nasdaq
HARARE (AFP)--A partial recount of votes from
Zimbabwe's March 29 general
election was delayed Saturday in a number of the
23 constituencies, AFP
correspondents reported.
The recounting was
due to have begun at 0600 GMT, but it hadn't yet gotten
underway nearly an
hour later in at least three areas.
Correspondents covering the recount
for the constituencies of Goromonzi West
and Zvimba North both said the
process had been delayed, while an official
also told AFP by phone that the
count for Gokwe-Kabuyuni had yet to begin.
There was no official
explanation for the delay and a Harare-based spokesman
for the Zimbabwe
electoral commission said: "We don't know what is happening
on the ground so
we cannot comment."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
04-19-080322ET
Yahoo News
by Godfrey
Marawanyika Fri Apr 18, 10:43 PM ET
HARARE (AFP) - Three weeks after
Zimbabwe staged a general election, a
partial recount was to begin on
Saturday in a move that could see President
Robert Mugabe's ruling party
regain control of parliament.
The electoral commission, which is
still to declare the outcome of the March
29 presidential election, was to
begin recounting in 23 constituencies from
0600 GMT after a last-ditch
opposition legal bid to block the process
failed.
The recounts are
being conducted following a string of complaints by
Mugabe's ZANU-PF party
of irregularities in the initial vote counting.
The Zimbabwe African
National Union - Patriotic Front lost in 21 of the 23
constituencies under
the microscope and will be hoping that a new count will
leave it back in
control of the 210-strong seat chamber.
The opposition Movement for
Democratic Change, which currently has 109 seats
against 97 for ZANU-PF, has
denounced the recount as a ploy to steal back
control of parliament and says
it won't accept the outcome.
"We as a party will not accept any recount
in respect of parliamentary
seats," said MDC secretary-general Tendai
Biti.
"We have no doubt on the insistence of a recount because ballot
boxes have
been stuffed. Those ballot boxes have become pregnant and
reproduced."
The MDC has long regarded the electoral commission, whose
leadership is
appointed by the government, as a partisan body despite its
nominal
independent status.
The party's leader Morgan Tsvangirai has
already proclaimed himself the
victor over Mugabe in the presidential poll,
convinced that he won enough
votes on March 29 to avoid the need for a
second round run-off.
The lack of results has not prevented ZANU-PF
meanwhile from declaring that
there will be a run-off and has endorsed
Mugabe as its candidate.
The 84-year-old president avoided any direct
mention of the election outcome
or whether he would stand in a run-off when
he delivered an address Friday
at celebrations to mark Zimbabwe's 28th
anniversary of independence from
Britain.
Instead Mugabe, who has
ruled uninterrupted since independence, devoted much
of his speech to
attacks on the former colonial power whom he accused of
bribing voters to
mark their ballots for the MDC.
"Through money as a weapon, (the British)
literally buy some of our people
to turn against their government, and
accept to be politically manipulated
in abandoning their rights," said
Mugabe. "We are being bought like sheep,
like livestock."
Tsvangirai
has warned that ZANU-PF is arming itself for a "war" against the
people in
the aftermath of the elections, pointing as evidence to a shipment
of
weapons from China destined for Zimbabwe.
A South African high court
judge on Friday refused permission for the
weapons to be transported across
the country to Zimbabwe. The ship later
left Durban for an unknown
destination, SAPA news agency reported.
New Zimbabwe
Last updated: 04/19/2008 11:16:10
A SOUTH African human
rights group says a Chinese ship carrying weapons
destined for Zimbabwe is
now on its way to neighboring Mozambique.
The Southern Africa Litigation
Center says the ship left South Africa on
Friday after a High Court ordered
that the cargo and the ship not be moved.
The ship had anchored just
outside Durban harbour after receiving permission
late Wednesday to dock.
The human rights group asked the court to intervene
to keep the arms from
being taken to politically troubled Zimbabwe.
The group says the vessel
was already sailing away when officials tried to
serve the order on the
ship.
China is one of Zimbabwe's main trade partners and allies.
Zimbabwe's ruling
party and opposition party are locked in a dispute over
the presidential
election, whose results are still unknown almost four weeks
on.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions says the ship needs to
return to
China, as South Africa can't be seen as helping weapons reach
Zimbabwe in a
time of "political dispute."
The Chinese vessel, An Yue
Jiang, anchored off the port of Durban, lifted
anchor between 6:00 pm (1600
GMT) and 7:00 pm (1700 GMT) and sailed out to
an unknown destination, Sapa
news agency reported, quoting several unnamed
sources.
The ship's
master, who earlier this week identified himself simply as
captain Sunaijun,
told Sapa by telephone late Friday: "I am awaiting orders
from my
owner."
He declined to answer further questions, the agency
said.
Durban port police Captain Ricky Bhikraj and Transnet spokesman,
John
Dludlu, declined to comment on the vessel, it also said.
Three
million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades
and more
than 3,000 mortar rounds and mortar tubes are among the cargo on
the Chinese
ship, according to copies of the inventory published by a South
African
newspaper.
Globe and Mail, Canada
STEPHANIE NOLEN
From Saturday's Globe and
Mail
April 19, 2008 at 1:31 AM EDT
JOHANNESBURG — Zimbabwe's
opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, believes
that if he returns to his
country now, he will face imprisonment and
possible attack, and thus
undermine his movement's hope of taking office.
"Do you want a dead
hero?" he told The Globe yesterday.
Mr. Tsvangirai left Zimbabwe on April
8, 10 days after an election he is
widely believed to have won, although the
government's electoral commission
has yet to release the results, three
weeks later.
The leader of the Movement for Democratic Change has spent
the time since
then shuttling between southern African capitals. But as
Harare intensifies
its crackdown on MDC supporters in Zimbabwe, with more
than 175 people
hospitalized for beatings at the hands of police and
militias, Mr.
Tsvangirai is facing increasing calls to come
home.
"It's like a father, when the father is away, children always ask,
'Where is
the father,' but father may make an assessment that it is not
opportune at
that particular time to do certain things," he said.
"I'm
mobilizing international support, I'm being effective in making sure
that
the issue of Zimbabwe remains on the international radar. … It is no
use
going back to Zimbabwe and become captive. Then you are not effective.
What
can you do?"
