The Sunday Times
March 23, 2008
Our correspondent in Harare finds a ravaged nation
poised to reject the
dictator - but only if the poll is
fair
Christina Lamb
Zimbabwe's opposition is trying to thwart plans by
the regime of President
Robert Mugabe to rig Saturday's elections by
offering cash rewards to anyone
who comes forward with evidence.
A
website and postal address have been set up in the Hague promising $5,000
(£2,500) for the first 40 whistleblowers, a fortune in a country where
inflation of 150,000% has reduced average salaries to the equivalent of £3 a
month. Posters will go up this week advertising the rewards from an
organisation called Zimbabwe Democracy Now. They warn: "It is illegal in
Zimbabwe and anywhere else in the world for anyone to destroy, tamper with
or try to hide election results."
Among the offences listed are
stuffing ballot boxes, voting in more than one
station, bribing people with
food, voting under orders from a superior and
registering "ghost" or dead
voters.
"We will see who is rigging the vote this time," the posters
declare. "We
will not let our dreams be stolen."
Travelling across
Zimbabwe from the townships of Bulawayo to rural areas in
Mugabe's home
province of Mashonaland West and businessmen's haunts in
Harare, I found
that every person I spoke to was demanding change. Not one
wanted the
84-year-old Mugabe to stay on after 27 years in power.
"Look at what has
become of us," said Promise, one of a huddle of four
scrawny men selling
firewood along the highway from Chegutu to Harare.
"We used to work on a
farm but we were kicked off when they threw out the
white men and now we
hide like animals in the bush, running away from police
and hunting for
mice." He broke off to sell a bundle of sticks to a rare
passing car for
Z$5m (about 5p). "Zimbabwean electricity," joked the driver.
The country
often goes for days on end with no power.
"We are crying for change,"
said Elijah, whose salary of Z$300m a month as a
waiter sounds impressive
until he explains that his daily bus fares are
Z$50m and school fees are Z$1
billion a term for his four children. "But
these people know how to crook
elections."
Mugabe may have produced an entire nation of millionaires
but, with Z$1m now
worth just a penny, he looks set for a crushing defeat.
Not only is he
facing a third challenge from Morgan Tsvangirai, the popular
leader of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), but last
month his former
ally Simba Makoni joined the race, splitting the ruling
Zanu-PF.
"The mood is such, there's no way Mugabe can win legitimately,"
said
Tsvangirai. "How can he with 90% unemployment, his record of beating
people
and demolishing their houses, and when he's an 84-year-old who wants
to
govern till he's 90?"
Reports from human rights activists have
predicted a flawed outcome in the
country's first simultaneous polls for
president, parliament and councils.
Among the concerns cited are boundary
changes, irregularities in
registration, political intimidation and
violence, lack of access to
state-controlled media and partisan security
officials.
Last week the government declared that police would be present
inside
polling stations, claiming they were needed "to help disabled people
vote".
Opinion polling is difficult in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe's reign of
terror has
left most people afraid to express their views. But polls
conducted by the
Mass Public Opinion Institute, a Zimbabwean organisation,
have found that
support for Zanu-PF dropped from 41% in October 2006 to
about 20% this
month.
In the presidential race Mugabe is running at
20%, compared with 28% for
Tsvangirai and 9% for Makoni, the new entrant.
The remaining 42% who refused
to express a preference are considered more
likely to support the opposition
than the government.
"Mugabe can't
win the election but he can steal the election," Tsvangirai
said.
"He
could just announce victory like Kibaki," he added, referring to
President
Mwai Kibaki of Kenya, who had himself sworn back in within an hour
of
announcing the result, despite widespread allegations of fraud.
Sitting
in the study of his home in Harare under a poster of Nelson Mandela,
Tsvangirai admitted that it was dispiriting to contest repeated rigged
elections. Both in 2000 and 2005 he was widely believed to have won the most
support.
"I don't want to go into the Guinness book of records for
winning most
elections and never getting power," he said. "It's like banging
your head
against a brick wall. Suddenly you find you're 60 and you're still
at it. Of
course you think, what's the point?"
This time he hopes it
will be different. "We've learnt over the past 10
years so we've put in some
mechanisms," he said.
Apart from the reward posters, the MDC will attempt
a parallel count to try
to announce a winner in the presidential elections
before the election
commission.
Thousands of phones and
cattle-counters have been smug-gloed in under salt
packets and distributed
among MDC election agents so that they can call in
results from each station
for instant collation on a website. "We want to
try to announce first and
avoid the Kibaki scenario," Tsvangirai explained.
There is another
difference from previous elections. Not only does Mugabe's
rejection seem so
overwhelming that it could test even such a master of
electoral
manipulation, but the police are also giving the opposition
unprecedented
freedom to campaign, suggesting that Mugabe has lost control
of the state
machinery.
"I'm going into places I could never go to," said Tsvangirai
last Thursday
as The Sunday Times followed him to a series of rallies in
Mashonaland West.
His first of the day was in Chinhoyi, just 30 miles
from Mugabe's home
village. In previous elections the MDC could campaign
only underground
because of violence by a group known as the Chinhoyi
Notorious Six.
To reach the town meant driving between once-lush fields
at the centre of
the country's cotton industry. Most have been taken over by
war vets and are
now overgrown with weeds.
The first surprise was the
lack of roadblocks - a common method of
preventing people attending rallies.
The "Welcome to Chinhoyi" sign was
plastered with Tsvangirai
posters.
Inside a stadium, thousands of MDC supporters were waving red
cards, a
symbol in this football-loving nation of their desire to send off
Mugabe.
They cheered as the local candidate declared: "It's time to bring on
super-sub Morgan Tsvangirai."
Some say the MDC is being given such
freedom because Mugabe already has the
elections sewn up.
