The Times
March 29, 2005
Ghost voters, rigged ballots and
food bribes - the Mugabe route to power
By Jan Raath
TICHAONA CHIMINYA, a driver for the leader of Zimbabwe’s main opposition
party, was burnt alive in a truck. David Stevens, a white farmer, was shot in
the back of the head.
The men were among the first to die as President Mu-
gabe’s reign of terror unrolled five years ago. But their names are still on the
voters’ roll.
Supporters of the Opposition Movement for Democratic
Change say that up to a million phantom voters may appear on the register and
that “ghost voters” will be used by the ruling Zanu (PF) party to inflate the
votes that it receives in Thursday’s parliamentary elections.
Added to a
campaign to deny food to opponents of President Mugabe and door-to-door
intimidation of rural voters, the MDC fears that it may lose the election, even
if it has the support of the majority of voters.
Last week Tobaiwa Mudede,
the registrar-general who has run all of Mr Mugabe’s electoral victories since
1985, announced that there were 5.7 million voters on the roll.
Topper
Whitehead, who runs a pro-democracy group called Freezim and who helped to
detail irregularities in the 2002 presidential elections, analysed a sample of
between 500 and 2,500 registered voters in 12 of the 120 constituencies.
Mr
Whitehead estimates that 78 per cent of people who have died in Zimbabwe since
1980 are still registered to vote.
House-to-house checks revealed that
nearly half of the voters in the sample had never been heard of at their
addresses listed on the roll and the duplication of names was common.
Mr
Whitehead said that a conservative extrapolation of the statistics gave a total
of 2.6 million “ghost” and duplicate voters, and a voters’ roll that in reality
is closer to 3.1 million. “There is only one way he can win — by stuffing the
ballot boxes,” he said. “You need a heavily inflated number of voters so that a
huge fake turnout doesn’t look unreasonable.”
In 2002 opposition researchers
found that at rural polling stations where it had election agents, about 300
voters were casting ballots on each day. In the handful of stations that were
unstaffed, however, the count went up to 1,500 a day.
The MDC has never been
able to prove that fake balloting influenced the 2002 elections and the
Government insists that there is nothing wrong with the electoral roll.
Yet
Mr Mudede has defied three court orders to let the opposition officials review
used ballot papers, counterfoils and lists of checked-in voters from the last
presidential election.
This time a small number of observers, the cutting of
the election from three days to one, the doubling of polling stations to more
than 8,000 and the near-impossibility of the MDC training more than 32,000
election agents – four per polling station – have all worked in the ruling
party’s favour.
And the Opposition insists that in an electoral system whose
senior officials are personally appointed by Mr Mugabe, where polling stations
are manned by civil servants, including soldiers and policemen, and independent
scrutiny will be limited, required results can be made to order.
Independent
observers accused the electoral authorities in 2002 of invented results.
Officers from the 120 constituency centres telephoned their results to the
“national command centre” — an operations room which passed them on to be
broadcast. Lawyers who tried to enter the centre were threatened at gunpoint.
New electoral legislation passed in January abolishes the command
centre. Counting is to be done at each polling station and the results
telephoned to a constituency centre. However, instead of the command centre,
there is now a “national election logistics centre” with obscure functions and
whose existence is not legislated.
While the lead-up to the election has
been peaceful, there have been widespread reports that rural voters are being
told that they will be punished after the election for voting for the
Opposition.
Village chiefs have been told to accompany their people
to the voting stations to put pressure on them to vote for Zanu (PF). Voters
have been told that it will be easy to see who they voted for, as the new ballot
boxes are transparent.
There have been repeated reports of food being used
as a way of forcing people to vote for the ruling party. In some areas it is
difficult to buy grain without a Zanu (PF) membership card.
Pius Ncube, the
Archbishop of Bulawayo, accused President Mugabe’s regime on Saturday of using
food in the drought-ravaged Matabeleland region in southwest Zimbabwe to coerce
the electorate to vote for it in Thursday’s general elections.
Yesterday the
President responded by calling Archbishop Ncube a mad, inveterate liar. “He has
been lying for the past two years,” he said.
But some people say that some
of the rigging has already started. Three million Zimbabweans who have left the
country – and could be expected to support the Opposition – have been banned
from voting. The 200,000-strong uniformed services have already voted by postal
ballot. Party election agents and observers are barred from the process.
The Times
Against the closed fist
Zimbabweans
rally to the open palm, symbol of
change
Reality catches up with them
all in the end, even with political
operators as skilled as Robert Mugabe at
muffling and intimidating
opposition. Against all expectations, including
his own, Zimbabwe's
parliamentary election campaign has burst into defiant
life. Whatever the
ballot boxes entrusted to military and police election
"organisers" are
declared to contain after the polls close on Thursday - a
matter Mr Mugabe
is not expected to leave to simple electoral arithmetic -
there is now no
gainsaying the impatience of millions of Zimbabweans for
change.
The raised fist of the ruling Zanu (PF), once the symbol
of
national liberation, now signifies repression, intolerance and a
capricious
authoritarianism that has ruined the lives of all but an unjustly
favoured
few. One of Africa's most developed countries is now its fastest
declining
economy. With the collapse of commercial agriculture, and the
industries
that serviced it, four out of five people have no job,
hyperinflation has
destroyed what savings they had, and hunger afflicts half
the nation. Mr
Mugabe offers no panaceas, instead harping on anticolonialism
in a
hysterical "anti-Blair" campaign. This has backfired. People hardly
need
telling that Mr Mugabe, not Mr Blair, is their President, and that
after 25
years in power, their increasingly desperate state is his
responsibility.
In great crowds and, more perilously,
in small village
gatherings where the feared Zanu (PF) militias keep close
count of the
"disloyal", people are rallying instead to the more appealing
symbolism of
the open palm of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Its
leader,
Morgan Tsvangirai, has presented a detailed programme of reforms -
and above
all, holds out the promise of "a new
beginning".
The chances of that new beginning remain remote.
Mr Mugabe has
given himself ample means to treat opposition votes with
contempt. He may
have hoped, as the MDC feared, that voter apathy about an
election whose
result was seen to be a foregone conclusion would enable him
to control the
campaign as well - and that he could afford a few weeks ago
the "democratic"
gesture of ordering Zanu (PF) militias to desist from
breaking up opposition
rallies and beating up MDC supporters. But in the
relative calm that has
ensued, there has occurred a profound shift in the
national mood.
If the MDC were to win a popular majority,
manipulating the
result could now risk mass unrest. Pius Ncube, the
outspoken Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Bulawayo, declares that if cheated in
this election,
Zimbabweans should "really organise" to expel Mr Mugabe "by a
non-violent,
popular, mass uprising". Zimbabwe's ruthless military, not to
mention its
tightly controlled media and poor communications and the
neighbouring
countries' shameful tolerance of President Mugabe, all make a
surge of
people power, Ukraine-style, unlikely. The response to people power
could be
violent. But without peaceful democratic change, violence will
surely come
to Zimbabwe. It is not only out of concern for democracy that
this week's
elections matter to the world.
Updated Report on Polling Stations
Dated 28/3/5 22:00
In terms of
Section 51(3) and 52(2)(a) of the Electoral Act (Chapter 2:13),
the details
of Polling Stations for the 120 Constituencies were published by
the ZEC in a
number of papers on or about 18 March 2005.
