Robert Mugabe Part 3: Zimbabwe’s Tsunami

On Big Lives, we take a single cultural icon, people like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Little Richard, and we pull apart the story behind the image. And we do this by digging through the BBC's vast archives. Discovering forgotten interviews that changed exactly how we see these giants of our culture. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm Emmanuel Jochi, and Kai Wright, and this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives wherever you get your podcasts. It's April the 18th, in the year 2000, Independence Day. 20 years ago, at a stadium in Zimbabwe's capital, Harari, Robert Mugabe proclaimed the birth of a new nation. In a moving speech of reconciliation, the former guerrilla leader promised an end to the fighting between blacks and whites. Now those words ring totally hollow. 300 miles from the capital city, at a little after six in the morning, Martin Olds looks out of his window. A hundred men are breaking through the fence that surrounds his farm. They're well armed, with guns and traditional Zimbabwean hunting knives. Three days earlier, another white farmer, David Stevens, was kidnapped, taken into the bush and murdered by a mob. They claim to be war veterans, but from the looks of them, most of the men gathered outside Martin Olds' tin-roofed farmstead are too young to afford in the liberation war. He grabs his shotgun and loads a couple of cartridges into the chamber. At 42, Olds is a military vet himself, with four firearms of this disposal. A burly man with a thick brown beard, he cuts a pretty imposing figure. But Olds is no fool. He knows he stands little chance in a shootout. Instead, he attempts to negotiate. Stepping outside his front door, he sees the invaders have taken up offensive positions, and they don't seem willing to parlay. Before he can get a word out, one of the men fires. Olds is hit in the leg, bones splintering. He staggers back inside and reaches for his two-way radio. Grimmassing from the pain, he manages to make contact with the farmer's union. He begs them to call him an ambulance. With help on its way, or so he assumes, Olds improvises a temporary splint for his broken leg. He then steals himself for the battle of his life. For the next hour or so, he exchanges fire with the men outside his home, crawling from room to room to get a clear shot. He manages to hit half a dozen of the intruders, but the others show no sign of retreating. By now, Olds is desperate for medical attention, but the ambulance still hasn't arrived. Dettel does he know it's being held at a police roadblock, along with a group of farmers who were attempting to launch a rescue. Olds keeps the siege going longer than anyone could have expected, but eventually, the invaders flush him out. They hurl Molotov cocktails through the shattered windows of the farmstead, soon the entire building is ablaze. Choking on the fumes, Olds is forced out into the open. The invaders grab him and shoot him twice in the face of close range. For the next couple of hours, they remain at the farm cheering and singing. The farm's name in a twist of irony is compensation. By the time the police finally arrive on the scene, they're long gone. Later that day, President Mugabe appears on state television. Far from condemning the murder, he appears to sympathize with the invaders. Zimbabwe's 4,000 white farmers, he claims, are stuck in the entrenched colonial attitudes of the past. Thanks to them, the new constitution he proposed was defeated in a referendum two months earlier. Amongst other things, it would have transferred farmland from white to black owners. The whites, Mugabe declares, have proven themselves enemies of Zimbabwe, and by now, everyone knows how he treats his enemies. After two decades in office, Robert Mugabe has already shown himself to be a callous and brutal dictator. From the Kakurohundi genocide, launched against the minority endabellies, to the vote-rigging, corruption, and economic mismanagement by his cronies, there have been plenty of reasons for the international community to abandon him. But only after the farm invasions at the dawn of the 21st century will the outside world acknowledge Mugabe's true nature. And as Mugabe doubles down, he will drag Zimbabwe into the greatest economic crisis since the Wall Street crash. From Noiser, this is part three of the Mugabe story, and this is Real Dictators. From Mugabe and his ZanuPF party, violence and intimidation are longstanding political tools. As the wave of farm invasions sweeps the country from early 2000 onwards, that little doubt has to his intentions. Dr. Chippaudendere. We get to 2000 and these are vibrant opposition. Unfortunately, ZanuPF has learned that they can use violence, they can use military tactics that we used to gain independence, and they can use those on the citizens. They realize, like, look, we don't have the white