One man stands at the heart of a power struggle for the future of Zimbabwe. His name is Roy Bennett, and he is literally fighting for his life. The white former landowner and member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is standing trial for trumped-up terrorism and treason charges -- proceedings that began Nov. 9. Zimbabwe's attorney general, Johannes Tomana, is leading the prosecution himself.
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How this plain-spoken, sturdily built, third-generation Zimbabwean ended up on trial has much to do with his position as a practitioner in the country's most politically controversial industry: agriculture. Bennett was a coffee farmer, running one of Zimbabwe's many prosperous outfits until President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF Party government confiscated the land in 2003. The seizure was part of Mugabe's larger "land reform" scheme, officially intended to give land back to the black Africans deprived of it during colonization. In reality, the campaign resembled more closely what the country's own minister of justice, Patrick Chinamasa, called it -- a kind of punishment for white farmers' forefathers being "thieves" and "murderers."
But it wasn't only Bennett's farm that landed him in his current predicament. Bennett was a parliamentarian and a key player in the MDC, which he joined in 1999. Being in the opposition made Bennett unpopular from the start, but things became worse after the land seizure, and especially after Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's chose him for deputy minister of agriculture in the power-sharing government that took shape in the spring of 2009. Mugabe refused to swear Bennett in to his post, citing Bennett's ongoing trial -- a refusal that featured high on the list of grievances that inspired Tsvangirai to boycott the power-sharing government in October. The prime minister has since returned to negotiations, with a looming deadline in early December to sort out disagreements with Mugabe.
Attorney General Tomoma (appointed by Mugabe) is accusing Bennett of providing $5,000 to purchase weapons in a conspiracy to overthrow the president. The defense says that the key witness, a former, legal arms dealer named Peter Michael Hitschmann, tried in 2006 on the same charges, was tortured into implicating Bennett. (Hitschmann was writing an affidavit claiming he had no reason to implicate Bennett in October, but the lawyer helping him was arrested and later released on bail.) If found guilty, Bennett faces life in prison or the death penalty.
With December looking ever closer and the coalition government dangerously near collapse, the conclusion of this trial will serve as a litmus test. At stake is whether the MDC and its supporters can work with ZANU-PF and its founder, Mugabe, a man who has proudly compared himself to Adolf Hitler. Bennett, for one, is confident that Mugabe's reign of terror will end, though not necessarily anytime soon. Speaking to journalist Laura Wells, Bennett explains why Mugabe is a racist, why Tsvangirai's wife may well have been killed thanks to foul play, and why, nonetheless, the opposition keeps fighting.
Foreign Policy: When Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai left the power-sharing agreement with Mugabe last month, he cited the government's treatment of you as one of his reasons for leaving. He has recently returned to the government and you are still on trial. Can Tsvangirai help you?
Roy Bennett: No, I don't think he can at all. Mugabe is still fully in control. [His party,] ZANU-PF, is still fully in control. The MDC has pulled out of that government to show that, unless we were taken seriously within the cabinet and there was definite power-sharing, we would no longer be part of that government or part of any dealings with ZANU PF. I am one of those outstanding issues; I need to be sworn in [as deputy minister of agriculture.]
FP: What do you think will happen to the current power-sharing agreement?
RB: You can't have an agreement where one side is doing what you've agreed to and the other side is totally intransigent, totally unreliable, and totally deceitful. Unless the sincerity and the proper [political] will to make this work come from above in ZANU-PF, [that is, from Mugabe,] this thing will never move forward or succeed. It will all fall apart.
FP: Do you ever expect to be sworn in as deputy minister of agriculture?
RB: No, definitely not. I am everything he [Mugabe] hates, and I think it is a very big thorn in his side that I could be sworn in the agricultural portfolio, where I could expose a lot of the corruption, rampant corruption, theft, and bad policies that are taking place there.
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