The primary source of data
referenced in this report is the published
listings contained as an insert of
56 pages in the Zimbabwe Independent
newspaper (18 March 2005).
Later
data was obtained from the 60-page ZEC insert in The Standard (20
March 2005)
which was identical to that of the Zimbabwe Independent except
for an
additional four pages at the end of the document. The four additional
pages
contain:
* A page numbered E5 (sic - should be E57)
carrying details for
Mhondoro Constituency
* Page E58: Gwanda Polling Stations
* Page E59: a
MMPZ report
* Page E60: a Reserve Bank
advertisement
Comment:
The 56-page listing is characterized by the
following flaws:
* The listings are not always alphabetically listed
either by
Constituency or Polling Station
* Entries are not consistent eg
SECONDARY entered also as SEC
* Numerous spelling errors, eg
* Manicaland
Mutasa South 70 ST BARBARA'S SCH
MUTETE LEONARD T
* Manicaland Mutasa
South 71 ST BARBRA SEC SCH
MASHINGAIDZE JOSEPH N
* * Presiding Officer
names are generally listed in the format
Surname, Forenames but in many
instances are given Forenames, Surname making
it more difficult to check for
duplicates
* * Numbering of Polling Stations is erroneous in many cases
eg
* o Harare East
* o Chipinge North
* o Mutasa North
* Page E14
Bindura Constituency: from no 51, Polling Stations are
transposed with
Presiding Officers
* Page E26 Goromonzi: both columns transposed
* Pages
do not follow with correct data eg
* p 8 to p9,
* p11 to p 12
* top of
p13 is a continuation of p9 Mutasa South
* The following Constituencies are
omitted entirely:
o Mhondoro
o Gwanda
o Gokwe Sengwa
o Gokwe
South
o Gweru Urban
o Mkoba
* There is confusion over the correct
constituency names for
the Gokwe Constituencies. There are 5 Gokwe
Constituencies but different
names appear in various places. The list of
candidates has:
o Gokwe
o Gokwe Chireya
o Gokwe Kana
o Gokwe
Nembudziya
o Gokwe-Sengwa
while the Polling Station List has
o
Gokwe
o Gokwe Chireya
o Gokwe Kana
o Gokwe Nembudziya
* No
Constituency Election Officers are named for
o Gokwe-Sengwa
o Hwedza
o
Kadoma
o Shamva
* At least 50 names of Presiding Officers appear more
than
once.
* There are 152 duplicated polling station names, many in
the
same constituencies eg
CONSTITUENCY POLLING STATION PRES
OFFICER
Nyanga 32 Mazarura Sec Sch Kadzere Camillo
35 Mazarura Sec Sch
Njokoyo Joseph
5 Chaparatonga Prim School Mwapondora Themba
88
Chaparatonga Prim School Nyabunze Bernard
How and where will the rigging
take place?
Voting takes place in 12 hours on a single day: this reduces
the opportunity
for rigging at polling stations or ballot stuffing
overnight.
Counting takes place at Polling Stations and results are
forwarded to
Constituency Centres for collation and the official announcement
of the
result. In 2000 and 2002, all results were collated and announced at
a
National Command Centre in Harare which is where rigging occurred
primarily.
If rigging takes the form of ballot stuffing, this will have
to be done at
Polling Station level and given that the national average of
voters per
polling station is >700, any polling station that has more
ballots cast than
this figure should be subjected to intense scrutiny and
verification of
ballot papers.
Polling agents have been warned that
they will be arrested and prosecuted if
they communicate results at polling
station level. The only reason for not
releasing results at Polling Station
level is to allow results to be
"massaged" at Constituency or National
Command Centre level.
Zimbabweans and International Observers must demand
immediate access to
results at Polling Station level without "verification"
at Constituency
level first.
The Australian
Editorial: Another farce in Zimbabwe
March 29,
2005
DEMOCRACY has a chance in Thursday's parliamentary election in Zimbabwe,
but
it will take a miracle. The country's dictator, Robert Mugabe, whose
Marxist
policies have reduced the economy to rubble, has employed less
ostentatious
violence and torture against his opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai's
Movement for
Democratic Change, than during the 2000 election campaign, but
that is
because he is slightly more secure in his control of the process.
Rigged
electoral rolls, a newly gerrymandered electoral map and the presence
of
army thugs at each polling station to "manage" the vote have rendered
Mugabe
so confident he has even allowed the MDC a few minutes on
state-controlled
television. Nevertheless, "illegal" MDC gatherings - such
as a planning
meeting between candidates and party officials - have been
brutally broken
up, and the campaign of intimidation against anybody
suspected of MDC links
has continued unabated.
That is why the fact
that polls are showing the MDC in with a chance is
already a minor miracle.
After all, even telling a pollster you were
thinking of voting against
Mugabe could lead to a visit from members of the
country's youth militia,
whose idea of re-educating any woman with
anti-Mugabe connections usually
involves gang rape. The people of Zimbabwe
are crying out for freedom and
democracy, which is why nobody seriously
doubts that in a free and fair
election the MDC would win. Unfortunately and
disgracefully, the African
establishment has closed ranks behind Mugabe,
with South African President
Thabo Mbeki humouring his rants against Tony
Blair and others who want to
"recolonise" Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, Mugabe lets
his people starve rather than
being "choked" by foreign aid, while his
homophobia and AIDS-denial have
resulted in 2.3 million Zimbabweans, out of
a total population of 13
million, living with HIV/AIDS.
Mr Tsvangirai promises to reverse the
policies that have made Zimbabwe a
basket case. The danger, as Gavin du
Venage argued in The Australian
yesterday, is that if Mugabe were
destabilised, the army, which is really
all that sustains him, would step in
and take charge. What such a view
possibly overlooks is the worldwide
flowering of democracy, via
people-power, that has followed the liberation
of Iraq from the tyranny of
Saddam Hussein. This is what really puts the
skids under thugs such as
Mugabe and his backers - the fact that US
President George W. Bush has
declared the long and ultimately cynical
detente between democracy and
dictatorship over. That does not mean military
action against Mugabe or his
cronies - such a folly would only impose more
suffering on the Zimbabwean
population. It does, however, mean that those in
countries ravaged by
tyranny know they will receive support from outside
when they rise up
peacefully to overturn rigged polls and put those who
actually win elections
in power. In a world buffeted by the winds of
democratic change, not even
carefully vetted election observers recruited
from docile neighbouring
countries may be enough to validate a rigged result
in Zimbabwe on Thursday.
News24
MDC fears vote-rigging
28/03/2005 22:27 -
(SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe's opposition said on Monday some 800 polling
officers sent
to a rural area at the weekend were turned back and accused of
being
opposition sympathisers, prompting fears of vote-rigging in the
parliamentary elections later this week.
Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) secretary general Welshman Ncube said
the polling officers were
blocked on Sunday by a local government officer in
Mudzi, about 200km
northeast of the capital, who apparently told them that
he "did not need
polling officers from Harare".
"Sensing defeat, Zanu-PF has forced back
to Harare 800 polling officers who
had been deployed by the Zimbabwe
Elections Commission (ZEC) to manage
polling stations in Mudzi east
constituency, claiming they were MDC
supporters," Ncube said.
