Cape Times
April 10, 2008
Edition 2
Fiona Forde and Reuters
The Zimbabwean Electoral
Commission has been moved to a secret location and
is now subject to
national security, while it has emerged that high-ranking
army officers have
been deployed to masquerade as war veterans during the
expected run-off
campaign.
It is understood the state-run electoral body, which is in
possession of the
presidential ballot papers, was moved early on
Tuesday.
Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai and
independent
Simba Makoni, both of whom ran against President Robert Mugabe
on March 29,
have been denied access to the electoral commission team and
have been
unable to find out where it has been moved.
"Simba asked
that some of his team be allowed access to the commission, but
he was
refused," Kudzai Mdudazi, a member of Makoni's team, said last night.
The
MDC was told that it did "not have the right to be present" for the
final
count of the presidential votes. This was now a "state secret of
national
security", the party was told.
Until Tuesday, the electoral commission
had been using Rainbow Towers here,
site of the former Sheraton Hotel. There
had been signs that its operations
were being wound down, although
confirmation was not forthcoming until
yesterday.
"If the
verification process is done in private, then nothing they say at
this stage
can have any credibility as the results will have been so heavily
diluted,"
Mdudazi said.
Other sources think the regime's resorting to such extreme
measures suggests
desperation in Mugabe's camp.
"Mugabe must have
gone down badly if this is what they are doing," said one.
The source
believes there will be a run-off, but is unable to say when.
"Zanu-PF will
take as much time as they want," he said.
Justice Minister Patrick
Chinamasa said the ruling party's tallies of the
results showed a run-off
would be necessary between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
"None of the candidates
has been able to secure (the number of votes)
required to avoid a
run-off."
Meanwhile, a number of well-placed sources claim senior army
officers are
being deployed to hot spots around the country to masquerade as
war veterans
during the run-off campaign.
According to a list of
names released to the Cape Times, the head of the
Defence Forces,
Constantine Chiwenga, is to direct the estimated 200
officers who are to
mobilise support for Mugabe with the intention, one
source said, of
"squeezing the space for the MDC".
Also listed are the officers who are
to assist in the operation. They
include Lieutenant-General P V Sibanda and
Major General Nick Dube.
Tsvangirai was in Botswana last night as part of
a whistle-stop tour of the
region to appeal for urgent
intervention.
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, chair of the Southern
African Development
Community, has called an urgent summit of regional
leaders for Saturday. It
is unclear whether Mugabe will attend.
International Herald Tribune
The Associated PressPublished: April 10,
2008
HARARE, Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe said Thursday it was prepared
to brief an
emergency summit of southern African leaders on the situation in
the
country, but did not indicate whether President Robert Mugabe would
attend.
Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said that although it was
not normal
for another country — in this case Zambia — to call such a
summit, "Zimbabwe
would appraise the regional bloc of political developments
in the wake of
the elections," the state-controlled Herald newspaper
reported.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change says its
candidate, Morgan
Tsvangirai, won the March 29 vote outright, and accused
Mugabe of delaying
the results so he can orchestrate a runoff and give
ruling party militants
time to intimidate voters and ensure he wins a second
election.
Tsvangirai embarked on a trip around the region Wednesday,
beginning with
Botswana, to ask Mugabe's peers to push him to end the
standoff. He met with
Botswana's President Seretse Ian Khama and hoped to
travel to four or five
other countries before Saturday, opposition officials
said.
His spokesman, Nelson Chamisa, said Thursday that Tsvangirai would
ask them
to "put pressure and counsel Mugabe to accept the verdict of the
people."
"The issues are to help Zimbabweans realize or resolve their
crisis. We have
done our bit and Mugabe was defeated," Chamisa said in a
telephone
interview.
With no resolution in sight 11 days after the
election, Zambian President
Levy Mwanawasa called an emergency summit of
southern African leaders for
Saturday to discuss the crisis, Zambia's
information minister said.
Mwanawasa had originally planned to send a
delegation of former heads of
state to Zimbabwe but decided to hold an
urgent summit instead because the
situation had grown so serious, Zambian
state radio reported.
African leaders previously had deferred to South
African President Thabo
Mbeki and his strategy of "quiet diplomacy" on
dealing with Zimbabwe.
Mwanawasa has stood out as the only southern African
leader to publicly
criticize Mugabe's policies, last year likening the
country's economy to "a
sinking Titanic."
MDC secretary-general
Tendai Biti said regional leaders should push for
Mugabe's resignation at
the summit.
"We don't know why the world has to wait until dead bodies
start littering
the streets of Harare," he said.
Biti indicated the
opposition would boycott any runoff.
"Morgan Tsvangirai won this election
without the need for a runoff, and we
will not accept any other result
except one that confirms that we won this
election," he said.
The
High Court will decide Monday whether to grant an opposition request for
the
election results to be released, lawyers for the MDC and the election
commission said.
Mugabe has virtually conceded he did not win the
election and appeared to be
campaigning for a runoff by intimidating his
foes and fanning racial
tensions.
Biti accused the ruling party of
deploying senior army and police officials
across the country to "oversee
the reversal process."
Desmond Mufunde, a newly elected MDC councilman
from the rural Gweru
district, said soldiers attacked some people in his
district last weekend.
"I still don't know what was the reason and why,"
he said. "We're trying to
establish what happened."
Zimbabwe's
Commercial Farmers' Union accused ruling party supporters of
forcing dozens
of white farmers off their land and ransacking some of their
homes. Such
seizures started in 2000 as Mugabe's response to his first
defeat at the
polls — a loss in a referendum designed to entrench his
presidential
powers.
Farmers warned that continued chaos could endanger the wheat
crop, vital to
a nation that has grown deeply dependent on food aid during
the worsening
economic crisis.
"The planting for wheat will be in a
few weeks time and if it is not in,
we'll go starving again," said farm
union spokesman Mike Clark.
Pressure continued to build on the
government, with Australia adding to
calls from the United Nations, Britain,
the European Union and the U.S. to
release the vote results.
Simba
Makoni, a former finance minister who received less than 10 percent of
the
presidential vote, according to independent tallies, said he was baffled
by
the delay in releasing the results.
The U.S.-based National Democratic
Institute said Wednesday that one of its
staff members was freed after being
held by Zimbabwean authorities for six
days.
Dileepan
Sivapathasundaram, a U.S. citizen who had been working with local
groups who
were monitoring election monitors, was detained at Harare's
airport as he
tried to leave the country last Thursday, the nonprofit group
said. He has
left the country.
The Spectator
Peter
Oborne
Wednesday, 9th April 2008
Peter Oborne says that the
post-electoral limbo leaves Mugabe with a series
of unpalatable options, the
armed forces in disarray and Zimbabweans with a
sense of grim
foreboding
On the night after the presidential elections 12 days ago, a
British
diplomat, Philip Barclay, witnessed the count at the little outpost
of
Bikisa deep in rural Masvingo. This part of Zimbabwe is Zanu PF
heartland.
