The Times
June 21, 2008
Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg
Zimbabwe's neighbours are
bracing themselves for an influx of millions of
refugees after the run-off
presidential poll next week, which President
Mugabe is determined to win
even at the cost of regional isolation.
The United Nations High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has put contingency
plans in place in the
expectation that hordes of Zimbabweans will cross the
borders to Mozambique,
Botswana, Zambia and South Africa, where an estimated
three million of their
fellow countrymen are already taking refuge.
"UNHCR has pre-positioned
food and tents in all these places in the
expectation of a flight of more
refugees," a senior official told The Times.
It has become clear that Mr
Mugabe will not hand power to the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) even if he loses the election. He is
also determined to use violence
and rigging to win it.
Mr Mugabe declared yesterday that "only God" could
remove him from office.
He was also quoted in the daily state newspaper The
Herald as saying that he
would not retire until he had ensured that
Zimbabwe's land was "truly and
safely in the hands of the black majority" -
an open-ended invitation to
himself to stay in office.
The Southern
African Development Community (SADC), a grouping of
neighbouring states, has
tacitly accepted that it is powerless to stop Mr
Mugabe. A growing number of
African nations have joined the US and Britain
in saying that the poll will
not be free or fair because of violence
unleashed by thugs in Mr Mugabe's
ruling Zanu (PF).
Buchizya Mseteka, a regional analyst, said: "There is
no question of
military intervention. But equally, the regime that emerges
from the run-off
will have no legitimacy at all. Effectively we are
witnessing a military
coup. The economy will be his undoing."
Most
observers believe that the election will provide no solution to
Zimbabwe's
problems and that the economic situation is now so dire that
people will
just leave the country to find food.
"People are too tired and exhausted
to take to the streets, and neighbouring
states can do nothing except stand
by and condemn events," a regional
diplomatic source said.
Reports
emerged yesterday that Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader and Mr
Mugabe's
election opponent, was considering pulling out of Friday's election
because
of the violence and fears that it will be a charade.
Nelson Chamisa, a
party spokesman, said: "There is a huge avalanche of calls
and pressure from
supporters across the country, especially in the rural
areas, not to accept
to be participants in this charade." He added that the
MDC would decide on
Monday whether to contest the poll.
Zimbabwean doctors published a list
yesterday showing that 85 people had
died in political violence in past 11
weeks. At least 21 of the deaths were
murder-squad "executions", with the
victims snatched from their homes or off
the street and the bodies found
days later dumped in the bush.
But police dismissed detailed witness
reports of the deaths this week of
Abigail Chiroto, wife of the unofficial
mayor of Harare, and four young men
in an attack on the home of an MDC
councillor in Chitungwiza township on
Wednesday.
"We are not aware of
any of these murders," Chief Superintendent Oliver
Mandipaka said yesterday,
adding that police had recorded a decline in cases
of political
violence.
MDC campaigning has all but dried up in comparison with the
March ballot,
when the opposition was able to out-campaign Zanu (PF) with
rallies,
posters, meetings and advertising. Now buses are forced to carry
Zanu (PF)
stickers and many business offices in Harare are displaying ruling
party
posters for protection in case they are raided by youth mobs. In rural
areas, Mugabe T-shirts are ubiquitous, also as an insurance against
attack.
"The MDC's structures have been decimated," Mr Tsvangirai
admitted last
week. MDC officials say that Zanu (PF)'s violence campaign has
eliminated
most of the grassroots activists responsible for mobilising party
support.
But Mr Tsvangirai still believes that he can end Mr Mugabe's
28-year rule
and he said that Zimbabweans must have "hope and courage" and
turn out to
vote next week.
"If we fall into despair or disarray, my
friends, the regime will have
succeeded in its evil machinations to divide
and discourage us," he said in
a message to supporters.
President
Mbeki of South Africa, the SADC's official mediator for the
crisis, failed
this week to broker a face-to-face meeting between Mr
Tsvangirai and Mr
Mugabe to push the idea of a government of national unity.
Mr Mugabe flatly
refused to consider the idea.
Mr Mbeki, long criticised for failing to
take a tough approach with his
Zimbabwean counterpart, is reported to want
the MDC to pull out of the poll,
which he believes now will only lead to
more violence.
The SADC balks at any suggestion of military intervention,
but does now
appear ready to isolate Mr Mugabe diplomatically - even if
there is a huge
exodus of people.
The Times
June 21, 2008
Nelson
Mandela arrives in London to celebrate a life devoted to fighting
oppression. He must use this authority to condemn the atrocities in
Zimbabwe
The world's most revered elder statesman arrives in London tomorrow
to take
part in the global celebrations of his 90th birthday (see page
36).
Nelson Mandela, the towering South African freedom fighter, who
spent 27
years in prison, cast off the shackles of apartheid in 1990 and
went on to
lead his country for five momentous years. He remains in old age
the most
influential figure on the African continent. His name has become
synonymous
with the qualities he has, in his long life, exemplified:
magnanimity,
tolerance, compassion, wisdom and moral courage. In London, the
Nobel
prize-winner's life will be honoured with a star-studded concert in
Hyde
Park, a symbolic re-creation of the Free Mandela concert in Wembley
Stadium
20 years ago that did much to raise global pressure for his release.
Precisely 46,664 tickets are being sold, representing Mr Mandela's long
Robben Island ordeal. He was prisoner 466, imprisoned in 1964.
Mr
Mandela announced some years ago that he had "retired from retirement".
But
although he travels and speaks less, the demands on his time, his name
and
his authority are ceaseless. He has frequently credited Gandhi as the
main
source of inspiration in his life. Now he too has become a figure of
transcendental inspiration, a man of giant moral authority, whose example is
held up across continents and conflicts. Two statues honour him in London.
He has received more than 100 awards over four decades. There have been
films of his life. A Broadway musical is soon to be staged. Monarchs,
presidents and statesmen line up to meet him.
Such acclaim is neither
inevitable nor necessarily welcome. Mr Mandela
remains, amazingly, on a US
list of terrorists because of the past record of
violence of the African
National Congress. A Bill is going through Congress
to remove his name, but
his past involvement in violent resistance is, as he
admits, a fact of
history. And mawkish attempts to sentimentalise the old
man's life tend to
hide both the hard moral choices he had to make, his
lifelong opposition to
repression whatever the skin colour of the oppressor
and the danger that his
name and legacy will be misappropriated by those who
share little of his
outlook and none of his principles.
Mr Mandela is coming to London not
only to celebrate a long life but also to
raise awareness of Aids in Africa
and funds to fight the epidemic. Aids is
an issue on which he took an early
and outspoken lead in speaking out. On
another issue, however, he has been
woefully silent. Since his retirement,
and indeed even before that, he has
said little about the tragedy unfolding
in Zimbabwe. There may be something
of the old freedom fighter's
anti-colonial instincts at work here; but Mr
Mandela is in a unique position
to fight once again for the cause - freedom
and justice in Africa - that
earned him the admiration of the
world.
Mr Mugable and his henchmen could not ignore a rebuke from Mr
Mandela, a man
who endured more than they did in the name of black
empowerment. He could
also inspire the people of Zimbabwe with real courage
and hope. And in the
process, he would help to restore the authority of
South Africa, a nation
that for so long clamoured for support in its time of
need and which has in
recent months offered limp diplomacy as its neighbour
endured starvation,
intimidation and murder.
His aides insist that he
does not now intervene in political issues, and
that he needs in any case to
conserve his strength. The excuse is feeble.
They know that only a few
sentences could change perceptions, galvanise
Africa's attitude to the
tyrant in its midst and spare thousands of lives
from ruination. It is time
Mr Mandela spoke out, here in London this week.
http://www.theherald.co.uk
IAN BELL June 21
2008
The twentieth century gave us the word genocide. It also
bequeathed the
notion of crimes against humanity. As though in consolation,
that grisly era
then fostered the belief - or the delusion - that the
monsters of the age
could always be brought to justice, that international
law and institutions
could be used to confront great crimes no matter where
they occurred. Many
people wanted to believe it. Most people knew
better.
No apologies, then, for returning so soon to the subject of
Zimbabwe and the
madness of Robert Mugabe. Sometimes you think you have said
all you have to
say on a topic. Then you are reminded swiftly of your own
recurring naivety.
The octogenarian dictator and his generals are
determined, it seems, to defy
the world. That they may also be defying
reality no longer seems to trouble
the members of the regime.
Mugabe
has declared war on his own people. That has been said before; now he
is
using the word himself. The right of citizens to express their choices
with
marks on pieces of paper is declared offensive. His revolution, his
personal
property, is not to be betrayed by fantasies of democracy. The fact
that he
has betrayed every hope he ever offered to Zimbabwe is of no
account. He
says simply this: if people have to die to prevent his defeat in
run-off
elections on June 27, so be it. Even Graham Greene never anticipated
such a
character.
Nor did many governments. Not so long ago it was taken for
granted - I took
it for granted - that the absolute economic collapse of
Zimbabwe would be
the end of the dictator. Not so. It was fondly imagined,
too, that when the
inevitability of electoral defeat became obvious, that
when the vote-rigging
was too blatant, too absurd, the old man would cut a
deal, pack up his money
and head for his "holiday villa" in Malaysia.
Hardly.
The west understood neither the man nor the forces that surround
him.
African governments, always in a position to know better, have only now
begun to accept publicly the reality of the Mugabe regime. Tanzania,
Swaziland and Angola have said that enough is enough. Paul Kagame, Rwanda's
president, with a certainty born of bitter experience, calls the elections a
joke. But aside from despatching observers, if Mugabe will have them, to
watch people being shot dead, Zimbabwe's neighbours offer no great, decisive
plan.
Gordon Brown, meanwhile, demands more monitors and access for a UN
human
rights envoy. Nothing wrong with that, save for the fact that Mugabe
and his
generals no longer care who sees, or who knows. Condoleezza Rice,
the US
Secretary of State, tells us that there is no way the elections can
be free
or fair. Even the casual viewer has probably worked that one
out.
You can hardly blame Morgan Tsvangirai, of the opposition Movement
for
Democratic Change (MDC), therefore, when he wonders aloud about the
sense of
putting himself up as Mugabe's opponent next week. The dissident
will not be
allowed to win, that much is clear. He may even, in a bizarre
way, validate
a Mugabe "victory" just by allowing his name to go forward.