"Elections
are a process, not an event," remarked Raymond Motsi, a Baptist
leader. "The
elections on the day may be free but the process has not been
fair."
Among the many irregularities he pointed out was the
manipulation of postal
votes - not allowed for 4m Zimbabweans who have left
the country but
compulsory for police and soldiers who will be on duty
during election day
and have to vote in front of their superiors. Last month
they were given
large pay increases.
Food aid for government
supporters has long been used as a political weapon
but Mugabe has gone
further this time. On one day alone he handed out 300
buses, 500 tractors,
20 combine harvesters, 50,000 ox-drawn ploughs, 680
motorcycles and 100,000
litres of petrol.
Yet this campaign has not been marred by the widespread
violence seen
previously. The candidacy of Makoni, the former finance
minister, is said to
have divided the security services.
This week
General Solomon Mujuru, an ex-army chief whose wife Joyce is
vice-president,
is expected to back Makoni. This would be a severe blow for
Mugabe as Mujuru
still widely commands the security services' support. Some
believe they may
rig the elections for Makoni.
The president's posters show him making a
menacing gesture above the
unenticing slogan: "Get behind the fist". His
rhetoric at rallies is still
in the language of anticolonialism and he
dismisses Makoni and Tsvangirai as
"British stooges".
"He has nothing
to offer but history and negativity," said Tsvangirai. "The
best thing he
could do is step down gracefully; then we would give him an
honourable exit.
If that's the price we have to pay to move the country
forward, we are
willing."
While rumours abound that Mugabe's family are already on their
way to
Singapore, the president has said in the past that he would leave
State
House only in a coffin. Those close to him say he believes he must
stay in
power to protect himself from charges of war
crimes.
Opponents fear he may announce emergency rule to avoid defeat or
a
second-round run-off. Others worry that if Tsvangirai is allowed to win
there could be a coup - security chiefs have already declared they will not
accept him.
The Sunday Times
March 23, 2008
Christina Lamb in Chegutu
The names on
the court affidavit are stark; William Michael Campbell vs
Robert Gabriel
Mugabe.
While 4,000 white farmers have been thrown off their land in
Zimbabwe, Mike
Campbell is the first to take the president himself to an
international
court. On Tuesday his case will open at the new tribunal of
the Southern
African Development Community (SADC) in the Namibian capital of
Windhoek.
"It took some guts to sign my name to that," said 73-year-old
Campbell,
glancing at the court papers. "But then I thought, what have I got
to lose?
My life I suppose . . ."
Both he and Mugabe are stubborn old
men but there the comparison ends.
Campbell is a white farmer fighting to
retain his land, one of fewer than
500 still clinging on after eight years
of violent farm invasions.
His has been a lonely stand that has seen his
wildlife killed, his safari
lodge burnt down, his mangoes stolen and the
death of a pregnant
daughter-in-law. He and his family have also been
virtually ostracised by
fellow white farmers.
"We tried to get other
farmers to join the fight but they said you're mad .
. . you'll stick your
neck out and get your head chopped off," Campbell
said.
Many have
changed their minds since his first approach to the SADC tribunal
resulted
in a court order last December requiring the Zimbabwean government
to stay
off his land until the full case has been heard.
A further 77 farmers
have now asked the tribunal if they can join the
action - interventions that
could be used by the Zimbabwe government to
delay Campbell's case next
week.
Driving down the dirt track to his Mount Carmel farm in Chegutu, 80
miles
southwest of Harare, under a wide blue sky, it is easy to see why
anyone
would want to hold on to it. Neatly spaced rows of trees are laden
with
swollen purple mangoes that will be sliced and packaged for sale in
British
supermarkets.
Water-sprinklers play on the roses and other
country garden flowers
surrounding his stone and thatch house. The only
sounds are the twitter of
the colourful birds that flash in and out of the
trees and the belching
croak of a frog.
It seems the most peaceful
place on earth. But nearby are the charred ruins
of a barn burnt down by
invaders, and a mournful chestnut horse mooches
around. Her name is Ginger
and she has followed Campbell's wife Angela
everywhere since she was
attacked by Mugabe's war veterans.
The Campbells' British son-in-law Ben
Freeth eventually found her tied up
with barbed wire through her mouth and
knee deep in mud. "She won't let
Angela out of her sight since then,"
Campbell said.
In the garage Freeth, 37, shows the skull of a young
giraffe that caught its
head in a snare. "The skull grew around the wire
until finally the wire cut
into the brain and killed her," he said. "To me,
this symbolises what has
happened over the last eight years here - the slow
strangulation of
everything."
A former South African army captain,
Campbell moved to what was then
Rhodesia in 1974. An enormous kudu head
dominates his sunny living room,
testifying to the love of hunting and
fishing that first attracted him to
the country.
When he bought the
3,000-acre farm, he began stocking it with game and
eventually opened a
safari lodge by the river that runs through the land.
"One of my dreams as a
young man was I wanted a farm where I could keep
game," he said. "Until
three years ago we had 45 giraffes, 300 impala, 150
wildebeest, 50 eland,
waterbuck, warthogs, zebra, game birds . . . It was a
paradise.
"But
these guys have systematically killed them and now we have nothing, not
even
a wart-hog. It's been a bitter pill."
The war vets arrived in 2000 after
the farm was listed by the government for
takeover. "About 20 or 30 turned
up and I gave them a shed to live in
because I told them I don't want you
chopping my trees to build your huts,"
said Campbell.
After a year
with Campbell refusing to leave they moved off onto adjoining
land owned by
his son Bruce. They have stayed there to this day, making it
impossible for
Bruce to farm.
They make regular forays on to Campbell's farm, where they
set fire to his
lodge and hay bales. Once they drove 600 cattle into his
wife's garden.
