentary Portfolio Committee tasked with considering this petition described Christianity as “the solution” to the problem posed by the petition. This Committee viewed the petition as a gateway to issues such as “child exploitation … rights without responsibility … and spiritual bondages.” The petition disappeared into the annals of parliamentary bureaucracy. A year later, the Constitutional Court unanimously voted to increase the age of consent to 18.

A more horrifying instance of this unholy alliance between the church and the state in Zimbabwe is a recently unearthed money laundering scheme that has occurred under the watchful eye of the government. Under the stewardship of self-proclaimed Prophet Uebert Angel, the Ambassador-at-Large for the Government of Zimbabwe, millions of dollars were laundered by the Zimbabwean government. Here, as revealed by Al Jazeera in a four-part docuseries, Ambassador Angel served as a middleman for the government, facilitating the laundering of millions of dollars and the smuggling of scores of refined gold bars to the United Arab Emirates. He did this using his plenipotentiary ambassadorial status to vault through loopholes in the government’s security systems.

Importantly, Prophet Angel was appointed in 2021 as part of a frenetic series of ambassadorial appointments. President Mnangagwa handed out these appointments to specifically high-profile church leaders known for their glamorous lifestyle and their preaching of the prosperity gospel. Through these appointments, Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government earned itself a permanent stamp of approval from the church and access to a multi-million member base of voting Christians in the country. Mnangagwa’s gained access to freedom from accountability arising from the power of the endorsements by “men-of-God,” one of whom’s prophetic realm includes predicting English Premier League (EPL) football scores and guessing the color of congregants’ undergarments.

In exchange, Prophet Angel has earned himself a decently large sum of money. He has also earned the same freedom from critique and accountability as Zimbabwe’s government. To date, there is no evidence of Angel ever having faced any consequences for his action. The most popular response is simple: the majority of the Christian community chooses either to defend him or to turn a blind eye to his sins. The Christian community’s response to Prophet Angel’s actions, and to the role of the church in abortion and LGBTQ discourse is predictable. The community also responds simply to similar instances when the church acts as a dialogical actor and absolves itself of accountability and critique

Amidst all this, it is easy to denounce the church as a failed actor. However, the church’s political presence has not been exclusively negative. The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, for example, was the first organization to formally acknowledge Gukurahundi, a genocide that happened between 1982 and 1987 and killed thousands of Ndebele people. The Commission did this through a detailed report documenting what it termed as disturbances in the western regions of the country. Doing so sparked essential conversations about accountability and culpability over this forgotten genocide in Zimbabwe.

Similarly, the Zimbabwe Bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission has been involved in data collection that is sparking discourse about violence and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. In doing so, the Commission is challenging Zimbabweans to think more critically about what constructive politics can look like in the country. Such work is hugely instrumental in driving social justice work forward in the country. What uniquely identifies the church’s involvement in both of these issues, however, is that neither touches on matters of Christian dogma. Instead, the Commission responds to general questions about the future of both God and Zimbabwe’s people in ways that make it easy for the church to enter into conversation with a critical and informed lens.

The conclusion from this is simple: if Zimbabwe is to shift into more progressive, dialogical politics, the church’s role must change with it. It is unlikely that the church will ever be a wholly apolitical actor in any country. However, the political integration of the church into the politics of Zimbabwe must be a full one. It must be led by the enhanced accountability of Zimbabwean religious leaders. In the same way that other political actors are taken to task over their opinions, the church must be held accountable for its rhetoric in the political space.

A growing population has, thus far, been involved in driving this shift. Social media has taken on a central role in this. For example, social media platforms such as Twitter thoroughly criticized megachurch pastor Emmanuel Makandiwa for his sentiments regarding vaccinations. This and other factors led him to backtrack on his expressed views on inoculation. However, social media is not as available in rural areas. There, the influence of the religion is stronger than elsewhere in the country. Therefore investments must be made in educating people about the roles of the church and the confines of its authority. This will be instrumental in giving people the courage to cut against the very rough grain of religious dogma. Presently, few such educational opportunities exist. To spark this much-needed change, it will be useful to have incentivizing opportunities for dialogue in religious sects.