Mr. Tsvangirai has been imprisoned repeatedly by the
government of Robert
Mugabe and was savagely beaten by police last
year.
"The minute we go home, they'll arrest us, they'll take our
passports and
that will be it," said George Tshibotshiwa, a senior aide to
Mr. Tsvangirai,
speaking in the drab Johannesburg office that has become the
leadership's
temporary headquarters.
On Thursday, Zimbabwe's Justice
Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, said the
government had found documents showing
Mr. Tsvangirai was committing
"treason," plotting with former colonial power
Britain to topple the
government, and would face the "obvious
consequences."
In 2002, Mr. Tsvangirai was charged with treason and had
the threat of the
death penalty hanging over him for two years before he was
acquitted.
Mr. Tsvangirai has said repeatedly over the past week that he
would return
imminently to Zimbabwe, and made that pledge again yesterday,
saying it is a
matter "of days, not weeks," but that before he goes to
Harare and possible
arrest, he must continue the shuttle diplomacy that he
now views as the
strategy most likely to unseat Mr. Mugabe, who has ruled
Zimbabwe since its
independence in 1980.
"We want to cut the
umbilical cord of Mugabe with Africa," he said. "I am
certain that those who
will … remain with Mugabe will be those rogue
states."
He said he was
making "big progress" on this task, and taking heart from an
emerging split
in the Southern African Development Community, the top
regional body. For
SADC, "even to disagree is progress," he said.
SADC members have long
cited the principle of state sovereignty and refused
to speak out against
Mr. Mugabe. Regional leaders delegated dealing with the
crisis in Zimbabwe
to South African President Thabo Mbeki, who favoured a
policy of "quiet
diplomacy" that has produced no visible change over five
years of
mediation.
Zimbabwe's once-vibrant economy is shattered, with inflation
running higher
than 168,000 per cent. The country is critically short of
food, fuel and
basic medicines, and some four million refugees have fled
over its borders
to neighbouring states.
At an emergency SADC summit
last weekend, Mr. Tsvangirai said, regional
leaders were evenly split over
continuing to support Mr. Mugabe; he has now
asked the Zambian President to
take over mediation, saying Zimbabweans "do
not believe [Mr. Mbeki] is an
honest broker."
Here in South Africa, Mr. Tsvangirai has clearly made
inroads with the
governing African National Congress, the new leadership of
which has come
out in favour of "crisis talks" with the parties in Zimbabwe
and has
strong-armed Mr. Mbeki into dropping his quiet-diplomacy
strategy.
Today, Zimbabwe's electoral commission is set to hold a recount
of the
parliamentary vote in 23 constituencies.
Mr. Tshibotshiwa said
he was "quite sure" that the recount would give
ZANU-PF back at least the 16
seats it would need to retake a parliamentary
majority.
Last week,
soldiers moved into the electoral centre and removed the ballot
boxes, and
the opposition has had no information on their whereabouts, nor
have any
opposition or independent observers been given information about
how to
witness the recount.
At the end of his afternoon yesterday, Mr.
Tsvangirai turned from two
foreign journalists to a radio interview in
chiShona, broadcast back home.
While he assured Zimbabweans that he was
"with you in your struggle," an
assistant showed in a salesman carrying 10
boxes of size 43 black leather
dress shoes. Mr. Tsvangirai is spending so
much time on his feet, Mr.
Tshibotshiwa said, that he needs something with a
softer sole.
ABC radio, Australia
This is a transcript from AM. The program is
broadcast around Australia at
08:00 on ABC Local
Radio.
.
AM - Saturday, 19 April , 2008 08:18:00
Reporter:
David Weber
BRENDAN TREMBATH: Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has
used an
Independence Day speech to accuse the country's former colonial
ruler of
interfering in Zimbabwe's affairs.
There are still no
official results from Zimbabwe's Presidential
election but it is widely
thought the main opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai won the
poll.
Thousands of Mr Mugabe's supporters gathered in Harare to
hear him
accuse Britain of trying to steal Zimbabwe again.
ROBERT MUGABE: Where as yesterday they relied on brut force to
subjugate our
people and plunder our resources, today they have perfected
their tactics to
more subtle forms, as they throw money as a weapon,
literately buy some of
our people to turn against their government.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: The
Commercial Farmers' Union in Zimbabwe says it
fears the nation could slide
into civil violence if there's not
international intervention.
David Weber reports.
DAVID WEBER: The President of the Commercial
Union of Farmers says
more than 130 properties around the country have been
affected by invasions.
The President Trevor Gifford says most
farmers have now been able to
get back to their land, but there are some
places where the situation is
still too tense.
Speaking from
Harare, Mr Gifford says the violence against farm
workers has been
horrific.
TREVOR GIFFORD: The farm workers have been really bearing
the brunt of
the situation. They've been accused of voting the wrong way in
the
elections, they've been beaten thoroughly.
In my own case,
my farm which is situated five hours drive from
Harare, my labourers were
severely assaulted for 12 hours and they are in a
bad way at this
time.
DAVID WEBER: Mr Gifford says police have been trying to
reverse farm
invasions.
But he says that violent intimidation
flares up again whenever police
leave an area.
Trevor Gifford
says he fears the worst is yet to come.
TREVOR GIFFORD: There
continues to be reinvasions and some of our
members have experienced
reinvasions everyday since the fifth of April. So
the situation remains
incredibly tense.
We're also getting reports in that army have set
up camps within the
farming areas and they are calling the labour and those
that have been
resettled over the last eight years in, and pretty much
threatening them
with their lives.
DAVID WEBER: Mr Gifford says
it's heartening that people in Zimbabwe
are now speaking openly against the
Government.
But he says there needs to be more action by leaders in
the region.
TREVOR GIFFORD: I just hope and pray that sense will
prevail and these
countries will realise that whether they like it or not,
they need to deal
with this Zimbabwe situation sooner than later before it
does turn in to a
Rwanda-Burundi type situation.
DAVID WEBER:
You think it could be that bad, it could become that bad?
TREVOR
GIFFORD: Look there's never say never. But really the majority
of the
population are very disgruntled.
If we don't deal with the
situation, or if Africa doesn't deal with
the situation it is going to have
a huge impact on the ability for South
Africa to host the 2010 Soccer World
Cup. FIFA representatives need to take
a serious look at the hosting of that
World Cup.