The man planning to move into Campbell's farm is one of
the country's big
men, Nathan Shamuyarira, official spokesman for the ruling
Zanu-PF party.
Campbell is undaunted, though he knows what he is taking
on. "It was a bad
time, particularly at the beginning of the land invasions,
as anyone who
showed any resistance was taken out, some even horribly
murdered in front of
police, so we realised there was no protection and
every man for himself.
"But nobody wanted to stand together and we all
went our own ways and the
government gradually picked us off one by one
until there was only very few
left."
One Sunday lunchtime three years
ago, a delegation arrived at Campbell's
farm. One of them was Shamuyarira,
who offered to let Campbell stay on as
manager. Campbell was having none of
it.
"I told Shamuyarira, if you want my farm you will have to steal it
and you
will have to kill me, so then you will be guilty of murder too," he
said.
He admits he would not be able to carry on without the support of
his family
and their strong Christian faith. But they have paid a high
price, and not
just in terms of property.
The war vets who took over
Bruce's farm brought cerebral malaria into the
valley, killing 11 workers.
When Bruce's wife Heidi was four months pregnant
with twins, she caught it
and died, leaving him a single parent to their
five-year-old
daughter.
"That was the hardest blow to the family," said Campbell's
daughter Laura,
who also lives on Mount Carmel in an adjoining farmhouse
with her husband
Ben and three tousle-haired children, running her company,
Laura's Linens.
"This whole land issue has really divided the white
community. For me the
white reaction has been the most distressing thing. I
haven't felt hatred
towards Mugabe himself, but I've felt anger and
resentment towards the white
community.
"We've been totally isolated
because of the stand we've taken. Dad and Ben
haven't been invited to any
farmers' meetings for six years. I've had women
turn and walk away in the
Chegutu club. We're not wanted because we rock the
boat."
Despite the
SADC order, war vets turned up only two weeks ago at the Freeths'
and
started a fire in their car port before spending the night chanting and
singing. When Ben Freeth showed them the order and asked them to move off,
the leader replied: "I am SADC. You are greedy, greedy, greedy and you must
go back to your own country."
His reaction suggests that even if
Campbell wins the case, this might not be
the end of their battle, which
will be portrayed in a film, Mugabe and the
White African, in British
cinemas this year, followed by a screening on
television.
"The
trouble with the law always is that it works on the assumption that a
policeman will carry out the court order," said their lawyer, Jeremy
Gauntlett. "This could all end up as papier-mâché. But it will be very
embarrassing for SADC if they rule in our favour and Mugabe ignores
it."
With elections six days away, the focus has moved on from the farm
takeovers, even though the resulting collapse of agriculture is the reason
more than half the population needs food aid in the region's former
breadbasket.
Meanwhile the invasions continue. In Chiredzi, a police
chief recently
invaded a cane farm owned by Digby and Jess Nesbitt. He has
moved into their
farmhouse, alongside the owners, with his family and about
15 members of a
youth militia. The property has been the Nesbitts' home for
more than 20
years.
Another white farmer who went to court, Roy
Bennett, believes legal
challenges will achieve nothing as long as Mugabe
remains.
"He can go to whatever court he wants, even to the Hague," said
Bennett, who
is treasurer of the opposition MDC and was forced to seek
asylum in South
Africa after a year in prison.
"The only way there
will be justice for Mike or any of these people who have
suffered is when
there's political change."
Independent, UK
So wonder people have no faith that Saturday's elections will be free.
Tiseke Kasambala reports from Zimbabwe
Sunday, 23 March
2008
In Mutare, a picturesque Zimbabwean town on the border with
Mozambique, a
couple in their fifties reluctantly admitted that they would
support
President Robert Mugabe's party in next weekend's election. They had
one
very practical reason: access to food.
If a local councillor puts
you on the list, the woman explained, you get
government handouts of mealie
meal (maize flour) and farm equipment such as
ploughs and tractors. Those
who could not prove loyalty to Mr Mugabe's
Zanu-PF get nothing. "The mealie
meal is only being accessed by us," she
said.
With Zimbabwe's economy
in freefall - inflation is now officially above
100,000 per cent - food has
become a powerful tool for the government and
the ruling party. An elderly
man in Marange, Manicaland province, told me:
"If you show yourself to
support the opposition, you will starve."
Encounters such as these help
to show why, despite Mr Mugabe being opposed
by a challenger from within
Zanu-PF, Simba Makoni, as well as Morgan
Tsvangirai of the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
Saturday's voting is expected to
result in another coronation for the man
who has ruled the country since
independence in 1980.
Between last September and this month, I spent
seven weeks in Zimbabwe and
visited all 10 provinces, interviewing scores of
people from farmers to
teachers, housewives to market traders, to produce a
report for Human Rights
Watch, which was published last week. I heard
similar stories nearly
everywhere I went.
In the capital, Harare, at
the offices of an organisation that treats and
counsels victims of violence
in Zimbabwe, a young woman sat facing me.
Avoiding my eye and speaking in a
barely audible voice, she described how
the police beat her after she took
part in a march, organised by a group
called Restoration of Human Rights
Zimbabwe, a month earlier.
"A policeman hit me on the nose with his fist
and then hit me with his baton
on my back and on my feet," she said. "It was
raining; they took us outside
and made us lie down in the dirty water, and
made us crawl as we were being
beaten. In the car they were hitting us again
and made us put our dirty
shoes in our mouths. At the station they told us,
'You will never take the
President out of power. It will never
happen'."
The President himself seemed in no doubt about the result when
he warned the
opposition on Friday that any outbreak of violence if they
lost the
election, such as happened in Kenya, would be crushed. "If
Tsvangirai and
his group have such plans, they must stand warned," he told a
rally in his
home area of Zvimba, north-west of Harare. "That will never
happen here,
never, never. We will never allow it. We have enough security
forces to
handle that."