vote, white farmers are going to support the opposition, so let's embrace all the evil. Journalist, Jerry Jackson. It was very controlled. It wasn't a mass of people going out to farms and just mass-recuring people. It almost feels like they had a meeting one day and said, "How many white farmers do you think we can kill?" Or should kill to bring everybody to heal? They killed every animal they could on the farm, and that was a deliberate policy because it upset white people to see their horses covered in bales of hay and set a light. Or they would chase the horses over the cattle bridge so they'd break their legs and it'd stone the dogs to death. In early 2000, Megabia's still smarting from his first ever electoral defeat. A new political party, the movement for democratic change, spearheaded the no vote in the recent referendum campaign. Thanks in part to the efforts of white activists, the MDC succeeded in quashing Megabia's plans. In large part, the farm invasions are intended to destroy the MDC's base, just as the Kakurohundi massacres 20 years earlier targeted the supporters of Megabia's rival, Joshua and Koma. But it's not just the white farmers who are in the crosshairs. Black farm workers are raped, tortured and massacred as the invaders are unleashed. Douglas Rogers, author of The Last Resort, a memoir of Zimbabwe, grew up on his parents farm near the Mozambique border. Up to one million people lived and worked on white commercial farms and they were overwhelmingly supportive to opposition. So in taking out white farmers, he was doing two things. He was targeting a white minority, but he was also destroying black farm workers in that community. Many were killed, many beaten up, left landless, fled to South Africa, fled to Mozambique, and that was to me, that's the overlooked story of that time. Dr. Sue Onzler. The way that it was reported in the press, particularly in the UK, emphasized the attacks, the damage, the killings, the invasions, the destitution of farmers. But not enough attention was given to the wider Zimbabwean black community who were impoverished, who were dispossessed, whose lives and livelihoods were wrecked. That was I'm afraid of statistic. Lagabia is unrepentant. It is our right. It is our land. He tells supporters at one rally. We must be prepared to die for it. The history of land ownership in Zimbabwe is a complex one, stretching back more than 100 years. Cecil Rhodes, British South Africa Company, and the subsequent white minority regime plundered this land and subjugated its people. But essentially, many of the white farmers are third or fourth generation immigrants who've never lived anywhere else. Presenting the farm invasions is a straightforward racial conflict suit, Magabee. Oh, all the white people had the best land and best farms and everything. Not necessarily. From independence in 1980, if you had a farm and you wanted to sell, you had to offer it to the government first of all, and couldn't just sell it to anybody. And if they didn't want it, you got a letter of no interest, and your farm was protected in theory from government intervention at any time. 80% of the farms that were invaded had letters of no interest from the government. They could have bought the farms in the past, they could have resettled people on them if they wanted to. They had no interest. Despite decades of appalling leadership, Mugabe himself still garrons residual respect across Africa. Although a lot of people in Africa didn't like what Mugabe had done, they quite liked the fact that he'd given the finger to the white man. Even after all the violence on the farms and stuff, he would go into national and be sated. And he's like the old man of Africa, you know, like a father figure, this sort of giant of a continent in a way. But with parliamentary elections coming up in June, Mugabe faces the most serious political threat of his 20 years in power. The MDC's leader, trade unionist Morgan Changarai, is younger, more dynamic, and he has the common touch. Plus, he's already beaten Mugabe once before in the referendum campaign. Mugabe has no intention of losing again. The same day as the first white farmer, David Stevens, was murdered. Changarai's driver was killed in a petrol bomb attack on his vehicle. Now with the election looming, property seeds from white farmers are turned into re-education centres for dispossessed black farm workers. Men, women and children are rounded up and bundled into convoys of stolen vehicles, driven to remote farms, and subjected to days of bullying and intimidation. By June 1st, the MDC have calculated that only a fifth of constituencies are safe enough for them to campaign in. An investigation by one, human rights organisation finds more than 5,000 separate incidents of political violence. But even faced with this bloodshed, millions of Zimbabweans remain optimistic as to the possibility of change. After all, if Zanu P.F. can lose their