Mugabe Hardliner Dies

By A Correspondent | Edward Raradza, a former Zanu-PF legislator and farmers’ leader who became one of Robert Mugabe’s staunchest rural political allies during an era in which parts of Mashonaland were turned into virtual no-go zones for the opposition, has died.

He was 79.

Raradza, a former Zimbabwe Farmers Union vice-president and Muzarabani South MP, died in Harare on Friday evening, according to his family.

“I can confirm that father passed away yesterday late, around before 8:00pm last night. It was a shock to the family. We’re still trying to process it and accept that this is what has happened,” family representative Mathew Raradza said.

His death closes the chapter on a political career that straddled farming advocacy and the hard-edged rural politics of Mugabe’s final decade in power.

Raradza rose to national prominence through the Zimbabwe Farmers Union, where he advocated for farmers over producer prices, agricultural inputs and government support.

He frequently challenged authorities over rising production costs, shortages of agricultural inputs and delayed payments to farmers. In 2006, for example, he criticised steep increases in fertiliser prices and demanded improved producer prices to cushion farmers.

But it was his move into Zanu-PF politics — particularly in Muzarabani — that made him a more controversial national figure.

Raradza contested Muzarabani South on a Zanu-PF ticket in the watershed 2008 parliamentary elections and was declared elected unopposed after no opposition candidate was returned by the nomination court.

His constituency lay in Mashonaland Central, one of Zanu-PF’s most important rural strongholds and a province where opposition parties struggled for political space during the Mugabe era.

The province became particularly notorious during the bloody aftermath of the March 2008 elections, when Mugabe lost the first round of the presidential election to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Zanu-PF lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence.

Human Rights Watch subsequently documented what it described as a state-sponsored campaign of violence concentrated heavily in traditional Zanu-PF strongholds, including Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East and Mashonaland West.

The organisation documented torture camps, forced political “re-education” meetings and the creation of areas effectively closed to opposition political activity. It said Zanu-PF supporters, war veterans, youth militia and elements of the security forces were implicated in beatings, torture and intimidation of suspected MDC supporters.

Mashonaland Central was among the worst affected.

One of the most notorious incidents occurred at Chaona Primary School in Chiweshe on May 5, 2008, when Human Rights Watch said more than 70 people were tortured at a forced “re-education” meeting and six men died from their injuries.

Muzarabani itself was engulfed by the violence. Contemporary reports described attacks on suspected MDC supporters, destruction of homes, political bases and intimidation intended to prevent opposition organising.

It was against this background that Raradza’s name became controversial.

The Commercial Farmers Union later named him among Zanu-PF figures it accused of involvement in political violence, describing him as a perpetrator of violence in Muzarabani and Chiweshe and alleging that he was present during the May 5 Chaona attacks.

Other opposition-linked accounts accused Raradza of participating in or directing groups that attacked MDC supporters and destroyed homes in Muzarabani.

The allegations formed part of the wider, deeply contested record of Zimbabwe’s 2008 election violence. Raradza was not convicted in a court of law over the allegations.

But the broader violence in Mashonaland Central was extensively documented by local and international human-rights organisations.

The pattern was not unique to Muzarabani.

Further east, Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe (UMP) became another symbol of Zanu-PF’s rural political dominance under Mugabe.

For years, UMP routinely delivered some of Mugabe and Zanu-PF’s largest electoral majorities. Opposition parties repeatedly complained that the area was hostile territory in which campaigning could expose activists and supporters to intimidation or violence.

Academic research on UMP has described the district as having acquired a reputation as a “no-go area” for opposition parties, while examining allegations of politically motivated abuses by Zanu-PF supporters and state security agents from 2000 onwards.

Zimbabwean media similarly described UMP during the Mugabe era as effectively a no-go area for opposition parties amid recurring allegations of intimidation and violence against MDC supporters.

Together with areas of Mashonaland Central such as Muzarabani, Mount Darwin, Bindura and parts of Mazowe and Chiweshe, such constituencies formed the backbone of the rural electoral fortress that repeatedly helped sustain Mugabe and Zanu-PF in power.

The system depended not simply on electoral popularity. Human-rights organisations documented how patronage, traditional leadership structures, liberation-war politics and, particularly during contested elections, intimidation and political violence combined to restrict opposition activity in some rural communities.

The 2008 election exposed that system at its most violent.

After Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe in the March presidential vote but officially fell short of the threshold required for an outright victory, Zimbabwe descended into a campaign of violence ahead of the June runoff.

Human Rights Watch reported killings, torture, beatings, displacement and the establishment of militia bases across the country, with violence particularly concentrated in Zanu-PF’s Mashonaland strongholds.

Tsvangirai eventually withdrew from the runoff, saying the level of violence made a free and fair election impossible. Mugabe proceeded with the June 27 vote and was declared the winner before regional mediation produced the 2009 inclusive government.

Raradza remained firmly on Mugabe’s side throughout that turbulent period.

He became known as an outspoken Mugabe loyalist whose praise of the veteran ruler sometimes assumed religious dimensions.

An academic study examining the political use of Christian and messianic imagery during Mugabe’s rule cited Raradza as describing Robert Gabriel Mugabe as the “real Angel Gabriel” — an illustration of the personality cult that developed around the ageing Zanu-PF leader among some of his most committed supporters.

Yet Raradza’s political identity was not confined to Zanu-PF mobilisation.

He remained an influential voice on agriculture and continued using Parliament to raise concerns affecting farmers.

As a legislator, he spoke on tobacco marketing, agricultural subsidies, input schemes and government support programmes. In Parliament in 2011, he criticised the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board over what he regarded as inadequate services for farmers.

During the inclusive-government period, he also complained that promised seed and fertiliser subsidies were failing to reach ordinary farmers and argued that government programmes were not adequately empowering rural producers.

His career consequently reflected two intertwined strands of Zimbabwe’s post-independence political history: the emergence of black commercial and smallholder farmers as an increasingly important political constituency following land reform, and the increasingly coercive politics through which Zanu-PF defended its rural strongholds as opposition to Mugabe intensified.

To his supporters, Raradza was a farmer who rose through the Zimbabwe Farmers Union to become a national advocate for agricultural producers and a representative of rural communities.

To his critics, particularly MDC activists and victims of the 2008 political upheaval, his name remained inseparable from the violent politics that characterised Zanu-PF’s battle to retain control of rural Mashonaland.

His death therefore removes one of the surviving figures from a generation of Mugabe-era Zanu-PF politicians whose political careers were forged at the intersection of land, farming, liberation-war politics and the bitter struggle against the MDC.

Raradza is survived by his family.

Funeral arrangements are expected to be announced in due course.