The government claims that changes to
Zimbabwe's election laws will make
Saturday's voting, for president,
parliament, senate and local councils,
more fair. One change was that police
were prevented from coming within 100
metres of polling stations, but last
week President Mugabe used his powers
to reverse the rule. Police will now
be allowed to "assist" illiterate and
disabled voters in polling booths.
Even before the weakening of such
safeguards, it was inconceivable that the
elections would be free and fair.
Voters had little knowledge about the new
and complex electoral process; on
state-run television and radio I heard
little about the opposition, and read
even less in state-run
newspapers.
In Bindura, north-east of the capital, I saw two men wearing
MDC T-shirts,
something that would have been unheard of three years ago.
Bindura is a
ruling party stronghold, and in the past was a no-go area for
the
opposition. Did this signal greater tolerance? Any change was
superficial, I
was told by a local human rights activist. MDC candidates
could not campaign
openly or hold meetings without being subjected to
threats by ruling party
supporters, and had to do their campaigning at
night. Most people in these
areas are afraid to attend opposition
rallies.
Sitting in a car by the side of a dam in Masvingo province,
south-eastern
Zimbabwe, I talked in October to five men ranging in age from
their twenties
to their fifties. They were not optimistic about the
election, remembering
the irregularities and high levels of violence
committed by ruling party
supporters and state security forces at previous
polls. One, a teacher, said
ruling party youths attacked him after they
heard him telling people to
register to vote. "They hit me with clubs," he
said. "They displayed me
before the rest of the school, and now they are
keeping an eye on me." He
showed me the scars on his head. He reported the
case to police, but the
perpetrators were never caught. Two other men, also
teachers, told me they
too had been threatened with violence.
This
month I returned to Masvingo to ask the same group of men about
electoral
conditions. Things were relatively calm, they said, but the
government was
trucking in food to its rallies and giving it to loyal party
supporters.
Despite the relative peace, they did not believe that the
elections would be
free and fair. "There is too much intimidation," one of
them said. "People
have little confidence in the election process," said
another.
The
government has banned election observers from many countries, but is
allowing a team from neighbouring states belonging to the Southern African
Development Community (SADC) to monitor the voting. I asked the men whether
they thought the presence of these observers would help prevent further
abuses, intimidation or fraud. One of the teachers shook his head. "It
doesn't matter what they do," he said. "If the ruling party wins, it simply
means that those of us who are believed to have voted for the opposition
will starve, be beaten or chased out of our homes."
Tiseke Kasambala
is a researcher for Human Rights Watch
Free and fair?
On Saturday
Zimbabwe's 5.9 million registered voters will elect a President,
270 members
of parliament and local councillors from across the 10
provinces. But with
opposition parties accusing the ruling Zanu-PF of voter
intimidation, it is
not clear how high the turnout will be.
The 11,000 polling stations are
concentrated in rural areas, where Mugabe's
party is strongest, while people
in urban areas, where the opposition has
most support, could find it
difficult to vote. The independent Zimbabwe
Election Support Network fears a
re-run of the 2002 presidential elections,
when tens of thousands of voters
were turned away.
Harare has 379 polling centres for about 760,000
voters, giving each person
only 22 seconds to vote if they all turned out.
In contrast, the monitoring
group said, most rural polling stations would
handle only 600 voters each.
Opposition groups say hundreds of thousands of
extra ballot papers have also
been printed.
International
observers from South Africa, China and Russia have been
invited, but
monitors from Britain, the European Union and the United States
have
not.
An opinion poll showed Mr Mugabe trailing the main opposition
leader, Morgan
Tsvangirai, by 28.3 points to 20.3, with the former finance
minister, Simba
Makoni, on 8.6 points. But over a third of those polled were
undecided or
unwilling to say which party would get their vote.
Nina
Lakhani
After nearly three decades in
power, there are signs that Robert Mugabe's
iron grip on Zimbabwe is
starting to loosen. Now the opposition is setting
its sights on victory this
week. But, as Tracy McVeigh reports from Harare,
there are growing fears
that ballot rigging and intimidation may provoke
vicious post-election
violence
Tracy McVeigh in Harare
The Observer,
Sunday March 23
2008
A man in his late fifties pushed a home-made bicycle through
the crowds
gathered for an impromptu political rally in Ebworth, a rural
suburb of
Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. His shoes were made of strips of
rubber tyre, an
old skill the fighters learned during the hardships of the
independence
struggle.
They marked Gibson Nyandoro out as a war
veteran as clearly as if he had
been wearing a sign around his neck, and as
people saw him they stopped
singing. Some of the bolder ones began to boo
and hiss.
War veterans are Robert Mugabe's faithful, men who have given
his presidency
and his Zanu-PF party their unwavering loyalty for almost 28
years. They are
the ones who, armed with machetes and guns, did his dirty
work for him
during the violent land seizures of 2000 when white farmers
were terrorised
and beaten and forced off their land. They are Zanu-PF to
the core.
So when, five days ago, Nyandoro, 58, rattled his bike into the
centre of
the opposition rally - he said later he thought his heart would
stop in
fear - and told the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) candidate
and her
supporters that a group of his comrades had sent him to ask if they
would be
welcome to join, it was an unprecedented act. It was time for a
change, he
said, to great cheers. 'We don't want this power-hungry dictator
any more.
We have lost our dignity through this ruling party and have gained
nothing
in return.'