A
spokesperson for the elections commission, Utloile Silaigwana, said that
election officials had been dispatched to the area to investigate the
incident and that a report would be issued.
The group are part of
some 90 000 polling officers being deployed throughout
the 8 300 voting
stations across Zimbabwe ahead of the parliamentary
elections on
Thursday.
Ncube alleged that the ruling Zanu-PF candidate for Mudzi, Ray
Kaukonde,
along with other local Zanu-PF leaders, "told the polling officers
they were
not wanted in Mudzi because they were MDC supporters and
sympathisers".
"We believe that the usual Zanu-PF machinery which will
conduct the
elections is geared to rig the poll and steal the people's
vote," said
Ncube.
The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic
Front has traditionally been
seen to be strong in rural areas such as
Mudzi.
President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party is tipped to win the vote
in this
week's elections, that are closely watched to see if the southern
African
country will adhere to regional guidelines for democratic
elections.
Schoolteachers 'disenfranchised'
The MDC has meantime
said some 50 000 polling officers, most of them
schoolteachers who have been
recruited to be polling officers will be
disenfranchised this week because
they have been deployed outside their
constituencies where they are
registered to vote.
"Teachers, just like members of the uniformed forces
who have already cast
their votes through the postal ballot system, also
have a constitutional
right to elect representatives of their choice into
parliament," said the
MDC in a statement.
It said the problem showed
that Mugabe's government was not ensuring
democratic polls.
"We view
this development as another of the regime's futile attempts to
steal the
parliamentary elections," said the MDC.
ABC Australia
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV
PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2005/s1332817.htm
Broadcast: 28/03/2005
Tsvangirai rallies against Mugabe in
Zimbabwe
Reporter: Zoe Daniel
QUENTIN DEMPSTER:
Zimbabwe's Opposition Leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has
addressed a campaign
rally in Harare, telling citizens a vote for the
opposition is a vote for
food. The country's general parliamentary elections
will be held on
Thursday, and President Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF Party is
expected to win in
a landslide. The President has recently acknowledged food
shortages in
Zimbabwe, promising not to let people starve. But the
Opposition says rising
poverty may lead people to change their vote. Africa
correspondent Zoe
Daniel reports.
ZOE DANIEL: With just a few days left until the
election, Opposition
supporters have come out of hiding in a massive show of
support for the
Movement for Democratic Change. In the Highfields township
in the capital,
Harare, they gathered to hear opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai speak.
MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, MDC LEADER: You have a right -
you have a right on
31st, on Thursday. You have a right to speak. You have a
right to choose
your own leadership. You have a right to choose your own
government. Go and
vote for food. Go and vote for jobs. Go and vote for MDC.
Go and vote for
hope. Go and vote for your future!
ZOE DANIEL:
In Zimbabwe, shortages of fuel and food are critical
issues in the lead-up
to this election. President Robert Mugabe has
campaigned hard against
change. He says a vote for the opposition is a vote
for a return to colonial
rule under British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Morgan Tsvangirai
disagrees.
MORGAN TSVANGIRAI: Tony Blair has nothing to do with
Zimbabwe. If
Mugabe wants to contest Tony Blair, he should go to Britain and
not to
Zimbabwe!
ZOE DANIEL: Proper Ndlovu and Thando Sibanda
are observing the
campaigning from afar. They're young and politically
aware, but they live in
Johannesburg and they have no official vote on
Thursday. But they'll vote
anyway.
THANDO SIBANDA, ZIMBABWEAN
STUDENT: It actually shows how much I would
have loved to have that right
because voting is not a privilege, it's a
right.
ZOE DANIEL: A
mock election being conducted via text message and
telephone will poll three
million Zimbabweans living outside the country who
want to express an
opinion.
PROPER NDLOVU, ZIMBABWEAN EXPAT: I have the right to vote
to choose my
future leader as a youth, you know? The person whom I am going
to choose or
the party which I am going to choose, it's going to shape my
future.
ZOE DANIEL: There was a final legal challenge to allow
millions of
Zimbabweans living outside the country to vote in the official
poll, but it
was dismissed by the Supreme Court. The mock election will run
alongside the
official poll, and will begin in South Africa on Thursday.
Zimbabwean
political analyst Bheki Moyo says it's likely the Opposition will
win the
mock poll, but it wouldn't be a bad thing if the ruling party did.
He's
working with expats to make the experiment a success.
BHEKI MOYO, POLITICAL ANALYST: I think the idea is to judge the mood
and see
who exactly enjoys popularity and then from there we develop
strategies.
ZOE DANIEL: Despite shows of support like this, the
ruling party is
expected to win the official election with a two-thirds
majority later this
week. Zoe Daniel, Lateline.
Washington Times
Analysis: No roses or tulips for Zimbabwe
By
Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Washington, DC, Mar. 28 (UPI)
-- Can the tide of peaceful, democratic
revolution that has been rising over
Eurasia and the Middle East work its
magic in central Africa? A growing
number of people in Zimbabwe certainly
hope so. But it appears to be
unlikely yet.
The impoverished central African nation and former British
colony of 13
million people ruled with an iron hand by the 81-year-old
Robert Mugabe over
the past quarter of a century is due to hold
parliamentary elections
Thursday and there is virtually unanimous agreement
that the votes will be
fixed to arrange yet another victory for Mugabe's
Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF
party.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsviangirai, who heads the main
opposition party,
the Movement for Democratic Change, has been greeted by
large, passionate
and enthusiastic crowds wherever he goes. Some 20,000
people turned out for
him at a rally Sunday in a poor part of the capital
Harare.
Mugabe, by contrast, has run a bizarre campaign of demagoguery
that appears
strangely disconnected from the universal poverty and despair,
out of
control AIDS epidemic, and even widespread starvation from his
government's
inept and heavy-handed economic and agricultural
policies.
Ignoring all that, Mugabe has been running, not against his own
opposition
but against British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he is trying
to turn
into a fairy tale ogre and whom he has accused of plotting the
return of
British colonialism to enslave the Zimbabwean people.
And
on Monday, he labeled one of the most respected Christian leaders in the
country, Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second
largest city, a "half-wit" for calling for a peaceful, non-violent popular
movement to drive him from power.
"I don't know to which God he
prays. ... He is ...a half-wit. I don't know
why the Vatican tolerates
prayers of that nature," Mugabe said in Chivhu,
south of Harare. Chivhu is a
ZANU-PF stronghold where the president's wife
Gracie came
from.
Archbishop Ncube called Sunday for a broad-based, non-violent
peaceful
protest movement to topple Mugabe. He even volunteered to put on
his
vestments and lead a march to the presidential palace himself. "I hope
that
people get so disillusioned that they really organize against the
government
and kick him (Mugabe) out by a nonviolent, popular mass rising,"
he told the
South African Sunday Independent newspaper which is published in
Johannesburg.
"... People have been too soft with this government. So
people should pluck
up just a bit of courage and stand up against him and
chase him away. ... I
am simply backing a non-violent popular uprising, like
that in the
Philippines in 1986 and such as in Ukraine," he said.
But
as Ncube himself acknowledged, that is unlikely to happen. "If I do it,
I do
it alone," he said in the interview. "The people are so scared. You are
not
going to get that where people are so cowardly."