In all five presidential elections since independence in 1981 the
people of
Bikisa had voted solidly for Robert Mugabe — and there was little
expectation of anything different this time.
Barclay reports feeling
faint with sheer amazement when it became clear that
the largest pile of
votes was for Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change. Just 44 people in Bikisa voted
for President Mugabe,
against an overwhelming 167 for Tsvangirai.
Reports from other areas soon
made it clear that Bikisa was not exceptional,
and that Mugabe had been
voted out of power in a political earthquake. By
late in the afternoon on 30
March — the day after the election — the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, an
independent body charged with overseeing
the poll, was in a position to make
a cautious estimate of the result. It
judged that Morgan Tsvangirai had
secured almost 60 per cent of the vote,
more than double that of Robert
Mugabe with 27 per cent.
Sources say that when this news was brought to
the President his first
reaction was genuine incredulity. He is now so out
of touch, and so used to
winning elections, that he had felt confident of a
comfortable majority.
Incredulity swiftly turned to anger, and Mugabe
grimly ordered the Electoral
Commission to declare him the victor. This
command was resisted by very
brave election officials. They received
unexpected support, however, from
senior personnel within the Zimbabwe state
security apparatus, fearful of
the public order consequences that would
certainly flow from such blatant
fixing of the result.
At this stage
South Africa’s President Mbeki tried to solve the problem.
Reportedly Mbeki
also wished the result to be rigged, though not as
blatantly as Mugabe. He
seems to have proposed that the ZEC should sharply
downgrade Tsvangirai’s
share of the vote, sharply upgrade Mugabe to a more
respectable 40 per cent
and dramatically increase the share of the vote
enjoyed by the renegade Zanu
PF presidential candidate Simba Makoni.
Simba Makoni is Mbeki’s personal
choice as the next president of Zimbabwe.
There is some evidence that he is
also supported by the US state department.
A highly intelligent and
well-educated man, Makoni was a member of the
Mugabe inner circle for many
years, while maintaining warm links to foreign
observers and exercising care
to evade personal responsibility for the worst
of the regime’s atrocities.
He only stood for the presidency after being
given the green light by Mbeki
earlier this year. Unlike Morgan Tsvangirai,
a former miner of incredible
courage but with little formal education,
Makoni is the kind of politician
who appeals profoundly to the bureaucratic
mind.
Mbeki, quietly
backed by the United States, hoped to induce Mugabe to step
down and get
Makoni to stand in his stead. This plan had definite logic.
Makoni, though
he will never be forgiven by Mugabe for what the President
sees as an act of
unspeak- able betrayal, retains the strongest links with
Zanu PF. This means
that he would probably be acceptable to the senior
generals and policemen
who hold the key to Zimbabwe’s immediate future, and
to whom Tsvangirai’s
Movement for Democratic Change is utterly repugnant.
By the start of this
week it was beginning to be clear that the Makoni
wheeze was not going to
fly. The trouble is that — like many politicians
beloved of the official
class — Mbeki’s protégé lacks mass support. The
failure of the South African
intervention means there was stalemate in
Zimbabwe as The Spectator went to
press. Basically, President Mugabe has
only three options, and time is
running out very fast indeed.
The first of these is to mount a coup
d’état, the solution which is
preferred by Mugabe’s inner circle.
Significantly, it seems to be favoured
by General Constantine Chiwenga,
commander in chief of the armed forces, and
by Air Force Marshall Perence
Shiri, Mugabe’s blood relation and close ally.
It must be borne in mind
that senior figures such as these do not merely
stand to lose power if
Mugabe wins. They also face the prospect of being
brought to justice for the
crimes of the Mugabe regime. It was Perence
Shiri, for instance, who led the
North Korean-trained Fifth Brigades in the
Matabeleland genocide of the
early 1980s.
The problem with the idea of a coup d’état is not really the
international
condemnation that would inevitably result. The Southern
African Development
Community (SADC) might not like it, but under the
prostrate guidance of
Thabo Mbeki it would never lift a finger.
The
true problem is different: there are real reasons to doubt whether
commanders like Shiri (whose Chinese Mig fighters were buzzing low over
Bulawayo in an act of naked intimidation when I was there two weeks ago)
have the support of their troops. There is overwhelming anecdotal evidence
that ordinary soldiers and policemen, even some members of the feared
Central Intelligence Organisation, have turned against Mugabe. The director
of intelligence, Happyton Bonyongwe, is said to be quietly supporting
Tsvangirai.
Mugabe’s second option is to declare the recent elections
null and order a
re-run. There is strong evidence that the President is
preparing the way for
this. He is already taking revenge, for example, on
the hapless Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission, several of whose members have
been arrested over the
last few days. In a marvellous irony, they are being
accused of rigging the
result against Zanu PF.
If the President calls
a second election, it will be marked by all the
intimidation and horror
which was to a certain extent lacking on 29 March.
Mugabe’s green bombers,
his licensed torturers and murderers who bear close
comparison to Hitler’s
Brownshirts, are already off the leash.
Finally, Mugabe could stand down.
Here one key ingredient would be a
guarantee that he — and the scores of
murderers and torturers who are linked
to him — can live the rest of their
lives in the peace and tranquillity they
have denied so many others.
Granting Mugabe immunity from prosecution is
hard to engineer and would be
unpalatable for some. Others may judge it well
worthwhile.
Meanwhile,
everyone waits for the old man’s next move. I am told by a friend
who runs
one of Zimbabwe’s very few remaining factories that the mood among
the
workforce has changed very sharply over the last 48 hours. Hope has
turned
to bemusement and then — on Tuesday morning — to a silent, pervasive
sense
of terror, as if something horrible might be just about to happen.
IOL
April 10 2008
at 07:15AM
By Moshoeshoe Monare, Boyd Webb, Hans Pienaar &
Fiona Forde
Tension rose in Harare on Wednesday night as troop
numbers on the
street drastically increased, and Zambian president Levy
Mwanawasa called
for an urgent summit of Southern African Development
Community leaders.
The Zimbabwean Electoral Commission (ZEC) has
been moved to a secret
location and placed under national security, while
senior army officials
have been deployed to masquerade as war veterans
during the anticipated
run-off campaign.
It is understood that
the state-run electoral body, which is in
possession of the much-anticipated
presidential ballot papers, was relocated
in the early hours of Tuesday to
an unknown location.
Both Morgan Tsvangirai
and Simba Makoni - who challenged Robert Mugabe
in the March 29 race - have
been denied access to the ZEC team and are
unable to ascertain its
whereabouts.
"Simba asked that some of his team be allowed access
to the ZEC, but
he was refused," Kudzai Mdudazi, a member of Makoni's, team,
told The
Mercury on Wednesday night.