More than anything else, the people for whom and through whom the church exists must drive any shift in the church’s role. The people of Tunisia stripped President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of his authority during the Jasmine Revolution of January 2011. The women of Iran continue to tear at the walls that surround the extremist Islamic Republic. In just the same way, the people of Zimbabwe have the power to disrobe the church of the veil of righteousness that protects it from criticism and accountability.

In anticipation of the upcoming election, the critical issues emerging necessitate this excoriation even more. This will open up political spaces for Zimbabweans to consider a wider pool of contentious issues when they take to the polls in a few months. Above all, the people of Zimbabwe must start viewing the church for what it is: an institution, just like any other, with vested interests in the country’s affairs. As with any other institution, we must begin to challenge, question, and criticize the church for its own good and for the good of the people of Zimbabwe.

This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

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Politics

Pattern of Life and Death: Camp Simba and the US War on Terror

The US has become addicted to private military contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability” in the so-called war on terror.

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Pattern of Life and Death: Camp Simba and the US War on Terror
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Though it claimed the lives of three Americans, not 2,403, some liken the January 2020 al-Shabaab attack at Manda Bay, Kenya, to Pearl Harbour. The US would go on to unleash massive airstrikes against al-Shabaab in Somalia.

“We Americans hate being caught out,” a spy-plane pilot and contractor recently told me. “We should have killed them before they even planned it.”

Both the Manda Bay and Pearl Harbour attacks revealed the vulnerability of US personnel and forces. One brought the US into the Second World War. The other has brought Kenya into the global–and seemingly endless–War on Terror.

Months before launching the assault, members of the Al Qaeda-linked faction bivouacked in mangrove swamp and scrubland along this stretch of the northeast Kenyan coast. Unseen, they observed the base and Magagoni airfield. The airfield was poorly secured to begin with. They managed not to trip the sensors and made their way past the guard towers and the “kill zone” without being noticed.

At 5.20 a.m. on 5 January, pilots and contractors for L3Harris Technologies, which conducts airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) for the Pentagon, were about to take off from the airfield in a Beechcraft King Air b350. The twin engine plane was laden with sensors, cameras, and other high tech video equipment. Seeing thermal images of what they thought were hyenas scurrying across the runway, the pilots eased back on the engines. By the time they realized that a force of committed, disciplined and well-armed al-Shabaab fighters had breached Magagoni’s perimeter, past the guard towers, it was too late.

Simultaneously, a mile away, other al-Shabaab fighters attacked Camp Simba, an annex to Manda Bay where US forces and contractors are housed. Al-Shabaab fired into the camp to distract personnel and delay the US response to the targeted attack at the airfield.

Back at the Magagoni airfield, al-Shabaab fighters launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the King Air. “They took it right in the schnauzer,” an aircraft mechanic at Camp Simba who survived the attack recently recalled to me. Hit in the nose, the plane burst into flames. Pilots Bruce Triplett, 64, and Dustin Harrison, 47, both contractors employed by L3Harris, died instantly. The L3Harris contractor working the surveillance and reconnaissance equipment aft managed to crawl out, badly burned.  US Army Specialist Henry J Mayfield, 23, who was in a truck clearing the tarmac, was also killed.

The attack on Camp Simba was not the first al-Shabaab action carried out in Kenya. But it was the first in the country to target US personnel. And it was wildly successful.

AFRICOM initially reported that six contractor-operated civilian aircraft had been damaged. However, drone footage released by al-Shabaab’s media wing showed that within a few minutes, the fighters had destroyed six surveillance aircraft, medical evacuation helicopters on the ground, several vehicles, and a fuel storage area. US and Kenyan forces engaged al-Shabaab for “several hours”.

Included in the destroyed aircraft was a secretive US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) military de Havilland Dash-8 twin-engine turboprop configured for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. A report released by United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in March 2022 acknowledges that the attackers “achieved a degree of success in their plan.”