For Zimbabwe is not
post-Soviet Ukraine or Georgia, or even central Asian
Kyrgyzstan. All there
of those countries had peaceful, revolutions with
ether no -- or in
Kyrgyzstan's case last week -- minimal bloodshed. But the
Orange Revolution
of Ukraine could turn blood red, and not because of
Georgian roses or Kyrgyz
tulips, if it was applied to Zimbabwe.
That is because Mugabe is a
veteran revolutionary leader who won power
through a ruthless,
no-holds-barred guerrilla war and is determined to keep
it, unlike former
Presidents Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine, Eduard Shevardnadze
of Georgia and
Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan, all of whom were former communist
party
apparatchiks who had no taste for either revolution or for violent
repression when the crunch time came.
Mugabe, by contrast, has
reveled in repression and paranoia and continues to
do so, as his
extraordinary comments about Blair indicate. Also, he
continues to try and
take advantage of Zimbabwe's ancient tribal divisions
to retain the support
of his inner clique, so that his security forces will
not melt away or
refuse to fight for him, as Askayev's would not in the
Kyrgyz capital
Bishkek last week.
On Sunday, the MDC claimed that Mugabe's security
police had arrested 200
opposition supporters after their
rally.
Archbishop Ncube told Britain's Sky News in another interview
Sunday that
Mugabe and ZANU-PF were withholding food from political
strongholds of the
MDC in drought-ravaged Matabeleland in the southwest of
the country. The
accusation was especially potent because the Matabele
people were never
supporters of Mugabe and he mercilessly crushed them after
taking power in
the early 1980s.
ZANU-PF spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira
Monday angrily denied Ncube's charge.
"The allegation that they (Sky News
and the archbishop) made is completely
unsubstantiated and untrue," he told
the Herald newspaper in Harare. And he
called the archbishop "a mad,
inveterate liar. He has been lying for the
past two years."
The
archbishop, Shamuyarira claimed "fits into the scheme of the British and
Americans, who are calling for regime change and are feeding him these wild
ideas," he said
With Mugabe hanging in tough and the security forces
and ZANU-PF cadres
still loyal behind him, Zimbabwe still looks a long way
from any political
spring scented with oranges, roses or tulips.
New Zimbabwe
DANIEL FORTUNE MOLOKELE: FACING REALITY
Nobody holds elections like Zimbabwe
Last updated: 03/28/2005
23:58:59
I WAS chatting to one of my many South African activists'
friends
sometime during the past week over the much vaunted Zimbabwean
elections. He
intimated to me on how he was so fascinated by the colorful
and dramatic
nature of the polls. He compared the forthcoming plebiscite to
that of South
Africa last year and was of the strong opinion that there was
a large
difference between the two processes.
The South African
elections were too drab and dull. That is, when
compared to the current
excitement in Zimbabwe. The southern neighbor's main
focus was the boring
and inanimate issues such as empty promises on fighting
the high crime rate,
HIV-Aids, and poverty alleviation strategies. No one
was allowed to say
anything bad or nasty about the other party or its
candidates.
The elections emphasized on the letter of the hallowed Constitution.
The
electoral institutions and the concomitant state functionaries such as
the
intelligence and the police played a subservient low key role in the
entire
process. Curiously, there was government controlled media at the
ready
disposal of the ruling ANC.
But even more importantly, there was
nothing to write home about on
the credibility of the electoral process. No
fears of rigging. No fears of
serious political intimidation and violence.
No talk of fears about the
aspect of the elections being not free or fair.
It appears all and sundry
have bequeathed their most profound faith and
trust on the democratic
efficacy of the South African electoral
system.
Now let us fast forward to the northern neighbor's version
of a
national polling process . . .
The situation across the
not so flooded but crocodile infested Limpopo
is the complete apposite to
the one prevailing in South Africa. In Zimbabwe,
elections are not a Sunday
lazy stroll in the central park. No, they are
very serious business with all
the stakes raised so high like a township
tower light. It is not an
overstatement to say that they elections in
Zimbabwe are a guaranteed matter
of life and death.
Nobody conducts elections the way Zimbabweans do
it. Absolutely
nobody!
The March 2005 elections have however
placed themselves in a complete
class of their own. Never have Zimbabweans
staged such a dramatic and
colorful elections process. The plot is full of a
lot of unanticipated twist
and turns. It is highly unpredictable. Maybe,
only comparable to the
labyrinth nature of television soaps
plots!
There are a lot of dramatic events when Zimbabwe. Indeed can
south
Africa have an answer to the glamour and pomp, not to mention the
innuendos
and intrigues of the December 2004 Zanu-PF Congress? Can South
Africa have a
comparison to the controversy and in-fightings of the MDC and
Zanu-PF
primary elections?
Can South Africa give us an answer
to the colorful independent
candidates such as Jonathan Moyo and Margaret
Dongo? Talking about Jonathan
Moyo, nobody spins and doctors the media like
him. No, not even a rocket
scientist from Mars!
"Need I
talk about the Herald and the Chronicle, not to mention
New Ziana? South
Africa has no answer to these prolific propaganda
mouthpieces"
DANIEL MOLOKELE
Unlike in South Africa,
the electoral institutions are a source of
political amusement. For
starters, it is so hard to take them seriously.
They are so discredited, so
much that it is so strenuous to try and justify
their democratic legitimacy.
Added to that, they are too many of them!
There is the Registrar
General (read Rigging General!) known as
Tobaiwa Mudede who has developed
the art of messing up and cooking up the
voters' roll. Then there is the
Electoral Delimitation Commission that is
notorious for withdrawing the
opposition constituencies and depositing them
into what is perceived to be
the ruling party's rural strongholds.
Not to mention the Electoral
Supervisory Commission. It is supposed to
be the constitutional equivalent
of the South African Independent Electoral
Commission. But what does it in
fact do? All it does is to supervise the
entire rigging process without
raising any of its eyebrows or fingers.
But can South Africa have
an answer to our newly set up Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission. Curiously, the
electoral body did not even exist at
the beginning of 2005. It was set up
rather hurriedly sometime during
January. There are even fears that it does
not have the requisite
administrative capacity to facilitate the conduct of
a national election
process.
Then there is the nation's first
and permanent media choice, the
Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. The ZBC
is notorious for not only
claiming to be the first with the news but also
boasting that before it
happens we will already be there! Witness the
coverage of the Cain Nkala
murder story by Reuben Barwe.
This
is one thing I am sure all South Africans should be grateful that
they do
not have. What is their SABC when compared to ZBC? Can the SABC have
an
answer to such horrible programmes as the Media Watch, News hour, not to
mention the countless jingles like 'sendekera'?
Need I talk
about the Herald and the Chronicle, not to mention New
Ziana? South Africa
has no answer to these prolific propaganda mouthpieces.
And then
there is this cast of delightful maverick characters in the
political stage.
Can South Africa have the likes of Wayne Bvudzijena,
Tafataona 'MIC' Mahoso,
Job 'Wiwa' Sikhala, Munyaradzi Gwisai, Lovemore
Madhuku, and John
Makumbe?
Indeed, does South Africa have the lyrical answer to
politicians who
also could have made it in the music world? Does it have the
likes of Elliot
'Nora' Manyika and Jonathan 'phambili le Tsholotsho'
Moyo?
And then there is this aspect of dancing at rallies. A lot of
choreographers better attend these rallies just to see the abundant dancing
talent that the country has. Who would ever forget the late Border Gezi's
famous 'kongonya' dance?