Meanwhile, Mr
Tsvangirai's supporters suffer and die.
The MDC's
deputy leader, Tendai Biti, has been hauled up on "treason"
charges. The
allegations may be purest fiction but the possibility of
execution is real.
Abigail Chiroto, wife to Harare's mayor-elect, has,
meanwhile, been
kidnapped - in front of her four-year-old son - and
executed. The MDC puts
the death toll among its own people at 70. Killings
among the wider
population are unquantified.
Small wonder, then, that Mr Tsvangirai
hesitates.
There is nothing new about the revolution that eats its
children. The career
path of a Mugabe is also less than novel. The
liberation hero who ends by
imprisoning his people was a stock figure in
that busy twentieth century and
shows no sign of going out of fashion. But
at a time when most governments
are helpless in the face of a dictator who
is beyond reason, it becomes
necessary to pass judgment on one of the few
people with the power to aid
Zimbabwe. I am talking, yet again, about South
Africa's Thabo Mbeki.
Hindsight tells us that he has protected Mugabe for
a decade and more with
sophistries and delays. Even this week, when other
African leaders were
finding a voice at last, Mr Mbeki was silent.
Reportedly, his best effort
was a visit to Zimbabwe during which he tried to
persuade the dictator and
Mr Tsvangirai to form "a government of national
unity".
We are supposed to believe he was serious. He appears to take the
view that
mass murder and flagrant abuse of the rule of law can be
overlooked for the
sake of "stability". Mr Mbeki also appears to believe
that Mugabe can still
be sheltered from judgment. As such, he invites a
judgment on himself.
It has come to something, after all, when an ANC
president can adopt such
positions. Mr Tsvangirai, quite rightly, has simply
refused to accept the
South African leader as a mediator. What is there to
mediate? How would the
MDC appear to its supporters if it said, in effect,
that bygones could be
bygones? More to the point, how long would Mr
Tsvangirai survive under such
a bizarre and utterly dishonest
arrangement?
South Africa's trades unions, tellingly, have no time for
the strategy, so
called, being pursued by their country's president. Jacob
Zuma, head of the
ANC and a likely future head of state, is also prepared to
admit that the
elections are in no sense fair. Kenya and Zambia have
condemned the assaults
on the MDC. But unless Mbeki chooses to act, Mugabe
will get his way yet
again.
Former colonial powers cannot easily
throw their weight around in Africa. In
the case of Zimbabwe, China could
but, given its greed for resources and its
dismal human rights record,
Beijing is unlikely to bother. Sanctions have
been of little
help.
Yet even while South Africa is struggling to cope with some three
million
Zimbabwean refugees, Mr Mbeki clings to the idea that Mugabe's face
must be
saved.
That, I think, makes the leader of the regional
superpower culpable in his
own right. In effect, he has given Mugabe
licence. African troops - South
African troops, in particular - could put an
end to a shambolic regime
without too much difficulty. It would be a big
step. South Africa's
neighbours are wary of the power that is, notionally at
least, at Mr Mbeki's
command. Given some recent catastrophic examples
elsewhere, in any case,
armed intervention is no-one's favourite option. But
unlike Iraq, to take
the conspicuous example, the overthrow of Mugabe would
not be precipitate,
to say the least. And in this case the evidence of
malign intent is stark.
It won't happen. It will not happen because Mr
Mbeki has demonstrated time
and again that he is more comfortable placating
Mugabe than confronting the
mass murderer. It is almost as though the
dictator, Africa's erstwhile hero,
has a kind of psychological hold over the
scholarly incompetent who tells
him nothing he does not want to
hear.
Nevertheless, if Mugabe tightens his grip it will be time for
governments,
African and beyond, to begin to call Mr Mbeki to account. There
has been
nothing benign about his persistent neglect of a people's
suffering.
VOA
By Peta
Thornycroft
Harare
20 June 2008
A week before
the second round of voting in Zimbabwe's presidential
election, officials
have refused to grant bail to jailed opposition leader
Tendai Biti. Peta
Thornycroft reports from Harare that Biti will go on
trial accused of
treason and subversion.
There has been shock in legal circles that Tendai
Biti, who is a widely
respected lawyer, will have to go on trial.
His
lawyers on Thursday had requested a dismissal of the charges against
him,
saying the state's case had no chance of success because it was based
entirely on a document, which Biti said he could prove he did not
write.
Biti's lawyers said the state's case depended on a document which
described
what the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would do
during the
transition from President Robert Mugabe to rule by MDC leader
Morgan
Tsvangirai, should he win the presidential poll scheduled for June
27.
Biti is charged on four counts including treason and subverting the
government. Recently appointed attorney, General Bharat Patel, instructed
the magistrate's court to deny Biti bail.
Biti was arrested minutes
after he arrived at Harare international airport a
week ago.
Biti is
a popular and respected member of Zimbabwe's legal community and
many of his
colleagues have been in court to hear the case against him.
Several
expressed shock that the charges would continue. Several were
outraged when
he was denied bail.
Biti's legal team will now appeal to the High Court
Tuesday to reverse the
decision to refuse bail.
In addition there are
now fears that Biti's health is not good and that his
colleagues are worried
about his blood pressure. Lawyers say if he is denied
medical treatment in
police cells they will go to court to try and force the
state to allow him
to see a doctor.
Biti had been the MDC's negotiator in the Southern
African Development
Community (SADC) yearlong mediation of the Zimbabwe
crisis. Two days before
he was arrested he was engaged in talks with Mr.
Mugabe's ZANU-PF in
Pretoria. These talks are facilitated by South African
president Thabo Mbeki
who wants Mr. Mugabe to cancel the run-off election
and enter into
negotiations immediately for a government of national
unity.
The MDC says more than 70 supporters have been killed in political
violence
and that it is not able to campaign for its presidential candidate,
Morgan
Tsvangirai. MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said Friday the party will
decide
on Monday whether Mr. Tsvangirai who easily won the first round of
voting
against Mr Mugabe, will call for a boycott of the second round.
Sydney Morning Herald
June 21,
2008
Connie Levett was in Zimbabwe this week to test the mood for next
Friday's
presidential run-off election. She found a nation of
horrors.
It started three weeks ago. The military came to Philani's
village in
Masvingo province, south-eastern Zimbabwe, and asked for the
names of people
linked to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
party.
The re-education classes started, all-night sessions singing old
liberation
songs from the 1970s and chanting the slogans of Robert Mugabe's
ruling
Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front party. At first,
most
people ignored the sessions, thinking only party members had to attend.
They
soon found out otherwise.
"We didn't give names, but the ZANU-PF
leader knows who is in the MDC
anyway," Philani says. Village youths were
sent to collect MDC members and
sympathisers. Philani explains the
indiscriminate nature of the list of
those who have taken beatings for their
beliefs: "As long as you are linked
to the party, it does not matter how old
you are."
Every night at six, all men aged between 15 and 30 must report
to "the
base" - a local community hall - for party indoctrination, and to
witness
the nightly beatings. Non-MDC people can also be beaten for
non-attendance.
"They [MDC people] were brought in and forced to say
ZANU-PF slogans. They
were beaten with huge sticks by 10 or 12 people in
front of everyone. No one
objected, because people were afraid," says
Philani, 23. "The people don't
come [to the meetings] because they want to,
but through fear." The beatings
are administered by volunteers. No one is
paid to carry out the assaults, he
says.
Re-education bases have
sprung up in villages across the eastern half of
Zimbabwe, spawning
militias. The violence, organised by ZANU-PF in response
to its losses in
the March 29 parliamentary and presidential elections, is a
systematic,
brutal attempt to destroy the MDC's grassroots organisation in
provinces
where its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, did well in the first round
of
presidential voting.
At least 70 MDC supporters have been killed and
hundreds more have fled to
the big towns of Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare. The
MDC is now the largest
party in the parliament and Tsvangirai would be
favoured to beat Mugabe,
Zimbabwe's long-serving, despotic President, in a
fair presidential run-off
election on Friday. Even in the three Mashonaland
provinces, traditional
ZANU-PF strongholds where ZANU-PF MPs were returned,
there are beatings
because voters chose Tsvangirai over Mugabe in the
presidential ballot.
"They tell you to beat on the buttocks, to hurt, not
kill, and instil fear,"
Philani says.
Last Saturday, the Masvingo mob
lost any semblance of control. Philani and a
group of 20 went to the house
of an MDC man. When he refused to come out,
someone climbed onto his roof,
breaking through it and dropping burning
grass inside. He threw stones at
them and then came out with an axe,
managing to hit one assailant. "They
took him to the stadium. There were
about 400 people at the stadium, some
had come on buses. They were beating
him; no one said stop."
Philani
says 16 people were beaten up that night in his area, some at the
stadium,
some back at the base. Four were critically injured and two have
since died,
he says. He claims he has never beaten anyone, "but I feel
personal guilt.
Being there when this is happening, I feel maybe I might
have contributed".
This week, he slipped away to warn a non-government
organisation about the
madness enveloping his community. It had not occurred
to him that the same
scene was playing out across the country.
Zimbabwe did not need this
campaign of terror to bring it to its knees. Ask
Zimbabweans how they are
doing today, and the standard reply is "surviving".
The nation is in the
throes of hyperinflation that defies comprehension. In
the space of seven
days, the exchange rate moved from 1.6 billion Zimbabwe
dollars to the US
dollar to more than $Z5 billion. The highest note is $Z50
billion and is
valid only until December. You need two of them to buy a loaf
of bread;
well, at least you did a few days ago.
Mdudusi, 26, a peasant farmer near
Zvishavane, in central Zimbabwe, earns
less than $Z10 billion a month. As a
nephew of the village headman, with
permanent water on his land, he can grow
vegetables and is better off than
many of his neighbours. He is engaged to
marry, but must first raise the
"lobola" or bride price, which his
prospective father-in-law has tied to the
US dollar. He has already paid a
cow and a goat and must raise the Zimbabwe
dollar equivalent of $US150. "I
must go and pay some this weekend," he says,
"or it will be even
higher."
Like many Zimbabweans, Mdudusi is well educated. A generation
ago, Zimbabwe
was a beacon for southern African states in its pursuit of
universal
education. He has a university degree in computer studies but,
with the
unemployment rate at 80 per cent, he has no option but to work the
family
plot.