Teams working for another air-surveillance company survived the attack because their aircraft were in the air, preparing to land at Magagoni. Seeing what was happening on the ground, the crew diverted to Mombasa and subsequently to Entebbe, Uganda, where they stayed for months while Manda Bay underwent measures for force protection.

I had the chance to meet some of the contractors from that ISR flight. Occasionally, these guys—some call themselves paramilitary contractors—escape Camp Simba to hang out at various watering holes in and around Lamu, the coastal town where I live. On one recent afternoon, they commandeered a bar’s sound system, replacing Kenyan easy listening with boisterous Southern rock from the States.

Sweet home Alabama! 

An ISR operator and I struck up an acquaintance. Black-eyed, thickly built, he’s also a self-confessed borderline sociopath. My own guess would be more an on-the-spectrum disorder. Formerly an operator with Delta Force, he was a “door kicker” and would often—in counter-terror parlance—“fix and finish” terror suspects. Abundant ink on his solid arms immortalizes scenes of battle from Iraq and Afghanistan. In his fifties, with a puffy white beard, he’s now an ISR contractor, an “eye in the sky”. His workday is spent “finding and fixing” targets for the Pentagon.

Occasionally, these guys—some call themselves paramilitary contractors—escape Camp Simba to hang out at various watering holes in and around Lamu.

He tells me about his missions—ten hours in a King Air, most of that time above Somalia, draped over cameras and video equipment. He gathers sensitive data for “pattern of life” analysis. He tells me that on the morning of the attack he was in the King Air about to land at the Magagoni airstrip.

We talked about a lot of things but when I probed him about “pattern of life” intel, the ISR operator told me not a lot except that al-Shabaab had been observing Camp Simba and the airstrip for a pattern of life study.

What I could learn online is that a pattern of life study is the documentation of the habits of an individual subject or of the population of an area. Generally done without the consent of the subject, it is carried out for purposes including security, profit, scientific research, regular censuses, and traffic analysis. So, pattern-of-life analysis is a fancy term for spying on people en masse. Seemingly boring.

Less so as applied to the forever war on terror. The operator pointed out the irony of how the mile or so of scrubland between the base and the Indian Ocean coastline had been crawling with militant spies in the months preceding the attack at Camp Simba. Typically, the ISR specialist says, his job is to find an al-Shabaab suspect and study his daily behaviours—his “pattern of life.”

ISR and Pattern of Life are inextricably linked

King Airs perform specialized missions; the planes are equipped with cameras and communications equipment suitable for military surveillance. Radar systems gaze through foliage, rain, darkness, dust storms or atmospheric haze to provide real time, high quality tactical ground imagery anytime it is needed, day or night. What my operator acquaintance collects goes to the Pentagon where it is analysed to determine whether anything observed is “actionable”. In many instances, action that proceeds includes airstrikes. But as a private military contractor ISR operator cannot “pull the trigger”.

In the six weeks following the attack at Magagoni and Camp Simba, AFRICOM launched 13 airstrikes against al-Shabaab’s network. That was a high share of the total of 42 carried out in 2020.

Airstrikes spiked under the Trump administration, totalling more than 275 reported, compared with 60 over the eight years of the Barack Obama administration. It is no great mystery that the Manda Bay-Magagoni attack occurred during Trump’s time in office.

Typically, the ISR specialist says, his job is to find an al-Shabaab suspect and study his daily behaviours—his “pattern of life.”

Several al-Shabaab leaders behind the attack are believed to have been killed in such airstrikes. The US first launched airstrikes against al-Shabab in Somalia in 2007 and increased them in 2016, according to data collected and analysed by UK-based non-profit Airwars.

Controversy arises from the fact that, as precise as these strikes are thought to be, there are always civilian casualties.

“The US uses pattern of life, in part, to identify ways to reduce the risk of innocent civilian casualties (CIVCAS) (when/where are targets by themselves or with family) whereas obviously Shabaab does not distinguish as such and uses it for different purposes,” a Department of Defense official familiar with the matter of drone operations told me.

