MADHUKU ON NCA PLANS, ATMOSPHERICS FOR CIVIL

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 000725

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

AF/S FOR B. NEULING
NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR C. COURVILLE
AFR/SA FOR E. LOKEN
COMMERCE FOR BECKY ERKUL

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/31/2011
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM ZI
SUBJECT: MADHUKU ON NCA PLANS, ATMOSPHERICS FOR CIVIL
RESISTANCE


Classified By: Charge d'Affaires, a.i., Eric T. Schultz under Section 1
.4 b/d

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Summary
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1. (C) National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) Chairperson
Lovemore Madhuku on June 14 told poloff that his organization
would organize street demonstrations in the capital within
three weeks, with or without collaboration from the
opposition MDC and others in civil society. The NCA planned
to expand protests to other venues before launching national
action in late July. Madhuku conceded that public
inclination to act was subdued despite wide support for
change, including in rural areas. He also acknowledged that
despite growing police sympathy for democratic forces, the
intelligence apparatus's were loyal to the regime and still
capable. The constitutional lawyer dismissed criticism of
his re-election at the NCA's recent Annual General Meeting
(AGM) and emphasized the importance of concerted civil action
before ZANU-PF consolidated itself behind Mugabe,s chosen
successor in the run-up to an election he expected to occur
in 2008. End summary.

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Street Action in Coming Weeks
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2. (C) One of civil society's foremost leaders, Madhuku said
his organization planned to put people back on the streets
within two or three weeks. With the dust settling on the
organization's AGM, he expected to get up to 300 individuals
demonstrating in Harare initially, with other actions to
follow in the following month in Bulawayo, Mutare, Gweru, and
Masvingo. The NCA would also be interspersing smaller
actions periodically in Harare's high density suburbs. As in
the past, constitutional reform would be the group's
principal focus.


3. (C) Madhuku continued that the various protests would
lead up to a larger coordinated national action he hoped to
launch in late July. The lead-up protests would be
unannounced; the national action would be advertised. The
NCA was meeting separately on strategy with other democratic
forces, such as ZINASU (the student union) and the MDC's
anti-senate faction, but the "broad alliance" of NGOs, unions
and the MDC had not gotten together formally since April.
Madhuku said that the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions
(ZCTU) had been out of the picture since long before its May
Congress and he did not expect them to re-engage in the near
term.


4. (C) Madhuku elaborated that MDC anti-senate faction
president Tsvangirai and his followers remained rhetorically
committed to a late-July resistance effort but he had seen
little evidence of any mobilization or preparation on their
part. Indeed, after blaming the NCA for dragging its feet on
civil resistance in April, the anti-senate faction now
appeared reluctant to engage in civil resistance. The NCA
would proceed with or without them, Madhuku asserted.


5. (C) Elaborating on the national mood and the setting for
civil resistance, Madhuku commented that Zimbabweans were
largely supportive of the democratic forces but still not
inclined to action out of a mixture of fear and apathy. In
rural and urban areas alike, he maintained, people recognized
him and were enthusiastically encouraging. Getting more than

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a few hundred into the streets at one time, however, would
take more education and confidence-building -- assuming no
unanticipated spark otherwise lit a fire under the broader
populace.

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Tapping Rural Elements
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6. (C) Centrally important to the NCA's civil resistance
campaign was its growing effort to penetrate and mobilize
rural areas, according to Madhuku. Since October, the NCA
had conducted at least three workshops in each of the
country's 120 constituencies. In the coming three months,
they would hold two more in each. Attended by 50 - 300
people, each workshop demonstrated connections between regime
misrule and community misery at the local level. The
workshops also empowered rural residents politically by
offering them promise of support by NCA structures and legal
representation should they run into trouble for political
participation.


7. (C) Madhuku assessed that the rural population remained
a largely untapped resource. Like most urban counterparts,
they were suffering and unhappy. Although many were under
the sway of ruling party patronage and propaganda, they could
in many cases be engaged. He asserted that the best
demonstrations conducted by the NCA were those in which rural
participants were bussed in because, unlike urban residents,
"they had nowhere to run." Madhuku said resource constraints
kept them from playing a more regular or expanded role.

