Readers of PoliticsWeb may perhaps have read my recent piece on Zimbabwe's farmworkers and the (sometimes) interesting correspondence which it provoked. Two issues of significance which surfaced were the importance of the new census and the extent to which it might reveal a genocide during the last twelve years. 

The issue of genocide is difficult, partly because of the official definition of that term. Originally the term was coined by the Polish (and Jewish) legal scholar, Raphael Lemkin, in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944). Once the Holocaust was revealed Lemkin and others campaigned for genocide to be declared a crime, which it was by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, passed on 9 December 1948 and which came into practise on 12 January 1951.

The CPPCG defines genocide as follows: "...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children ofthe group to another group."

There are several points of interest here. First, anyone who has read much classical history will realise that similar practises quite normally obtained in the age of the Romans, Gauls and Carthaginians. Similar examples can also be found in both pre and post colonial Africa - and, of course, in Bosnia and Cambodia. Thus, rather as with the use of torture, one of the reasons why genocide is so shocking to the modern conscience is that it represents the recurrence in modern times of inhuman practices associated with the earlier stages of human development, "the bad old days".

Second, in its first draft the CPPCG contained reference to the destruction of political and social status groups. However, this was fiercely opposed by members of the Soviet bloc because of Soviet sensitivity that the Convention might be used to investigate the deaths of millions of political or "class" dissidents in Stalin's purges. The Soviet representatives argued that political groups were temporary and unstable and in  general rather vaguely conceived - and they anyway argued that the UN should not become involved in limiting or regulating political conflicts since this would cause the UN to interfere far too much in the domestic affairs of nations. 

Since it was clear that this was a deal-breaker for the Soviet bloc and since its backers wanted the widest possible consensus behind the Convention, the reference to political and status groups was dropped. This has led to considerable subsequent criticism, as has the omission of the forcible removal of population groups - a phenomenon which is always attended, in practice, by increased mortality among the groups subject to removal.

What has happened under Mugabe since 2000 throws up another problem, for so much of the mortality has been casually, coincidentally or indirectly afflicted. True, a considerable number of people have been murdered outright by Mugabe's thugs, starting with the massacres in Matabeleland in the 1980s and continuing to this day in continuing low-intensity campaigns of assassination, torture and beatings of MDC and human rights activists.

In all this probably accounts for over 20,000 deaths. But far, far more have died through more indirect consequences - from starvation, from exposure, from an acceleration of death from Aids due to deprivation of drugs, food and care, from death during migration (not just crocodiles in the Limpopo but from a plethora of causes, for the migration is typically very stressful physically) and simply from the collapse of almost everything else.

Whenever I am in Harare or Bulawayo I always make it my practise to give lifts to a lot of people - not just because there are now so few buses but because it's a useful way of meeting, quite literally, the man in the street. I am always struck, during the conversations which ensue, at the huge number of deaths caused by events which would never normally be mortal. Such-and-such cut herself with a kitchen knife, it turned septic and with the hospitals having collapsed, she died of it.

So and so's children are terribly sickly because they can't get enough to eat and he is selling bits of furniture to get money to feed them and he says "God knows what I'll do when the furniture's gone". The murambatsvina saw an explosion of stories of "accidental" deaths in a great variety of situations among those whose houses were destroyed and who were simply thrown upon the mercy of the elements.

In Bulawayo Archbishop Ncube told me that they had long had to resort to mass, anonymous burials in a pit since so many were dying of all causes, but almost always in part through lack of food and care. Everyone you meet has lost a brother, a wife, a husband, a child. By 2006 life expectancy had collapsed to 37 years for men, 34 years for women - the lowest in the world.

Most of these deaths would escape the CPPCG definition of genocide because - as with the 365,000 individuals estimated to have died as a result of Thabo Mbeki's AIDS policies - they were not members of any groups being specifically targeted by anyone but because those in charge simply couldn't give a damn about such deaths. Similarly, the collapse in both the South African and Zimbabwean rates of life expectancy were not policy outcomes that Mbeki or Mugabe had planned: they simply didn't care in the slightest about such things, in just the same way it simply would not have occurred to medieval rulers or tribal leaders of old that they ought to feel responsibility for the mortality rate.

But, certainly in Mugabe's case, the leader's general purpose is nonetheless served by such deaths for his entire aim is to reduce the population to a state of utterly dependent peonage, from which they are bound to support the powers that be, as their only means to survival. The fact that life in Zimbabwe is so obviously nasty, brutish and short does indeed unnerve, frighten and discourage the population from dissent of any kind: the thought that "there but for the grace of God go I" can never be faraway in such an environment.