Zimbabweans go to the polls on Saturday and they
want the unthinkable - the
84-year-old Mugabe gone. But the question is, how
will this be achieved? In
Harare last Wednesday, as Mugabe's
three-helicopter convoy thrashed across
the sky, breaking the quiet of an
under-worked capital city, the talk was of
the President's late-night
passing of a new decree - no longer would his
police have to remain outside
polling stations on Saturday, as stated in
law. They would instead be posted
inside, ostensibly to help the illiterate
or the disabled with their ballot
papers. It was the latest in a series of
last-minute tinkerings with
election legislation by the ruling party.
'It's a disgrace and we will
challenge it in the courts,' said the MDC
senator Sekai Holland. 'Ordinary
people are terrified of the police and many
will be deterred from going to
vote at all, if not intimidated into voting
for Mugabe and
Zanu-PF.'
No one knows yet how much of an effort Mugabe may put into
trying to rig the
election. There are about 68 official election monitors
invited in from
outside the country and about 11,000 polling stations. The
government has
refused to make the voters' roll available for inspection to
the opposition,
but there are claims from government sources that it
contains the names of
dead people. There are four choices on the
presidential ballot paper: Robert
Mugabe; the former Finance Minister, Simba
Makoni; MDC leader Morgan
Tsvangirai; and an unknown independent called
Langton Towungana, who seems
to have given up before he even started. Under
Zimbabwean law, when several
candidates contest the presidency the winning
candidate must receive at
least 51 per cent of the vote, otherwise a second
round between the two
leading candidates must be held within 21
days.
Whether it goes to a second round or not, there will be two results
- he who
gets the lion's share of the vote and he who will take power. Many
feel they
are depressingly unlikely to be the same person. One of the few
polls of
voters Zimbabwean academics attempted to carry out showed
Tsvangirai
leading, with Mugabe second and Makoni third. But with more than
20 per cent
of people questioned refusing to answer, this can only be seen
as the
roughest of guides.
There are very real fears that the
resultant political discord and outrage
at an election seen as unfair will
boil over into violence in Zimbabwe's
more polarised and volatile
areas.
Already last week in Ebworth seven people walking home from a
rally and
wearing MDC T-shirts, including a woman carrying her baby, were
attacked and
beaten by a gang of young Mugabe supporters. The mother, Vida
Tawa, 35, had
been smacked in the face with a golf club and her year-old son
has a nasty
head wound. 'They said to me, "Why do you wear this T-shirt, are
you
traitors?",' she said. 'No one feels safe here.'
Donald, an MDC
campaign worker, told how his whole family had been divided
by this
election. His brother - a member of the much-feared Central
Intelligence
Organisation (CIO) - would no longer speak to him.
Lydia, 18, has joined
the MDC 'peace units'. 'It is a defence against the
Zanu militias who
terrorise us,' she says. 'Now I am a fighter.'
But Senator Holland says
she is trying hard to stop talk of violence among
her own young supporters.
'They're not glorifying violence, they want to
defend themselves if it
comes. It's unavoidable that the Zanu culture of
violence has permeated our
whole society.'
In an exclusive downtown Harare hotel last week, Makoni's
once unthinkable
political campaign was in full swing after months of
secrecy and plotting.
Makoni announced his defection from the party on 5
February - Super Tuesday,
as his supporters dubbed it - in order to stand as
an independent against
his former boss, Mugabe.
The hotel's porters
were all of a flutter at the sight of the small man in a
yellow baseball hat
printed with his own name sitting in their foyer,
dwarfed by his security
man and looking a lot older than the photograph on
his posters. When Makoni
goes off alone for a meeting elsewhere, the forces
behind the campaign
retire to the bar to discuss the next day's schedule
over cold beer and hot
peanuts.
A harried and bespectacled press spokesman is scribbling a
timetable in his
dog-eared notebook, then scoring everything out as minds
change around him.
The most important voice here is that of Dr Ibbotson
Mandaza, a former
Zanu-PF member, Makoni's number two, and the chief
conspirator in the
breakaway plot.
'The bottom line is that there are
only two candidates, not three: Simba and
Morgan. Mugabe is gone,' Mandaza
says. 'And Simba is flying.' He says if
Makoni wins the presidential vote
Tsvangirai can maybe have the
vice-presidency, Mugabe can have a quiet
retirement. 'Or maybe we'll send
him to Surrey, the British and him like
each other so much,' he laughed
heartily.
'The level of self-interest
in the ruling class in getting Mugabe out is
huge, he is a useless, deranged
old man. And his party is divided, in ruins,
immobilised. This campaign
crystallised because I was angry at the failure
of the politburo guys to
force Mugabe out. It became clear to me that the
time was right for change.
The decision to choose Simba was unanimous, for
his clever mind and long
experience in the corridors of power.'
But it is hard for Makoni to shake
off the fact that he has only just left
Zanu despite its years of
mismanagement of Zimbabwe. 'Like most of us,
Makoni was uncomfortable in
government,' says Mandaza, then, irked by the
question, he leans forward and
glares at me. 'How did you get into the
country?'
While Makoni stands
for personality change at the top, there is a reluctance
to talk about any
other change other than 'the policy remains the same'.
Mandaza says Makoni
is standing as an independent rather than forming a new
party because the
decision on a name has been 'deferred'. Many suspect that
if he wins he
would announce it as a victory for Zanu - a Zanu without
Mugabe.
Due
to either fear or hedging of bets, only one member of Mugabe's cabinet
has
so far come out of the shadows. Boasts that the party is split and that
big
names close to Mugabe are prepared to back Makoni have failed to
materialise. In the bar Mandaza and the others are convinced that the next
day will see that change and that the 'sleepers' will come forward. 'We have
commitments,' says Mandaza.
The hints are heavy that these will be
Vice-President Joice Mujuru and her
husband Solomon, a powerful former army
chief who crucially commands the
support of the military. But early the next
morning Mandaza receives a 'very
disappointing' text and rages to colleagues
in his office: 'How can they
treat me like this?' Later, the clue to his
fury is the story running on the
front page of state-owned newspaper The
Herald under the headline 'Gen
Mujuru disowns Makoni' and quoting Mugabe as
saying he had been assured of
the general's support.