In a similar move, the MDC
were told that they "do not have the right
to be present" for the final
presidential count, which is now a "state
secret of national
security".
"If the verification process is done in private, then
nothing that
they say can have any credibility as the results will have been
so heavily
diluted," Mdudazi said.
That the regime has resorted
to such extreme measures is indicative of
its desperation, it is
believed.
"Mugabe must have gone down badly if this is what they
are doing,"
suggested a second source, who spoke on condition of
anonymity.
Although the tactics paint the likelihood of an imminent
Mugabe
"victory", the source still predicted a rerun as opposed to an
overall
victory for the incumbent leader, but was unable to say
when.
"Zanu-PF will take as much time as it wants," he
said.
Meanwhile, a number of credible sources claim that senior
army
officers are being deployed to hot spots around the country to
masquerade as
war veterans in the anticipated run-off campaign.
According to a list released to The Mercury, the head of the defence
force,
Gen Chiwenga, will direct the estimated 200 army officers, who will
mobilise
support for Mugabe, "so as to squeeze the space for the MDC".
While
Zimbabwe faced its 12th day without results, Tsvangirai was in
Botswana on
Wednesday night as part of his whistle-stop tour of the region
to appeal for
urgent intervention.
His visit coincided with Zambian president
Levy Mwanawasa's call for
an urgent summit of SADC leaders, which is to be
held in Zambia on Saturday.
Tsvangirai called on regional leaders
to tell Mugabe to stand down
when they met at the summit, reports
Sapa-AFP.
"We hope that Mugabe will be asked to stand down," the
party's
secretary-general, Tendai Biti, said.
South African
foreign affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said on
Wednesday night that
only once an official invitation was received would the
government consider
participation, and the composition of a delegation.
President Thabo
Mbeki was on Wednesday night making his way home after
attending the
India-Africa summit in New Delhi. He is expected to head for
Zambia this
weekend.
Meanwhile, a judge wrapped up hearing an opposition
petition demanding
the immediate release of the election results on
Wednesday, and said he
would deliver his judgment on Monday.
"Conscious of the urgency of the matter, I should be ready for a
judgment on
Monday afternoon," Judge Tendai Uchena told the high court in
Harare on
Wednesday.
This article was originally published on page 1 of
The Mercury on
April 10, 2008
Yahoo News
by Godfrey Marawanyika 1 hour, 53 minutes ago
HARARE (AFP) -
Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe faced mounting pressure Thursday
over presidential
poll results as rival Morgan Tsvangirai ramped up his
charm offensive ahead
of a regional weekend summit on the crisis.
While President
Mugabe has lain low at home, Tsvangirai has launched a
diplomatic drive in
recent days, visiting neighbours and pleading for help
in forcing out the
result of March 29 elections he claims to have won
outright.
In an
interview on Wednesday the opposition leader accused 84-year-old
Mugabe of a
"de facto military coup", saying he was deploying troops around
the country
to try and intimidate people ahead of a possible run-off
election.
The Zimbabwe opposition's bid to build up pressure on
Mugabe after the
disputed polls bore fruit on Wednesday as plans were
unveiled for a weekend
summit to discuss the escalating crisis.
While
Tsvangirai toured the region, urging leaders to prevent Zimbabwe from
sliding into chaos, the president of neighbouring Zambia said he would
gather his peers for talks on Saturday aimed at breaking the
deadlock.
Twelve days on from polling, there has still been no word on
the outcome of
the presidential election, with officials maintaining the
line that they are
still busy collating and verifying the votes.
But
the announcement by Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, the current chair
of
the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC), is set to
add
to the pressure for the results to be finally unveiled.
Mugabe, who has
presided over his country's descent from regional model to
economic basket
case in the 28 years since independence, has often bridled
at any kind of
outside intervention.
The former British colony now has a six-figure
inflation rate, unemployment
is beyond 80 percent while average life
expectancy stands at 37 years.
Stepping up his rhetoric ahead of the
summit, Tsvangirai painted a grim
picture of the situation in the country in
an interview with Time magazine.
"The military leaders in the
establishment are trying to subvert the will of
the people.
"This is,
in a sense, a de facto military coup. They have rolled out
military forces
across the whole country, to prepare for a run-off and try
to cow the
population. It's an attempt to try to create conditions for
Mugabe to win,"
he said.
Opposition hopes that the country's high court would order the
electoral
commission to announce the results before the summit were dashed
when a
judge said he would only decide whether to issue such a ruling on
Monday.
If the commission announces that none of the candidates has won
more than 50
percent of the votes, a run-off should be held under Zimbabwean
law on April
19.
But Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union -
Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) has
already called for total recount of the
presidential vote and is contesting
enough seats to overturn its loss in the
parliamentary poll held alongside
the presidential
election.
Tsvangirai, 56, was expected to travel on to Zambia and
Mozambique after
holding talks Wednesday with new Botswana President Ian
Khama.
Reuters
Thu 10 Apr
2008, 1:16 GMT
By Cris Chinaka
HARARE, April 10 (Reuters) -
President Robert Mugabe's government said on
Thursday it had no problem with
Zambia's decision to hold an emergency
regional summit on Zimbabwe this
weekend but made clear it had not sought
assistance.
In the first
direct regional intervention over Zimbabwe's election deadlock,
Zambian
President Levy Mwanawasa said he had called the Southern African
Development
Community (SADC) meeting for Saturday because of "deepening
problems" in
Harare.
Mwanawasa, SADC's current chairman, gave no other
details.
Concern has mounted among Zimbabwe's neighbours because no final
result has
been announced yet from the March 29 poll, dashing hope of quick
action to
turn round a ruined economy that has sent millions of refugees
fleeing to
surrounding countries.
The main opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC), which urged SADC
to ask Mugabe to step down, says
the Zimbabwean leader is prolonging the
delay while he plans a violent
response to his biggest defeat since taking
power in 1980.
SADC has
been criticised in the past for failing to pressure Mugabe despite
the
economic collapse in Zimbabwe, now suffering the world's highest
hyper-inflation, chronic shortages of food and fuel and a near worthless
currency.
"That's normal within SADC ... to call for meetings. We are
neighbours and
that is the spirit of SADC to meet and consider anything,"
Information
Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu was quoted as saying by the state-run
daily
Herald newspaper.
"As far as we are concerned we have not asked
for assistance. We are waiting
for (the electoral commission) to do its
work, verifying the results because
it should announce the correct results,
so we don't see any problem," said
Ndlovu.
He said the electoral
commission was "in the final stages" of its work.
The Herald reported the
government was prepared to brief SADC on
developments in Zimbabwe since the
presidential, parliamentary, senate and
local government
ballots.
DISPUTES
On Wednesday, Justice Minister Patrick
Chinamasa said ruling ZANU-PF party
tallies of the presidential vote showed
a run-off would be necessary between
Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai.