Where in the world would you fight the
leader of another country being
touted as an opponent in the local
elections? But in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe
is busy contesting against the
British Prime Minister. You should hear him
once he starts to wax lyrical
about the so-called anti-Blair elections!
And then those colourful
campaign regalia. You should see how well
dressed supporters and leaders'
alike look at some of theses rallies. Not to
mention the different
assortments of caps and cowboy hats!
And then the empty political
rally speeches. Nobody gives harangues
like our leaders! These guys can talk
like I don't know. Just the other day
our living room was set alight by one
Morgan Tsvangirai. He was on the news
talking about Mugabe's success in
ruining the economy. Said he, 'how can we
have a successful economy in a
nation were millionaires are poor!'
Hey, you got to hand it over to
the Zimbabweans because after all has
been said and done, it appears no one
holds elections like we do. Absolutely
nobody!
Anyway, let me
take this opportunity to wish all Zimbabweans a very
peaceful elections day.
May God be with the entire nation at this time of
critical national
discourse.
CONTACT DANIEL BY E-MAIL: danielmolokele@yahoo.co.uk
Daniel Molokele is a lawyer and a former student leader. He is
currently
based in Johannesburg, South Africa. His column appears here every
Monday
Reuters
Zimbabwe opposition fears voter apathy
Mon Mar 28, 2005 11:11
AM GMT
By Emelia Sithole
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe (Reuters) -
Zimbabwe's main opposition party fears voter
apathy and lingering concerns
about political violence may keep many of its
supporters away from
Thursday's parliamentary elections.
"Our biggest challenge is that
Zimbabweans have never experienced any form
of free and fair elections and
have had 25 years of broken promises and
betrayed dreams," said Movement for
Democratic Change Information Secretary
Paul Themba-Nyathi.
"We have
to make them see a future that they have never dared envisage," he
told
Reuters during a campaign stop in Gwanda, southern Zimbabwe.
At every
campaign rally, MDC leaders have exhorted supporters to turn out in
large
numbers, hammering home the message each vote counts despite
expectations
President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party will win.
Riding a wave of
public anger over Zimbabwe's collapsing economy, the MDC
braved violence and
intimidation by ZANU-PF supporters in contesting the
2000 parliamentary
elections and a presidential poll in 2002. It maintains
it would have won
both if not for rigging.
The MDC says Mugabe's party has used tough media
and security laws to
engineer another victory this year.
"Apathy and
fear are of major concern. After what happened in 2000 and 2002
some people
say 'What changed, so why bother voting?'," Themba-Nyathi
said.
Themba-Nyathi said the party has mounted an education campaign for
its
election monitors, cautioning them to be extra vigilant about potential
vote
tampering.
Although the run-up to this year's elections has been
relatively
violence-free, Themba-Nyathi says many people were still fearful
there may
be a resurgence of the political strife that marked previous
polls,
particularly in remote rural areas.
"People here are very
vulnerable to all kinds of insinuations and this is
one area which
experienced the brutality of the army (in the early 1980s)
and people still
remember that," he said.
"The fear factor is there. When somebody is told
that if we lose at this
polling station we know who you are and we will deal
with you, people then
don't want to take the risk and so they would rather
stay away from the
polls."
Themba-Nyathi reiterated charges that some
ZANU-PF supporters were abusing
scarce food supplies to coerce people to
vote for it, withholding the sale
of the basic maize meal from those who did
not have its party cards.
ZANU-PF has denied the allegations.
Reuters
Zambia Benefits from Zimbabwe Woes, Others Struggle
Mon Mar
28, 2005 04:32 AM ET
By Manoah Esipisu
HARARE (Reuters) - Zambia's
agriculture and tourism sectors have reaped rich
benefits from Zimbabwe's
economic and political woes, analysts say, though
other countries have
suffered losses.
White Zimbabwean farmers displaced by President Robert
Mugabe's land reforms
have also boosted farm output in Malawi and Mozambique
with their expertise.
But Zimbabwe's economic collapse, which has seen
joblessness soar and
created food shortages, has also robbed neighbors like
Mozambique of a key
market for their exports.
Zimbabwe was once a
prized client of hydroelectric company Cahora Bassa and
Mozambique Ports and
Railways, but the volume of its goods through
Mozambique has declined due to
a persistent foreign exchange shortage,
analysts said.
"Zimbabwe used
to be an important trade partner for Mozambique but foreign
exchange
problems have limited cross-border activity," Professor Cardoso
Muendane, a
Maputo development consultant, told Reuters Monday.
"The economic and
political situation in Zimbabwe has negatively affected
Mozambique. That
country has limited ability to buy Mozambique's produce,"
Muendane
added.
"A quick solution would be desirable but unfortunately this does
not depend
on a calendar and it is difficult to forecast when a turnaround
will
happen," he told Reuters in Maputo.
Malawi had benefited from a
trickle of Zimbabwean farmers, foreign exchange
shortages in Harare had
distorted prices making Malawi's produce
comparatively more expensive,
analysts said.
Zimbabwe faces parliamentary elections on March 31 which
Mugabe hopes will
help counter international criticism of his
government.
Mugabe has faces five years of international isolation amid
charges he
rigged the last major parliamentary vote and his own re-election
as
president in 2002. The European Union and the United States have put
sanctions on his government on charges of previous election
rigging.
INSTABILITY IN ZIMBABWE DOLLAR
"Zimbabwe has hit Malawian
exporters because of instability in the exchange
rate," said Malawi
University economics professor Ben Kalua. A decline in
the Zimbabwe dollar
hurts Malawi whose kwacha is relatively stable, they
said.
Zambia
meantime has had a boost, with significant gains in agriculture and
tourism,
said financial commentator Ignatius Chicha, treasurer at CitiBank
Zambia.
"We are now seeing more tourists visiting Livingstone to see
the Victoria
Falls from the Zambian side because of instability and food
shortages in
Zimbabwe, growing tourism," Chicha said.
"There are more
planes landing at Livingstone airport bringing in people who
would
ordinarily be visiting Zimbabwe because of the good infrastructure it
has,"
Chicha added.
The growing tourism sector in Zambia had made small
airlines in the
region -- including Zambian Airways and Air Botswana --
expand their
southern African routes, analysts said.
And the latest
data from the Tobacco Association of Zambia (TAZ) showed that
tobacco
production would rise to 52 million kg this year from 31 million kg
in 2004
and just some 3.4 million kg in 2000 on the back of white Zimbabwe
farmers
now in Zambia.
CitiBank's Chicha said Zimbabwe's economy could experience
a rebound after
Mugabe leaves office, probably after 2008 when Zimbabwe is
due to hold its
next presidential elections.
"They are working hard
to stabilize the exchange rate and also to try and
lower interest rates and
bring down inflation. The only thing they need to
do is repair their
relations with Western donors," Chicha said.
Zimbabwe has had soured
relations with Western donor agencies and countries
in a row Mugabe says was
instigated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
angered at his taking of
white farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
Mugabe's critics say
he, not Blair, must bear the blame for 5 years of
economic decline in
Zimbabwe.
Abel Mkandawire, chairman of the Zambia Association of Chambers
of Commerce
and Industry (ZACCI), said an influx of Zimbabwe farmers and
business people
also improved technology use in Zambia and fueled production
of quality
goods.
