Posted on 03/14/2002 9:44:12 AM PST by xsysmgr
INTIMIDATION in the countryside, cutting the number of polling stations in the towns: these were the twin prongs of Robert Mugabe's vote-rigging in Zimbabwe's presidential election.But the skulduggery of the past few days comes at the end of a two-year reign of terror in which opponents have been killed, raped and beaten, the voter register has been falsified, the media have been shackled, the courts cowed and election monitors harassed.
And there is more to come. Buoyed by his "victory", Mr Mugabe will now tighten the screws on the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and those civil and religious leaders who have spoken out against him. The future for white farmers in Zimbabwe, the first target of the terror campaign, looks hopeless.
And the economy, already unable to produce enough of the main staple, maize, can only sink lower while such policies last. Mr Mugabe remains in power, but at a huge cost.
That is felt most acutely by Zimbabweans, who have known no other ruler since independence in 1980 and now find that he has engineered a further six-year term. But it spreads outwards, first to southern Africa, then to the continent south of the Sahara as a whole, and finally to the Commonwealth.
The collapse of the Zimbabwean economy is adversely affecting members of the Southern African Development Community, among which are Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia. It is dampening trade, deterring foreign investment and raising the spectre of large-scale refugee movement across Zimbabwe's borders.
Mr Mugabe's misrule also casts a shadow over the whole of Black Africa. He is a throwback to the autocratic first generation of independence leaders who stymied their countries' growth while other parts of the developing world surged ahead.
That image improved somewhat after the Cold War had ended and donors were demanding good governance as a condition of aid. But in recent years it has again been tarnished, this time by mayhem in Sierra Leone and megalomania in Zimbabwe.
Mr Mugabe's stealing of the presidential election will undermine the New Partnership for Africa's Development, under which the continent's leaders have requested Western funding to promote growth, democracy and peace.
The prospects for the Commonwealth are equally bleak. The legitimation of the election by South African observers yesterday suggests that the organisation will be unable to reach a consensus on suspending Zimbabwe from its councils.
That will deepen the rift between the African members on one side and Britain and the former dominions of Australia, Canada and New Zealand on the other. The last said yesterday it was ready to impose its own penalties on Zimbabwe should the Commonwealth prove impotent.
Britain should do the same, by seeking to extend European Union sanctions against the president and his henchmen; Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, spoke yesterday of their "systematic campaign of violence and intimidation".
Failure to act earlier against Mr Mugabe is proving very expensive.
And exactly where in Africa is this NOT the case? Nigeria, perhaps? Ethiopia? Uganda?
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