Chinamasa said the electoral commission had ordered five
constituency
recounts in the parliamentary ballot in which ZANU-PF lost
control of the
chamber for the first time.
The MDC rejected a runoff
and recounts, saying it would accept only an
outright Tsvangirai win as
shown by its tallies.
Official results have not been released from the
presidential poll.
Mwanawasa's summit call came after Jacob Zuma, leader
of South Africa's
ruling African National Congress, said the results must be
released,
signalling a new more robust reaction than President Thabo Mbeki
who favours
"quiet diplomacy".
"I think the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission should have announced results by
now," Zuma, who rivals Mbeki as
the most powerful man in South Africa and is
the frontrunner to succeed him
in 2009, told the Star newspaper in
Johannesburg.
Mwanawasa told
reporters in Lusaka on Wednesday: "Because of the deepening
problems in
(Zimbabwe), I felt that this matter should be dealt with at
presidential
level."
Mwanawasa briefly broke ranks with other African leaders last
year when he
called Zimbabwe a "sinking Titanic" before getting back in line
under
pressure.
Chinamasa told reporters ZANU-PF was gearing up for a
Mugabe-Tsvangirai
run-off. He rejected MDC victory claims and said there was
no need for
international intervention.
"Nothing has transpired
during and after the election to disturb
international peace and security,"
he said, accusing the MDC of echoing
calls by its "allies" in Washington and
London.
Mugabe's critics blame him for reducing the population to misery
by
mismanagement that has wrecked the Zimbabwean economy. He says the West
is
to blame.
(Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe, Stella
Mapenzauswa, Nelson
Banya, Muchena Zigomo, Shapi Shacinda in Lusaka; writing
by Barry Moody;
editing by Ralph Gowling)
Financial Times
By Matthew Green
and Alec Russell, Southern Africa correspondent
Published: April 10 2008
04:31 | Last updated: April 10 2008 04:31
Zambia on Wednesday called for
an emergency meeting of regional leaders to
discuss the intensifying crisis
in Zimbabwe as the country’s authorities
faced the first signs of pressure
from their neighbours to release the
results of last month’s presidential
election.
The announcement of a presidential summit of the 14-nation
Southern African
Development Community on Saturday came after Jacob Zuma,
the leader of South
Africa’s ruling party, shrugged off the region’s
traditional reluctance to
confront Robert Mugabe’s autocratic
regime.
“I think the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission should have
announced results by
now,” Mr Zuma told the South African Broadcasting
Corporation. Keeping
Zimbabwe and the world in suspense was wrong, he said.
“I don’t think it
augurs very well.”
His comments followed a meeting with
Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s
opposition leader, who has embarked on a tour
of the region to try to gather
support. The comments were widely seen as
signalling Mr Zuma’s intention of
taking a more robust stance towards
Zimbabwe than Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s
president, who has championed a
policy of “quiet diplomacy”.
Mr Mbeki led an unsuccessful attempt by the
SADC to mediate between the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change and
the ruling Zanu-PF party last
year. His comments at the weekend that the
situation was “manageable”
infuriated the MDC.
In the first formal
intervention by the region, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian
president, said he
had called an emergency SADC meeting about Zimbabwe
“because of the
deepening problems in the country”.
Eleven days after the polls closed,
the state-appointed Zimbabwe Election
Commission had on Wednesday night
still not released the results of the
presidential election. The MDC is
claiming victory for Mr Tsvangirai but
independent projections suggest he
might have just failed to cross the
threshold of 50 per cent plus one vote
necessary to avoid a run-off.
The MDC accuses Mr Mugabe of fomenting
violence to intimidate his opponents
ahead of a second round and has urged
African nations to intervene. However,
SADC leaders have been reluctant to
criticise a fellow African head of state
and former anti-colonial hero, and
western diplomats believe they will balk
at taking a tough line.
The
MDC is hoping the courts will compel the ZEC to release the results. But
George Chikumbirike, a lawyer representing the ZEC, argued that judges
should not compel the commission to publish the tally.
“It would be
dangerous in my view to give an order because it might not be
complied with
... because of outside exigencies, which the party [ZEC] will
be unable to
control,” he told a judge.
africasia
JOHANNESBURG, April 10 (AFP)
A leader of Zimbabwe's feared war veterans, hardline supporters of
President
Robert Mugabe, on Thursday denied the invasion of white-owned
farms in the
wake of a poll dispute.
"There are no farm invasions in
Zimbabwe," national chairperson of the War
Veterans Association Jabulani
Sibanda told SABC radio.
Sibanda said war veterans had merely gone to
investigate claims that whites
were preparing to "take back the land" after
opposition Movement for
Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai declared
he had won the
presidential poll.
President Robert Mugabe's ruling
ZANU-PF has been fanning the flames of the
land issue in a bid to discredit
Tsvangirai, whom they typecast as a
pro-Western stooge planning to resettle
the whites.
The Commercial Farmers Union on Wednesday announced that more
than 60
farmers had been driven off their land, in a reminder of President
Robert
Mugabe's controversial land reforms which started in
2000.
"We've got over 60 farmers who have been evicted," Commercial
Farmers Union
president Trevor Gifford told AFP. "They have been chased away
and left
everything behind."
Gifford said a first black farmer had
also been forced off by the so-called
war veterans, pro-Mugabe activists who
were at the forefront of the
widespread seizure of white farms earlier in
the decade.
However Sibanda said "anyone that had been thrown off the
land, it is not by
war veterans."
"Some went to farms to investigate
the groupings of white people. There is
no one that has been thrown off
their land. War veterans are disciplined."
He warned against white people
planning to take back farms given to blacks
during the land
reforms.
"The people of this country, they are prepared and ready to
protect their
country if there is an invasion, an invasion of any kind," he
said.
The Sowetan
10 April
2008
Sowetan says:
We are deeply concerned about the precarious
situation Robert Mugabe has put
Zimbabwe in after his humiliating loss at
the polls.
His loss of the parliamentary election is a
clear sign that the
freedom-loving people of Zimbabwe want to see the back
of the despot and his
Zanu-PF cronies.
Instead of accepting the will
of the people and gracefully conceding defeat
after 28 years of misrule, the
megalomaniac Mugabe is resorting to his handy
bag of devious tricks to cling
to power.
His bizarre demand for a recount of the presidential ballot,
even before the
results are known, is typical of Mad Bob. So is the brazen
act of arresting
election commissioners.
It does not require a rocket
scientist to deduce that he lost even the
presidential election and now
wants to tamper with the results.
These unseemly acts, plus the
slothfulness of the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission that has yet to announce
the presidential results 12 days on,
point to even more bad news for the
long-suffering Zimbabweans.
The genocidal Mugabe’s demonstrable
propensity for cruelty, as shown in
Matabeleland in the 1980s, raises
genuine fears that he would rather resort
to mass murder than relinquish
power.