referendum, who's to say they can't lose an election as well? That's when we said it thinking, "Okay, so maybe we might get in your president." There was really now this bubbling, a big video sort of like this excitement and anxiety. I remember my sister, my older sister, who had never voted, and her husband was from a tabel-e-land. I mean, though we just saw you for it, they excited. They're talking about change, right? That something has to change. And then people start using, "We don't have to go." Like the old man must go. In fact, Mugabe's own job isn't up for grabs for another two years. When Zimbabwe faces its next presidential election, but losing his majority in parliament would be a devastating blow nonetheless. In the event, he just about scrapes through. Zanu P.F. takes 62 seats to 57 for the MBC. The share of the popular vote is even closer. 48 to 47 percent. One thing is crystal clear. Had it not been for all the violence and intimidation, Mugabe would have lost the election. A decade ago, he was campaigning for a one-party state. Now, he barely commends a majority. Journalist Nathan Dodso. That parliamentary election in 2000 really was a major wake-up call. So now they had opposition. All of a sudden, there's opposition to anything that we want to put forward. Things were changing. The tide was actually turning slowly but surely. I'm Ian Glenn. And this is Real Vikings. A monastery on a remote Scottish island overrun with pagan warriors. The dragon-shaped prowl for longboat, cutting through Canada's icy waters. A North Strader in North Africa, exchanging furs for silver under a desert sun. The Vikings terrified the medieval world, yet they beguilers today. Who were they really? Real Vikings from the Noiser Podcast Network. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. With his eye on the presidential poll two years down the road, Mugabe doubles down on the farm invasions. In July, he announces a government program designed to formalize the so far chaotic process. Harking back to the liberation wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, Mugabe quissons this program of land reform the third chimarenga. In the first two years, around six million hectares of land are confiscated from Zimbabwe's white farmers. But to no one's surprise, the best properties are snapped up by Mugabe and his cronies. Of course, fat cats all took the best farms and they used them to this day. They sort of got out there. It's a bit like a hunting lodge or a gentleman's country estate and they take their mates out there and they have barbecues and stuff. And nobody's really farming too much. Land reform isn't about land reform. It's about rewarding people that are loyalty. But what that means is that three quarters of the farms stop producing. Great day. So when you think about Harking, Mugabe people in Mugabe shouldn't be hungry, but there are because the farms are just not functioning. They've got arable land. That arable land just became a wasteland. The farms were taken with no plan. It was just right. Let's give the land to this person. But then the produce dropped because again, you have to train that person to use that land effectively. Zimbabwe's staple crop, maze, sees a decline of 37%. And in the ensuing years, production will continue to fall. Even in the faraway UK, a major export market for Zimbabwe and foodstuffs, consumers notice a change. Professor Steven Chan. At that point in time, you would go to St. Springs and you could bet your bottom dollar at the packet of beans that you were buying with has a label on the produce of Zimbabwe. This paid for an exchange into the national coffers. And all of that was suddenly lost. Suddenly Zimbabwe and produce disappeared from the supermarket shows. There's no need to boycott. There's just less than there. It will be several years before the full impact of the land redistribution is felt by this Zimbabwe economy. In the meantime, the apparatus of state are becoming increasingly authoritarian. By now, the police force is little more than a government militia and censorship of the media is stricter than ever. In 2001, an independent paper, the Daily News, as its printing press is destroyed in a bomb blast. Foreign journalists, to me, might begin to be expelled from the country. Those who dare to criticize Mugabe's government, live in constant fear of reprisals. Morgan Changurai, the leader of the opposition, was frequently assaulted, detained. And this happened frequently, if you were in the opposition, if you were activists in the MVC, particularly around election times. I remember interviewing a guy once, and he was in a rural area. And as I was talking to him, he was being attacked and you could hear the glass breaking around him. And he just said, "I'm so tired. "He's been on the run for so long. "You've got to understand the level of poverty in this country "of how hard it is to fight back." It's not just the MVC