"Mugabe did a lot of good things in the early years,"
says David Foya, a
political analyst at the University of Africa in Mutare.
"He expanded the
education system, primary and secondary. In 1980, Zimbabwe
had only one
university; eventually every province had a state university
except
Masvingo. He built his name, but people can't eat past
glory."
Even those still working in their professions earn a pittance.
Teachers with
a degree earn $Z15 billion a month. Three teachers from a
small rural school
near Zvishavane, who hitched a ride with this reporter,
were carrying
plastic bags of empty containers. They said their salary does
not even cover
their return bus fare of $Z1.2 billion to school each day. If
they hitch,
drivers charge them half that. To cover the difference they sell
scones,
chips and popcorn to the children to make ends meet.
Teachers
have been targeted by the militias because their union backed the
MDC in the
recent elections. The women say they have been threatened with
beatings by
youth militia, and that beatings are always carried out in front
of the
children.
Mugabe was once a teacher himself. In his early years as
President, he would
return after work to the State House, his official
residence, and gather the
gardeners to teach them to read and write. Now,
one of his derisive slogans
is "democracy is for educated people".
On
the remote track to Mdudusi's village, the small shops are shuttered as
everyone compulsorily attends a ZANU-PF rally. Mdudusi's cousin, Tom, wears
a ZANU-PF party T-shirt "so he won't be beaten up". A four-by-four utility
goes past with youth chanting anti-MDC slogans: "Tsvangirai is a British
wife, Tsvangirai is a white man's condom."
Back on the main road, a
group of 30 young men carrying long sticks
toyi-toyi in broad daylight. The
toyi-toyi is a jogging protest that goes
back to Zimbabwe's liberation
struggle, where unarmed protesters would jog
at police lines chanting their
defiance.
There is no ideology today, except to create fear. In the
surreal world of
Mugabe, it is the MDC that is perpetrating the violence
sweeping the nation.
Mishek Kayurabadza, an MP-elect in Manicaland and an
outspoken critic of
Mugabe, is on the run, accused of inciting his MDC
followers to violence
against their attackers. The former mayor of Mutare is
also looking after
500 villagers who have taken refuge at MDC headquarters
in town.
Tambo and her husband Nhamo, chairman of the local MDC
committee, fled their
village in Nyange, north of Mutare, after a gang of
youths came for him and
took her instead. She was driven to a forest,
assaulted and beaten in the
genitals with an iron bar. The driver was a
nephew of the region's former
ZANU-PF MP. "They said, 'why did you marry an
MDC person?' I said, 'when I
married, the MDC was not formed.' Then they
started to beat me."
Manicaland police will not document reports of
violence from MDC victims,
and public hospitals refuse to treat
them.
There is a rising clamour for Mugabe and his cronies to pay for the
misery
they have wrought. "They have got to be made accountable," says a
provincial
doctor. "All my patients - black and white - say the same thing."
The
beatings, he says, are devastating.
Says Nhamo: "Mugabe is very
stubborn and very cruel. He says no country can
be taken by vote, only by
war. The politicians say he can retire because we
need him to retire.
Tsvangirai can say that, but what about for us? We have
been tortured. Do we
say, 'thank you Mr Mugabe'? They burnt our house, thank
you Mr Mugabe; they
are killing our people. Do we say thank you Mr Mugabe?
Everyday, people are
killed, intimidated, beaten."
With the election due on Friday, the
unpredictable Mugabe has crushed all
space for political dissent. Tsvangirai
says he is driven by the need to
protect his own power. "His whole
preoccupation is about dying in office,"
says Mugabe's
challenger.
Heidi Holland, author of Dinner With Mugabe, interviewed the
despot last
December. She is convinced he will find a way to win the
election. "He will
steal it, he will do whatever it takes to terrorise the
people to do it,"
she says. "He wants revenge against the
opposition."
She says he lives in a fantasy bubble of his own making, but
she does not
think him mad. "He lives in the world in a mad kind of way, and
he surrounds
himself with people who agree with him." In the Harare
reception area of the
information department for the President and cabinet
hangs a huge motto:
"Mugabe is right," it proclaims, in suitably Orwellian
manner.
Holland first met Mugabe in 1975 when he was a liberation
fighter. She says
he was then a decent person. The problem is "he can't take
rejection" and
"he can act out his urges". "He now knows people have
rejected him, and he
is very angry."
Mugabe has great faith in his
ability to beat people into submission. He has
lost the respect of
Zimbabweans, but if his terror campaign keeps enough MDC
supporters away
from the polls, he can win the run-off election.
No one knows if he has
snuffed out the determination for change. At a small
private hospital in
Harare this week, Kerry Kay, the MDC's secretary of
social welfare, is
covertly making the rounds of MDC victims. In a hospital
corridor, kneeling
on a chair, with his face leaning into the wall is a boy
who has been beaten
on the buttocks so he cannot sit down. "You are very
brave," she says. He
looks up, winces and says, stoically: "It is the time."
Some names have
been changed or withheld to protect individuals' identities.
The Zimbabwean
Friday, 20 June 2008 14:22
HARARE - Sixty three percent of voters are
expected to vote for Morgan
Tsvangirai on Friday according to a respected
independent poll carried out
last week. The countrywide poll, carried out in
the last week by a leading
independent researcher who cannot be named for
security reasons, found that
the 63% of respondents intending to vote for
Tsvangirai was remarkable
consistent with assessments of the true support
for the MDC at the last
election.
The parameters of the poll were
necessarily circumscribed by the
prevailing security climate but the low
number of those refusing to comment
or not intending to vote is
striking.
Political analysts said the figures "make sense".
A
total of 2758 individuals were polled, of whom only 104 (0.4%) said
they
would not comment or vote. 974 (63%) said they would vote for
Tsvangirai.
The poor showing by Mugabe, 37%, is despite the widespread reign
of terror
and the denial of food aid to MDC supporters by the state over the
past two
months, coupled with the extensive Zanu (PF) patronage system which
has seen
the economy destroyed through corruption and wholesale theft of
state
resources by Zanu fatcats.
Sophie Shaw in
Manicaland
guardian.co.uk,
Friday June 20, 2008
There is no
electricity, of course, so the only light at the makeshift
shelter is from
the bonfires that the 80 refugees huddle around. Several are
warming plaster
casts and bandaged limbs. Some hiked for two days to get
here, nursing
fractures or internal injuries. Others cannot talk, their eyes
unfocused, in
a catatonic state caused by the horror of what they have seen
and
suffered.
These people are the lucky ones. They have made it to an
informal refugee
centre in eastern Zimbabwe. The really unfortunate people
are sleeping rough
while militias search their villages, or enduring a night
of violence and
abuse in a Zanu-PF reorientation camp. Some are in unmarked
graves, or
recorded as missing and feared dead.
Two men from Rusape
arrive. They say they fled their homes after the murder
of Farai Gamba, an
opposition activist, by the army on June 14. Other
refugees are from Makoni,
Nyanga, Buhera and other rural areas. They are
keen to show their
injuries.
One low-level activist from the Movement for Democratic Change,
trying to
sleep on a freezing concrete floor under a single blanket, admits
his
despair. "The elections are not fair. There is too much intimidation now
that they have guns. I now doubt that we can win, although we won
overwhelmingly before."
The MDC in Manicaland is in no more than
survival mode. Police have issued
arrest warrants for five newly elected MPs
in the province. Councillors are
being beaten until they flee their wards.
Polling agents, organising
secretaries and other rank and file activists are
named on lists handed out
to Zanu-PF militia units which arrive at night
banging their axes and clubs
against their new Chinese pick-up
trucks.
The confidence that MDC leaders in the area felt two months ago
after
winning 20 of 28 parliamentary seats has turned to fear, despair and
rage.
"Do we have to wait for Zimbabwe to become Burundi or Kenya?" asks
a
provincial leader. "Do we need a large massacre before the international
community does something?
"I am convinced that the people would vote
for us in even larger numbers if
they are allowed to vote freely. But we are
120% shut out. We cannot
campaign at all. Rallies are forbidden. Anyone
wearing our T-shirts is
beaten. And they spread lies about us in the state
media. This is not a
contest between political parties. It is a government
versus the majority of
the people."
The MDC feels powerless to fight
this unfree and unfair election alone while
engaged in a civil war in which
only the ruling Zanu-PF has guns.
"Our people are being shot dead", says
a successful MDC candidate who is now
in hiding. "We feel so abandoned. We
need a rescue. Honestly, we need UN
peacekeepers here now to protect us. Or
we need weapons to defend ourselves,
but we don't have those
resources.
"Why does the UN wait until we are all dead before it does
anything? I
honestly expect that I will be dead soon."
Zanu-PF's
systematic violence is turning the tide in this election.
Opposition
supporters are being killed, hospitalised or driven from their
homes. Voters
are being told to give their ballot paper serial numbers to
their village
leaders, and they in turn are being told they are responsible
for delivering
100% for Mugabe.
Voters who confess they supported the MDC in the first
round of voting but
promise to switch to Mugabe are being told to tell
presiding officers they
are illiterate. Illiterate voters are assisted in
polling booths by police
officers, who can monitor their
choices.
Sources within the MDC admit they fear a collapse in their rural
vote. The
opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, secured only a 4% lead over
the
president, Robert Mugabe, on March 29, so the damage being done to the
MDC's
vote is likely to prove decisive.
The violence is all the more
remarkable because it is being carried out
under the noses of observers from
the Southern Africa Development Community
(SADC). Human rights monitors
confirm that the SADC team is meeting victims
and seeing militias
threatening all-comers with axes and sticks. But the
protection that the
South African president, Thabo Mbeki, and other SADC
leaders continue to
give Mugabe may mean that SADC's reports are
long-delayed and fail to
properly reflect what observers have seen.
For Zimbabweans, the next week
cannot pass quickly enough.
· Sophie Shaw is a pseudonym.
Daily Express, UK
Friday June
20,2008
Voters in Zimbabwe have been urged to have hope and courage in
the face of
violent intimidation by Robert Mugabe's regime.
Morgan
Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change,
said a
"wave of brutality" had swept over the country in the run-up to next
Friday's
presidential run-off election.
His message was distributed by email, one
of the few ways he has of reaching
voters. Mr Tsvangirai's attempts to tour
the country have regularly been
stopped by police at road blocks, and the
state-controlled media all but
ignore him.