Hence the arrest of journalists to prevent the truth being
known.
The SADC and the AU must prevail on Mugabe before it is too
late.
Dispatch, SA
2008/04/10
SOUTH
Africa should use its powerful position in the United Nations Security
Council to put the Zimbabwean election saga on the international body’s
agenda, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said yesterday.
Zille,
who is currently in New York, said in a statement she would meet
South
Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dumisani Khumalo, to
discuss the
unfolding crisis in Zimbabwe.
“I will make the case that South Africa
must use its position as rotational
president of the United Nations Security
Council to put the prevention of
conflict in Zimbabwe firmly on the UN’s
agenda,” Zille said.
As the current president of the Security Council,
South Africa had a unique
opportunity to influence the UN to take
action.
“However, according to the Security Council’s programme, Zimbabwe
is not
even on the agenda for April – the month that South Africa holds the
rotational presidency,” Zille said.
Her proposals to Khumalo would
include the establishment of a UN field
mission to Zimbabwe, and dispatching
a UN peacekeeping force to Zimbabwe if
full-blown conflict
erupted.
“There are legitimate fears that President (Robert) Mugabe is
preparing a
bloody intimidation campaign to ensure that he wins a run-off
election.
“In light of these developments, and mindful of events in Kenya
earlier this
year, it is crucial that international multi-lateral
organisations such as
the UN and the African Union take pro-active steps to
prevent bloodshed in
Zimbabwe,” Zille said.
Given South Africa’s
dismal record in speaking out against human rights
abuses, Khumalo had a
duty to salvage the country’s image by pushing for the
Zimbabwean issue to
be put on the council’s agenda, Zille said.
“Our failure to stand up for
human rights in Myanmar, Sudan, Zimbabwe,
Belarus, Cuba and the Democratic
Republic of Congo has led UN Watch to call
us ‘the chief human rights
villain’.
“South Africa now has the opportunity to silence critics of its
foreign
policy by using its position on the UN Security Council to urge UN
action in
Zimbabwe,” Zille said. — Sapa
Medecins sans Frontieres
Information dated 10.04.2008
MSF's ability to care for more people in need is hindered by the lack
of
trained health workers, restrictions on which staff can prescribe ARV
drugs,
and stricter administrative requirements for international staff to
work in
the country.
Rampant unemployment, skyrocketing inflation, food
shortages, and
political instability has continued to wrack Zimbabwe. Up to
three million
people are believed to have fled to neighbouring countries in
recent years
among a population of 12 million.
The national
health care system, once viewed as one of the strongest
in southern Africa,
now threatens to collapse under the weight of this
political and economic
turmoil with the most acute consequences potentially
for the 1.8 million
Zimbabweans living with HIV/AIDS.
Currently, less than one-fourth
of the people in urgent need of
life-extending antiretroviral (ARV)
treatment receive it. This translates
into an average of 3,000 deaths every
week. And the prospects for a further
scale up of the national AIDS program
are dim.
Trained medical professionals are leaving the country, the
government
program for HIV/AIDS treatment is oversubscribed, and the lack of
ARV
supplies has stifled further expansion. Patients often face obstacles to
reach hospitals or clinics because of high fuel and transport
prices.
Through programs in Bulawayo, Tsholotsho, both in
Matabeleland North
province, Buhera, Manicaland province, Epworth,
Mashonaland East province,
and Gweru, Midlands province, MSF provides free
medical care to about 29,000
people living with HIV/AIDS - 16,900 of whom
are receiving ARV treatment.
MSF's ability to care for more people
in need is hindered by the lack
of trained health workers, restrictions on
which staff can prescribe ARV
drugs, and stricter administrative
requirements for international staff to
work in the country. At the same
time, Zimbabweans are feeling the health
impact of degraded or nonexistent
water-and-sanitation systems.
In recent weeks MSF has been
addressing cholera cases in Mudzi, in
Mashonaland East province, where about
250 patients have been treated so
far. In Kariba, Mashonaland West province,
MSF has provided medical material
and training to local health personnel in
order to help respond to a cholera
outbreak.
MSF is currently
working with a little more than 400 field staff in
Zimbabwe and has been
present in the country since 2000.
Dispatch, SA
Editorial
2008/04/10
LATE yesterday street vendors in Zimbabwe said that “war
veterans” loyal to
President Robert Mugabe were threatening to kill people
who voted for the
opposition. One vendor was too terrified to go to her
village for fear of
Mugabe’s rampaging gangs of “green bombers” –
unemployed, ill-educated,
indoctrinated youths who, since 2001, have
terrorised rural folk.
Earlier this week the youth militia fanned
out across four provinces,
surrounded farms and forced about 60 mostly white
families out of their
homes.
A black farmer accused of voting against
Mugabe was also evicted and his
workers’ houses burnt and employees
intimidated.
Meanwhile, signs of the 84-year-old tyrant’s “iron fist” are
reportedly
everywhere – from the “figure portrayed on ubiquitous election
posters ...
to, by association, the tanks, water-cannons, rocket-launchers
and armoured
personnel- carriers menacing city streets”.
All this as
the lunatic leader’s campaign for re-election supposedly “swings
back into
action”. One can only wonder who Mugabe expects to take such an
“election”
seriously. The notion of free and fair hardly comes to mind when
one
considers a geriatric dictator whose reign of terror is enforced by
thugs, a
man who has plunged a country into lawlessness and ruin and who
appears to
have lost the plot so badly that he thinks nothing of scotching
election
results right in front of a watching world. In a country where
voters get
death threats, the climate is hardly democratic.
How ironic that despite
his vows to never allow Zimbabwe to be re-colonised,
Mugabe done precisely
that. He has given his country over to anarchy. His is
a colony of
lawlessness, one that is now imploding.
Faced with the human suffering on
our doorstep, Zimbabwe’s neighbours cannot
continue to stand back and coyly
whisper the sweet nothings of quiet
diplomacy.
Pussy-footing around
Mugabe for years has proved worthless. And anyway, his
overblown ego does
not deserve “a dignified exit”. His injury has not just
been to the people
of Zimbabwe, but to the region.
And yes, while it is right to say that
Zimbabweans need to show courage
against this tyrant, it is also necessary
that in the same way that foreign
countries helped the ANC during its
liberation struggle, South Africa stands
up for the people of Zimbabwe in
their time of need.
Yesterday, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa called a
weekend summit of
southern African leaders to discuss the post-election
crisis, and DA leader
Helen Zille was attempting to get South Africa to use
its position in the UN
Security Council to prevent further conflict in
Zimbabwe.
Good for them. These are at least tangible steps. It is
precisely at such a
time, when facing a dragon, that the tangible, decisive
steps of true
leaders are needed.
