Horror story of Zimbabwe must keep us on right track

As we head towards our 20th year of freedom, let us nurture our good habits

WANDERING around the streets of Harare on April 18 2000 was a most depressing experience. It was meant to be a joyous day, as it marked 20 years since the country had gained independence.

The people were meant to be wearing the national flag in their hearts and walking tall as they celebrated the achievements of their nation. You would have expected street parties in the ghettos and the popping of bubbly in the snobbish suburbs.

Yet, all you could see on the streets of Harare were long faces. The people of Harare were a miserable sight. All they could talk about was hardship and their once proud country's slide into dictatorship and basket-case status.

Everywhere you went, they were bemoaning the betrayal of their country and the ideals of the chimurenga (the liberation struggle) by the Zanu-PF elite.

Many couldn't wait for the public holiday to be over so that they could return to the foreign embassies to rejoin the snaking visa queues. Others were not even bothering with those formalities and were headed to the border to make their illegal crossings.

In his celebratory address, President Robert Mugabe delivered his usual rant about colonialism and imperialism, and the glories of the chimurenga, seemingly unaware of the horror he was visiting on his people.

Zimbabweans were right to feel miserable. The country, which in the 1980s had been on the road to relative prosperity, was facing catastrophe. The economy was in free-fall. The currency was becoming the joke of the region as inflation soared. Food and fuel shortages were becoming a norm.

On the political front, Mugabe was waging war against democracy and doing everything to tighten his grip on power.

As the people of Harare said over and over again on that day: there was nothing to celebrate.

As we celebrate 18 years of South Africa as a democratic republic, we should be thinking of what scenes will play out on our city streets in 2014, when we mark 20 years of freedom. Will we be looking back on the previous 20 years with pride and gazing at the future with confidence?

The report card will largely be a positive one. We will be able to look back on two decades in which strong institutional democracy was built, basic services were provided to millions, international tournaments were spectacularly hosted and our place in the world community was cemented.

The scenes at the Union Buildings on Friday were heart-warming.

The fact that all political formations -- from the Pan Africanist Congress to the Freedom Front Plus - could line up on a public platform to take turns in pledging loyalty to the republic, the constitution and the wellbeing of citizens should make our chests swell with pride.

This is one of the really good habits we have developed as a nation. Let us not unlearn it. We should not unlearn those habits which have earned us the respect and admiration of our continental brethren and the rest of the human community.

Zimbabwe did not just arrive at the point it was at in 2000 by accident. Nor did it happen overnight. It was the culmination of a haphazard, but deliberate campaign by Mugabe and those around him to keep Zanu-PF in power by all means possible.

They undermined all the institutions of democracy. They went about creating a pliant judiciary by sidelining and strong-arming independent judges, while promoting those with nodding heads. There was a concerted move towards creating a secretive society by curbing media freedoms and denying citizens the right to access information to which they were entitled.

Non-governmental organisations and civil-society movements were treated with suspicion. Opposition parties were labelled and treated as enemies, rather than opponents.

Security agencies worked for the party, and intelligence chiefs pledged loyalty to individuals in the party. State coffers became the piggy-banks of ministers and party bigwigs, while state-owned companies served the interests of Zanu-PF. The Zanu-PF-dominated parliament became a conveyor belt for Mugabe's wishes, with virtually no questioning of executive decisions.

By 2000, when Mugabe embarked on his decade-long destruction of Zimbabwe, he had already laid the ground. He could do as he wished under the cover of darkness and in an environment in which the populace no longer had the full protection of an independent judiciary.

The downward spiral of Zimbabwe over the next decade has few parallels in modern history. Zimbabweans can perhaps use the excuse that they did not see it coming. It is not an excuse South Africans can use, given that we have had the best ringside seat to the horror movie in the country next door.

When we celebrate 20 years of freedom, we should do so happily. We should do so knowing that we have internalised the good habits and that the future is safe from those who want to rip apart the house we have been building since 1994.