BRENDAN TREMBATH: The President of the Commercial Union
of Farmers,
Trevor Gifford ending David Weber's report.
OpEdNews
by
Michael Roberts
http://www.opednews.com
PART
I
Zimbabwe: Africa’s Political Basket Case
Mugabe’s
Failed State
The Stench Of Vote Rigging Is Everywhere But Mugabe Appears
Unperturbed
An Essay By Michael D. Roberts
Maybe Zimbabwe will go
the way of Kenya and chalk up a new African nation in
crisis and chaos. And
if sketchy reports coming from Harare are anything to
go by it looks a
vintage Robert Mugabe all over again. There are reports of
controlled,
state-sponsored violence in the countryside and other
provocations around
the country mainly by Mugabe’s loyal ZANU-PF members who
have everything to
lose if the 85-year old president should have to demit
office.
In
fact, this election is by far the most crucial in Mugabe’s political
career
since any loss of power will undoubtedly provoke a wave of political
revenge
by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) no matter
what it
says to the contrary. And Mr. Mugabe’s cronies, close inner circle,
and
members of his ruling ZANU-PF know that their very class interests are
at
stake and that the octogenarian president’s retention of political power
is
in their best interests.
Until recently, Mr. Mugabe had always been able
to stifle political
opposition. His ZANU-PF party had still dominated what
is virtually a one
party state occupying 147 out of the country's 150
parliamentary seats. But
growing discontent over the country's failing
economy with inflation and
unemployment soaring to record levels are
starting to threaten his
authority.
Already the ZANU-PF must be
having some anxious moments since the writing
was on the proverbial
political wall when it lost the parliamentary
elections to the MDC. That
caused Mr. Mugabe to convene a hasty session of
the party’s Politburo who
spun the yarn about a pending recount. When that
did not work Mr. Mugabe had
his henchmen arrest about seven members of
Zimbabwe’s Election Commission
accusing them of rigging the elections for
the MDC.
Meanwhile, the
wily Mr. Mugabe fell back on a tried and tested tactic: white
farms and
black destituteness. To date, some 60 white farmers and at least
two black
farmers are said to have been evicted from their land in this new
round of
tensions. Four foreign journalists have also been arrested,
including New
York Times correspondent Barry Bearak.
The Zimbabwean military has
released the names of 200 high-ranking officers
who it said were leading
gangs of thugs in the guise of war veterans in
attacks on government
opponents. Unemployed youths are reportedly being
recruited to join
government-backed gangs. Correspondingly, armed gangs are
said to be hunting
down opponents of ZANU-PF, burning houses and beating
people.
We have
seen these political chess moves and shenanigans before – when
President
Mugabe wants to cling to power at all costs. While all this is
going on the
Zimbabwean Electoral Commission is yet to release the vote
count for the
presidential elections even as ZANU-PF is saying that Mr.
Mugabe is ready
for a new run off.
Nobody in the world should be surprised by Mr.
Mugabe’s antics. After all
the rigging of elections in Zimbabwe are now
routine and standard operating
procedures for ZANU-PF. For example, in 2002
amid great fanfare and lofty
talk about transparency and fairness some of
the MDC’s supporters were
abducted, beaten, intimidated, threatened and
murdered. Anybody who dared to
even suggest that Mr. Mugabe was literally
getting away with murder was
arrested.
Then like now electoral roles
and registers were padded with phantom names
and the ZEC kept changing and
making up the rules at it went along to
suppress voter turnout in areas
where the MDC was perceived as too strong
and popular. Local journalists
were kidnapped and killed for writing
articles critical of the electoral
process and of the conduct of the
president. Government food aid to
drought-stricken areas was used as a means
of buying votes.
It is the
same playbook that Mr. Mugabe uses today and now like then the
situation is
tense and thousands of people are fleeing the country for fear
of reprisals
by the security forces that remain fanatically loyal to the
president and
ZANU-PF.
Perhaps the only page left in his playbook that’s not been used
yet is the
internal ethnic cleansing that he used in May 2005. Back then Mr.
Mugabe
ordered the demolition of shanty towns in “Operation Murambatsvina,”
which
means “clear out the trash” in Shona. Poor residents were loaded onto
trucks
and driven into the countryside where they were dumped without any
means of
livelihood or even basic sanitation.
An estimated
700,000 people, or six percent of the population, were
displaced in this
operation. In total, 2.4 million people were affected
directly or
indirectly. It was an attempt to crush opposition among the
urban working
class. When the white farms were occupied, the rural workers
they employed
were treated with similar brutality.
But perhaps he’s already setting the
stage for a new “operation.” Last
weekend he publicly stated: “The land is
ours, it must not be allowed to
slip back into the hands of the whites.” By
revisiting and repackaging an
old bogeyman Mr. Mugabe is deflecting concerns
that the results of the
presidential elections have not yet been made public
and his countrymen are
in a state of political limbo with the underpinning
for real violence
present and accounted for.
Still, this old
political canard will not work this time. That is because
Mugabe can no
longer posit himself as Zimbabwe’s liberator as he did, say,
10 years ago.
He’s caught with his pants down this time since his record
speaks volumes
about the kind of liberation that he practices. And blaming
the west for all
of his country’s ills certainly does not hold water
anymore. Indeed, his
strident attacks and angry rhetoric against Britain and
the United States is
more for domestic consumption rather than a genuine
anti-west
position.
First of all Mugabe came to power in 1980 with the express
backing and
support of both Britain and the United States who saw him as the
best choice
over Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) that
was aligned
with the then Soviet Union. Remember also that Mugabe had split
with ZAPU
and joined ZANU in 1963. Given the choice between ZANU and Robert
Mugabe and
ZAPU and Joshua Nkoma the former colonial power decided to go
with Mugabe
even though he publicly stated that he was Maoist and inspired
by the
Chinese revolution.
Born in 1924, Robert Gabriel Mugabe was
educated in missionary schools and
received the first of his seven degrees
from South Africa's Fort Hare
University. Returning to Rhodesia in 1960 he
joined Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe
African People's Union (ZAPU) but left three
years later to form the rival
Zimbabwe African National Union
(ZANU).
Jailed without trial for 10 years he left Rhodesia for
neighboring
Mozambique in 1974 and led the largest of the guerrilla forces
fighting a
protracted and bloody war against the Ian Smith government.