Dispatch, SA
2008/04/10
IT
HAS been a momentous week in Zimbabwe’s longstanding and agonising
drama.
Only twelve days ago, Zimbabwe’s beleaguered people were preparing
to vote
in the country’s presidential and parliamentary elections on March
29 2008 –
and in so doing, face down the might of a Zanu-PF regime using
every
available trick to manipulate the process and the result in order to
preserve it and its leader, Robert Mugabe, in power.
There was much
to suggest that this time, the precedent of a fraudulent
election would be
repeated. After all, the evidence of the 84-year- old
tyrant’s iron fist was
everywhere – a figure portrayed on ubiquitous
election posters and present
by association in the tanks, water- cannons,
rocket-launchers and armoured
personnel-carriers menacing city streets.
In the traditional Mugabe
stronghold of the countryside, too, the regime’s
commitment to extend its
hegemony was manifest in rampaging gangs of “green
bombers” – the
unemployed, ill-educated, indoctrinated youths who, since
2001, have
terrorised the rural population with vicious beatings and rapes.
Twelve
days on, Robert Mugabe is still there, Zanu-PF rule has not ended –
and the
official results of the presidential election have still not been
declared.
But the political landscape looks very different, thanks to the
bravery and
commitment of Zimbabwean voters. For the weight of their choices
eventually
forced an admission that the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC)
had won the majority of parliamentary seats, and forced the
regime to
announce a second round in the presidential election – a tacit
admission
that the “old man” had failed to receive the popular backing he
needed for
an unwarranted claim of victory to be persuasive.
The people’s hopes for
change thus led them to vote in such numbers that
even Mugabe’s minions were
unable to rig the poll in the way they had done
before. The weapon of
democracy – of one-person-one vote – that had been won
for Zimbabwe in the
wake of the liberation struggle in 1980 was put in the
service of
Zimbabweans against the masters who had so disappointed them.
The quarter
of Zimbabweans who had fled the country shared in the collective
moment, as
they followed the event via the Internet, TV, radio or mobile
phones from
around the world. The diaspora – forbidden to vote, but equally
desperate
for change and good news, also had a huge economic as well as
personal and
emotional stake in what was happening at home. It was their
remittances that
have enabled the Mugabe regime to stay afloat, even in the
face of an almost
complete collapse of the country’s once-vibrant
agriculture, mining and
manufacturing industries, and an unprecedented
inflation-rate of 100 000
percent that makes even daily transactions
calculable only in millions of
Zimbabwe dollars.
The country’s economic meltdown has inflicted
devastating consequences on
Zimbabweans’ health and capacity to function as
normal citizens. The bare
statistics – unemployment at 80 percent, the price
of a loaf of bread at R8
(Z50 million), around 45 percent suffering from
malnutrition (with 30
percent of children in rural areas suffering long-term
malnutrition), and a
life-expectancy of 34 for men and 37 for women – can
only indicate the depth
of the crisis consuming the country.
This
background of deep economic and social trauma and cautious political
hope
explains why the days since the election have seen Zimbabweans
experience
such a kaleidoscope of emotions. The delay in announcing the
results was
first greeted as confirmation that Zanu- PF had suffered – and
knew that it
had suffered – a decisive loss. But as the days wore on and the
organs of
the regime were clearly calculating how best to adapt to the
situation
without acknowledging defeat, the sense of optimism has begun to
give way to
foreboding.
The partisan Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) contributed
to the shift of
mood by delaying the announcement of the results of the
house of assembly
election, and then releasing them at a glacial pace. It
took until the
evening of April 2 – for the final batch of carefully
orchestrated
parliamentary results to be declared. The ZEC promised
presidential and
senate results by the following evening, but at the last
minute postponed
the announcement, citing “logistical problems”.
The
opposition MDC was finally confirmed by the ZEC as having won a majority
in
the house of assembly of 99 seats – with Zanu-PF on 97, Arthur Mutambara’s
breakaway faction of the MDC on 10, and one independent. The MDC also made
its own tally and released the figures. At that stage, many Zimbabweans
tentatively began to rejoice. But heavy-handed police soon put a stop to
public displays of celebration.
By April 2, Zimbabweans were growing
restive at the lack of official
confirmation of what everybody already knew:
the MDC had won. The
international community demanded that the ZEC release
the results. Even the
“friendly” observers from the southern African
community, the African Union,
Iran, Russia and China – handpicked by the
Mugabe regime – began to express
reservations about “irregularities” and
delays in the vote-counting process.
Until this point, Robert Mugabe
himself and his senior officials had been
quiet. It was evident that they
had been stunned by the extent of the
anti-government vote. In the void,
wild rumours had begun to circulate –
that Mugabe had fled to Malaysia, that
the service chiefs were going to
stage a coup. Both were dust in the
people’s eyes – for suddenly the
leadership came out with guns blazing,
accusing the MDC of “attempting a
coup” in prematurely announcing the
results.
A key image in the shift in the people’s mood arrived on April
3, when
Mugabe appeared on state television bidding farewell to the African
Union
delegation – looking fit and cheerful. The much-reviled Minister for
State
Security, Didymus Mutasa, announced a politburo meeting for April 4.
Mugabe’s
spokesperson, George Charamba, warned the MDC of “consequences” for
its
having released unofficial election results. Deputy Information Minister
Bright Matonga started talking of a rerun of the presidential election
(within 21 days, as the law demands – even though the results of the actual
vote had not even been announced yet.
At this point, other rumours
abounded – that police had been instructed to
collect their weapons from
armouries countrywide, that “war veterans” had
been called on to gather and
report for duty. This time, there was more
substance to the whispers – for
it was becoming clear that a regime
fight-back was underway. The politburo
meeting decided to call for a second
round of voting in the presidential
contest, and to mobilise the state’s
security forces (official and
unofficial) to help ensure that Mugabe and
Zanu-PF got the “right” result
this time.
These political tactics were, to veteran Zimbabwe analysts and
Mugabe-watchers, as familiar as they were chilling. The similarities with
2000, shortly after Mugabe lost a referendum on constitutional amendments
that he himself had proposed, are uncanny. Then, immediately after the
results had been announced, he had appeared on state television looking
subdued and reconciliatory. Soon after, gangs of war veterans and ruling
party thugs were invading commercial farms, killing and beating white
farmers and their workers, torching staff accommodation and slaughtering
farm animals. The lesson, in 2008 as in 2000, is that a politically wounded
Mugabe can be as or even more dangerous than a complacently triumphal
one.
The cycle of events in the days since the election thus fits the
pattern of
Zimbabwe’s recent political history. The ungrateful voters have
backed their
president into a corner, and his response is to fight even more
viciously.
His two-pronged strategy is to deploy the fused party- state
institutions
and the threat and/or reality of force to ensure that his
re-election can be
made official. His vicious militia, together with the
police and army, will
attempt to terrorise the population into voting for
him; and his minions in
the ZEC can be relied on to fix the ballot if and
when the tally again needs
to be corrected in his favour.