Whether this can
change before election day is unclear; a lot of
middle-class and business
people are behind Makoni, seeing him as change,
but at an acceptable
pace.
The populist support commanded by Tsvangirai has too much of a
whiff of
socialism, with his talk of titles to land for the poor. But the
votes of
people in the countryside matter, and many people there still do
not know
who Makoni is or they cannot separate him in their minds from the
regime he
has just left.
At a Makoni rally in Mabvuku, about 20
minutes' drive from Harare, past the
hanging rocks of Chiremba, where MDC
activists sacrifice meagre stocks of
sugar and flour for the paste to
plaster the stones with Tsvangirai posters,
several dozen supporters have
been bused in to boost the numbers. The local
children throw themselves into
the spirit of the occasion, grabbing yellow
flags and chanting, 'Simba,
Simba', but many adults stand on the outskirts,
just
watching.
Sitting in the sun, one campaign worker says they are
desperately short of
election agents - party workers who attend polling
stations on the day to
help and observe. In the constituency she is working
in she needs 48. So far
she has eight. 'They are all too scared,' she
said.
Tsvangirai chuckles when The Observer tells him this story later,
in the
garden of his modest Harare home. 'Scared or not interested? Zanu
defectors
are just people who want to protect their ill-gotten gains. We
will win.
Mugabe may declare himself the winner whatever, but the people are
demonstrating that we will win. You see, Zimbabweans have suffered
enough.'
Tsvangirai talks at length of new policies, of land reforms and
new links
with the outside world. Perhaps most surprising is his talk of
reconciliation.
'There cannot be a clean sweep when we get into
power. History has taught us
that is wrong. We must work together. But we
cannot go back on the land
reforms of 2000; that would be political suicide,
but we also cannot condone
what Zanu has done. What will be elected will be
a transitional government
for perhaps two years until we can have a
referendum on a new constitution.'
And, like Makoni, Tsvangirai refuses
to consider putting Mugabe on trial for
the destruction of his country. 'He
is an old man, he can live out his
retirement here.' He claims that he may
even consider a state funeral when
the former hero of Zimbabwe's liberation
struggle finally dies.
But Mugabe, who used 28 years of power
systematically to ruin Zimbabwe's
economy and land, to bring unnecessary
suffering to its people and to chase
three to four million of its population
into exile overseas, is never going
to go quietly.
While Makoni may
yet pull in the big-name Zanu defectors he desperately
needs, and Tsvangirai
has managed to mobilise people in the vitally
important rural
constituencies, no one has yet managed to topple Mugabe.
The only thing
that is clear is that, with farms lying idle in the hands of
corrupt
politicians, with electricity and water supplies unreliable, phone
networks
intermittent, medicines and doctors unavailable, open sewers
running through
the suburbs, unemployment at 80 per cent, numbers of Aids
orphans
multiplying daily, and prices rising so fast and to amounts so huge
that
even Zimbabweans can find no jokes to lighten the tragedy any more,
times
have never been so tough.
When Zimbabweans enter the police-manned
polling stations, it will only be
the tiniest of baby steps at the beginning
of the journey to a new Zimbabwe.
From the fading grandeur of a swanky
Harare hotel to the unsettled and
hungry people struggling to survive from
day to day in Ebworth, people want
to see change.
The
candidates
Robert Mugabe - Zanu-PF
Once hailed as a model African
democrat, the former Marxist guerrilla has
held power since winning
Zimbabwe's first election in 1980.
Morgan Tsvangirai - The Movement for
Democratic Change
Emerged from a trade union background to become a leading
opposition
activist. The MDC inflicted a stunning blow on Zanu-PF's iron
grip on power
in the 2000 elections.
Simba Makoni -
independent
Served in Mugabe's government for 10 years, most recently as
Finance
Minister. Supporters say he will reverse economic collapse and end
political
stalemate.
It took 18 months to set
up the interview with Mugabe. The result was a
revealing
encounter
Alex Duval Smith in Cape Town
The Observer,
Sunday March
23 2008
Sitting in his office beneath a portrait of
himself, Robert Mugabe cut a
lonely, pitiful figure in his first in-depth
interview for nearly 30 years,
moved to tears at the memory of his lamented
friendship with the Queen.
Moments later, however, his eyes sparked with
anger, betraying his vengeful
nature.
The 84-year-old Zimbabwean
President was talking to author Heidi Holland,
and her 'psycho-biography'
depicts a deluded leader who still has the power
to bring everything right
for his country - on condition he gets a phone
call from Downing
Street.
'His issue is with Britain,' said Holland, whose book, Dinner
With Mugabe,
has just been published by Penguin South Africa. 'Even today,
he sees the
white farmers as British. Given the history and the behaviour of
Britain,
there is logic - a twisted logic - to his thinking. It's all very
well for
Britain to say he is beneath contempt. But it is they who have to
talk to
him if the crisis is to end.'
Holland, a white Zimbabwean
living in South Africa, spent 18 months lobbying
for the interview, which
she finally obtained in December. 'I had been
waiting in Harare for five
weeks and had been vetted and grilled. In the end
I received a call telling
me I should be at State House in half an hour. I
arrived at 10am and three
hours later His Excellency - "HE" as everyone
calls him - received
me.'
Holland's only previous meeting with Mugabe was in 1975 when she
cooked for
him at a clandestine dinner in Salisbury (now Harare). When he
left, it was
to go to Mozambique to lead guerrillas fighting Rhodesian white
rule. He
became Prime Minister in 1980. To write her book, Holland talked to
three
psychologists. 'I needed help in understanding how events in Mugabe's
life,
including his childhood, had impacted on his internal narrative.' By
the
time Mugabe was 10, his father had left home and his older brother had
died.