After months of
negotiations the 1979 Lancaster House agreement set the seal
on a Rhodesian
peace deal and Mr. Mugabe returned home to a rapturous
welcome from Black
supporters.
He initially built a coalition
government with Mr. Nkomo, whose ZAPU forces
had also fought the Smith
government, but the discovery of a large arms
cache at ZAPU-owned houses led
to Mr. Nkomo's dismissal from government. A
brutal crackdown on ZAPU
supporters followed, leading many commentators to
compare Mr. Mugabe's own
approach to political opposition with that during
the time of white rule.
The collapse of the coalition allowed Mr. Mugabe to
strengthen his hold on
power.
The political conundrum for both the British and American
governments was
that the then-British colony of Rhodesia had unilaterally
declared
independence in 1965 under a white racist regime, which refused to
grant
even the most modest political rights to the majority of the Black
population. A violent insurgency developed, leading US Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger to fear that the impasse in Rhodesia would allow the Soviet
Union to gain ground in southern Africa and threaten strategic American
interests. He put pressure on Britain to reach an accord. Then end result
was the Lancaster House agreement that helped put Mugabe in
power.
--------
MICHAEL D. ROBERTS is a top Political Strategist
and Business, Management
and Communications Specialists in New York City’s
Black community. He is an
experienced writer whose specialty is
socio-political and economic analysis
and local community relations. He has
covered the United Nations, the
Caribbean and Africa in a career that spans
over 32 years in journalism. As
Editor of New York CARIB NEWS, a position
that he’s held since 1990, he is
in a unique position to have his hands on
the pulse of the over 800,000
Caribbean-American community in Brooklyn, and
the over 2.5 million members
resident in the wider New York State
community.
OpEdNews
by Michael
Roberts
http://www.opednews.com
PART
II
Mugabe’s Political Shenanigans Cast Doubts On Electoral
Fairness
Presidency By Theft
President-For-Life Syndrome
Forces Mugabe To Cling To Power
An Essay By Michael D. Roberts
As
the results of Zimbabwe’s elections continues to be what is now a closely
guarded state secret, perhaps known only to President Robert Mugabe, the
international community for all its handwringing and strident calls for
transparency and fairness; for all of its condemnation of Africa’s last
reigning political strongman, is powerless to stop what is now an obscene
case of “Presidency by Theft.”
It now appears that Mr. Mugabe is
hell-bent on retaining the title of
“President-for-Life” even as everything
is crashing down around him. For one
thing he is impervious to the calls of
regional African leaders, the
international community, and his own
Zimbabweans. For another the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
has now become irrelevant to Mr. Mugabe’s
nefarious political plans. The
latest move came as he and his ruling ZANU-PF
party declared that the MDC
has committed treason – meaning in Mugabespeak,
that it is now ineligible to
hold political office and is, for all intents
and purposes, now outlawed by
the gangster regime in Harare.
Now a very dark cloud hangs over Zimbabwe
causing the national mood to go
from cautious optimism when record number of
Zimbabweans cast their votes on
March 29, to depressed resignation that the
more things change the more they
remain the same. The one clear signal in
this sordid political mess is that
Mr. Mugabe is intent on reversing the
popular outcome or the elections by
foul means. In a shameless display of
chauvinistic bombast Mr. Mugabe has
declared that his ZANU-PF will challenge
21 parliamentary results and will
commence recounting the presidential vote
in 23 constituencies – all without
releasing the results.
This
political charade is an embarrassment to both Zimbabwe and Africa. Mr.
Mugabe’s goon squads have also spirited away to a secret location the
members of the Electoral Commission to prevent them from being accessible to
opposition party activists. With a deliberate mechanism in place to
obliterate any transparency or appearance of transparency, critics of the
regime say that it’s rigging time again and that ballot box stuffing with
pro-Mugabe votes will be the outcome.
This latest round of political
shenanigans has clearly demonstrated to the
world that Mr. Mugabe believes
that he has a divine right to rule Zimbabwe
for life even as his 28-years of
dictatorial and despotic rule has
devastated the socio-economic fabric of
his country and millions of his
people now face starvation on a day to day
basis. In fact, Mr. Mugabe has
betrayed the trust of his own people by his
reckless and callous approach to
politics and his megalomaniacal behavior
that borders on unadulterated
lunacy.
It has now become painfully
obvious even to a jaded dimwit that Mr. Mugabe
has absolutely no intention
of obeying or honoring the popular wish or will
of the Zimbabwean people at
this time. At 85-years old and set in his ways
he’s comfortable with the
fact that those who owe him – the big shots in the
army, police, state party
and business – will never desert him because it is
in their continued
interests to keep him in power. While millions of
Zimbabweans are starving
and cry out for relief Mr. Mugabe’s small, rich and
powerful cronies help
him hijack the elections and pretend that everything
is all
right.
Moreover, his dictatorial quixotic rule is being cuddled by the
leaders of
the 14-year old Southern African Development Community (SADC) led
by South
African President Thabo Mbeki whose impotent, wishy-washy quiet
diplomacy
has not only failed miserably but has largely been ignored by Mr.
Mugabe and
the ZANU-PF. And yet it is mindboggling in its stupidity and
illogic that
even as this diplomacy is going nowhere fast South Africa and
other member
states of the SADC are taking in thousands of fleeing
Zimbabweans on a daily
basis that threatens to roll out a major humanitarian
crisis and strain the
social safety nets in these countries.
Mr.
Mugabe has betrayed the trust and confidence of all Zimbabweans. But
this is
not new and all one has to do is revisit his history and record and
you will
discover that “Good Ole Bob” as his former colonial patrons called
him
before they fell out was and is no revolutionary but a conceited,
arrogant
power-hungry tyrant.
For example, Mr. Mugabe always boasts about his
“Zimbabwean revolution,” but
in reality the institutions of the old
Rhodesian state were largely
preserved and adopted by the new regime under
his control. *”Mugabe’s
methods were as brutal then as they are now. The
only difference is that
Britain and the US did not object to his attacks on
ZAPU led by his
arch-rival Joshua Nkoma.