Independent human rights
activists have accused Mugabe of deploying police,
soldiers and party
militants in attacks on the opposition to ensure he
defeats Mr
Tsvangirai.
The MDC says more than 70 of its activists have been killed,
and the
international community has become so concerned at the violence that
some
leaders have suggested the runoff be cancelled.
The MDC also says
treason charges against its secretary-general, Tendai
Biti, is part of a
government plot to undermine it.
Mr Tsvangirai claims he won the first
round vote outright. Official results
indicate he came in first but without
the 50% plus one vote necessary to
avoid a second round against
Mugabe.
"Help us to remind our people that they are winners. That their
courageous
decision on 29 March was not in vain," Mr Tsvangirai
said.
"Help us encourage them to vote again for change on 27 June. Help
us to
protect them from the regime's attempt to destroy their hope. On 27
June,
let's finish it!"
Mugabe has been accused of ruining the economy
and holding onto power
through fraud and intimidation. The economic slide of
what was once the
region's breadbasket has been blamed on the collapse of the
key agriculture
sector after often-violent seizures of farmland from
whites.
Sydney Morning Herald
Connie Levett in Harare
June 21, 2008
NEXT week could
be the most important week in the life of Morgan Tsvangirai,
Zimbabwe's
resilient opposition leader who refuses to be bowed by constant
harassment
and disparagement ahead of Friday's presidential election
run-off.
President Robert Mugabe and the ruling ZANU-PF party, call
Mr Tsvangirai a
stooge for the white farmers, a white man's condom, a Trojan
horse for
British recolonisation, and a hippopotamus, a reference to his
girth.
He is detained "for his own safety" almost daily and his
supporters are
beaten, driven from their homes, raped and even killed for
associating with
his Movement for Democratic Change by youth militias that
ZANU-PF has
established across the country.
Yet, amid the turmoil
that has engulfed much of Zimbabwe in the 10 weeks
since the first round of
presidential voting, Mr Tsvangirai remains a figure
of calm. When he spoke
with the Herald in an exclusive interview at his
Ashton Park home in the
Harare suburbs this week, he acknowledged the
possibility of a military coup
if he wins on June 27, the need to let Mr
Mugabe retire gracefully and the
enormous task ahead if he wins the
presidency.
His first job would be
getting through the front door of the State House,
the President's official
residence. Mr Mugabe has said he will not leave
office, whatever the result.
He recently told supporters: "We won government
with the barrel of the gun,
we held it with the barrel of the gun and we
will defend it with the barrel
of a gun."
Mr Tsvangirai believes he will win but said the transition may
be difficult.
"If I win, I have won the mandate of the people of Zimbabwe,
but the
transfer of power may be complicated . if they want to stage a coup
that is
up to them."
Coups were not the remedy they once were in
Africa, he said. "The problem
with a military coup is it's not the 'in'
thing in Africa . SADC [the
Southern African Development Community] has
rules, the African Union has
rules, so by and large the question of a
military coup is becoming
unattainable and unsustainable."
He
believes that senior military officials of the Joint Operations Command
are
largely running the country and orchestrating the pre-election violence.
"Our top military commanders are part of the power institution of Mugabe .
and therefore defenders of Mugabe's excesses."
The climate of
intimidation was at odds with the relatively peaceful first
round of
elections, he said. "It's almost back to the guerilla war years.
The
liberation struggle was legitimate, but now it's almost like the
military
has declared war against the people they liberated."
The South African
President, Thabo Mbeki, a friend of Mr Mugabe, has been
pushing for a
government of national unity. He met both candidates this
week. ZANU-PF
would be the senior party and Mr Mugabe president.
"A government of
national unity is unacceptable because it would undermine
the democratic
process," Mr Tsvangirai said. "A government that is all
inclusive to manage
the transition is what the MDC has always committed
itself to. Mugabe cannot
play any role in the future political dispensation
of this
country.
"He should be given an honourable exit, in other words he is not
stepping
down, he is stepping up to founding father and statesmen's role
that other
heads of state have assumed.
"I know it hurts, I know
victims are hurting if there is no prosecution of
Mugabe, but what is the
point in the country getting stuck in a stalemate
for ever and ever."
The Zimbabwean
Friday, 20 June 2008 14:27
Violence has
intensified and spread to urban areas one week before the
presidential
run-off elections scheduled for the 27th June. All indications
are that most
people displaced by violence will not be able to cast their
vote in a
presidential run-off whose voting is ward-based.Tens of thousands
of
opposition and civic activists have been declared persona non grata in
the
wards and political constituencies in which they are registered to
vote.
The news received today by the Centre for Community Development
In
Zimbabwe (CCDZ) indicate that most activists in Murewa, Musana,
Wedza,
Mutoko, Bindura, Kadoma, Mhondoro,Chinhoyi, Masvingo, Redcliff,
Jerera,
Buhera, Chipinge and Mutare have been given a weekend altimatum to
leave
their villagers and go to Harare "to their master" MDC president
Morgan
Tsvangirai.
As CCDZ we contend that the strategy by ZANU PF
militia to drive out
MDC supporters from the villages is a well-calculated
strategy to
disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters.We are also disturbed
by the
threats being issued by the youth militia and war veterans to
opposition
activists
Violence in Harare and Chitungwiza
The
ZANU PF party has unleashed vigilante groups called Chipangano in
urban areas
to terrorise voters ahead of the presidential run-off.Marauding
gangs clad in
party regalia are moving around Harare and Chitungwiza
townships terrorising
voters and threatening to kill anyone who votes for
MDC president Morgan
Tsvangirai.
In Chitungwiza, four (4) bodies of MDC activists abducted
last week
were discovered on Wednesday.The violence has also spread to
other
high-density suburbs in Harare such as Epworth, Rugare and
Dzivarasekwa.The
youth militia are manning illegal roadblocks and forcing
people to recite
and chant ZANU PF slogans.Those who cannot recite the slogan
are assaulted
and tortured.There is overwhelming evidence that the
presidential run-off is
neither free nor fair and does not conform to the
dictates of the SADC
Guidelines governing democratic elections agreed to by
State parties,
including Zimbabwe at Grand Baie (Maritius) in 2004.
Issued on 20/06/2008
Advocacy & Community Organizing
Centre for Community Development In Zimbabwe
+263912962381
europa.eu
IP/08/984
Brussels,
20 June 2008
Commissioner Louis Michel expresses deep concern over
Zimbabwe crackdown
European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian
Aid, Louis Michel,
has expressed his deep concern over the worsening
situation in Zimbabwe.
Exactly a week ahead of the second round of
Presidential elections in the
country, Commissioner Michel believes the
Zimbabwean authorities must take
immediate action to stop the campaign of
smears, intimidation and violence.
Furthermore, Commissioner Louis Michel is
deeply concerned at the arrest and
detention of Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) Secretary General Tendai
Biti. The European Commission believes
that the Zimbabwean authorities
should release Biti amid concerns over the
legality of his detention on
treason charges.
"I am truly worried
about the current situation in Zimbabwe which is
clearly getting worse day by
day. President Mugabe has the responsibility in
respect of his people to
ensure that there are acceptable and peaceful
conditions on the run-up to the
second round of Presidential elections next
Friday (27th June 2008) which
will allow the Zimbabweans to express their
free will. The campaign of
violence and intimidation must stop." He added,
"I am also deeply troubled
over the legality of the arrest and charges
brought against Tendai Biti. Such
a detention just days before the second
round smacks of political
intimidation. I would strongly urge the Zimbabwean
authorities to release him
as a positive gesture at this time."
The detention of MDC Secretary
General Biti is just one example of the
unacceptable crackdown by the
Zimbabwean authorities on its opponents and
just serves to deepen the
European Commission's concern over the recent wave
of violence. In addition,
Commissioner Michel was deeply shocked to learn of
the murder of the wife of
the mayor of Harare.
Commissioner Michel went on to say, "I have always
supported and continue to
support our African partners' efforts at the level
of SADC and the African
Union to assist in ensuring appropriate conditions
are in place and observed
during this election period. It is crucial that
more international and local
electoral observers are effectively deployed on
the ground with a view to
ensuring the holding of the run-off election in
acceptable conditions."
politicsweb
Helen Zille
20
June 2008
Article by Democratic Alliance leader June 19
2008
"Mbeki's Zimbabwe 'solution': Good for Mugabe, Bad for
democracy"
The crisis in Zimbabwe deepens by the day. The detention of
MDC leaders -
including Tendai Biti who faces the death penalty for
"subversion" - as well
as the murder of over 70 MDC supporters has taken the
reign of terror to a
new level. President Mugabe has openly said that he
will "go to war" to
maintain power.
President Mbeki is now reportedly
pushing for a cancellation of the
presidential run-off election in Zimbabwe
scheduled for next Friday, in
favour of the establishment of a "Government
of National Unity" (GNU).
His rationale for the cancellation of the
election is, apparently, that "the
run-off might exacerbate the situation."
It is ironic that Mbeki has until
now justified his inaction on Zimbabwe by
saying that Zimbabweans themselves
must determine their future through the
ballot box.
The world therefore expected him, as the official mediator in
Zimbabwe , to
do what was necessary to ensure conditions conducive to a free
and fair
election.
Instead he allowed Mugabe to run an unprecedented
intimidation campaign and
force a presidential run-off election when he
should actually have conceded
defeat. With the possibility that Mugabe
could lose the run-off despite his
threats of war, Mbeki now wants to help
him avoid an election altogether.
Even worse, reports suggest that the
Mbeki plan involves the creation of a
Zimbabwean GNU is one in which Mugabe
would effectively retain power, with
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the
opposition Movement for Democratic
Change, as his junior partner.
A
GNU sounds deceptively pragmatic and sensible. I oppose it because it
will
vindicate Mugabe's reign of terror. It will enable him to stay in
power.
It will be the final death knell for democracy in Zimbabwe . This
so-called
"solution" will actually exacerbate Zimbabwe 's problems -- and
spread the
contagion far beyond.
In fact, the rot started in Kenya earlier this year
where a government of
national unity was negotiated with the help of
international mediators,
following an election reportedly rigged in favour
of the incumbent President
Mwai Kibaki. This deal enabled a rejected
President to cling to power, with
his successful challenger in the more
junior position of Prime Minister.