In a sense the model goes all the way back to the villagers mobilised by Zanla guerrillas in the 1970s, where fearsome punishment would be visited upon dissidents so that the survivors would embrace the Zanu cause, singing its songs and praising it, in a weird mixture of nervy support and pure terror. Morgan Tsvangirai once said to me "Mugabe wants to reduce us all to helpless peasants. He started off as a Marxist but he lost all interest in socialism once he realised that workers were sturdy independents with a mind of their own, who might march or strike."

The truth is that the African nationalist elite is in that sense lordly, and what it wants is not support so much as fealty. (Mbeki was, in the same way, distinctly lordly, denied that he knew anyone dying of Aidseven when one of his own assistants was virtually on his deathbed - an act worthy of a Borgia prince - and was never comfortable with the independent power of the trade unions.) 

No wonder there are reports that the new, Zanu-PF farm owners treat farmworkers as virtual slaves. For there is a world of difference - a whole epoch of human development - separating the worker experience under commercial farmers and the quasi-feudal peonage which the new elite expects and demands. 

Now, however, comes the long-promised Zimbabwe census. Cathy Buckle describes - in her blog post "Cold Shivers down our Spines" of 11 August 2012 - what has been happening this last week:

"Only in Zimbabwe could an ordinary population census be turned into a political bun fight.

Schools around the country were ordered to close a week early to enable the co-ordinating, registration and training of civil servants who will be conducting the August population census. Parents re-arranged their lives and changed their work schedules, holiday bookings were disrupted and tourists suddenly found that they couldn't get a hotel room or hire a car anywhere. When the national count was less than a fortnight away we suddenly started seeing very belated census adverts in the press and then the mayhem began.

With utter disbelief we watched as soldiers hijacked the census preparations. At centres around the country soldiers arrived in numbers and demanded that they be registered as enumerators despite the fact the positions had already been allocated and the teachers were about to be registered and trained for the task. For days the reports got worse and worse: soldiers refused to go away; refused to let enumerators into training centres; confiscated clipboards, training material and foodstuffs and prevented training workshops from being held; journalists were harassed.

Riot police arrived at one centre in Harare and they wouldn't let government officials, organisers or enumerators in. Government ministers waded in and the registration process was announced as having being postponed for a day, then another day. Then what was openly being called ‘anarchy' was taken to Cabinet. They said that only the pre-agreed 1,500 soldiers would be accredited to take part in the census and they would count people at prisons, police and army bases, as has always been the practice. This was a far cry from the 10,000 places the soldiers had been demanding in the census counting.

We're not sure what happened behind the scenes but next came a statement from the Acting Finance Minister saying the training of census enumerators had been cancelled but that the census would not be affected as most of the enumerators had been trained and undertaken previous census counts. A day later this changed again and census enumerators were told to report to their centres, the training was back on. Confusion reigned.

And the unforgettable quote in the midst of the mayhem came from the Zimbabwe Defence Forces spokesman. Contacted for comment by News Day newspaper about soldiers disrupting census registration, the Colonel said: "Were they wearing uniforms? I am not aware that such a thing has happened." All this might seem absurd to outsiders, but to Zimbabweans waiting for a constitutional referendum and an election within the next few months, we dread to think what lies ahead for us; this has sent cold shivers down our spines."

What this is about, without much doubt, is the realisation somewhere within the Zanu-PF camp, that the census is a very dangerous exercise indeed. First, it will, if honestly done, reveal just how poor a reflection of human reality the current voters' roll is, setting of fresh demands for the drawing up of an entirely new roll, something which Zanu-PF very much wants to avoid. It will also determine constituency boundaries, which could also upset Zanu-PF plans.

Secondly, such a census would reveal the huge gaps in the nation's demography and thus will begin to reveal the full dimensions of population loss. And one has to remember to remember that genocide is, amazingly, quite easy to hide, easy enough so that many will attempt to hush those who talk of it, suggesting they are alarmist and irresponsible. Thus it was even with the Holocaust which remained more than half-hidden until the Allied armies blundered upon the Nazi death camps. Until then the voices raised in the Jewish communities of the UK and USA, attempting to bring this horror to public attention, had been dismissed as alarmist in the usual way. 

It is the same now with Zimbabwe. But once the dreadful secrets which that census will lay bare become public knowledge there will be renewed cries for Mugabe and his cronies to be led before the International Criminal Court. And their judgement at Nuremberg, while it may be delayed, cannot in the end be denied.

RW Johnson 

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