HARARE -- President Robert Mugabe and senior army officers implicated in atrocities will not be prosecuted if they voluntarily vacate office to make way for new blood committed to serving the interests of the country, MDC-T secretary general Tendai Biti has said. 

Biti – who is also Zimbabwe’s finance minister – said several ministers from Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party who are presently serving in a coalition government with the MDC-T as well as service chiefs were hanging on to power to “prolong their freedom”.
“They are afraid of being arrested once they leave office. But let’s tell them that they can leave and not lose their farms or arrested,” Biti told captains of industry during a meeting organised by the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries to review the 2010 mid-term budget statement he presented last Wednesday.

Several top Zanu (PF) officials and army generals have been fingered in the atrocities that accompanied Zimbabwe’s chaotic decade-long land reform programme as well as political violence during previous polls. Others, including Mugabe and Air Force of Zimbabwe commander Perence Shiri, have also been implicated in the 1980s massacre of innocent civilians during an army operation to crash an uprising in the southern Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.

Zimbabwe witnessed some of the worst political violence last year after a parliamentary election that was won by the MDC-T while
Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in a parallel presidential election but with fewer votes to avoid a second round poll.
In a bid to ensure Mugabe regained the upper hand in the second round vote, Zanu (PF) militia, war veterans and security agents unleashed an orgy of violence and terror across the country, especially in rural areas most of which became no-go zones for the opposition.

The MDC-T leader later withdrew from the 27 June 2008 run-off poll because of the violence which was won by Mugabe unopposed. At least 20 000 innocent civilians form the Ndebele ethnic minority were reportedly killed in the early 1980s during a bloody
counter-insurgency drive by the army in Matabeleland and Midlands.

Mugabe – who some say personally ordered deployment of the army’s North Korean-trained 5th Brigade in Matabeleland and Midlands ostensibly to stop an armed insurrection against his rule – has called the killings an “act of madness”. But he has never personally accepted responsibility for the civilian murders or formally apologised.

The Zimbabwean strongman has also not yielded to calls by human rights groups for his government to compensate the victims of the brutal army operation popularly known as the Gukurahundi massacres.

Mugabe has conveniently avoided raising the issue fearing a backlash from disgruntled Ndebele members of his divided Zanu (PF) party – all in hope of maintaining a fragile 1987 Unity Accord he signed with the then PF Zapu led by the late Joshua Nkomo.
The Ndebele group within Zanu (PF) has long been disappointed by what they see as the apparent sidelining of their region from national development issues.

Biti’s statement tallied with comments by Tsvangirai who has previously called for the setting up of a truth and reconciliation commission to probe cases of human rights abuses dating as far back as the pre-independence era and touching on the highly emotive Gukurahundi massacres.

The prime minister has however cautioned against retributive attacks against those fingered as behind the atrocities, hinting on a possible amnesty for the perpetrators of public violence and other atrocities.
Biti and Tsvangirai would however face a tough assignment of convincing their supporters – many of whom were maimed or lost loved ones due to the atrocities – about the importance of an amnesty.

Amnesty for senior Zanu (PF) officials and other people behind the 2008 political violence has been an emotive issue since Tsvangirai joined Mugabe and Arthur Mutambara of a splinter MDC faction in the coalition government 17 months ago.
Security chiefs and Zanu (PF) chefs have tried to derail the unity government unless there are guaranteed immunity from prosecution.
They do not want to face the courts and fear that exposure of their crimes could threaten ill-gotten assets such as farms.