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Security Forces Ambivalent, Intelligence Apparatus Strong
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8. (C) Militating in favor of civil resistance was the
increasing ambivalence of the security forces, according to
Makhuku. He estimated that the level of outright support for
democratic forces within the police was approaching 50
percent. Indeed, he said he and other democratic players
regularly got invaluable tips from sympathetic police.
"Free-lance" violence was increasingly rare and few police
were overtly hostile absent direct orders from above. The
NCA had been around long enough that people recognized it for
what it was despite GOZ propaganda and even many in the GOZ
were comfortable with it, he explained.


9. (C) At the same time, Madhuku said he was impressed by
the continuing vitality of the GOZ intelligence apparatus.
Despite petrol shortages and other resource constraints,
their assets around the country kept the authorities very
well-informed. He said that the line of police questioning
during each of his more than dozen arrests demonstrated
extensive knowledge of all his activities. Further evidence
that arrests were intelligence and not law enforcement
exercises, he and any NCA member upon arrest always faced
extensive grilling about NGO activities and financing -- but
never anything about the activity for which each purportedly
was arrested.

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AGM Flap Won't Impair Effectiveness
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10. (C) Madhuku asserted that the flap over his election at
the NCA's recent Annual General Meeting would not impair his
stature with Zimbabwe's democratic forces or effectiveness

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against the regime. The organization's constitutional
amendment that permitted him to run again despite existing
term limits reflected the overwhelming majority of NCA
members. It had been spotlighted disingenuously by the GOZ.
The MDC pro-senate faction had for political reasons also
criticized him, but most other major players in civil society
had overtly endorsed or accepted his re-election without
objection. He conceded that several donors had expressed
concern about the apparent "anti-democratic" implications of
the exercise, but he was working to allay their fears.

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Possible Internal ZANU-PF Rapprochement?
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11. (C) Madhuku predicted that Mugabe would get ZANU-PF's
warring Mujuru and Mnangagwa factions to reach some kind of
accommodation with a view to stepping down in 2008. Mugabe
could not afford to allow one to prevail over the other,
which could fracture the party and leave Mugabe essentially
unprotected. At the same time, neither faction nor the
populace as a whole would tolerate Mugabe staying on after

2008. Under the circumstances, Mugabe's interests would be
best served by forging party unity with a promise to step
down in 2008 and yielding to an anointed successor. He
predicted Mnangagwa ultimately would accept Mujuru's
succession chiefly because Mugabe would order it, but also
because she would prove a weak president and an easier
adversary for Mnangagwa than a Vice President Mujuru under
the status quo.


12. (C) Madhuku warned that a Mujuru candidate supported by
a "retiring" Mugabe would be a formidable electoral foe, even
assuming the nation's economic crisis continued. People
would be so happy to usher the old man out, many would
"reward" him by voting for his chosen successor, even without
regard to the traditional illicit tools ZANU-PF employed to
manipulate elections. Factional tensions would be an issue
in the upper echelons but the party's grassroots voters were
"homogeneous" and "good at taking orders". Prospects for
such a scenario made action by democratic forces all the more
urgent now, Madhuku asserted, as the ruling party would begin
to close democratic space in the year before the 2008
election.

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Comment
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13. (C) Many in civil society have voiced concerns about the
ham-handed inattention to process concerns in Madhuku's
re-election as chair of an organization dedicated to
constitutionalism. Nonetheless, he remains respected at the
grassroots as one of civil society's foremost street
organizers and someone who mans the trenches with his troops.
With their respective congresses behind them, the MDC and
ZCTU will be under pressure to support NCA demonstrations but
may proceed cautiously, sharing Madhuku's assessment of the
public's reticence to act as well as the regime,s residual
if declining ability to react.
SCHULTZ