'Mugabe has a thin skin and shaky self-image. When rejected or
humiliated,
he turns to revenge. His relationship with the British
government has the
intensity of a family feud.'
Holland saw evidence
of Mugabe's ire whenever she hit on controversial
subjects such as the
Gukurahundi (the killing of up to 30,000 Ndebeles in
the Eighties). He told
her: 'Gukurahundi, what was it? You had a party with
a guerrilla force that
wanted to reverse democracy. And action was taken.
And, yes, there might
have been excesses, on both sides. There is no regret
about the fact that we
had to defend the country. But excess, where it
happened, yes. Any death
that should not have happened is a cause for
regret.'
When Holland
suggested that the economy was failing, Mugabe angrily insisted
that it was
'a hundred times better' than that of most African nations.
'Outside South
Africa, what country is like Zimbabwe?' he said. 'Even now,
what is lacking
now are goods on the shelves, perhaps. That's all. But the
infrastructure is
there. We have our mines, you see. We have our
enterprises. We don't even
have to go two years. Look at what we will do
next year, and you'll be
surprised.'
Some interviewees told Holland that the land invasions that
began in 2000
and have deprived hundreds of whites of their farms may have
been initially
supported by Mugabe but got out of hand. 'He denies this, of
course,' says
Holland. 'But what is most interesting is that... he really
thought the
British government would do something.'
But Britain,
under Tony Blair, proved the equivalent of a disappointing
parent, quick to
scold and unwilling to listen. When the Labour government
made it clear it
felt no obligation to subsidise further programmes of land
acquisition
because previous compensation had been misused, Mugabe went
ballistic. 'He
was nearly crying when he told me that Blair "even poisoned
Prince Charles
and the Queen against me".
'I think he granted me the interview because
he feels he is getting old and
it's time to put certain things on the
record. But he expects to win the
election and probably will.'
Asked
how he would like to be remembered, Mugabe said: 'Just as the son of a
peasant family who, alongside others, felt he had a responsibility to fight
for his country and was grateful for the honour that the people gave him in
leading them to victory over British imperialism.'
Sunday Times, SA
Amukelani Chauke
Published:Mar 23, 2008
International
non-governmental organisations and church groups have set up
shop in the
South African border town of Musina ahead of Zimbabwe's
elections on
Saturday.
Representatives from the UK-based Save the
Children, and the SA Catholic
Bishops' Conference (SACBC) , have set up an
emergency centre to handle any
crisis that might occur during the
poll.
SACBC spokesman Father Chris Townsend said this week that
churches and
non-governmental organisations had established themselves in
Musina in
preparation for "a worst- case scenario" which could result in as
many as
250000 people fleeing Zimbabwe.
The United Nations High
Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) has apparently
assisted in the planning and
assembling of the organisations.
The churches and NGOs arrived in Musina
this week to investigate how many
Zimbabweans were fleeing their country
daily. Townsend said their findings
would determine whether the UNHCR "would
move in" to help .
The UNHCR could not be reached for
comment.
Townsend said that, although they were still in "planning
stages", they were
considering erecting a few refugee camps near the
Beitbridge border post,
about 16km from Musina.
The camps, which
would provide shelter and food for refugees, could also
include mobile
clinics.
Save The Children, which cares for children in Musina's
township,
Nancefield, and in Zimbabwe, has brought in a team from England to
assist.
But several Zimbabweans who spoke to the Sunday Times said
they weren't
interested in the poll.
Thousands of refugees cross the
border illegally every day - hindered by a
gang of robbers known as
amagumagumas, a Shona word that means "rob what you
don't
know".
According to locals, the robbers charge the refugees to "escort"
them across
the border. After crossing, the locals say, the gang robs the
illegal
immigrants, rapes the women - and even throws babies into the
Limpopo River.
On Tuesday, Zimbabwean Admire Songeri was busy cutting a
hole in the border
fence, metres away from Beitbridge, that would serve as a
route into South
Africa for hundreds of illegal immigrants.
Songeri,
22, said he expected over 100 immigrants to use the hole, at a cost
of R100
each, later that day.
Using rocks to grind through the wire, Songeri
described himself as poor
young man trying to make a living. But his
brand-label clothes and a tattoo
of a gun on his left arm painted a
different picture of him.
Later the Sunday Times found 22-year old
Prudence Meyiwa, who had paid a
heavy price for using the services of
amagumagumas. She had been raped by
two men who robbed her of her luggage
and R500 after crossing the border.
Meyiwa, who has found refuge in
Musina, said she crossed the border two
weeks ago to look for the grave of
her father, who had passed away while
working in Pretoria.
Monsters and Critics
Mar 23, 2008, 7:19 GMT
Harare - One of Zimbabwe's leading
human rights bodies is alarmed over what
it says is a 'contradiction' in the
country's electoral law which gives two
directly opposing directions for
declaring of the winner of presidential
elections.
Zimbabwe Lawyers
for Human Rights (ZLHR) has written to Judge George
Chiweshe,
state-appointed chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
(ZEC),
appealing for a resolution to the issue ahead of the March 29
elections,
ZLHR projects officer Rangu Nyamurindira said.
A section in the main body
of the Electoral Act stipulates that if none of
the candidates gets more
than 50 per cent of the vote, a second round has to
be held within 21 days
between the two candidates with the most votes.
But another provision in
the law's schedule - an addendum to the act which
is meant to provide
explanatory detail to the main part of the law - says
that the candidate who
simply gets the most votes is to be declared the
winner.
The chances
of a run-off have assumed dramatic importance in the March 29
election.