Will it
work? It has worked before. But this time, it could backfire.
Zimbabweans
are heroically patient, but they have also had a glimpse of hope
and freedom
– two of the most potent forces on the planet. They know that
their
first-round vote made the regime wobble; they know that a clear
majority of
them wishes to see the end of a regime that has inflicted such
misery. If
they do indeed repeat their first-round decision and vote
massively for
Morgan Tsvangirai, they may find too that many of the police
and army
rank-and-file will join them at last. After all, the regime’s foot
soldiers
also have to queue for hours to buy the basic provisions of life,
and to
rely on begging or bribery to feed their families.
The best outcome then
would be for Robert Mugabe to retire with as much as
grace as he has left,
and accept the offer of a protected retirement – at
home or in exile. But
the “old man’s” intransigent character – and political
persona that so
identifies his wishes with the interests of Zimbabwe that he
is blinded to
the damage he has wrought – may impel him to defy the people’s
wishes and
fight to the end. This would indeed be a tragic outcome that
would make
Zimbabwe’s much-needed internal reconciliation even more
difficult. In that
event, the polarised attitudes and lack of forgiveness
that would ensue
could consign Mugabe to a far less comfortable fate: being
handed over to
the international court in The Hague, to answer for crimes
against
humanity.
The Zimbabwean people have spoken – and Mugabe has refused to
listen. Now,
under circumstances of extreme and dangerous pressure, they are
being asked
to raise their voice again. It is an occasion for the world to
stand with
Zimbabweans in what is for them both a moment of democracy and a
time of
trial.
Wilf Mbanga is founder, editor and publisher of
The Zimbabwean, an
independent newspaper based in England and circulated
widely in southern
Africa
SABC
April 10,
2008, 07:45
Zimbabwe's Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa says the
electoral commission
has accepted a Zanu-PF request for a recount of votes
in five parliamentary
constituencies. The ruling party is trying to overturn
the result of the
March 29 polls in which it lost control of parliament for
the first time
since independence.
Chinamasa says the commission has
rejected seven appeals and nine are
pending. The opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) has a two-seat
majority in Parliament. However a
breakaway faction of the party has won
another 10 seats and one has gone to
an independent candidate.
Meanwhile, youth militia - allegedly loyal to
Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe - are reportedly behind the forced
removal of around 60 farmers off
their land since the weekend. The Zimbabwe
Commercial Farmers Union says the
latest wave of farm grabs moved into high
gear on Monday and Tuesday as
groups of war veterans fanned out across four
provinces, surrounding farms
and ordering families to leave.
Zambia
steps in to help resolve crisis
Brian Smith - who has been farming for 27
years - has gone into hiding in
Harare after he and his family were kicked
off his land. Smith says most of
the farmers who were evicted had not even
voted in the polls.
The MDC's bid to build up pressure on Mugabe after
disputed polls are
bearing fruit as plans are unveiled for a weekend summit
to discuss the
escalating crisis. President of neighbouring Zambia Levy
Mwanawasa says he
will gather his peers for talks on Saturday aimed at
breaking the deadlock.
President Thabo Mbeki has confirmed that he will also
attend the summit.
The Nation
(Nairobi)
10 April 2008
Posted to the web 10 April
2008
Matirasa Muronda
Harare
Robert Mugabe was once revered and
idolised by his people, but now, he is
increasingly an object of ridicule
not only in his own country but
worldwide.
He is shunned for his
autocratic rule and crackdown on those who oppose is
rule.
Currently, Mr Mugabe is hopping from one reason to another
to continually
deny Zimbabweans the right to know the outcome of a
presidential poll held
12 days ago.
Mr Mugabe, who is contesting his
sixth election and has ruled Zimbabwe since
Independence from Britain in
1980, has alleged that the election results
were manipulated by Electoral
Commission officials and now wants both a
re-count and a
run-off.
Some political analysts have pointed out that what makes the
octogenarian
President's claims strange is that he has refused to declare
the basis for
his asking for a re-run while the commission has not released
the outcome of
the polls.
For instance, Zimbabweans would want to
know the percentages involved in the
dispute to also put into perspective,
the alleged rigged votes being
referred to in the State media.
Zanu
PF, this week, claimed that at more than 5,000 of President Mugabe's
votes
were tampered with, and so far, four Electoral Commission officers
have been
arrested for taking part in the alleged rigging.
Parliamentarians too,
have started making claims of rigging in a move
expected to complicate and
worsen an already exasperating situation.
On its part, the opposition MDC
claimed a landslide victory, which means
they got the over 51 per cent of
votes warranted by the country's
constitution for anyone to become
President, while Mr Mugabe is understood
to have managed something above 40
per cent.
At the moment is tense
The situation in the country at
the moment is tense with the electorate
getting more and more impatient
although not entirely surprised by Zanu PF's
unprecedented move.
But,
the security forces are not taking any chances, and have enforced an
unofficial curfew, starting at 10 pm until 6 am in residential suburbs, in
fear of an outbreak of violence.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai
has meanwhile, started seeking audience
with regional leaders as he appeals
for their support in solving the
Zimbabwean crisis. On Monday, the MDC
leader met with African National
Congress president Jacob Zuma in
Johannesburg, South Africa and he is
expected to go to Tanzania next, and
then Zambia on a similar mission. Mr
Zuma has urged Mr Mugabe to "respect
the will of the people" by releasing
the results "no matter the
outcome".
Meanwhile, Zanu PF has responded by unleashing its former
freedom fighters,
on the few remaining white-owned farms.
The "war
veterans", whose farm invasions started soon after the formation of
the MDC
in 1999 as punishment for the farmers' support of the opposition
party, have
since announced their intention to complete the takeover of the
farms, and
although police have warned against the invasions, these continue
unabated
in every corner of the country. "This is not an isolated incident,"
declared
war veterans leader Jabulani Sibanda on Tuesday. "We are taking
over every
single farm that still remains with the whites from now onwards."
In a
turn for the worse, complications surrounding the presidential results
have
fuelled the unprecedented increase in the prices of food stuffs, fuel,
transport and clothing.
In fact, prices continue to skyrocket by the
day, with the majority of the
people now no longer in a position to afford a
single, decent meal a day.
Political analysts have, however, said
Zimbabweans should brace for even
more bone-biting suffering as it is now
clear that with the two parties
dragging each other to courts, the election
saga might go on for weeks,
before any solid ruling is made, hence also
prolonging their anxiety and the
survival of the fittest economics currently
employed in the country.
While the majority of Zimbabweans are still
eager to vote in the event of a
run-off, political analysts have not ruled
out the possibility of
intimidation, torture and violence as a way of
punishing constituencies that
did not perform to Zanu PF's expectations in
the disputed polls.