The Biden administration resumed airstrikes in Somalia in August 2021. AFRICOM claimed it killed 13 al-Shabaab militants and that no civilians were killed.

According to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Mustaf ‘Ato is a senior Amniyat official responsible for coordinating and conducting al-Shabaab attacks in Somalia and Kenya and has helped plan attacks on Kenyan targets and US military compounds in Kenya. It is not clear, however, if this target has been fixed and killed.

A few days after the second anniversary of the Manda Bay attack, the US offered a US$10 million bounty.

The American public know very little about private military contractors. Yet the US has become addicted to contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability”.  “Americans don’t care about contractors coming home in body bags,” says Sean McFate, a defense and national security analyst.

These airstrikes, targeted with the help of the operators and pilots in the King Airs flying out of Magagoni, would furnish a strong motive for al-Shabaab’s move on 5 January 2020.

The Pentagon carried out 15 air strikes in 2022 on the al-Qaeda-linked group, according to the Long War Journal tracker. Africom said the strikes killed at least 107 al-Shabaab fighters. There are no armed drones as such based at Camp Simba but armed gray-coloured single-engine Pilatus aircraft called Draco (Latin for “Dragon”) are sometimes used to kill targets in Somalia, a well-placed source told me.

The US has become addicted to contractors mainly because they provide “plausible deniability”.

The contractor I got to know somewhat brushes off the why of the attack. It is all too contextual for public consumption, and probably part of army indoctrination not to encourage meaningful discussion. He had, however, made the dry observation about the al-Shabaab affiliates out in the bush near the airfield, doing “pattern of life” reconnaissance.

The strike on Magagoni was closely timed and fully coordinated. And it appears that the primary aim was to take out ISR planes and their crews. It was private contractors, not US soldiers, in those planes. I pointed out to the operator that those targets would serve al-Shabaab’s aims both of vengeance and deterrence or prevention. His response: “Who cares why they attacked us? Al-Shabaab are booger-eaters.”

With that he cranks up the sound, singing along off-key:

And this bird, you cannot change

Lord help me, I can’t change….

Won’t you fly high, free bird, yeah.

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Politics

Breaking the Chains of Indifference

The significance of ending the ongoing war in Sudan cannot be overstated, and represents more than just an end to violence. It provides a critical moment for the international community to follow the lead of the Sudanese people.

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Breaking the Chains of Indifference
Photo by Musnany on Unsplash.
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They say that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

As someone from the diaspora, every time I visited Sudan, I noticed that many of the houses had small problems like broken door knobs, cracked mirrors or crooked toilet seats that never seemed to get fixed over the years. Around Khartoum, you saw bumps and manholes on sand-covered, uneven roads. You saw buildings standing for years like unfinished skeletons. They had tons of building material in front of them: homeless families asleep in their shade, lying there, motionless, like collateral damage. This has always been the norm. Still, it is a microcosm of a much broader reality. Inadequate healthcare, a crumbling educational system, and a lack of essential services also became the norm for the Sudanese people.

This would be different, of course, if the ruling party owned the facility you were in, with the paved roads leading up to their meticulously maintained mansions. This stark contrast fuelled resentment among the people, leading them to label the government and its associates as “them.” These houses were symbols of the vast divide between the ruling elite and the everyday citizens longing for change. As the stark divide between “them” and “us” deepened, people yearned to change everything at once, to rid themselves of the oppressive grip of “them.”

Over the years, I understood why a pervasive sense of indifference had taken hold. The people of Sudan grew indifferent towards a government that remained unchanged. It showed no willingness to address the needs of its citizens unless it directly benefited those in power. For three decades, drastic change eluded the Sudanese people. They woke up each day to a different price for the dollar and a different cost for survival. The weight of this enduring status quo bore down upon them, rendering them mere spectators of their own lives. However, as it always does, a moment of reckoning finally arrived—the revolution.