This deal seems to have set a
precedent whereby African leaders can
manipulate (or ignore) the outcomes of
elections they lose. If power cannot
change hands through the ballot box,
democracy is dead.
Developments in Kenya and Zimbabwe also put a
different light on Jacob
Zuma's recent statements that the ANC has been
ordained by God to govern
South Africa and that it will rule "until Jesus
comes back". A man who
holds these views is also unlikely to move quietly
into an opposition role
if he loses an election.
All these
developments merely entrench the view, held by so many, that
Africa is not
ready for democracy. If Mugabe gets his way, it will entrench
the suspicion
that the outcome of elections in Africa is generally
determined by the
nastiest, most brutal bully who can use the security
forces as instruments
of terror.
If President Mbeki does indeed facilitate this outcome, it
will by a Pyrrhic
victory. The unintended consequences will define his
legacy for decades to
come.
Mbeki and the African Union have one last
chance to do the right thing by
Zimbabwe and other emerging democracies in
Africa . They have the tools to
do so in terms of the African Union's own
Constitutive Act which gives them
the right to intervene in a member state
in grave circumstances that include
war crimes, genocide and crimes against
humanity. At least two of these
conditions apply in Zimbabwe.
They
must use this power of intervention, but not in a way that will finally
subvert the will of the Zimbabwean people. Instead they have a bounden duty
to ensure the opposite.
This may require a postponement of the 27
June poll - in order to move
swiftly and decisively to create conditions for
a proper election, the new
date of which must be announced simultaneously
with the postponement of next
week's poll. A new election must take place
within three months, at the
latest.
The African Union must
immediately take the necessary steps to prepare for
this election in
Zimbabwe. With the material and logistical backing of the
United Nations,
the AU must deploy a peace-building force in Zimbabwe. Their
mandate must be
to end the terror and create conditions for an election in
which it will be
safe for Zimbabweans to elect their government.
Needless to say, Mugabe
will not accept this, but he must not be given a
choice. The time has come
for the choice to be made by the voters of
Zimbabwe . The time has come for
the AU and SADC to show the world that we
can be trusted with
democracy.
The South African government, in particular, must use its
position on the AU
Assembly of Heads of State and Government to help ensure
that the AU
peace-building force is deployed.
Instead of persisting
with inappropriate and unworkable 'solutions', that
actually destroy
prospects for democracy, Mbeki must urgently build a
united front -
through SADC and the AU - to force Mugabe's thugs to retreat
and create
conditions for an election that will reflect the will of the
Zimbabwean
people. If African leaders fail to do so, they will expose their
organisations for what they increasingly seem to be - Unions for the
protection and preservation of the power of former liberation leaders. The
worst fears of the Afro-pessimists will be confirmed.
This article by
Helen Zille first appeared in South Africa Today, a weekly
letter from the
Democratic Alliance leader, June 20 2008
New Zimbabwe
By Alex T.
Magaisa
Last updated: 06/21/2008 13:46:50
AFRICA. Finally, Africa has
turned. Or so it seems.
Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga has called it
'an African eyesore'. In
the same week, 40 of Africa's prominent sons and
daughters issued a
collective epistle on Zimbabwe.
You may not have
expected it from Kenneth Kaunda, erstwhile President of
Zambia and close ally
of Robert Mugabe from the liberation era.
Not from Joachim Chissano,
another great friend of the President. So close
is the man, he was Best Man
at Mugabe's wedding just over a decade ago.
Not from General Ibrahim
Babangida, erstwhile strongman of Nigeria, himself
part of the Military Junta
that thwarted Nigeria's abortive bid for
democracy in the
mid-nineties.
But they have come in all shapes, sizes and colours to add
pressure against
a regime that is now, surely, like the dear friend who runs
amok in public
without covering his modesty. You are embarrassed, less for
him than for
yourself as someone whom the public associates with the
shameless fellow.
Eventually, there comes a point when you have to rein him
back; to chastise
him publicly for everyone's good.
But in all this,
there is a clear sign.
It is that Mugabe's current account of loyalty and
patience in the bank of
the African leadership community is running very low.
For a long time,
Mugabe has maintained a deep loyalty account with this
community of allies
and sympathisers. He is their brother; a man to whom they
have deferred,
even if they may have whispered in the ear and murmured in the
secrecy of
the boardrooms.
It has been an enigma. How surely, ordinary
people have asked, could the
African leadership stand by and do nothing when
their beloved brother has
run amok?
But then, a few loyalty bankers
remain; the likes of South Africa's
President Mbeki, who have long provided
an overdraft facility on this
loyalty account. But Mugabe has continued to
draw from it. It can only be a
matter of time before they, too, put a cap on
that overdraft facility. For,
it has reached a stage where the recipient is
now in a vicious loyalty 'debt
cycle': the more he draws from the facility,
the further he descends into
debt and the more he seeks to draw from the
facility. It is unsustainable.
They have extended the facility in the
hope that somehow the recipient would
make amends; that he would put in place
measures for rehabilitation. But any
hopes that the debt would be repaid
continue to recede with each passing
day, with every new episode of
calculated violence, with every statement and
threat to the peace and
security of an extraordinarily patient nation
But when the recipient of
the facility can no longer reciprocate, the
lenders will have to re-assess
and protect their own interest. And sure
enough, Zimbabwe is beginning to
hurt a lot more beyond its borders. Not the
ordinary citizens of those
countries - they have already borne the brunt of
Zimbabwe's catastrophe. It
is the leadership, whose embarrassment at
defending the indefensible can,
surely, be concealed no longer. That which
has horns will eventually
manifest. And it has.
They, too, know that history will judge them very
harshly; but before that,
their own citizens will issue judgment. They did so
at Polokwane and Mr
Mbeki's leverage has diminished since then. Even the
MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai
plucked up enough courage and audacity to publicly
question Mbeki's
sincerity and neutrality, something that he might have done
behind closed
doors, were it not for Mbeki's own growing
impotence.
Mbeki facility to his elder comrade began to hurt him long
back and it will
surely haunt him for years to come. Harsher members of the
jury have already
issued their verdict - that he has been an accessory to the
fact. Not
because he has not tried. He has but the greatest weakness is that
his
public appearance has been that of a cushion to the indefensible. But
there
is a chance yet; an opportunity to say, "I tried my best under
the
circumstances but I cannot stand for and by this,
anymore".
Perhaps then, even the harshest critics of his 'Quiet
Diplomacy' may be
prepared for a little kindness. Those persuaded by the good
Book often talk
of St Paul, the man who turned dramatically on the road to
Damascus, casting
aside loyalty to the tradition and accepting the Faith.
They talk of a man
who converted and became one of the principal voices of
the Faith; a man
whose letters form the bulk of the latter half of the good
Book. Some among
the African leaders have already turned. They, too, have
issued a letter.
But there is one man and one letter that could make by
far a greater
difference. It is the word that could come from the man who has
so far stood
side by side with his great friend. The world awaits President
Mbeki's St
Paul moment.
For, surely, it is now clear that the veil of
democracy has become a lot
thinner. It is no longer necessary to lift the
veil to see what lies behind
it. The veil itself is now so thin it cannot
conceal much.
Mugabe is reported to have recently said the pen cannot
erase what the gun
achieved. Those with memories stretching further than the
current crisis
will recall that it is not the first time. He is reported to
have said in
1976, 'Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any
vote we
shall have, shall have been the product of the gun (sic). The gun
which
produces the vote should remain its security officer - its guarantor.
The
people's votes and the people's guns are always inseparable twins'? That
is
and has always been Mugabe's view of electoral democracy.
President
Mbeki and his SADC colleagues could draw a lesson from history.
Those who
recall the 1979 Lancaster House Constitutional Conference that
paved the path
to Zimbabwe's independence say that, at one stage, Mugabe
threatened to
withdraw from the talks and return to the bush. It took the
intervention of
three African statesmen who had stood by and provided active
support to
Mugabe and the liberation movement. Of the three men, Samora
Machel, Julius
Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda, only the latter has lived long
enough to witness
another 'return to war' tantrum.
President Mbeki is in a very similar
position to those three sons of Africa.
He may wish to confer with Kaunda to
know what it is they did and said at
the time for Mugabe to re-commit to the
talks and facilitate an end to the
war.
For President Mbeki, a St Paul
moment, surely, now beckons.
Alex Magaisa is based at Kent Law School, UK
and can be contacted at
wamagaisa@yahoo.co.uk
VOA
By Joe
DeCapua
Washington
20 June 2008
This
Sunday has been designated as a day of prayer for Zimbabwe. The World
Council
of Churches, representing Christian denominations in 110 countries,
says it
is impossible to overstate the importance of the June 27th election.
It says
the people of Zimbabwe will be challenged to find ways to
overcome
violence.
Elenora Giddings ivory is the director of council's
Public Witness Program
for Addressing Peace and Affirming Justice. From
Geneva, she spoke to VOA
English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua
about why the day of prayer
for Zimbabwe was called.
"Churches are
always reminded to use prayer during times of turmoil and
conflict. We want
to call on God to help guide us through these difficult
situations. So
bringing all the churches in the world as much as possible
together to pray
for the situation so the calm can prevail. It also helps
those on the ground
to know that they are not alone, that there are others
who are thinking about
them during this time," she says.
But what can prayer do that mediation
and political pressure have been
unable to do? Giddings Ivory says, "We're
sometimes amazed even in our own
family situation when we take the time to
say something out loud in prayer
or in conversation. How it makes it more
concrete and realistic. It also
helps to reflect back to ourselves what we
may want to happen. It helps us
to move forward to do that. And we, those of
us who believe that there is a
God, who controls everything.are calling on
God to help control the minds
and thinking and actions of those who are
participating in this election
process."
Asked whether a day of prayer
is getting churches involved in politics, she
says, "Jesus was involved in
politics. He talked to politicians and tax
collectors. And so we're following
the examples of Jesus. And we should not
think of any institution or
processes that are beyond our own understanding
of where God is in the
world."
The general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Rev.
Samuel Kobia,
is quoted as saying, "It is impossible to overstate the
importance of this
election, its fairness, its outcome and its aftermath."
Giddings Ivory says
the council has taken an official position on democratic
reforms.
