Terror in Zimbabwe

The lead story in today’s New York Times is titled, “Mugabe Aides Are Accused of Terror in Amnesty Bid.” It describes a campaign of pressure against the opposition in a new power-sharing government to avoid prosecution after the inevitable retirement of President Robert Mugabe who is now 85 years old.

Officials in Mr. Mugabe’s Party, ZANU-PF, are arresting and torturing high-level members of the opposition because they are afraid of being brought to justice for a series of incidents starting in the 1980s and repeated in 2000 and 2002. The worst, it seems, was in 2005 when in the name of “slum clearance,” over 700,000 people in opposition strongholds were driven from their homes.

The head of the opposition MDC Party, Morgan Tsvangirai, and other opposition members speaking anonymously, said the idea is to trade opposition members and forgiveness for their “crimes,” often admitted to in forced, false confessions, for amnesty of current officials of the ZANU-PF, Mr. Mugabe’s Party.

While amnesty may have been beneficial for societies like South Africa, that were riven apart by apartheid, and needed healing to prevent a bloodbath, I am not convinced that amnesty is the best course for all authoritarian African nations making the transition to democracy. Sometimes, justice is necessary for the healing of the nation instead of amnesty. And, of course, the methods used to obtain amnesty in this case make its implementation even less likely.