"They have created jobs for Zambians and they have
improved how we do
business," Mkandawire told Reuters in
Zambia.
(Additional reporting by Shapi Shacinda in Zambia, Mabvuto Banda
in Malawi
and Mateus Chale in Mozambique)
Sokwanele blog
Monday, March 28, 2005
Archbishop Pius Ncube for Nobel
Peace Prize!
Congratulations to this hero for his outstanding courage in
leading from the
front, rather than following his flock. Spiritual leaders
need to ensure the
rights, lives and futures of their congregations. If they
don't stand up for
good, who will?
posted by Parishioner - Bulawayo at
9:56 PM
Not very 'PC'!
Selina has just come back from her rural home
and tells me that the
computers given to her child's school by our
president, were then taken back
for delivery to another school. So much for
election gimmicks!
posted by Still Here - Bulawayo at 3:15 PM
We are
being heard...
Flattering comparison of Zvakwana to freedom fighters in
Serbia, Ukraine and
Georgia. We hope we live up to it and we know
Zimbabweans want freedom as
much as they do!
The whole world is
noticing Zimbabwe's struggle. Zvakwana was featured on
page one of the
weekly Mail and Guardian SA with five posters pictured and
'f*ck quiet
diplomacy!' Sokwanele's blog has been noticed by the Guardian
newspaper (UK)
in their online blog section.
Newsweek on its cover says "Mugabe is on
the ropes".
posted by Sokwanele at 12:59 PM
Zim is beautiful, but
there's something wrong here...
I have been visiting Zimbabwe for years as a
tourist. If you like to be off
the beaten path, COME NOW! I practically had
Vic Falls to myself, and the
road from Vic Falls to Bulawayo is empty. Stop
at one of the little picnic
rest stops, which have unfortunately fallen
apart, and you will be alone in
silence.
As for violence, how do you
see it? As a visitor, you can't really see what's
happening. Thanks to sites
like Sokwanele for telling what's really
happening.
The truth is that
something's wrong. I saw a dead hyena on the road near
Hwange, and then
heard that there is a giant elephant slaughter there. Every
single person
wants to talk politics. Everybody asks for food - something
that did NOT
used to happen here - and all the guys are looking very trim -
too trim,
with small waists. You can tell they're not getting enough to eat,
even in
Vic Falls where there are still some jobs.
posted by USA - Visitor at 12:29
PM
Thorn in the side
Sokwanele is obviously a thorn in the side of the
zanupf technological thug
crew. They realize that civil society in Zimbabwe
has finally found the
courage to stand up and say 'Enough is Enough' to the
regime's crude and
violent oppression. They are trying to close us down.
Last week Sokwanele
received two separate emails, one on Friday and another
on Sunday (they are
working overtime!), directly from zanupf@africanonline.com. Both
contained
viruses. They are desperate because their days are numbered,
people have
said 'Enough is Enough!'
posted by Sokwanele at 12:53
AM
Sunday, March 27, 2005
I can feel the winds of change
blowing.
Yesterday's rally was amaaaazing. We were conspicuous by our pale
faces and
what a fabulous welcome we received from a happy bunch of Bulawayo
MDC
supporters. I wish the other whities in this country would stop being so
afraid, kill their victim complexes and get out with our fellow countrymen
to end evil.
I was pleasantly surprised by the cops there, a few
stood stony faced and
long suffering, some helped usher vehicles into the
car park and you could
see many itched to fling their open hands up, joining
the crowd in welcoming
democracy. At last they realize they are working for
their children, not the
government that treats them like dirt. I can feel
the winds of change
blowing .
A bit of humour. On the way to
yesterday's rally, I was chuffed to find
myself driving behind David Coltart
envoy. One of their enthusiastic numbers
was so busy waving to pedestrians,
he was taken unawares when the truck he
was in moved off from a traffic
light. He fell out the back, unhurt, picked
himself up and ran after the
vehicle. He was too slow but luckily, Mrs
Coltart was coming up behind him
and scooped him up.
The comedy not over, he jumped out of her vehicle at
the next traffic light
to jump back into the back of the truck, but he was
too slow! Once again he
was saved by the MP's good wife.
posted by Proud
white Zimbo - Bulawayo at 11:14 PM
Where are the observers?
Heard that
villagers out past Bulawayo airport have been visited by CIO and
they've
been told who will go and vote and how they should vote, and that if
there
is any other result at that particular polling station other than the
expected result, all their houses will be burned down. This is the down side
of counting votes at each polling station. Where are the observers? Seems to
me that they are in Holiday Inns and only attending permitted
rallies.
posted by Friend - Rural Matabeleland at 4:50 PM
Observers:
watching, but not asking questions... why?
I heard from a friend who was part
of the Good Friday walk in Bulawayo, that
a few walkers approached some
observers outside the Selbourne Hotel. They
were completely uninterested in
what the 'walkers' were doing or what they
wanted to say to them. I wonder
why they are here if they are uninterested
to speaking to us.
posted by
Parishioner - Bulawayo at 3:19 PM
Tsholotsho rallies
I have just heard
that Professor Jonathan Moyo held a rally last week in his
constituency,
Tsholotsho. His generous supply of free food and drink brought
in a crowd of
10 000 as reported by the State run newspapers. President
Mugabe held a
rally in Tsholotsho's main business center a few days after.
His offer of
free, forced transport brought in a crowd of 4000. The MDC also
held rallies
in Tsholotsho in two separate, isolated, hard to reach growth
points. They
offered no food, no drink and no transport. The combined
attendance at the
MDC rallies was over 9000. Who knows, the MDC may retain
Tsholotsho after
all.
posted by Friend - Rural Matabeleland at 12:37 PM
Saturday, March
26, 2005
'Fueled' or 'Fooled' ?
One of the speakers at the rally that I
attended the other night was talking
about the level of corruption that has
developed in our society and how
unashamed people have become. Today, I met
with friends and the topic came
up again. My friend (I'll call him Mr.T)
shared his experience...
Recently, Mr.T went on holiday to Mozambique.
Because he was unsure of
whether he would get fuel along the way he took a
jerry can of petrol with
him. Before he crossed the border he filled up the
fuel tank in his vehicle,
but had about 10 litres left over in the can. At
the border, the Zimbabwean
officials told him he was not allowed to take
fuel out of the country.
Obviously, Mr.T was annoyed and was NOT going to
allow the officials to have
his 10 litres of fuel. On principle, he started
pouring the petrol out onto
the road.
The officials, accompanied by
an armed policeman, came dashing over and
asked him to instead sell the
petrol to the people nearby. Eventually my
friend gave in, and sold his fuel
for Z$30 000.00.
A short while later, at the customs office, the same
officials asked how
much cash he had on him. (There is a limit to the amount
of Zim dollars you
are allowed to take out of the county). Because of his
fuel 'sale' he now
exceeded the cash limit.
Surprise, surprise! Mr.
T's extra cash was 'confiscated'.