The 84-year-old President Robert Mugabe is standing against
former national
labour head Morgan Tsvangirai of the opposition Movement for
Democratic
Change, along with former finance minister and ex-ruling party
politburo
member Simba Makoni and a lesser-known fourth candidate, Langton
Towungana.
In the last presidential vote in 2002, Mugabe got 54 per cent
of the vote,
against Tsvangirai's 40 per cent. Analysts say that this time
around, with
Mugabe's support considerably withered by economic chaos and
some defections
within his party to Makoni, there is a strong likelihood he
will get less
than 50 per cent.
This would force him into a run-off
against either Tsvangirai or Makoni,
either of whom could then form some an
alliance with the potential to
collect more votes than
Mugabe.
Nyamurindira said ZLHR told Chiweshe 'that the discrepancy (in
the Electoral
Act on conditions for a runoff) might cause confusion' and
needed
clarification from the ZEC.
'Normally what happens is that the
content of the act itself takes
precedence over the schedule.' Nyamurindira
said there were court rulings
that served as legal precedents in similar
conflicts, where the provision in
the main body of the act was ruled to be
superior to that in the schedule.
Political commentators have warned that
if Mugabe is faced with a second
round, he may order that the simple
majority provided for in the schedule be
followed, irrespective of legal
opinion.
'Mugabe has shown over and again that if the law is against him,
he'll do
what he needs to win,' one analyst said.
Nyamurindira said
ZLHR was also considering applying to the High Court for a
declaration from
a judge stating which provision in the Electoral Act should
be followed,
should Mugabe fail to get more than 50 per cent of the vote.
'That will
at least make it difficult for him to wriggle out of a run-off,'
said
another lawyer who asked not to be named.
No comment could be obtained
from ZEC.
The affair is the latest in a series of challenges to electoral
authorities'
handling of the election, which will also decide the new
210-seat House of
Assembly, 60 out of the 84 seat in the senate (Mugabe
appoints the remaining
24) and 1,958 local councillors.
Trudy
Stevenson, an MP of the smaller faction of the MDC, is demanding that
authorities hand over a digitally amenable copy of the voters' roll of 5.5
million voters, which computer experts could analyse for evidence of any
deliberate manipulation meant to favour Mugabe and his Zanu-PF.
The
only analysis of the voters' roll briefly permitted in 2002 unearthed
the
names of thousands of deceased voters, people registered several times,
others with fake identity numbers and more at addresses at small homes where
scores of voters were listed.
Stevenson said she had discovered
recently that the name of Desmond
Lardner-Burke was on the voters' roll for
her Harare constituency. He was
the notorious former minister of law and
order in the white minority
Rhodesian government that came to an end in 1979
after a seven-year civil
war for black majority rule, and had died several
years ago in South Africa,
she said.
'He would now be 102,' she
added.
Tendai Biti, secretary general of Tsvangirai's MDC has applied to
the High
Court for a hard copy of the electoral roll. His lawyers said they
have been
told by authorities they can have it 'after the
election.'
Also before the courts, is an application to force the ZEC to
increase the
number of polling stations in urban areas. An election watchdog
organization
last week said there were so few provided for now, it would
mean that
polling stations would have to process a voter every 22 seconds in
12 hours
on the single day's voting.
This was an 'impossible' feat
and would mean thousands of voters would be
unable to cast their votes, the
organization said.
Analysts say it is as deliberate ploy by Mugabe -
first used in the 2002
elections - successfully - to cut the number of
voters in urban areas where
opposition against him is strongest.
IOL
March 23 2008 at
10:29AM
By Moshoeshoe Monare
Zimbabwe's President
Robert Mugabe confessed to his supporters that he
had had a cold bath
yesterday morning as the country sank deeper into an
economic
quagmire.
He told about 3 000 Zanu-PF supporters at a rally in
Chitungwiza
township, just outside Harare, that shortages in the country
affected even
the president's residence.
Ahead of next
Saturday's elections, Mugabe was trying to reassure and
console his
supporters, who faced daily economic woes such as food
shortages, potholes
in the roads, no water and power cuts.
"Last night [Friday] when I
came back from Zvimba [his home village],
there was no hot water in my
home.
"I said to myself, 'I am a man' and I used cold water they
fetched for
me in buckets. This morning, they tried to boil water for me,
but I am used
to the showers in the prison. I have a cold bath
again.
"Water shortage is a problem. My
minister said they could not
distribute water because they don't have money
for purification chemicals
and they were waiting for the cabinet. I said
'Why wait for the cabinet?'
They want [the cabinet to allocate] foreign
currency to import these
chemicals from South Africa," he said in a one-hour
speech, speaking mostly
in Shona.
At rallies throughout this
week, Mugabe warned business against
food-price increases, invoking party
heroes to portray Zanu-PF as the only
organisation that sacrificed for
freedom and promising to deliver government
services.
On
Saturday, he said that the district development fund would repair
rural
roads, but city roads are badly scarred with potholes.
He said the
electricity problem was affecting the region, including
South Africa, and
that he would build power stations and distribute
generators after the
elections.
He threatened companies that increased food prices,
charging that this
was a political ploy to "influence people to vote for
[the Movement for
Democratic Change] MDC" and blame Zanu-PF for all the
mess.
"Drop those prices to the level they were at. If you don't,
I'll do it
for you. They will not be prices dropping, but you will be
dropping," he
said - in English.
He blamed rain for the food
shortages.
He reiterated his invective against Simba Makoni, the
former Zanu-PF
politburo member now a independent presidential candidate,
calling him a
sellout and a prostitute without a political
party.
"Sellouts will never win elections in Zimbabwe," he
said.
He was applauded for his attacks on the MDC, Britain and Tony
Blair,
the former British prime minister.
This article was
originally published on page 2 of Sunday Independent
on March 23,
2008