By Lance Guma
19 July 2010
Finance Minister Tendai Biti has suggested that ZANU PF leader Robert Mugabe and several of his senior army generals are hanging onto power because they fear prosecution for human rights abuses, once they step down.
Addressing delegates to a meeting organized by the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, Biti is reported to have cheekily offered an olive branch saying, ‘let’s tell them that they can leave and not lose their farms or (get) arrested.’ The CZI meeting was organized to review the 2010 mid-term budget statement the Finance Minister had presented to Parliament last week Wednesday.
The suggestion to offer immunity has been made several times in the past with various think tanks, including the International Crisis Group, putting forward the idea. Last year South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance joined the fray suggesting a favourable exit strategy for Mugabe was the only way he will ever relinquish power. Some analysts however say it raises the question of who has the right to offer immunity and what is the input of victims who have either suffered rights violations or lost loved ones.
When Mugabe and ZANU PF lost the harmonized presidential and parliamentary elections in 2008 it was reported at the time that the MDC leadership was in direct talks with members of the army about offering immunity in return for Mugabe accepting defeat and stepping down. ZANU PF officials were even said to have stressed that Mugabe would step down if there were guarantees that he and senior aides would not be prosecuted.
Whatever the truth of the reports nothing materialized. Instead the Joint Operations Command (JOC) a grouping of army, police and state security chiefs, engineered a murderous campaign of retribution that cost the lives of over 500 opposition supporters and the maiming of tens of thousands more. Eventually the mediation of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), led by South Africa, created a compromise coalition government which kept the loser firmly in power.
When Finance Minister Tendai Biti was still trying to push through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act, immunity from prosecution for central bank governor Gideon Gono was made a precondition by ZANU PF MP’s. Parliament passed the Bill after it was amended to include a clause that gave partial immunity to Gono or any employee of the bank "for anything done in good faith and without negligence under the powers conferred by this Act".
At the time of the deal political analyst John Makumbe called the granting of immunity to Gono a ‘costly’ golden handshake. “It's dangerous to give immunity to a person who destroyed our economy propping up ZANU PF. I am furious about it. The MDC has no authority to grant anyone immunity.” He also said it was a dangerous precedent that would make it difficult to prosecute other people, guilty of similar crimes.
Political analyst Pedzisai Ruhanya said amnesty should be offered along the lines of what happened in South Africa after the end of the apartheid regime there. He said amnesty should be offered within a legal framework like a Truth and Reconciliation Act. This however could not cover crimes of genocide which, under international law, cannot be excused. Ruhanya said even if the political parties struck an amnesty deal, individual citizens could still approach the courts seeking justice under international law.
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