Nkomo’s social base was
mostly among the Matabele. In 1982, Mugabe launched
“Operation
Gukurahundi”—sweep away the chaff—in Matabeleland. There were
beatings,
murders, arson, rapes and public executions. Famine relief was
blocked. An
estimated 20,000 civilians died before Mugabe declared an
amnesty in 1987,
which led up to the merger of the two parties to form
ZANU-PF (Popular
Front-the previous electoral name for ZAPU.)
Mugabe’s anti-imperialist
rhetoric was feverish as he dealt with the
internal opposition to his
regime. But the white farmers had nothing to
fear. Land reform proceeded at
a glacial pace. By 1998, only 70,000 families
had been resettled. Most of
them received poor-quality, drought-prone land.
White farmers continued to
own 40 percent of the land and two thirds of the
best agricultural land.
Mugabe’s regime has presided over massive inequality
in Zimbabwe since it
came to power. A new ruling elite emerged under his
patronage, like
millionaire businessman Philip Chiyangwa, who boasted, “I am
rich because I
belong to ZANU-PF.” [*WSW article “Zimbabwe: Mugabe
government responds to
mass opposition with repression” By Ann Talbot, 11
April 2008]
In
fact, while the African political leadership in 1980 was talking about
peace
and development after a particularly brutal guerilla war in Zimbabwe
Mr.
Mugabe had other plans. Politically cunning and self-opinionated Mr.
Mugabe
was and is something of a political enigma from the start of his
career as a
guerilla leader.
Raised and educated as a Roman-Catholic Mr. Mugabe
became a committed
Marxist during the guerrilla war against the Rhodesian
Front government of
Ian Smith. Taking power on a wave of popular support his
early political
promises of reconciliation and democracy were later
overtaken by a strong
authoritarian streak and a deep distrust of
opposition.
Born in 1924, Robert Gabriel Mugabe was educated in
missionary schools and
received the first of his seven degrees from South
Africa's Fort Hare
University. Returning to Rhodesia in 1960 he joined
Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe
African People's Union (ZAPU) but left three years
later to form the rival
Zimbabwe African National Union
(ZANU).
Jailed without trial for 10 years he left Rhodesia for
neighboring
Mozambique in 1974 and led the largest of the guerrilla forces
fighting a
protracted and bloody war against the Smith government. After
months of
negotiations the 1979 Lancaster House agreement set the seal on a
Rhodesian
peace deal and Mr. Mugabe returned home to a rapturous welcome
from black
supporters.
He initially built a coalition government with
Mr. Nkomo, whose ZAPU forces
had also fought the Smith government, but the
discovery of a large arms
cache at ZAPU-owned houses led to Mr. Nkomo's
dismissal from government. In
recent years Mr. Mugabe has become an
increasingly outspoken nationalist,
lashing out at the 75,000 white
Zimbabweans and their alleged foreign
backers for his country's economic
collapse. Mr. Mugabe has made much of
his devout Christianity, but his
marriage to a former private secretary in
1996 - 41 years his junior and
with whom he already fathered two children -
raised more than a few
eyebrows.
At the same time he has pursued what he regards as a deeply
moral campaign
against homosexuality making "unnatural sex acts" illegal
with a penalty of
up to 10 years in prison.
So what is the prognosis
about Zimbabwe’s future and the way forward?
For starters the theft of
the elections will be most obvious to the
international and African
communities. But Mr. Mugabe and his cronies in
power could care less what
the world thinks since the country’s credibility
has already been shattered
by Mr. Mugabe’s antics. Next, Zimbabwe’s ruling
elite will do everything to
keep their man in power since they have amassed
their ill-gotten gains under
his rule. Most of their riches and landholdings
are in Zimbabwe so they
cannot just simply pack up and move out; they are
trapped in Zimbabwe
whether they like it or not so keeping Mr. Mugabe in
power is in their
immediate and future interests.
The alternative is simply to wait a bit
more. Already social issues are
making the ability of Mr. Mugabe and his
government impossible to rule. This
inability of the ruling class to rule is
the result of a social dynamic that
Mr. Mugabe cannot control. One such
dynamic is a runaway inflation that is
pegged to reach about 500,000% in
June this year. This will have an enormous
negative social impact – one that
could cause a wave of public mass unrest
that can precipitate the end of the
Mugabe Era.
This impossibility of normal life across the board that will
be accompanied
by high interest rates, higher food prices and other factors
that Mr. Mugabe
cannot manipulate but will bring with them increased
suffering for ordinary
Zimbabweans. But perhaps this will be the final straw
that breaks the camel’s
back and allow ordinary Zimbabweans to do
extraordinary things like united
across all tribal, ethnic and social lines
and kick Mr. Mugabe
unceremoniously from office.
Still, there is one
inherent danger in this scenario: that the social and
political fabric
already weakened by the economic situation can degenerate
into such
lawlessness that Zimbabwe progresses negatively into a new version
of
Somalia with warlords and all. There is no easy way forward for Zimbabwe
I’m
afraid.
----------
MICHAEL D. ROBERTS is a top Political
Strategist and Business, Management
and Communications Specialists in New
York City’s Black community. He is an
experienced writer whose specialty is
socio-political and economic analysis
and local community relations. He has
covered the United Nations, the
Caribbean and Africa in a career that spans
over 32 years in journalism. As
Editor of New York CARIB NEWS, a position
that he’s held since 1990, he is
in a unique position to have his hands on
the pulse of the over 800,000
Caribbean-American community in Brooklyn, and
the over 2.5 million members
resident in the wider New York State
community.
Washington Post
Washington
Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 19, 2008; Page A08
JOHANNESBURG,
April 18 -- For two tantalizing days, Zimbabwe's opposition
leader, Morgan
Tsvangirai, believed he was on the verge of becoming
president. Results
posted publicly after the March 29 vote clearly favored
him. The ruling
party was visibly split. And a top cabinet official for
President Robert
Mugabe had come forward, seeking negotiations for a smooth
transition.
Then, after an initial round of secret talks just days
after the election,
an electrifying piece of news filtered back to
Tsvangirai through his
representatives: A cabinet minister told them that
Mugabe had accepted
defeat.
Tsvangirai recounted this moment with a
hint of despair in an interview with
The Washington Post and Toronto's Globe
and Mail newspaper in a Johannesburg
suburb to which he fled soon after the
election. He said he was confident
that Mugabe, 84, who has ruled Zimbabwe
since its founding in 1980, was
ready to step aside, that a nation with
chronic food shortages, the world's
worst inflation and a devastating flight
of talent was poised for a
turnaround.