Dr Farai Mhaka, a political analyst, said re-doing
the voting exercise is
going to cost the Government a fortune and further
worsen the plight of
Zimbabweans.
"One of the critical issues is that
the ruling party was defeated for the
first time ever, in an
election.
"They might be aware that even a run-off will not save them and
what they
want is to buy time and wind up their unfinished businesses for
just a few
weeks," Dr Mhaka said.
Jamaica Observer
Patrick
Wilmot
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Robert Mugabe began his
political life as a freedom fighter, a guerrilla
leader whose successful
struggle against the racists of the so-called
Rhodesia gave him the right to
be called the father of his nation. To
celebrate this momentous event, Bob
Marley sang at the independence of
Zimbabwe where he is still remembered
after 28 years. The qualities which
people most admired in Mugabe were his
intelligence, humility, and
asceticism.
In the brutal prisons of Ian
Smith, Mugabe gained several degrees by
correspondence courses, a feat
beyond the ability of most of his countrymen
and women outside. He dressed
modestly, ate the food of the people, and
lived in a house that did not
alienate the people with its gratuitous
luxury. He applied his intelligence
to organising his society so the people
who were deprived by the racist
inheritors of British colonialism could
receive education, health care, and
economic opportunities.
Twenty-eight years after Independence Mugabe is
not even a shadow of the man
he was in 1980. People all over Africa and the
diaspora, who once worshipped
his talents and modesty, now regard him with
contempt. He now lives in a
25-bedroom mansion on 44 acres in an expensive
suburb, which allegedly cost
£8 million. People who have been inside speak
of marble, granite, ornate
chandeliers, expensive furniture. His tailored
suits now make him look like
a playboy.
Mugabe's intelligence became
a liability when he started to believe that he
was the brightest man in
existence, without whom his country could not
function. Instead of using it
to make the lives of his people better, he
sent out tanks and cannon to
silence them. When his hungry people tried to
replace him, he rigged
elections as shamelessly as his counterparts in
Nigeria and Kenya. With his
complete disregard for human life he was even
more ruthless than Babangida,
Abacha, Obasanjo and Kibaki.
One of the virtues of intelligence is the
ability to analyse action in order
to assess its effectiveness in achieving
goals. When intelligence
degenerates into seeking enemies and rewarding
sycophants it becomes a
weapon against oneself.
The people of Zimbabwe
fought a war to liberate the land which had been
conquered by Europeans. But
when ZANU raised the issue of reform in the
Lancaster House talks, the
Americans and British said that land should not
be taken from whites and
given to blacks, but be bought at market prices if
the whites were willing.
Since the guerrillas had no money, Kissinger and
Thatcher promised to
provide funds.
The Anglo-Americans who had been the strongest opponents
of Mugabe, however,
broke their promise because they saw nothing wrong with
Europeans owning
most of the fertile land. They had supported Vorster and
Smith, thought
Apartheid brilliant, and thought Mandela and all the other
"communists"
should hang. Even worse, Mugabe did nothing to force the
Anglo-Americans to
fulfil their pledges.
For almost two decades the
people were deprived of the land which they had
fought to liberate. Mugabe
did not seize European-owned land until he was
politically cornered by
opponents who tried to articulate the needs of the
people. And when he did,
it was a disaster. Instead of resettling farmers on
the millions of hectares
of unused land, he seized working farms which were
the backbone of the
agricultural economy. And instead of giving the land to
people who could
work it, he gave it to family and cronies in politics,
business, the
military and security forces who abandoned it.
Economic mismanagement
meant that funds from the rich minerals of the
country were not invested in
education, health, roads, industry or public
housing. People had to queue
for bread in a land which once fed its
neighbours. Put perhaps nothing
exemplified Mugabe's failure more starkly
than the 100,000 per cent
inflation which forced poor Zimbabweans to queue
to buy food with millions
of dollars which weighed more.
Mugabe's condemnation of the
Anglo-Americans as the source of his problems
is so crude that it lacks
credibility. It is true that Britain created the
murderous colonial system
which made Europeans gods and Africans sub-humans
on their own continent.
But this did not prevent South Africans or even
Kenyans from letting some of
its people enjoy a better life. South African
leaders made errors but the
racists cannot snicker, as Ian Smith did, that
Mandela and Mbeki had
destroyed their country.
If Mugabe were as intelligent as he thinks he
is, he should accept the will
of the people and step down. But when an
intelligent man refuses to use his
brains, he's the biggest fool of
all.
Patrick Wilmot is based in London. He's a writer and commentator on
African
affairs for the BBC, Sky News, Al-Jazeera and CNN. He's a visiting
professor
at Ahmadu Bello and Jos Universities in Nigeria.
Dallas Morning News
Editorial:
12:00 AM
CDT on Thursday, April 10, 2008
If former South African leader Nelson
Mandela represents the best of
post-colonial Africa, surely Robert Mugabe,
the merciless despot ruling
neighboring Zimbabwe, is its worst.
The
dictator Mugabe, who has run Zimbabwe since taking power from the white
minority government in 1980, appears to have lost the recent election. Yet
there are widespread fears that Mr. Mugabe is trying to steal this election,
as he more or less stole the last one, in 2002.
Mr. Mugabe, now 84,
was once the future. Brilliant and well educated, he led
the guerrilla fight
against racist rule and became the new nation's leader.
Mr. Mugabe inherited
a nation rich in resources and an agricultural
showcase.
In no time,
Mr. Mugabe began practicing thuggish politics against his rivals
and changed
the laws to solidify one-man rule. He has ruthlessly suppressed
challengers,
denouncing opposition figures as lackeys of white colonialists.
When
citizens began to fall on hard times as a result of Mr. Mugabe's
misrule, he
blamed white farmers, expropriated the farms and redistributed
the land to
his cronies.
Now, Zimbabwe is one of the worst places in the world. The
World Health
Organization says the southern African nation has the world's
shortest life
expectancy. The economy is destroyed, with inflation running
at over 100,000
percent annually. Once the region's breadbasket, Zimbabwe
now depends on
international food aid to survive.
The United States
has an interest in African stability; the continent's
poverty, violence and
corruption makes it vulnerable to extremists, hence
the establishment last
year of the U.S. military's new African Command. But
there's not much we can
do for Zimbabwe.
Yet the nation's regional neighbors could help, as
opposed to their standing
by for years as Mr. Mugabe has bled his nation
dry, refusing to criticize
the hero of anti-colonial resistance. Tendai
Biti, a spokesman for the
democratic opposition in Zimbabwe, begged African
nations to intervene in
the current crisis, pleading, "Don't wait for dead
bodies on the streets of
Harare."
South Africa should lead regional
efforts to save the nation and its people
from the madman Mugabe. Zimbabwe's
continued suffering is southern Africa's
shame – and its peril.