"The World Council of Churches and its governing body.approved a
statement
(in February) on the democratic electoral processes. It referred to
the
United Nations Millennium Declaration that commits the nations of the
world
to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law, as well as respect
for
all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms. So
the
World Council of Churches and its member denominations are celebrating
the
fact that more nations around the world are embracing democracy in order
to
bring about human rights and freedoms for all people who may live within
a
particular country and wanting to protect that as much as possible."
IOL
June 20
2008 at 04:16PM
Zimbabwe is hosting eight journalists from the
Middle East as part of
its "perception management programme", the state-owned
Herald newspaper
reported on Friday.
The Zimbabwe Tourism
Authority (ZTA) had invited the reporters, who
are mainly travel writers, "to
see, first-hand, the situation in Zimbabwe",
the online version of the state
newspaper said.
The paper quoted a Dubai-based British journalist
as saying she "felt
safe in Zimbabwe".
"I feel pretty welcome in
Zimbabwe. I was greeted with smiling faces
and I'm interested in seeing what
the situation in Zimbabwe is like," said
Kate Hazell of ITP, a publishing
group in Dubai.
Another journalist, Adam Wilson of AMG media group,
reportedly told
the newspaper: "Zimbabwe is an amazing country with friendly
people."
ZTA chief executive Karikoga Kaseke said another
delegation from
Japan, with journalists, travel agencies and tour operators
was scheduled to
arrive in Zimbabwe at the weekend "as part of this
aggressive tourism
marketing campaign".
"It is our hope that
when they go back to their markets, they will be
reporting about Zimbabwe
from an informed position," said Kaseka.
He added that he hoped the
Japanese delegation would lobby their
government after the visit to
reconsider its travel warnings against
Zimbabwe, which is currently on level
2 and does not permit its citizens to
visit the country.
Zimbabwe is preparing for a presidential run-off election on June 27.
The
run-up has been marred by violence and more than 70 opposition
supporters
have been killed since the first round of elections at the end
of
March.
Meanwhile, food agencies have warned of famine in the
strife-torn
southern African country, saying nearly half of all Zimbabweans
will be at
risk of famine by the end of the year due to a maize shortfall. -
Sapa
When reporting to Observer Missions, they
prefer written reports if
possible. Give your name and contact
details.
SADC - email tjozi@sadc.int
tel Harare 758648 Secretariat on M2, Rainbow
Towers
PAP - (no email
available) PA's tel 0912 541 822 Secretariat Rm 1267 Meikles
Hotel
AU - no
details yet.
Thanks to Kubatana for also providing some of this
information.
Trudy
Fahamu
(Oxford)
OPINION
20 June 2008
Posted to the web 20 June
2008
Grace Kwinjeh
Rather than deflect and defeat the
likelihood of political violence, the
construct of a Government of National
Unity would formally integrate it into
the lifeblood of the Zimbabwean
democratic dispensation. For South Africans,
this situation recalls the kind
of power sharing arrangements that former
South African President F W De
Klerk had in mind at the start of the 1990s
negotiation process, where the
share of actual voter support would not
determine power arrangements. This
proposal was not acceptable in the new
South Africa then, and it is not
acceptable in the new Zimbabwe now, writes
Grace Kwinjeh examining the
upcoming Zimbabwe presidential elections rerun.
In March 2008 Zimbabweans
voted in the most peaceful election since
independence, resulting in an
unambiguous victory for the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change led by
Morgan Tsvangirai. Three months later,
the country is hemorrhaging from a
massive and rising tide of political
violence not seen since the state
sponsored terror of the early 1980s. The
ruling party and its supporters are
responsible for the vast majority of the
current attacks [1]. As if to
underscore his party's public embrace of
violence, President Mugabe now
openly threatens to "wage war" beyond the
June 27 Presidential run-off
election, if his candidacy should be rejected
by the people for a second
time. Meanwhile the MDC government-elect, MDC
party structures and much of
the party's leadership have been forced into
hiding as they seek to convince
voters of their right to select - and see
installed in place - a president of
their choice.
For SADC, the Zimbabwe conflagration has become the
most comprehensive
diplomatic failure in the region since the resumption of
the Angolan war in
the 1990s. But unlike Angola, the Zimbabwe crisis is one
for which SADC,
President Mbeki and the international community bear a
central contributing
responsibility. By pushing for secretly brokered
power-sharing arrangements
leading to a "government of national unity" (GNU),
the international
intervention in Zimbabwe has relegated hopes for a new
democratic
dispensation built on the foundations of the expressed popular
will of
Zimbabweans. By refusing to actively acknowledge the MDC's electoral
victory
and insist on its recognition and acceptance by ZANU PF, regional
leaders
and the international community effectively ignored and silenced
the
democratic voice of the people. As a consequence, the MDC's
hard-won
legitimate authority has been erased, and the way has been opened
for ZANU
PF to recover by the bullet the authority it had lost at the ballot
box.
This violent outcome of a proposed GNU strategy should not have
been
unexpected. ZANU PF's violent riposte is reminiscent of the
period
immediately prior to Independence around the Lancaster House
Conference, and
even more so of the party's violent campaign before the 1987
"Unity Accord"
with the ZAPU opposition: indeed, it is a tried and tested
tactic of ZANU PF
to threaten and deploy intense violence as a strategic
bargaining tool.
Since independence the party has singularly distinguished
itself among
Zimbabwean political parties by demonstrating a capacity for -
and indeed
claiming the right to wage - mass violence in defense of its
"national"
interests. No longer heading the majority party, Robert Mugabe now
cynically
portrays violence as a means for defending the people from their
mistaken
choice.
This deeply cynical pathology is echoed more subtly
in the GNU concept.
Despite a clear rejection of ZANU PF under electoral
conditions heavily
tilted in that party's favour, unity talks have been
promoted as a means of
bringing the former ruling party back into the centre
of decision-making.
Even though neither voters nor the MDC demanded this
arrangement in March,
the new government in waiting has come under enormous
pressure to fall in
line accordingly. Its leaders have repeatedly said that
such an arrangement
would deny the popular voice and reward anti-democratic,
flagrantly illegal
and often murderous behaviour - while only deferring, and
certainly not
solving, the problem of organising the transition to a new
political order.
It is indeed difficult to understand why those who
previously promoted
engagement with ZANU PF as a means of strengthening a
deeply flawed
electoral process, should now effectively reject that improved
process and
insist on power sharing terms with the author of electoral fraud
and
intimidation.
In contrast, it is clear that the promotion of a GNU
is integral to the
facilitation of an elite transfer of power which would
vitiate the popular
will of the electorate. This is why the idea of a GNU has
been explicitly
rejected by the leading membership-based civil society
organisations in
Zimbabwe, from the trade unions to human rights networks.
These groups
challenge the credibility and viability of a compromise that
according to
its proponents, would bring about some sort of "normalisation"
of the
political space without addressing the growing democratic deficit
in
Zimbabwe. For the Zimbabwean democratic movement, political
normalisation
requires before all else, recognition and acceptance of the
expressed will
of dominant social interests - not its circumvention through
brokered elite
'pacting' carried out under the threat of violence.
In
Zimbabwe, there is abiding consternation over why ZANU PF and its
militia
were given the opportunity by SADC and the international community to
ignore
the electoral results in the first place. What would have happened if
the
election results - deemed legitimate by observers - had been recognised
and
enforced? And what would happen if a similarly free and fair process
were
enforced in the current second round, by insisting on the disarming of
ZANU
PF and its militia, and the confinement of the security forces to base?
Have
those mediating and promoting mediation raised these issues - the
clearest
and most profound obstacles to democratic practice in Zimbabwe in
the
current moment?
It is widely acknowledged that demilitarisation is
a central precondition
needed to advance a democratic outcome and ensure its
consolidation in the
medium term. Yet, the perpetration of violence has been
treated as a
negotiable right - not as an act which invalidates claims to the
process of
a democratic transition. Remarkably, it took 10 weeks of
deteriorating
conditions for SADC's official mediator Thabo Mbeki to publicly
raise his
concerns about the spiralling violence. But even then he avoided
commentary
on responsibility, despite ample documented evidence heavily
implicating
ZANU PF and state security forces in commanding the terror. His
spokesperson
claims he is precluded from doing so by virtue of his position
as mediator.
However this is a hollow rationale in the face of open and
mounting ZANU PF
belligerence.
For ZANU PF, with few political
repercussions arising from the deployment of
its violent supporters, there
seems little incentive for abandoning this
approach- and perhaps much to be
gained from pursuing it. Robert Mugabe's
public declaration earlier this week
that his party would go to war in the
event of his defeat in the second round
of voting was met with paralysing
silence by Thabo Mbeki. The deployment of
weapons and violence may be
logistically difficult to confront: the
deployment of words and threats is
not.
THE ELECTION FIX: BACK TO THE
FUTURE
By focusing on the GNU, rather than the actual election results,
the SADC
mediation has effectively allowed ZANU PF to return to the
brokerage
scenario it had anticipated in the post election period. This
scenario,
broadly shared by ZANU PF reformers, SA, some EU governments and
others
before the election, was premised on the belief that the
MDC-Tsvangirai
party's support would be diminished by support for
MDC-Mutambara and for
Simba Makoni, the former Finance Minister and ZANU PF
reformer who was a
candidate for President. A split opposition vote would
enable victory in the
Presidential election and at least a plurality in
Parliament. Moreover, the
dispersion of opposition representation across
three groupings would present
options for developing a 'Kenyan-style'
negotiation that could lead to a
ZANU PF dominated GNU. Makoni - the
"modernising" reform face of ZANU PF -
could be parachuted in under Mugabe,
to soon replace him as the consensus
politician. And ZANU PF could argue
that, if this kind of arrangement was
acceptable for Kenya, why not in
Zimbabwe? There was a lot of this kind of
talk amongst MDC-M and Makoni
supporters in advance of the election.
For ZANU PF this scenario both
enabled the departure of Mugabe, a political
liability whose presence would
continue to block the party's return to
legitimacy and the resumption of
desperately needed, stabilizing financial
assistance for the world's
fastest-collapsing economy; and the retention and
renewed consolidation of
power by the ruling party. Confident of a mediated
victory and needing a
"legitimate" result to back its claims to
rehabilitation, ZANU PF
significantly loosened control over the electoral
process in the first round
of voting in March.