Returning home after the 2019 revolution in Sudan, what stood out in contrast to the indifference was the hashtag #hanabnihu, which from Arabic translates to “we will build it.” #Hanabnihu echoed throughout Sudanese conversations taking place on and off the internet, symbolizing our determination to build our nation. To build our nation, we needed to commit to change beyond any single group’s fall, or any particular faction’s victory. Our spirits were high as everyone felt we had enough muscle memory to remember what happened in the region. We remembered how many of “them” came back to power. With the military still in power, the revolution was incomplete. Yet it still served as a rallying cry for the Sudanese people. It was a collective expression of their determination to no longer accept the unfinished state of their nation.

Many Sudanese people from the diaspora returned to Sudan. They helped the people of Suean create spaces of hope and resilience, everyone working tirelessly to build a new Sudan. They initiated remarkable projects and breathed life into the half-built houses they now prioritized to turn into homes. We had yearned for a time when broken door knobs and crooked toilet seats would be fixed, and for a time when the government would smooth out the bumps on the road. For four years following the revolution, people marched, protested, and fought for a Sudan they envisioned. They fought in opposition to the military, whose two factions thought that a massacre or even a coup might bring the people back to the state of indifference that they once lived in.

Remarkably, the protests became ingrained in the weekly schedule of the Sudanese people. It became part of their routine, a testament to their unwavering dedication and the persistence of their aspirations. But soon, the people found themselves normalized to these protests. This was partly due to the fact that it was organized by the only body fighting against the return of this indifference: the neighborhood’s resistance committees. These horizontally structured, self-organized member groups regularly convened to organize everything from planning the weekly protests and discussing economic policy to trash pickup, and the way corruption lowered the quality of the bread from the local bakery.

The international media celebrated the resistance committees for their innovation in resistance and commitment to nonviolence. But as we, the Sudanese, watched the news on our resistance fade, it was clear that the normalization of indifference extended beyond Sudan’s borders. The international community turned a blind eye to justice, equality, and progress in the celebrated principles of the peaceful 2019 revolution. In a desperate attempt to establish fake stability in Sudan, the international community continued their conversations with the military. Their international sponsors mentioned no  retribution against the military for their actions.

During my recent visit to Sudan, the sense of anticipation was palpable. It was just two months before the outbreak of war between the army and the paramilitary group. The protests had intensified and the economy was faltering. The nation stood at the precipice as the activism continued and the tensions between “us” and “them” had begun to grow once again.

Now, as war engulfs the nation, many Sudanese find themselves torn. At the same time, they hope for the victory of the Sudanese Army. Despite the army’s flaws, Sudanese people hope the army will win against “them” while recognizing that this war remains primarily between different factions of “them.” We wake up every day with a little less hope. We watch them bomb Khartoum and the little infrastructure that existed turn to dust. We watch as the resistance committees continue to do the army’s job for them. They work fiercely to deliver medicine, evacuate people and collect the nameless bodies on the sides of the streets next to the burnt buildings that were almost starting to be completed.

Another battle takes place online. On Sudanese social media, people challenge the negative mood of the war. Sudanese architects and designers work from their rented flats in Cairo or Addis, posting juxtaposed images that place the grainy, rashly captured photos of the latest burnt-down building in Khartoum next to different rendered perspectives. These perspectives reimagine the same building in a rebuilt Sudan. They thus instantly force a glimpse of hope in what now looks like a far-fetched reality to most people.

Just as these young visionaries attempt to defy the odds, international intervention and support are pivotal to help Sudan escape the clutches of this devastating conflict. Let Sudan serve as a catalyst for the change that was meant to be. Diplomatic engagement, humanitarian aid, and assistance in facilitating peaceful negotiations can all contribute.

The significance of ending the ongoing war in Sudan cannot be overstated. It represents more than just a cessation of violence. It provides a critical moment for the international community to follow the lead of the Sudanese people. The international community should dismantle the prevailing state of indifference worldwide. The fight against indifference extends far beyond the borders of Sudan. It is a fight that demands our attention and commitment on a global scale of solidarity. We must challenge the systems that perpetuate indifference and inequality in our own societies. We must stand up against injustice and apathy wherever we find it.

This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

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