The main demand from the
ruling party side was amnesty for Mugabe for past
misdeeds and modest
representation for his party in a transitional
government, Tsvangirai said.
There was also a request that Mugabe be allowed
to maintain a powerless
figurehead position within the government, but the
opposition refused, said
Tsvangirai's spokesman, George Tshibotshiwa.
"The parameters were that we
had won the election, that we would
incorporate" Mugabe's party in the
government, Tsvangirai said of the
discussions. "But it would be by our own
choice. And that Mugabe can exit
honorably, but he has to concede
defeat."
But what came next was not a public concession by Mugabe but a
suddenly
fierce determination to fight back.
The cabinet member,
Labor Minister Nicholas Goche, mysteriously failed to
appear for a third day
of scheduled talks, Tsvangirai said. Soon after,
police, soldiers and youth
militias deployed; opposition activists were
arrested, beaten and tortured
by the dozens. A close-knit group of military
and security officials,
according to many sources, took day-to-day control
of much of the
government, including preparations for a runoff election that
Mugabe's party
abruptly said was necessary -- even though initial election
results had not
been announced.
"We knew that we were talking to moderates within"
Mugabe's party, said
Jameson Timba, one of Tsvangirai's two lead envoys,
speaking from Harare,
the capital of Zimbabwe. "So when the talks did not
proceed, we knew that
the hawks, the hard-liners, had taken
over."
Speaking in a drab office park here, in a small, glass-walled
conference
room with little more than a table, some chairs and a water
cooler,
Tsvangirai said he plans to return to Zimbabwe in several days but
expressed
concern about what awaits him there.
"Do you want a dead
hero?" said Tsvangirai, a former union leader.
As the political crisis
approaches the three-week mark, it has settled into
a grim stalemate.
Mugabe's party, after initially acknowledging that it had
lost control of
parliament and got fewer votes for president as well, has
taken control of
the electoral mechanisms. Police have arrested election
officials, and the
ruling party has challenged results in swing districts
and has halted the
official release of the presidential results, even though
the totals for
individual precincts have been posted across the country
since the day after
the vote.
Goche did not answer numerous telephone calls Friday
night.
Tsvangirai's account, though impossible to entirely verify, fits
roughly
with descriptions offered over the past three weeks by numerous
other
sources, including some within the ruling party, the opposition and
the
military.
Those other interviews, most of which were conducted on
the condition of
anonymity, made clear that Mugabe acknowledged his loss to
several members
of his inner circle and that a significant faction urged him
to step down.
The decisive resistance to that idea came from the nation's
highest military
and security leaders, who refused to support a government
led by Tsvangirai,
who had no role in the guerrilla war that led to the fall
of the white
supremacist government of Rhodesia.
Tsvangirai and his
Movement for Democratic Change have repeatedly claimed
victory in the
election but have offered no plausible plan for taking power.
A general
strike flopped Tuesday. Unprecedented diplomatic efforts,
including an
emergency summit among southern African regional leaders last
weekend, have
failed so totally that Tsvangirai has called for South African
President
Thabo Mbeki, the region's traditional heavyweight, to be removed
from his
lead role in resolving the standoff.
Zimbabwe's meltdown is having
political consequences across southern Africa.
Mbeki's African National
Congress (ANC) has become so frustrated with his
deferential approach to
Mugabe that party leaders have publicly broken from
their long-standing
policy of "quiet diplomacy" and are attempting to
organize their own
negotiations directly with Zimbabwe's two major political
parties.
The ANC's treasurer general, Mathews Phosa, in an interview
Friday, called
Mugabe "an embarrassment." About Mbeki, Phosa was nearly as
blunt, saying
"Mbeki's one of our cadres," a term that refers to party foot
soldiers who
take orders from the ANC leadership. "He must listen to
us."
The long-unified Southern African Development Community has split
sharply
over how to manage Mugabe's flaunting of the democratic principles
the group
espouses. Zambia, whose President Levy Mwanawasa heads the group,
reportedly
has pushed for a hard line against Mugabe, with the support of
Botswana and
Malawi. Mozambique, Angola and South Africa have resisted,
according to
accounts of an emergency meeting last weekend.
For the
southern African region accustomed to showing a unified face,
Tsvangirai
said with a laugh, "to even disagree is progress."
Yet he spoke harshly
of Mbeki's role.
"Our people are being brutalized at the moment. Not a
word of condemnation,"
Tsvangirai said. "How does he hope that our people
will feel? . . . We're
facing an extraordinary situation here, and he is
keeping quiet."
Tsvangirai increasingly has focused on wooing the leaders
of other nations
and South African officials other than Mbeki. One of
Tsvangirai's first
meetings in South Africa was with Jacob Zuma, the bitter
rival of Mbeki who
ousted him as party leader in December.
In a sign
of the growing political resistance to Mugabe in South Africa,
where he long
was regarded among the foremost heroes of anti-colonial
liberation, union
workers in the port city of Durban refused this week to
unload a shipment of
ammunition and mortars sent to the military from a
Chinese company,
according to news reports.
After the interview, Tsvangirai spoke with a
radio station broadcasting into
Zimbabwe.
Then, he attended to one of
the many mundane matters more easily resolved in
South Africa than in
Zimbabwe. He welcomed a salesman carrying an armload of
shoes into the
conference room. Tsvangirai tried on several, then picked a
new black
leather pair for his eventual return home.
Globe and Mail, Canada
STEPHANIE NOLEN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
April 19,
2008 at 1:22 AM EDT
JOHANNESBURG — For two fleeting days, Morgan
Tsvangirai applied himself to
the task of being
presidential.
Zimbabwe held a national election on March 29, a Saturday.
And by Monday,
his Movement for Democratic Change knew it had won the vote,
as its
candidates phoned in posted results from across the country. Mr.
Tsvangirai,
beaming and confident in a sharp blue suit, addressed a packed
press
conference, met with diplomats, began to plan his
cabinet.
Someone else knew the MDC had won: President Robert Mugabe, who
has ruled
Zimbabwe for 28 years. That Monday, the President sent an
emissary, a
prominent Harare businessman, to say he wanted to make a deal
about ceding
power, the opposition leader said in an interview yesterday,
providing a
detailed and candid description of the heady days after the
vote.