You cannot win! Fortunately, our sense
of humour can't be taken away.
posted by Noktula - Bulawayo at 3:38
PM
Nzara, Nzara
My domestic worker has just returned from a ZanuPF
rally where the President
himself was addressing the crowd in Norton, just
outside Harare. Five years
ago this area was considered one of the finest
farming districts in the
country. Today it is a dusty patch of weeds. My
worker attended the rally
purely out of curiosity and was amused to report
that the many elderly
participants enraged the President as they set up a
low chant in Shona
"Nzara, Nzara" in English, "Hungry, hungry". Five years
ago everyone had a
roof over their head, a full stomach, a clinic to be
treated at and a decent
school to send their children to.
posted by Flame
Lily - Harare at 12:47 PM
Friday, March 25, 2005
Blocked ears
I
feel compelled to share the lighter side of the farcical election campaign
being held in the Nkayi district. We all know that Obert Mpofu, a nefarious
and self important character and the governor of Matabeleland, is the
parliamentary candidate for this constituency.
Mpofu has had his
thugs plaster his face to any wall, rock or tree space in
this rural area.
Local residents (majority of whom are MDC supporters) have
responded to his
mugshots with hilarious revenge tactics.
His posters now boast poked out
eyes and ears, filled with stalks of grass!
This has really gotten up the
noses of the ZanuPF supporters who are now
busy pulling down their own
posters.
A good chuckle always makes the day's crises easier to deal
with.
posted by Friend - Rural Matabeleland at 9:22 PM
'War vets' as
election supervisors
Government Election Supervisors are following the
campaigners around and
some of them have been recognized as local war vets.
My belief is that these
war vets have been given uniforms to intimidate
people at rallies. This has
happened in several different places. I've also
been told that a notorious
war vet who works at the Chiredzi General
hospital as a nurse is now an
Election Supervisor in this area...! We also
have War vets as Polling
station Presiding Officers in this area. How can
anyone possibly say that
this Election is free and fair under these
circumstances?
posted by Cane Rat - Lowveld at 5:47 PM
Courage at
corner of 23rd Ave/Plumtree Rd
Yesterday afternoon, at the busy intersection
of 23rd Ave and Plumtree Road,
a group of MDC youths stood proudly on the
traffic island wielding an
oversized MDC flag (I'll try and upload a pic
later). The contrast between
these joyful youths and the shocked and
depressed looks of passersby was
most conspicuous, living proof of the
personal empowerment action brings.
This is not a time for caution, but it
is the time to stand proud, be
courageous and do what is necessary. Freedom
is a big prize and it deserves
extraordinary action if it is to be
won.
posted by Still Here - Bulawayo at 5:16 PM
Relieved?
I was
quite relieved to see our pastor in church this Good Friday morning.
He and
some other members of our congregation had strolled through the city
centre
earlier today, from one church to another, carrying crosses to
commemorate
Jesus' sacrifice for us. When we were asked to join him, I
immediately
thought: yes I do want to participate, as Christ died for me
too, and I
would not be afraid to publicly acknowledge that. But then I did
become
afraid after all. What if no police permission had been sought? What
if I
would be picked up by the CIO and taken to the Police Station like
happened
to me several years ago? What if I would have to give all my
particulars
again (name, address, ID-number etc) including my church
affiliation? What
if the CIO would read my name in the paper in the list of
polling agents,
which has to be published by law? What if - and I can go on
like this for
some time. So I did not carry my cross, and I felt terrible
for not doing
so. I had let down my pastor, my fellow congregants, but most
of all I had
let down Jesus Christ because I was afraid of mere men. This is
what
election time in Zimbabwe can do to people.
posted by Church Mouse - Bulawayo
at 3:11 PM
Like Kuwait
There are fuel queues at almost every service
station again. With elections
less than a week away, rumours are rife about
the fuel shortage. Some people
are saying that the government is holding
back fuel so that people will not
have transport to go and vote. Others are
saying we have run out of foreign
currency to purchase fuel.
We have
become so accustomed to lining up our cars outside a petrol station.
I don't
remember the last time I got petrol on the spur of the moment. There
is a
joke circulating: "Zimbabwe is a lot like Kuwait, because all we do is
'queue' and 'wait'!"
Yesterday, as I drove through the city centre I
noticed that there were
policemen on every corner of each block along the
main street - robert
mugabe Way. We see this from time to time. It usually
means that mugabe is
in town and is due to drive down that particular road,
usually with a whole
entourage of security. At the end of the motorcade
there is also normally an
ambulance, just in case. The road will be cleared
ahead of arrival by
policemen on motorbikes. The procession does not impress
people, but angers
them! More flagrant abuse of taxpayers money. The fruits
of our hard earned
labour!
A while later, I pass a small van. The
driver is hooting continuously as
they drive along. There are supporters in
the back cheering and shouting,
trying to attract attention. I could not
make out who they represented as we
passed each other to quickly. Election
fever is building up.
posted by Noktula - Bulawayo at 3:05 PM
Lots of
cars and helicopters
A couple of nights ago (22 March) I went to collect a
colleague at the
airport who was arriving on the night flight from Harare. I
was forced to
wait some time as guess who was coming to dinner??? It was the
First Lady
herself. Her motorcade consisted of no less than 17 vehicles who
left the
airport in a blur of speed. Earlier that evening, whilst sitting in
my
garden, I had seen our dear president passing over on his way from a
rally
in Gwanda to State House in Bulawayo with his normal squadron of three
helicopters. I wander, how many suffering children could have been saved
with the state funds used to prop up our corrupt regime just last
night?
The United Nations reported last week that one child dies every 15
minutes
in Zimbabwe.....
posted by Still Here - Bulawayo at 10:03
AM
Soldiers seen moving on farms
Between 20 and 30 armed soldiers were
seen moving on the farms half way
between Chiredzi and Mkwasine at 9.45pm on
Monday. If this isn't
intimidation, then why are they hiding in the evening
hours? Nevertheless,
despite the army using food and death threats to
intimidate people in this
area - and the war vets saying that there will be
war if they lose - people
seem to be ready to try and vote.
posted by
Cane Rat - Lowveld at 9:23 AM
Illegal: Singing on a bus
My
hairdresser's nephew was on a bus with 20 other male youths from their
Apostolic Church en route to a Christian camp at Masvingo this weekend. They
were stopped by Police at the Beatrice/Mbare road intersection and made to
go to Mbare Police where they were charged with "Singing on a
bus".
The uniformed officious official fined them $450,000.00 (for the
group of
20!).
Other police officers at the Station said " that is
not an offence" to which
the more senior replied " I will do whatever the
President tells me to do"!!
posted by Flame Lily - Harare at 9:17
AM
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Queues everywhere
Outside every bank in
town, there are long, winding queues of people trying
to draw their months
wages. At one point, I drive through past a fuel queue
on one side, and a
bank queue on the other. It felt like I was driving
through a tunnel. I feel
lucky, as I have money in my pocket and petrol in
my car.
posted by BD -
Harare at 3:40 PM
First meeting
Last night I went to an MDC rally.
Late in the afternoon, I finally managed
to persuade my friend to come with
me. She had never been to a meeting
before, and was scared of being targeted
for attending one. At 4pm she was
still 'undecided' but at 5.45pm, finally
gave in. The meeting was due to
start at 6pm. As we arrived, I could sense
the tension she was feeling, but
as the evening progressed she relaxed and
it was not long before she was
throwing her hands up and cheering along with
the rest of us. The atmosphere
was electric and the crowd were rearing to
go! Nobody was afraid to wear
their MDC t-shirts, hats and headbands that
are usually not shown in public
at all. There is a feeling of complete
togetherness.