As it turned out, the party's electoral assumptions
were wildly naļve. At
the election support for the MDC-M collapsed - and
notably for its
leadership, which was roundly defeated. Makoni was
overwhelmingly rejected
by voters, gaining perhaps just 10 percent of the
vote. At the same time,
ZANU PF's traditional voters deserted the party by
voting for the opposition
or by boycotting the poll, as they had done in the
benchmark defeat of the
party in the 2000 Constitutional Referendum. In
contrast, the MDC Tsvangirai
party surged across the country, including in
former rural strongholds of
ZANU PF that for the first time ever had been
rendered easily accessible to
opposition campaigners - and to opposition
polling agents and officials.
This combination of factors meant there were
too few votes to rig with, and
that the conditions allowing the playing off
of opposition forces within a
prospective GNU did not materialize
[2].
The shock of the election result and the resulting conundrum for the
ruling
party were quite literally written on its face. The headline of The
Sunday
Mail, the most slavishly loyal of the state-controlled newspapers,
screamed
the day after the election, "Anxiety Grips Zim." Many other state
media,
including the country's only radio and television broadcaster,
ZBC,
effectively fell silent, bewildered. No party leader of note addressed
the
nation for several days.
It was apparent that ZANU PF was
reassessing its game plan. Over the next
month it developed and then rolled
this plan out, as SADC first patiently
accommodated repeated inexplicable
delays in the processing and announcement
of results by ZEC, and then sat
motionless as ZESN, the key civic election
monitoring network, and MDC itself
were raided by state officials in search
of independently collected polling
data that could be used to disprove
manipulated official figures. Even after
the long delay, only limited
details of the presidential poll were eventually
released [3].
Meanwhile, reports surfaced of remobilised war veterans and
youth militias,
and of the first violent penetrations by state security
forces of "turncoat"
former ruling party strongholds. ZANU PF aimed to create
conditions that
would make the run-off so difficult and dreaded that
prospects of averting
violence through some form of GNU and power sharing
arrangement would be
welcomed: a replay of the ZANU-ZAPU Unity Pact of 1987.
ZANU PF's
transparently obvious "spin" on the violence -which has often been
taken up
by SADC leaders, and swallowed whole by much of the regional media
as well -
has been doubly damaging for Zimbabwean democrats. One the one
hand,
substantial evidence that the violence is disproportionately
organised
against the MDC has drawn muted criticism from SA, SADC and the
GNU
advocates like Makoni; on the other, the small amount of
retaliatory
violence attributed to the MDC is deemed to suggest a "crisis"
and raise
possibilities of "civil war" - reinforcing the need to avoid a
run-off and
the urgency for a negotiated solution [4].
African leaders
have thus far studiously avoided apportioning responsibility
for violence, in
most instances couching reactions in terms of cautioning
both sides and
invoking dialogue. Widespread violations of SADC's election
'norms and
standards' have failed to elicit coherent responses from them.
Neither has
SADC cautioned or castigated the ZANU PF government for failing
to ensure its
constitutional responsibility for safety and security, despite
overwhelming
empirical evidence that the primary perpetrator is ZANU PF and
its
proxies.
Rather than address the issue of destabilizing violence and
impose political
censure for its deployment in this period of uncertainty,
the SA government,
SADC, some EU diplomats and the Makoni grouping actively
talked up the need
for a GNU - ostensibly as way to avert the threat of
violence coming from
ZANU PF. Indeed, independent and MDC reports
demonstrated that increasing
numbers from the MDC's ranks were being beaten,
tortured, abducted and
murdered, the rationale for a GNU - and a political
counter-attack to the
wave of violence - was publicly reinforced by SA and
SADC.
While mediation does not preclude processes of accountability, this
approach
appears to have been absent from the Mbeki initiative. As a result
the SADC
intervention has directly facilitated ZANU PF's unfolding strategy
for
manipulating the conditions and issues that would have to be
negotiated.
SADC's tentative response to the March vote allowed space and
time for ZANU
PF to regroup and ramp up the violence and threats of more of
the same -
both fuelling a defensive "demand for GNU", and reasserting ZANU
PF's
leading place in the setting of terms for any negotiations. The latter
now
focus on ending violence and averting civil war, rather than
implementing
the results of the peaceful election or ensuring that the next
round of
elections are conducted in a free and fair atmosphere - something
that it
appears can no longer be ensured.
THE GNU PROBLEM
If
the GNU is primarily being proposed as a means to avoid a violent
tragedy,
rather than as a basis for a establishing a new inclusive
democratic
politics, skeptics are right to question the idea's aims,
objectives and
predictable outcomes. Just as importantly, we need to pose a
question for
those advocating a non-democratic negotiated resolution to
Zimbabwe's
election crisis: by what principle can the rights of the popular
democratic
will as expressed by voters be equated with, or rendered
secondary to, the
rights of discredited elites and perpetrators of violence?
For this is
precisely what the idea of a GNU proposes, in the name of an
elusive, highly
unstable and temporary peace.
Even if the MDC were able to extract
considerable concessions from ZANU PF,
it is highly unlikely that Robert
Mugabe's party would cede its effective
control over its levers in the
bureaucracy and particularly, in the security
forces. Why would it: these are
the instruments of war and obstruction that
have enabled ZANU PF to climb out
of the hole of electoral defeat on more
than one occasion, to protect its
networks of power. To suggest that these
determinants of power would be given
up willingly is to accept the notion
that ZANU PF would be willing to
abdicate. The last two months have exposed
this view as profoundly
delusional. Those who have put stock in the GNU have
failed to assess their
model of peace-making in light of ZANU PF's strategic
understanding that
violence is a political asset and an effective substitute
for popular
legitimacy, which will not be negotiated away.
Rather than deflect and
defeat the likelihood of political violence, the
construct of a GNU would
formally integrate it into the lifeblood of the
Zimbabwean democratic
dispensation. This is a remarkable solution to put
before a political party
that has just won an election based on its abiding
commitment to non-violent
democratic participation - and to the voting
majority who supported it. For
South Africans, this situation recalls the
kind of power sharing arrangements
that former South African President F W
De Klerk had in mind at the start of
the 1990s negotiation process, where
the share of actual voter support would
not determine power arrangements
[5]. This proposal was not acceptable in the
new South Africa then, and it
is not acceptable in the new Zimbabwe
now.
For the time being, it seems increasingly likely that the GNU route
will be
not followed. This is not due to any lack of effort by the likes of
Mbeki
and many in SADC, or the distasteful posturing of the rejected Makoni,
who
cites rising violence as the need for inclusive negotiations without
naming
and condemning those - his erstwhile colleagues - who have created
the
unstable terrain on which he hopes to re-launch his ambitions. Rather,
both
the MDC and its supporters are wary of legitimizing the political role
of
those holding the gun to their heads and the torch to their homes. War
is
not something to be prevented: it is here already. And the only
non-violent
way to confront and defeat it is the ballot box, even if that
option too is
flawed.
If the current pressures for a GNU do indeed
fail, all is not lost for ZANU
PF: Makoni or another ZANU PF senior reformer
could return to the forefront
if Mugabe were to win the run-off, further
destabilize the MDC and civil
society, and then retire on his own terms -
handing over power to a reformer
to negotiate a new GNU from a position of
regained legitimacy and strength.
But this first requires another
successfully manipulated election result,
and a frontal assault on MDC and
civil society resistance. The arrest on
treason charges this past week of MDC
Secretary General Tendai Biti does not
bode well; neither does the relative
weakness of the SADC response to this
latest development. And is there any
reason to think that additional ZANU PF
manipulations during and after the
second round of voting will not take
place, given the success of such
interventions in the first?
ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY, ACTING
RESPONSIBLY
The options chosen by SADC and the international community
for dealing with
the March 2008 election have directly contributed to the
options chosen by
ZANU PF. It was a choice not to recognise the MDC victory
and to allow the
illegal charade over the recount to occur [6]. It is enough
here to point
out that the MDC won the Parliamentary elections, that Morgan
Tsvangirai won
the Presidential election, that nearly 3 million Zimbabweans
did not vote,
and consequently it is very clear that Robert Mugabe and ZANU
PF do not
enjoy the support of the vast majority of the
population.
This set of circumstances allowed for an alternative
political response; a
recognition of and call for an MDC government to be
accepted by ZANU PF.
However, the failure to support this option has
contributed directly to the
current confusion between promoting conditions
for a free and fair re-run
and negotiations for a GNU. Despite a widespread
acceptance that conditions
cannot be free and fair for the June 27 poll, and
calls for a GNU, the MDC
is sticking to the electoral path and holding out
prospects for an inclusive
government of national healing in which it would
play a lead role after the
elections. This position, openly supported by
SADC, will promote an elitist
management of transitional arrangements under
the auspices of a power
sharing arrangement that will effectively insulate
and protect those
responsible for perpetrating violence and gross human
rights abuses -as
happened with previous election amnesties for party
violence, and most
seriously with the Unity Accord in 1987.
As regards
the re-run, although it is no longer possible to create the
conditions for a
free and fair poll, with less than 10 days before the poll,
there could and
should be certain steps taken to remedy the most egregious
violations and
potential for destabilisation. This should include: deploying
adequate
numbers of election monitors, especially in areas where violence
and
intimidation has been reported, and playing a more active role in
monitoring
the activities and decision-making processes of the Zimbabwe
Electoral
Commission; promoting an agenda of disarming ZANU PF and its
militia/war
veteran proxies hands; censuring the role of the security
forces, censuring
hate speech and talk of war by any political parties;
commenting on access of
candidates to state media; question and establishing
a strategy with rewards
and penalties for compliance/non-compliance with
SADC election
guidelines.
Thabo Mbeki did state ahead of the 2005 elections that there
would be
consequences if the SADC Principles and Guidelines were seriously
violated,
but this was said against the background of woefully inadequate
provisions
for monitoring on the ground [7]. Meanwhile, in June 2008, the
corpses of
MDC officials and suspected opposition supporters are
accumulating,
thousands have been displaced by the political violence, likely
thousands
more beaten and brutalised, hate speech fills the airwaves, and
a
discredited President threatens the majority with war - and still, there
is
no sign of serious electoral censure in the air.
It is time for
fresh thinking and fresh action. In advance of the second
round of
presidential voting, problems need to be anticipated and prevented
before
they arise. Several critical questions emerge:
What would have happened
if SA, SADC and the international community
rejected the delays by ZEC and
ZANU PF, demanded the transparent compilation
and immediate release of
results - and ensured that all parties abided by
them?