“[He said] they had been discussing with Mugabe and they had
persuaded,
advised him, to concede defeat and seek a negotiated
accommodation for some
of his lieutenants.”
So Mr. Tsvangirai tasked
two senior MDC staffers to negotiate with Mr.
Mugabe's ZANU-PF party,
represented by Labour Minister Nicholas Goche. Right
away, the men held a
first meeting at a Harare hotel. Mr. Goche left to
spend Monday talking to
others in the cabinet and security forces.
He met again the next day with
the MDC team, Mr. Tsvangirai said, and they
discussed “an inclusive
government.” Mr. Goche said ZANU-PF wanted a
significant role for Mr. Mugabe
– as ceremonial president, perhaps, with Mr.
Tsvangirai to be prime
minister.
The opposition, elated with its victory, rejected that idea:
There would be
no place for Mr. Mugabe. But they were prepared to offer him
a way “to exit
honourably,” Mr. Tsvangirai said. ZANU-PF also wanted a place
for some of
its senior people in the government; the MDC was
amenable.
That meeting, on Tuesday, was the last.
It was, of
course, April Fool's Day.
The next day, Mr. Goche and his ZANU-PF aides
did not show up for the
planned talks. They offered excuses through the next
few hours, said George
Tshibotshiwa, a top aide to Mr.
Tsvangirai.
And by that evening, truckloads of riot police began to move
in to poor
urban areas that are bastions of support for the opposition. The
next day,
police raided democracy organizations that had supported the MDC
and
independent electoral observers.
On Friday, Mr. Mugabe met with
his politburo, and then sent out his
intelligence chief to tell journalists
that “the Old Man is raring to go,”
that Mr. Mugabe would contest a runoff
election and the party would “make
sure” he won a resounding victory. By
Sunday, senior military leaders had
taken over key day-to-day operations of
the country.
And, Mr. Tshibotshiwa said, the MDC was left with the grim
sense that the
negotiations had been a stalling tactic, a diversion intended
to distract
the opposition while the regime battened down its
hatches.
“There was no sincerity on their part,” he said.
Mr.
Tsvangirai seemed at once dismayed at the idea his party had been played
(“If it was a game, we didn't think that it was a game”) and not remotely
surprised, “not after 10 years of dealing with these people.” While Mr.
Mugabe's family and some close colleagues were urgently trying to persuade
him to step down, and so might have been genuine in their initial offer of
talks, the military never was, he said.
Mr. Tsvangirai, a labour
union leader, is a burly man. Sitting in a cramped
Johannesburg office
yesterday, dressed in another presidential blue suit and
silk tie, he had an
air of coiled frustration and despair. He seemed almost
maddened by the
knowledge that he has legitimately won an election, against
huge odds, and
yet will be denied the prize for which he has suffered
enormously because
Mr. Mugabe is more wily, more obstinate, and will not be
forced from
office.
While it is impossible to confirm Mr. Tsvangirai's account of
events in the
days after the election, it meshes with details provided to
The Globe and
Mail recently by others, including some of Mr. Mugabe's
closest advisers and
military leaders.
“We knew that we were talking
to moderates [in ZANU-PF],” said Jameson
Timba, one of the two envoys Mr.
Tsvangirai sent into negotiations, in an
interview in Harare last
night.
“So when the talks did not proceed, we knew that the hawks, the
hard-liners,
had taken over.”
Mr. Goche did not answer numerous phone
calls yesterday.
Now, the MDC is left with the knowledge that most
independent observers
believe they won the poll, although the party is
almost impossibly far away
from actually taking office.
Several
times, he returned to a description of those first conversations
with Mr.
Mugabe's men. “They said, ‘You have won, we concede that you have
won, but
what we would like is an accommodation of some of the people in
ZANU-PF so
that we can all contribute to the smooth transition,' ” he
recalled
wistfully.
“The problem is not really about the vote. It is about the
transfer of
power.”
With a report from Shakeman Mugari in Harare
National Post
National Post
Published: Saturday, April 19, 2008
We know most of our readers need
no further proof that inter -nationalist
organizations such as the
Commonwealth, the United Nations and the African
Union (AU) are nothing more
than toothless debating societies. But those few
who need more convincing
need look no further than Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe
is stealing last month's
elections in plain sight, and not one of the major
talk-shops is lifting a
finger to stop him.
Sunday will mark three weeks since Zimbabweans voted
for a parliament and
president, and still the official results have not been
released. The
country's national election commission, appointed by Mr.
Mugabe, has offered
no convincing explanation for the delay, fuelling
speculation that the
results favour the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), and that
the commission is merely stalling
The world
community has essentially washed its hands of Zimbabwe's crisis
until it can
stuff enough ballot boxes to swing the tallies back in favour
of Mr.
Mugabe's socialist ZANU-PF party.
This weekend will be crucial. If
Zimbabwe's courts -- also full of Mugabe
appointees --permit the election
commission to go ahead with recounts in the
22 constituencies whose results
are disputed by Mr. Mugabe's followers, but
not in the 60 challenged by the
MDC, then by Monday it may be possible for
ZANU-PF and Mr. Mugabe to claim
re-election.
The local results that trickled out after the March 29
election showed the
main opposition winning 109 of 210 parliamentary seats
to ZANUPF's 97.
Meanwhile, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai captured just over
50% of the
presidential ballots, while Mr. Mugabe received just under 50%.
With such
slim margins, it would not be necessary for Mr. Mugabe's
handpicked
commissioners to rig the vote much to reverse the results in his
favour.
(Even if the Mugabefriendly courts rule against the recounts he has
demanded, the election commission says it will go ahead, another sure sign
that Mr. Mugabe and his cronies are intent on winning at all
costs.)
So where are the Commonwealth, the UN and the AU? They have each
essentially
washed their hands of the crisis. They all claim to have ceded
responsibility for breaking the Zimbabwean impasse to the Southern African
Development Community (SADC), an emerging union of 14 nations in the region,
patterned after the EU.
But the SADC is dominated by South Africa,
and South African President Thabo
Mbeki is an old chum of Mr. Mugabe's. It
is no coincidence that the SADC
last week appointed Mr. Mbeki to broker a
deal between Mr. Mugabe and his
opponents, nor that Mr. Mugabe has felt free
to crack down on the opposition
in the days since, arresting scores of MDC
officials and accusing Mr.
