Mugabe removes last vestiges of fairness to ensure victory

The Daily Telegraph ^ | December 1, 2001 | David Blair

[MadIvan]

DAVID BLAIR, who was named Young Journalist of the Year for his despatches on Zimbabwe yesterday, reports on President Mugabe's campaign to stay in power

For President Robert Mugabe, politics is the art of the impossible.

His apparent life's mission, pursued with obsessive ruthlessness, is to render it impossible for anyone to hold power over Zimbabwe but himself - and he may now be close to succeeding.

With a climactic presidential election due by April 1, Mr Mugabe is moving with consummate guile to eliminate every last possibility of defeat. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is being left to chance.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and his declared challenger, is confronted with a stark question.

How can he fight the most crucial election in Zimbabwean history when thugs break up his rallies, officials prevent MDC voters from registering and mobs raze his party's headquarters?

Shamelessly partisan policemen have arrested its campaigners and a brutal terror campaign, waged the length and breadth of Zimbabwe, has left opposition supporters traumatised by fear.

Over the past four weeks, Mr Tsvangirai's party, already battle-scarred by repression, has come under furious attack. On Nov 5, Cain Nkala, an obscure member of the notorious War Veterans' Association, was murdered in Bulawayo.

His death was immediately blamed on the MDC and used as an excuse for a crackdown of unprecedented ferocity.

Mr Mugabe referred to opposition leaders as "terrorists" more than 20 times in a single speech, adding: "Their days are numbered."

At first, the response was traditional. The shock troops of the ruling Zanu-PF party raided the MDC's headquarters in Bulawayo and set it ablaze, before rampaging through the city's townships and hunting down Mr Tsvangirai's supporters for severe beatings.

This was straight out of the manual of Zanu-PF electioneering. What followed was more serious. Senior MDC figures were arrested everywhere and thrown behind bars on the flimsiest of charges. In the region of Matabeleland, the MDC has been shut down.

All but a handful of its key figures are either in jail or in hiding and the party has been forced underground in a former stronghold.

Mr Mugabe is now pushing a series of laws through parliament which serve only one purpose: guaranteeing the outcome of the election. All Zimbabweans who live abroad are being denied the right to vote, except those in the diplomatic corps or the army, who are assumed to back Mr Mugabe.

Everyone else is facing entirely new requirements for voter registration, carefully constructed to bear most heavily on MDC supporters.

In the cities - Mr Tsvangirai's heartland - people will have to produce a plethora of documents before they will be entered on the roll: proof of address in the form of title deeds, rental agreements or utility bills will have to be shown.

When you live in a shack in a heaving township, this is quite a challenge. Hundreds of thousands of Mr Tsvangirai's voters will be disenfranchised.

In the countryside, village chiefs will have to vouch for everyone who registers. Each headman is paid a grant by the government and almost all support Zanu-PF. None will vouch for anyone he suspects of backing the MDC.

Any chief foolish enough to do so would be severely dealt with. Other laws are designed to give Mr Mugabe a free hand to run the election with one outcome in mind.

Independent observers will be banned by an amendment to the Electoral Act. Voter education programmes by civic organisations have also been declared illegal.

The new media law announced yesterday will give the government, acting through a "media information commission", the right to bar journalists from working and perhaps close down newspapers.

Foreign correspondents already find it impossible to visit Zimbabwe and these rules may sound the death knell for local independent newspapers, already besieged on all sides.

Mr Mugabe's strategy is nothing if not sophisticated. The time-honoured methods of violence and intimidation form the first prong. One-sided laws and regulations provide the second. Together, they tilt the electoral playing field so markedly as to make it almost vertical.

Zanu-PF managed to steal a narrow victory in last June's parliamentary election when hundreds of foreign observers and journalists were present and, despite some gerrymandering of the constituency boundaries, the electoral machinery was relatively fair.

But for the presidential election, every last vestige of fairness has already been systematically removed.

[MadIvan]

The West should slam down as hard on Mugabe as bin Laden - his reign is entirely intolerable; furthermore he is encouraging Libyan ambitions on the continent. And giving Quadaffi more power is not in anyone's interest.

Regards, Ivan

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: "Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be." - Winston Churchill, 1940

This then, my lords and gentlemen, is the message which we send forth today to all states and nations, bound or free, to all the men in all the lands who care for freedom's cause. To our Allies and well-wishers in Europe, to our American friends and helpers drawing ever closer in their might across the ocean, this is the message-lift up your hearts, all will come right. Out of depths of sorrow and sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind. - Winston Churchill, 1941

"What kind of a people do they think we are? Is it possible that they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?" - Winston Churchill, 1941

[MadIvan]

Bump!

[JohnHuang2]

Thanks for all the pings, amigo.

[backhoe]

Hullo, Ivan.... indexing this for the bump list. As I put it in one of my Dark Underbelly of the Beast posts,

"Africa Implodes, and
nobody seems to care...."

[Brian Allen]

Bump!/Ping!

[Silverdrake]

"Africa Implodes, and
nobody seems to care...."

A South African correspondent once told me that the best thing that could happen to his country or any other in Africa would be very strong condemnation by First World countries whenever crap like this starts up. But if anyone says anything (anyone who could reasonably be expected to matter), they get accused of being racist and instantly back off into platitudes. >:{~

[backhoe]

But if anyone says anything (anyone who could reasonably be expected to matter), they get accused of being racist and instantly back off

Exactly.... the silence is deafening!

[jjbrouwer]

Bri: He pointedly took you off his *ping* list and yet you still find him!!!

[di_canio_volley]

Mugabe is a fraud.

[jjbrouwer]

Mugabe is an evil bastard.

[The Grammarian]

I think it's time for a civil war in Zimbabwe.

Down with the tyrant!

TG

[MadIvan]

I think it's time for a civil war in Zimbabwe.

We have the power to put a bullet in Mugabe's evil head. We should exercise that power immediately.

Regards, Ivan

[jjbrouwer]

Actually, Bri. You might prefer FreeBritannia to FreeRepublic. There are less British people on Ivan's site!

[RightOnline]

There's one solution, and one solution only, for Mugabe.

A bullet in the brain.