supporters who run the risk of violence. Gabriel Schumber is studying law at the University of Zimbabwe and the government more than doubles his tuition fees. The students organize a peaceful protest, but it's dealt with like a political riot. Police go through dormitories looking for people to beat up and drop tear gas onto the campus from helicopters. It was a crime to just a voice and opposing opinion. When I was graduating from the University of Zimbabwe, in the year 2000, I was president of the Student Representative Council. And at some point, I was then nominated to hand over a petition to protest the police brutality against the student demonstrations. President Mugabe was the chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe. As I was approaching him, to hand over that petition, I was whisked away by his security forces, his security aid. I was taken away in gown and cap and thrown into jail, merely for attempting to hand over a petition. I spent three days in jail. Despite such treatment going increasingly common, within Zimbabwe, the D word remains to boo. Dr. Chipodenderry left the country to pursue her education in the United States. In my studies, because I was a political science major, he was talking about Zimbabwe as a dictatorship, but the average person is not using the same. word, this word of dictated. I think it's the fact you're living in the state and there these constant contradictions, right? Well, is it a dictatorship if we have elections? Then at what point does it become a dictatorship? Now I think looking back, people use that phrase more openly. One of the few democratic bullwicks left in Zimbabwe is the judiciary, which despite Megabwe's best efforts continues to uphold the law as best it can. After losing her job at the state-run broadcaster, Jerry Jackson decides to try a legal route to set up the country's first independent radio station. I was speaking to some people who felt that if you took a case to the constitutional court about the government's broadcasting monopoly, you would win. So I thought, okay, and I did win the right to set up the first independent radio station, all five Supreme Court judges ruled in my favour. So I poured a transmitter in South Africa, found some offices, found a couple of people, and then of course Megabwe used his presidential powers to overturn the court ruling and had it shut down. They were wielding AK-47s and they surrounded the radio station and they were trying to break down the door and they seized all the equipment and they surrounded my house with AK-47s. Now I was advised to go into hiding. I decided to try and get some donor funding and relocate offshore because I was now on a mission. I'm on a mission here, I'm going to start a radio station and come hell or high water. So it was complex, but after a year, I set up a short way of broadcast service, broadcasting just outside of London. For the next 13 years, Jackson and her colleagues will put together a nightly bullet in at their studio in Borumwood, transmitted via a satellite station in South Africa. For around a million Zimbabwean listeners, many tuning in on wind-up radios, the uncensored broadcast is a lifeline. If Megabwe's goal is to reduce the number of voters likely to oppose him, then in one respect at least he succeeded. Millions of Zimbabweans quit the country for less repressive climbs. The resulting brain drain of blacks and whites sees the country lose around half its doctors. With Zimbabwean the grip of an AIDS epidemic and medicines in short supply, the timing couldn't be worse. As the presidential election approaches, Megabwe's rhetoric becomes increasingly combative. What we are now headed for is real war, he tells the party conference, three months before the polls open. This is the third chimarenga, you are soldiers of ZanoPF. Once again Megabwe's goons unleash hell on its Zimbabwean people. This time its youth brigades, known as the green bombers for their distinctive fatigue uniforms, are responsible for the brutalization. Across the country, MDC activists are abducted, tortured and murdered. Shops are looted and homes burned to the ground. International election observers are expelled. Two days before the election, hundreds of urban polling stations are closed down, leading to impossible cues at those that are permitted to open. After waiting for hours to cast their ballots, many voters simply give up and go home. Meanwhile, in the countryside, amongst the ZanoPF's traditional base, the number of polling stations is increased. The result of 14% majority for Megabwe is denounced by the opposition as daylight robbery. The United States, the European Union and most infuriating for Megabwe, Great Britain, all refused to accept it. A week later, Zimbabwe is expelled from the commonwealth. But for another six years at least, the presidency is his. Newly emboldened, Megabwe goes for broke on land reform. All 3,000 remaining white farmers in the country are served a 90-day notice to abandon their properties or face imprisonment. He even talks of seizing white-owned factories. The following year, Megabwe compares himself to the most hated figure of the 20th century. "I am still the Hitler of the time," he boasts, "but the funeral of a Zano loyalist. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their rights to their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold." In 2003, Morgan Changurizer rested and charged with treason, a crime that carries the death penalty. Although the case against him is eventually dropped, the threat never quite goes away. The fourth estate isn't much safer either. After expelling a number of international journalists, Megabwe now declares that the enemies of the state, this is the cue for journalists Nathan Doddso to leave the country. "December of 2002, they had actually put a front page, you know, article in the Sunday Mail, which is the main paper read by everyone on the Sunday saying, "Scribes Spy for BBC." So pretty much everyone who was an international journalist at the time was now seen as a spy. After we saw that article, I remember going back to our staying and people were saying, "Oh, you're in the front page, you know, how can people ever talk to you again?" Knowing that now, anyone who's again seen in that sense is now an enemy of the state. That's the reason why I came back to the UK in 2003. It is said to feel that you're not welcome in your own country, or you're not free in your own country. I was just reporting what I saw or I just filming what I saw, you know, but sometimes what I saw at times could be seen as something that shouldn't have been reported or shouldn't have been filmed, you know, but only they can decide that. Lawyer Gabriel Schumbert also finds his days in the country are numbered. Since being hauled away by police at his graduation ceremony, Schumbert has been working as a human rights lawyer and as an activist for the MDC. Two occupations in the current climate. They're always good as putting a target on your back. I have been arrested for not less than 14 or 15 times in Zimbabwe for my ex-visit, but at no period did any of the charges stick. It was mainly intended as intimidation and harassment under President Mojave. So I didn't for the life of me think that it would culminate to something worse than just an arrest and you know being thrown into jail. But that is what transpired and the ultimately forced me out of the country. As an MDC lawyer Schumbert has grown used to hearing stories of horrific abuse by the authorities, some of them so shocking that he finds him hard to believe. I was incredulous when I heard those stories and I, you know, the only time that I fully 100% believed it, it only hit home when it happened to me and I was blind-folded, taken for days, tortured, forced it to write a confession, confessing to three's and as the activities in Zimbabwe. So when that happened, I was electrocuted, I was urinated upon, I even vomited blood and I was made to drink my own urine and my own blood. Me only for representing an opposition member of Palia. After three days of torture, with no access to food or water, Schumbert is released, but it's clear that staying in Zimbabwe is no longer an option. Thanks to the false confession he was forced to sign, his passport has been confiscated by a judge. You'll have to find another way out of the country. Obviously I can't mention the nitty gritties of how that happened because I would be exposing some people, but only to say that I escaped from Zimbabwe in the boot of a car and I found myself in Botswana and the Outland, clean South Africa. Even in South Africa though, Schumbert knows he's not entirely safe. Mugabe's agents operate across international borders. People were being abducted and rendered back into Zimbabwe. I was almost abducted inside a theater in the Wednesday. I only survived because I removed my, the shed, they were holding me by both hands and I removed the shed and they were left to holding the shed and I escaped. In Johannesburg, Schumbert is able to return to his work as a human rights lawyer, but living a life in exile is never easy. I had left my children inside Zimbabwe, I had left my wife in Zimbabwe. A sented with depression and plastic stress in the water. Sometimes I would go into court and just freeze, fail to even rise when the juggle arrives in court, feeling as if my legs were stuck in concrete or something. Sometimes I would set bleeding from the nose endlessly, sometimes nightmares when I was sleeping, and I was suicide and I almost became an alcoholic during those days. So it became such a nightmare, just waking through a day. So I was in serious problems. I ended up seeking treatment in Denmark and also into one state. And I'm happy to say that I've at least passed some of those difficult moments. Because if I am a better person than I was