Tsvangirai of treason, an offence punishable by
death in Zimbabwe.
By off-loading responsibility to Mr. Mbeki, the
Commonwealth, UN and AU
have, for all intents and purposes, given their
blessing to Mr. Mugabe's
electoral theft. Mr. Mbeki is too cozy with Mr.
Mugabe to force his old
anti-colonial warrior-in-arms to play fair, and the
large international
organizations knew this when they agreed to step aside
for the SADC.
On Friday, in a bizarre speech filled with the sort of
conspiracy theories
that Mr. Mugabe is fond of peddling whenever his iron
rule is jeopardized,
the 84-year-old strongman claimed that under his
opponents, Zimbabwe would
"go back to white people, to the
British."
Many Zimbabweans no doubt wish this were true. Since
independence in 1980,
the annual income of the average Zimbabwean has fallen
from $1,200 to under
$500. Unemployment is currently as high as 80%, and
inflation is well over
120,000%. Mr. Mugabe's land reforms, corruption and
flights of
central-planning fantasy are the reason, but the President has
instead
blamed his problems on foreign (especially British)
conspirators.
As clownish as Mr. Mugabe's threats are, the joke is very
much on the world
community. For all our moralizing, he will never be forced
from office so
long as cowardly international organizations refuse to act
against him. And
Zimbabwe will never be able to recover so long as the
international
community timidly leaves Mr. Mugabe in power.
Mail and Guardian
Eddie
Matsangaise
19 April 2008 06:00
Isaac can't be more than seven or eight years old. It's hard to
tell his
exact age because he's so dirty and scrawny and his face is dark
and haggard
from the sun and the stress of hard living on the streets of
Musina-Beitbridge, the border town between South Africa and
Zimbabwe.
I meet Isaac during a mission to Musina with a
colleague
covering the Zimbabwean elections. We've followed the media hype
that
predicts a massive outflow of Zimbabwean migrants going over the
border to
cast their votes, but things are slow.
So here
we are, lazing around with a large contingent of foreign
correspondents with
their designer gadgets, from Gucci sunglasses and fancy
laptops to designer
flasks and other drinking utensils that seemed straight
out of a celebrity
kitchen on the BBC Food channel.
Then here comes a pair of
boys walking aimlessly around
the market and taxi rank at the border. They
are in a bad state. At first I
didn't take any notice of them, what with the
poverty and misery that is in
abundance in this forgotten place on Earth. I
say forgotten, because
everyone in this place is busy trying to stitch up a
broken life.
The streets are packed with vendors, their wares
stacked on
homemade tables, from tomatoes to bottled water, airtime and
starter packs.
Spaza restaurants come by the dozen and the taxi touts and
street
"businessmen" hold out huge stacks of Zimbabwean currency and talk
animatedly to anyone who cares to listen. The street politicians are there
too, speaking in undertones and making incomprehensible gestures, the
meaning known only to themselves.
So I really notice
these boys only because they are so young and
look so out of place. I
hesitate to talk to them, not knowing which language
to use. Then by a
stroke of luck as they walk past us, I overheard them
mumble something to
each other in Shona, a Zimbabwean language. My curiosity
gets the better of
me and I greet them in the same language.
Voila, one answers
readily, and as I later deduce, the sight of
a white female (my colleague)
must have seemed like a ticket to a
sympathetic ear and a meal and, with
that, a temporary escape from this
abyss. The boys are clearly hoping to get
something, judging by the
expectant looks on their faces.
I don't have much to give myself (you know how tight the budgets
are in the
NGO sector -- you have to account for every cent and no receipt,
no return),
so I offer them a yoghurt and an apple, remnants of the
breakfast we had
back at the guest house.
The boys fall on the food and the
conversation starts in
earnest. They introduce themselves as Isaac -- the
scrawny young one I'd
noticed earlier -- and Kelvin, who is probably nine or
10. They tell us that
many other boys like them have left Zimbabwe --
unaccompanied -- to escape
hunger and imminent
starvation.
Isaac, who says he's from Tsholotsho in
Matebeleland, says his
parents are dead. First was his mother, then, a year
later, his father.
Kelvin says his parents are factory workers who were
retrenched and later
divorced as a consequence of the domestic rows that
followed. He stayed in
Masvingo until life became unbearable and he jumped
on the back of a haulage
truck to Beitbridge.
These boys
are part of a contingent of street boys who can lay
claim to the extra title
of illegal migrants (is there anything called
"illegal migrant street kids"
I wonder). It's hard to determine their exact
number as they are constantly
on the move for various reasons; rushing to
get "clients" for whom they
carry various loads, from jerry cans filled to
the brim with fuel, to
grocery-laden Shangani bags. An interruption in our
conversation takes me by
surprise.
As we chat about all sorts of childhood things,
which they did
not really have, I notice quite late that I'm talking to an
empty space --
Isaac and Kelvin have dashed away in a mere blur of
movement. I turn just in
time to see them disappear among the haphazardly
arranged tables.
Next thing I see a group of police men and
women spewing out of
several SAPS (South African Police Service) vans, clad
in royal blue,
complete with white surgical latex gloves.
One could be misled into thinking they're off to attend to a
traffic
accident littered with broken bones and blood, but alas, they are
off on the
valuable mission of apprehending illegal migrants, who according
to them are
worse than rabid dogs and just as contagious.
As I look up
the hill, I see a soldier with an assault rifle,
battle ready, patrolling
the hill above the small market and taxi rank
below. Within minutes the
police have dragged two frightened youths, weak
and confused, to the waiting
police trucks. Apparently, this operation is
undertaken several times a
day.
Within minutes the operation is over and a few moments
later our
boys are back minus Kelvin; in his place is a chubby little boy
about
Isaac's age and he is limping. Some time later Kelvin returns from
wherever
he was hiding.
We get back to talking and to our
horror we learn the boys would
have been detained and deported if the police
or army had caught them. Isaac
says he's been deported three times already.
So this is their daily
struggle, to scavenge for food, carry heavy loads on
their small, frail
shoulders for a few cents and evade the police and army
as many as six times
a day. This is life in Musina at the Beitbridge border
post for an illegal
migrant street kid.
Eddie Matsangaise
is a programme manager for the Zimbabwe Exiles
Forum