As Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis deepens, victims of President Robert Mugabe's violent regime are being forced to flee for their lives. This World enters a world of paranoia and fear, following some of the thousands of Zimbabweans who enter South Africa illegally every week. They are running from the political and economic crisis in their country. Some are fleeing for their lives, victims of the Mugabe government's violent political crackdown. But even in South Africa they cannot escape the terror of the regime.
View Running from Mugabe. Video hosted on Guba. Many live in fear of Zimbabwe's feared Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) - the country's secret police who are widely suspected by dissidents of conducting surveillance operations outside Zimbabwe's border. Rumours of death squads and kidnappings are rife. This World speaks to refugees living in the shadow of this fear, and one young man who fled Zimbabwe after being reluctantly drafted into the CIO. He claims the training involved being shown how to torture using batons and electric wires. He also says he escaped from Zimbabwe, and that he was followed by CIO agents who have been trying to take him back to Zimbabwe. As they try to separate fact from fiction, events conspire to make This World believe that they too, might be under surveillance.
Robert Mugabe, born in 1924, was the first prime minister (1980-1987) and president (1987- ) of Zimbabwe. Mugabe played a crucial role in the black populations quest for majority rule, which was achieved in 1980.ZANU, now known as the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), convincingly won the 1980 elections, and Mugabe became Zimbabwes first prime minister. Mugabe, whose political support came overwhelmingly from his homeland of Mashonaland in the north, attempted to build Zimbabwe on a basis of reconciliation with whites and with his ZAPU rivals, whose support came from Matabeleland in the south. He also had to meet the expectations of his own radical followers for a complete restructuring of the country. He sought to incorporate ZAPU into the government and ZAPUs military wing into the army, but he was thwarted by an abortive ZAPU rebellion and discontent in Matabeleland. In 1982 Mugabe dismissed Nkomo, who had held a series of cabinet positions, and between 1982 and 1985 the military brutally crushed armed resistance in Matabeleland. In the 1980s Mugabes government was criticized for taking strong action against striking trade unions and student protesters, as well as for moving slowly on the redistribution of white-owned land to black farmers.
Reelected in 1985, Mugabe moved towards a conciliation and merger between ZANU-PF and ZAPU. He became president of Zimbabwe in December 1987 after constitutional reform merged the posts of president and prime minister. ZAPU was incorporated into ZANU-PF and Nkomo was appointed to a senior cabinet position in 1988 (he would become co-vice president in 1990). Corruption scandals in 1988 and growing unrest in the country led to the creation of more opposition parties, keeping Mugabe from achieving his goal of leading a unified, one-party state.
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-PFs 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.
 R. Mugabe 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 Marchin which Mugabe claimed victory over MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai after a poll that was criticized as flawed by most international observersZimbabwe 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 Mugabes regime continued to harden, he retained the tacit support of several southern African leaders including South Africas president Thabo Mbeki. In October 2004, Tsvangirai was found not guilty of 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.
Mugabes 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.
From: BBC - This World.
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