earlier on. I was in a state of depression and I was in a state of depression and I was suicide. I was suicide. In the year, getting Xanu candidates some implausible majorities, in 11 constituencies, the party somehow receives more votes than the total numbers cast. But even with the cheating, Mugabe has succeeded in clawing just 16 seats back from the MDC. In the cities, despite his best efforts, their support remains strong. This later hundreds of thousands of urban zimbabweans feel the full force of Mugabe's wrath. Supposedly, Operation Murambachina is a slum clearance program, intended to improve living conditions and flush out petty criminals. The name, ominously, translates as "Operation Drive Out The Filth". Unofficially, it becomes known as the "Babwe's Sunami". On May 25th, police and youth militias move simultaneously against many of the country's poorest communities. In particular, those in the slums and shanty towns on the outskirts of Harari and Bulawea. They bulldoze homes, shut down market stalls, and confiscate everything from food to flowers. Displaced families are transported to rural transit camps, where they're left without water or electricity. Operation Murambachina leaves almost a million people homeless. And I'm talking to my friend. My best friend at the time, she had studied selling things in the markets, and she writes to me, those were the days of emails or no social media and what's up. She writes to me and said, "We've lost everything." They came to the market and they just took our staff. So again, the word "dictator" doesn't come up, right? But in the frustration of people, in the conversations about things have to change. The violence is now in the cities. It's not just something from the rural areas. Now it's in the cities. It was again a brutal assertion of the will of the state. It led to very real hunger, distress, death, disruption. And it also struck directly at constituency strongholds of the political opposition. Still, Meghavi cannot dent the popularity of the MDC's leader. Morgan Changare has become the dictator's bekma. And that is a dangerous position to occupy. In 2007, after MDC activists were arrested at a gathering in Haraari, Changarei personally visits the local police station to argue for their release. But while there, he is subjected to the same horrific treatment as his comrades. I told the police, "Beat him a lot," Meghavi later boasts. He asked for it. When images of the beaten Changarei in his hospital bed get out, the international community is shaken. US Secretary of State Condoleez Arise declares, "The regime of Robert Meghavi is ruthless and repressive and creates only suffering for the people of Zimbabwe." A few weeks later, the cameraman responsible for leaking the images is murdered. The year was his name. He worked at television Big Guy. And he wasn't really a political person. But like all of us, he'd been pushed to the limit for what was happening. And apparently, he was standing with his wife in his house and he saw the gang coming for him. And he turned to his wife and he said, "I am dead." And they found his body the next day. As Meghavi continues to throw punches, all the while the economy is unraveling at an alarming rate. Ever since the start of the farm invasion seven years earlier, inflation has been on the rise. Investors are looking at this country and, "Well, this is lawless. Like, I can't invest in a farm. You're going to take it." So investment went away. Then it placed like a rarer. He looks like this big fancy city. But it's tied to agriculture. You've got tractor businesses and fertiliser and agri-business ran the country. So in taking away these commercial farms, you destroyed so many sectors of the society. And the only way out of it at that point then was to print money. As hyperinflation takes hold, the value of disembarbing currency plummets further still. The highest denomination banknote, the red $500 bill, acquires a new nickname, the Ferrari. So called because of the speed at which it leaves your wallet. Before long, new bills are being printed. A thousand dollars. Then a million. Then a billion. We would go into a restaurant with a toilet bag full of notes, high denomination notes, millions and millions. Which would then be put into a Chinese-made counting machine. So paying for your dinner, they just put the stack of notes into the counting machine. And the price of dinner would have increased while you were having a dinner. Bakers in the street would throw away the money you gave. In fact, you would come across out of your way. It's just littered with ostensibly high denomination notes. And no one wanted because they were valueless. If you realize that they don't care if the economy collapses, then it's easier to understand. They really don't care because they have so much money and they are plundering so much. It's actually, I don't care if you die and you can't eat and you can't afford