What would have
happened if all civil society organisations and democratic
parties and
politicians had stood firmly behind the MDC government-elect,
rather than
soliciting for all-inclusive extra-electoral GNU? If more
support for the
winning party MDC had been expressed, what options then
would have remained
for elite transitions?
Who, then, really enabled ZANU PF's violent
election strategy sending the
defeated party, its leaders and violent
supporters inside and outside the
state all of the wrong signals in the
immediate post-election period?
And consequently, whose responsibility is
it now to end the violence by
terminating discussions about an all-inclusive
GNU, and insisting on a
government of transition and renewal headed
unambiguously by the party
elected by the people: the MDC
Tsvangirai.
* Grace Kwinjeh is an NEC member of the MDC and the
Chairperson of the
Global Zimbabwe Forum.
[1] There is no credible
evidence to suggest a conclusion other than ZANU
PF's direct culpability for
the current wave of organised violence, as there
is a large and growing body
of documented evidence that substantiates this
view; there is no comparable
evidence suggesting that the MDC has either
launched a parallel wave of
attacks; that the MDC is capable of doing so;
and that MDC leaders or party
structures have called for such a strategy. As
such, violence is an integral
factor in - and not a product of - the current
crisis.
[2] See the
following for more detailed analyses of what happened in the
March elections;
SITO (2008), ZIMBABWE ELECTIONS 2008. Examining The Popular
and Presidential
Choice - Hiding or Run Off? IDASA: PRETORIA; SITO (2008),
The Inconvenient
Truth. A complete guide to the delay in releasing the
results of Zimbabwe's
presidential poll. Prepared by Derek Matyszak of the
Research and Advocacy
Unit, Zimbabwe. IDASA: PRETORIA; SITO (2008).
THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH
(PART II). A complete guide to the recount of votes
in Zimbabwe's
"harmonised" elections. Derek Matyszak, Research and Advocacy
Unit, Zimbabwe.
IDASA: PRETORIA; SITO (2008), What happened in the
Presidential election?
Research & Advocacy Unit, Zimbabwe. IDASA:
PRETORIA.
[3] In
the end, ZEC merely announced the result of the Presidential poll,
which bore
a suspicious resemblance to the ZESN "sample based observation"
result. No
detailed results were given for the Presidential poll, in
complete contrast
to the other three elections in these "harmonised"
elections. See again SITO
(2008), What happened in the Presidential
election? Research & Advocacy
Unit, Zimbabwe.
IDASA: PRETORIA
[4] The depiction of violence as
equitable and the deliberate avoidance to
engage with available empirical
information that clearly demonstrates who
are the primary perpetrators is
chillingly reminiscent of the way in which
violence in South Africa during
the negotiations of the early 1990s was
depicted as 'black-on-black',
'tribal', Zulu vs Xhosa, etc. These crude
representations, adopted by
significant sections of the media, analysts and
so on fundamentally
undermined efforts to secure accountability and remains
to this day a major
part of South Africa's 'unfinished business' in terms of
the dealing with its
past.
[5] De Klerk has envisaged a 'troika' arrangement involving the NP,
ANC and
IFP, as a way of avoiding a democratic outcome to the
negotiations.
[6] That the recount was illegal has been covered in great
detail. Here see
again SITO (2008), The Inconvenient Truth. A complete guide
to the delay in
releasing the results of Zimbabwe's presidential poll.
Prepared by Derek
Matyszak of the Research and Advocacy
Unit,
Zimbabwe. IDASA: PRETORIA; SITO (2008), THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH
(PART II). A
complete guide to the recount of votes in Zimbabwe's
"harmonised" elections.
Derek Matyszak, Research and Advocacy Unit, Zimbabwe.
IDASA: PRETORIA.
[7] The 2005 elections were, in fact, seriously flawed,
but nonetheless
given a passing grade by South African and SADC. For an
analysis of this
election, see Reeler, A.P., & Chitsike, K.C (2005),
Trick or Treat? The
effects of the pre-election climate on the poll in the
2005 Zimbabwe
Parliamentary Elections. June 2005. PRETORIA: IDASA.
Reuters
Fri 20 Jun
2008, 14:01 GMT
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's police have arrested 390
opposition supporters
and 156 members of the ruling party over violence since
elections in March,
the police chief said on Friday, blaming the opposition
for most of the
trouble.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC), Western countries and
human rights groups accuse President Robert
Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF of a
campaign of violence ahead of a June 27
presidential election run-off.
"It is without doubt that between the two
political parties ... the MDC is
the main culprit in the political violence
that we are currently witnessing
in the country," police chief Augustine
Chihuri told reporters.
People power always
prevails
It is imperative that every Zimbabwean cast their ballot for the
candidate
of their choice on Friday. Mugabe's brutal thugs have been
terrorizing the
whole country; beating, raping and murdering our countrymen
with the sole
aim of terrorizing them into voting for his illegitimate
regime. You alone
have the choice to decide where you will make your mark on
our nation's
future. We urge you to do so with courage.
The only
thing that can prevent the vicious beatings that thousands of
Zimbabweans
have endured at the hands of Mugabe's thugs from continuing to
be a way of
life. is for Zimbabweans to vote en masse and pull the silent
trigger.
Cast a ballot against the old tyrant and let your numbers be
so overwhelming
that another stealing of the vote is just not possible. We
all know what to
expect should he manage to succeed. If Mugabe and his
henchmen are allowed
to remain in control there will be more misery, more
beatings and more
death.
Mugabe and the junta have been lying to
Zimbabweans, saying Western economic
sanctions are to blame for the
country's woes. The only sanctions in place
are travel bans on members of
the regime to prevent them from spending
looted money on shopping sprees
around the world. The reality is that the
economic problems in Zimbabwe
emanate from the personal greed of Mugabe's
thieve-ocracy (the ruling
elite).
Far from being able to offer solutions to Zimbabwe's woes, the
Mugabe junta
now devotes all of its energy in clinging to power. The only
solutions
offered are beatings and threats. There are no offers to ease the
suffering
of the people of our beloved homeland.
They are also lying
about going back to the bush. Left to sleep under a
tree, like many
Mugabe-era Zimbabweans have been forced to do, the fat-cats
would not last a
day in the bush without their luxurious mansions.
Zimbabweans have now
had enough of being beaten, Zimbabweans have had enough
of war, enough of
Zanu (PF) and we have had enough of Mugabe. We now want a
man who will
respect the Rule of Law; man who has ideas to get us out of
this mess; a man
who can allow us to feel national pride once more. A man
who has new ideas
about how to improve our lives that we may walk with heads
lifted high once
more or sleep peacefully through the night.
Zimbabweans want to be able
to speak freely about the political situation.
Watch or listen to any radio
or TV station they choose - read any newspaper.
This reality is possible
again! We can destroy this den of thieves!
Despite the beatings and the
torture and the starvation and the confiscation
of ID cards. The declaration
of no-go areas for the MDC, the incarceration
and murder of activist leaders
and the taking of political prisoners people
should turn out. Every
Zimbabwean who is able to go to the polling station
on Friday must
go.
Mugabe has been defeated once and he will be defeated again. Do not be
discouraged by the menacing noises Mugabe and his generals are making about
not accepting defeat - there are forces at work here far greater than Mugabe
and his generals. Let the power of a nation standing in unity bring peace
and hope to heal our land.
Throughout history tyrants have ultimately
been defeated by the overwhelming
power of the people. The enduring
principles of peace and justice have
always prevailed.
Wilf
Mbanga
The Zimbabwean
June 19,
2008
An Open Letter to the Member Churches of the Zimbabwe
Council of Churches
and the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops'
Conference
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ
We have
been deeply disturbed by the continual reports from Zimbabwe of
ever
increasing levels of violence and deprivation. We appreciate that it is
an
incredibly difficult time for you as you seek to minister God's love for
all
people in the lead up to the presidential run-off election on June 27.
We
are shocked by the rising level of hunger, the lack of medical treatment
and
the growing numbers of vicious attacks on people, including those
working
for the churches, Christian Care and the Student Christian
Movement.
When so many are dependent on relief assistance for their basic
supplies we
were saddened to hear that groups including Christian Care can no
longer
distribute the food people so desperately need. What is perhaps
saddest of
all is the failure of the Zimbabwe Government to protect its
people from
these injustices and its deliberate efforts to interfere with the
election.
On this basis, and recognizing the life we share together as
the body of
Christ, we ask you to support the right of all Zimbabweans to
participate in
safe, free and fair elections on June 27 by speaking out
publicly and
directly to those involved. We believe the churches have a
responsibility
to encourage people to vote while assuring them that their
efforts will
contribute to the restoration of the country. At such times it
is important
for the churches to stand strongly within the prophetic
tradition and speak
out courageously in favour of those who have been made
poor at the hands of
the powerful.
In previous elections the
international church community has provided
election observers. Under the
current circumstances, when there is so much
international attention and
where the results are so critical, it is
important the churches advocate for
adequate election observers throughout
the country, including from churches
in neighbouring countries, the Vatican,
the World Council of Churches and the
All Africa Conference of Churches.
Finally, the ability of reporters to
travel widely and safely to report on
what is happening in both national and
international media will contribute
greatly to ensuring the elections are
free and fair. We encourage you to
defend this freedom and to support media
representatives however you are
able. The world is watching and we can use
the news we receive to
strengthen the international support for free and fair
elections in
Zimbabwe.
We assure you that the churches of Aotearoa New
Zealand continue to pray for
the people of Zimbabwe, the church community and
the long term future of the
country. Together we are participating in the
'season of prayer' in
response to your great need and in the gospel that
proclaims freedom and
hope even when fear prevails. Be assured that we care
very deeply for your
country and long for the day that peace will prevail and
hope be restored.
In the Name of the Risen Christ
David Moxon,
Co-presiding Archbishop of the Anglican Church
in Aotearoa New Zealand and
Polynesia
John A Dew, Archbishop of Wellington
Roman Catholic Church
of New Zealand
Brian Turner, President
Methodist Church of New
Zealand
Rodney Macann, National Leader
Baptist Union of New
Zealand
Pamela Tankersley, Assembly Moderator
Presbyterian Church of
Aotearoa New Zealand
W V (Bill) Robinson, Year Meeting Clerk
The
religious Society of Friends in Aotearoa New Zealand