bread. I really don't care. That is thinking. So we collapse the economy with the funds. I don't care. Import my food. It's that terrible attitude. So it's a cycle of economic mismanagement. Always to benefit themselves. Hyperinflation actually presents new opportunities. As in, Barbies ruling elite to make money. Senior officials now have access to US dollars at an absurdly low exchange rate, which they can then sell on the black market at a massive markup. The more the gap in value between the two currencies increases, the greater the jackpot. And by reinvesting the same money over and over again, they can become overnight millionaires. Their privileged financial access gives McGarby's cronies unprecedented spending power. Before long, in Zimbabwe, $50 is enough to buy a brand new Mercedes. For ordinary citizens though, hyperinflation is totally ruinous. In the summer of 2007, with inflation at 20,000%, the government orders shops to halve their prices. Within a week, supermarket shelves have been emptied. And thanks to the state imposed discount, managers can't afford to restock them. Then in September, the unthinkable happens. Zimbabwe runs out of beer. The following year sees a combined presidential and parliamentary election. Robert McGarby and Zanupierfe have never been less popular. For once, the MDC are allowed to campaign freely, and the impact is huge. On April 2, the Electoral Commission publishes the results. By a majority of one's seat, Changurai now controls the National Assembly. The presidential election, meanwhile, is apparently too close to call. The MDC are confident of victory here as well, but McGarby has a trick up his sleeve. With the count trending towards Changurai, the order comes through from on high, all counting and announcements. or to be stopped, the ballots will be recounted by hand. "Chaggaration of one of the elections, I had a map 56% on the night, one way or the other he should have been president. Instantly, when this trend became clear, counting an announcement stopped, and the law grinded towards a manual as were fixed by the paper by the paper started. It was quite clearly a forged result." It will be another six weeks before the presidential results are made public. While McGarby's people carefully massaged the figures, a spree of violence erupts that's unprecedented even in the bloody history of Zimbabwean politics. The campaign carries a sinister code name, Operation Where Did You Put Your Ex? The many, the reign of terror is known simply as the fear. "I guess you are a sole loser, you know, which you are if you become a dictator." At long last, the presidential election results are published. Estonishingly, Changurai is acknowledged to have won around 100,000 more votes than McGarby. But it's too early to break open the champagne. Thanks to a couple of fringe candidates, he's still short of an overall majority. He and McGarby will have to face each other again in a run-off. A second round of voting is set for June the 27th, almost two months away. In the meantime, hundreds of MDC agents disappear in mysterious circumstances. For long, more than 80 are confirmed dead. Changurai can only imagine the blob bath that will ensue when the polls open again. Five days before the run-off, he makes the most difficult decision-bus career and officially pulls out of the race. McGarby is duty-elected for a sixth term in office. Twenty years earlier, after crushing his political nemesis, Joshua and Como, in the Kakurohundi, McGarby invited him into his cabinet. Now history repeats itself. With Parliament split right down the middle, McGarby and Changurai come to terms. A most unlikely coalition is announced. A so-called "Government of National Unity". McGarby will remain as president, but the Changurai is Prime Minister. For McGarby, it's not simply a case of keeping your friends close in your enemy's closer. He's come under intense pressure from international leaders, including South Africa's president, Tabo and Becky, to come up with a democratic solution. The world put even enormous pressure for the GNU to happen. At the time, I was now in intern on Capitol Hill, and there was just so much pressure from the global community that you need a plan, you have to come to the table. Zanipi have kept a lot of the big ministries to themselves that gave MDC a lot of the crepe ministries where they had to do a lot of work. What Changurai does get is the finance portfolio. His new finance minister, Tendai Biti, replaces the Zanibarby in currency with the US dollar. The currency black market vanishes overnight, and goods start reappearing on supermarket shelves. But on March 6, 2009, only a month after the government of national unity is formed. Morgan Changurai is involved in a horrific car crash. On his way to a political rally in his hometown of Buhera, the car Changurai and his wife Susan are travelling in, is struck by a 7 ton lorry. The vehicle flips over, rolling several times before coming to rest on its roof. Changurai will recover in hospital, but his wife of 31 years is pronounced dead on arrival. The crash has all the hallmarks of a Maghaba hit job. But when Changurai returns to Harari three days later, he tells supporters he believes this one actually was an accident. Apparently, the driver of the lorry was asleep at the wheel. After a short trial, he's fined $200 and sent home. Not everyone is inclined to believe the official story. Suspissions are raised after a local farmer who took photographs of the crash scene is arrested with his camera confiscated by police. Sinister accidents have long been routine and zimbabwe. An emotional Changurai buries his beloved wife and then returns to work as the country's prime minister. If the crash was an attempted hit, then it failed. His rival/ colleague is alive and well, bruised, bloodied in grief stricken, but more popular than ever. For Mugabi though, the removal of Susan Changurai does have its benefits. Susan was an enormously popular figure in her own right, as well as a much loved first lady. She served as a constant reminder of the popularity that Mugabi's own first wife Sally enjoyed as mother of zimbabwe. Perhaps more significantly, Susan drew an uncomfortable contrast with his much younger second bride, Grace. Ever since she and Mugabi married more than a decade earlier, zimbabweans have been struck by Grace's conspicuous failure to live up to Sally's legacy. Sally Mugabi was highly respected and much loved figure. A good influence on the nation and the country and Grace came to be almost everything opposite to that as time went on. And as Mugabi got older, and people came to see her as incredibly manipulative, power hungry, disrespectful. All things that this sort of traditional society and zimbabwe would not be in favour of. It is easy to dislike the wife and then she also became very public. So yeah, people did not like it. It's just obviously accumulating wealth, taking land from smallholder farmers and just doing a lot of dictator-wife-tapes things. Grace Mugabi has acquired a reputation as a voracious consumer, earning herself some disparaging nicknames, chief among them, the first shopper, and Gucci Grace. When a reporter notes her apparent addiction to $1,000 Ferragamo shoes, she replies, "I have very narrow feet, so I can only wear Ferragamo's." For time her extravagant tastes have rubbed off on her husband. For a man who still claims to represent a Marxist revolution, it's a hard circle to square. With their fast cars and designer handbags, the Mugabies take the term "Champagne Socialist" to a whole new level. Their home in the swanky Borodale suburb of Harari is a literal palace. Many times the size of the president's official residence, it boasts 25 bedrooms, gold taps in all the bathrooms, and is surrounded by 44 acres of land. Built from Mugabi by the Chinese, the 8-figure edifice is an icon of dictatorial extravagance. It was called a blue roof because it had these tiles imported from Shanghai, and it was done in Chinese style, it had a herd of antelope, pools, gazeboes, high security, of course, and like gods, it's various entry points. I never went there, but I knew some people who had been to it. And yeah, again, you just start contrast to how most of the barwins lived at that time. The blue roof is the jewel in the crown of Mugabi's growing property empire, which also includes a 4 million pound villa in Hong Kong, purchased when he and Grace's daughter, Bona, started university there. Not to mention more than a dozen formerly white-owned farms within Zimbabwe. In total, the president's assets are believed to exceed a billion US dollars. Rightly or not, public perception puts the blame for Mugabi's transition from austere headmaster to extravagant tyrant, squarely at Grace's ferragamo-clad feet. What few could have predicted though is that the deeply unpopular Grace has political ambitions of her own. With her husband approaching his 90s, a succession crisis is looming, and ironically, after almost 40 years in power, it's Mugabi's wife who will help to bring about his downfall. They wanted Grace gone more than they wanted Robert Mugabi gone. I think if they could have arrested Grace and taken her out of the equation and kept Robert Mugabi's head figure, I think they would have kept it. He felt he was surrounded by lesser people and he couldn't hand over. He couldn't hand the revolution safely onto these people. The revolution required him. in his 90s. People knew he didn't have long, so there was this interview. The eternal war as to who would succeed him, it was a game of thrones within the ruling party. We would need to rally everybody together to ensure that we execute this. And with the Moogabe, if you are using one bullet, you better not miss because if you miss, you are the dead one. That's next time in the final part of the Moogabe story. [Music]