As we approached the gate to leave, my friend froze! There
was a small group
of people standing in the exit. She did not know what to
do - I realised
that she thought there was trouble ahead, and she did not
want to go through
the gate. I nudged past her and she followed me. There
was no trouble. The
group that had instantly intimidated her just by their
presence, were the
young people manning the gate. As we walking back to the
car she said to me
'people are no longer afraid, the MDC will win this time
around, because the
people are not afraid anymore!' When I asked her to come
with me to the next
rally on Saturday she said 'no way, that's going to be a
big one with
Morgan, and there will be trouble'. It is hard to break the
cycle of fear
that is ingrained after five years of continuous
intimidation!
posted by Noktula - Bulawayo at 3:18 PM
Rally at
Bulawayo Centenary Park
Last night I was at an MDC rally at the amphitheatre
in Bulawayo's Centenary
Park, was brought close to tears, goosebumps
abounding and the hair standing
up on the back of my neck. Seeing the
commitment and appreciating the
loyalty, the infrastructural organization,
the dedication and the outright
bravery of those who attended and put the
event together was more than
inspiring.
posted by Still Here - Bulawayo
at 2:23 PM
"No card, no fuel"
Today I waited in a fuel queue for over
an hour, when I finally got to the
front of the queue I was asked to produce
a Zanu PF card. I don't have one,
and don't want to have one. They turned me
away without fuel or even an
apology they said "No card, no fuel" I can't
believe that they can get away
with this. I was not the only one it happened
to, there are at least three
of my friends I have spoken to who have gone
through the same thing.
posted by Chipo - Bulawayo at 11:17
AM
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
It feels like Elections, not Easter
!
At this time of the year people are usually talking about the Easter break
and going home to see their families. This year there is no Easter
excitement. People do not have money for the transport home. Everybody is
instead talking about the elections. Not who will win and who will lose, but
how they are going to be rigged. Most of the people I have spoken to, say
they are going to vote. They say they 'have to try'. Not many are
optimistic.
posted by Noktula - Bulawayo at 9:31 PM
Keeping a low
profile
My small, half-dozen, circle of (white) friends, is probably more
apathetic
about this election than the previous two. There is no inclination
to get
involved or make monetary contributions. They are keeping a very low
profile. To a lesser extent this is true of me too. I still strongly
question the wisdom of the MDC to have gone back on its intial boycott of
the election, with the political playing field so uneven.
The same
apathy can be said to prevail with the half-dozen workers I employ.
The
frank, open exchanges of the last two elections debating policies no
longer
takes place. We are all too scared lest there should be a Zanu PF
sympathiser amongst us. They do however concede that the township violence
and harassment of 2000 and 2002 is absent this time round.
posted by 'K'
- Harare at 5:58 PM
Wanting to come home
I decided to blog under the
pseudonym 'Cold Feet' because I'm always cold in
this part of the world -
even in so-called summer, because I feel like a
coward for not being in my
own country when everyone else is going through
such a hard time, and
because I'm nervous about even contributing to this
blog!
It's funny:
ZANU's whole campaign seems to be against Tony Blair. Apparently
Blair is on
a mission to re-colonise Zimbabwe. In the meanwhile, Mugabe's
disastrous
policies have made a huge number of us skip the country overseas
just so we
and our children can survive.
Someone needs to tell our government- it's
one thing to be deliberately
colonised by a country, but its completely and
totally insane to hand all
your skills and assets over to another country on
a plate, for nothing!
Maybe if ZANU re-focused on things at home, and
stopped making us all so
scared for our futures, the millions of us out of
the country would come
back. And guess what...? We'd be working hard in
Zimbabwe, and our taxes
would be going to Zimbabwean schools, Zimbabwean
children, Zimbabwean health
care etc etc etc.
posted by Cold Feet -
Diaspora (UK) at 4:03 PM
Testing the hypothesis
People are so screwed
up by life in Zimbabwe in so many ways. I keep
thinking of the frog in
boiling water story, you know the one; if you put a
frog into boiling water,
it will try get out, but if you put it in cold
water and then heat it slowly
it will just get hotter and hotter until it
dies. Or so I am told. As if
anyone would actually test the hypothesis. But
it's a good metaphor for
Zimbabweans. Many of us here at home and not free
in the Diaspora just don't
realise what Mugabe's done to us and how he has
impoverished our lives not
only materially but also spiritually. The warmth
and compassion we used to
have for each other is almost non-existent.
Intolerance and disrespect is
the norm, irrespective of political
orientation.
posted by Mandebvu -
Harare at 1:22 AM
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Dying in a
skanya
Yesterday I read an article in the newspaper about a woman who
transported
her very ill husband to a hospital in a skanya (a small hand
pushed cart,
usually about 1.5 metres long by 1 metre wide). When she got to
the
hospital, she was turned away, or as the nurse put it 'referred to
another
hospital'. The next hospital was miles away. She had no money for
transport.
She had no assistance from the hospital because they had no
doctor, or
medical supplies. Her husband lies bleeding from the nose and
mouth beside
her.
In a first world country, this would cause an
outcry. Here at home, it has
become the norm. People don't bother to
complain, because they know nothing
will be done. Today I read that one
Zimbabwean child dies from AIDS every 15
minutes. I wonder much lower we
have to go before the rest of the world
takes notice?
posted by Noktula -
Bulawayo at 11:12
PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sokwanele
- Zvakwana is a peoples' movement, embracing supporters of all
pro-democratic political parties, civic organizations and institutions.
Sokwanele - Zvakwana will never aspire to political office. Sokwanele -
Zvakwana is a peoples' force through which democracy will be restored to the
country and protected jealously for future generations to ensure that
Zimbabweans will never be oppressed again.
SABC
Ncube stands by inflammatory remarks on Mugabe
March 28,
2005, 12:30
Pius Ncube, the Zimbabwean Archbishop of Bulawayo, is
standing by the
comments he made during an an interview with London's
Economist newspaper.
He was quoted in The Economist as saying the people of
Zimbabwe are praying
that Mugabe should die.
Zimbabwean
government-owned newspapers have called on the Roman Catholic
diocese of
Bulawayo to expel Ncube or force him to apologise publicly to
President
Mugabe. In its editorial today, the Bulawayo-based government
daily, The
Chronicle, has described Archbishop Ncube's statement as the
worst hate
speech to have come from a man of the cloth.
However in an interview with
the SABC, the outspoken archbishop says Mugabe
must be held accountable for
the sufferings of his people.
Los Angeles Times
March 28, 2005
Staying On,
Amid Zimbabwe's Madness
.. My parents cling to their home in the face of
Mugabe's hostility.
By Douglas Rogers, Douglas Rogers is a freelance
journalist based in New
York.
The dogs come in from the east:
snarling, bone-thin mongrels the size of
terriers, their howls echoing down
the valley to the farmhouse. Following
behind them, hacking their way
through the bush with sticks and metal
slashers, come their owners, six men
usually, squatters from the neighboring
farm who are ready to beat off the
hounds after they have run down a zebra,
bush buck or impala.
Three
years ago, at the height of the land invasions, when my father first
heard
the dogs, he hauled out his shotgun and drove to the edge of his
property.
He fired two shots in the air and the animals fled, their owners
in hot
pursuit. These days when he hears the dogs, he just shrugs. The game
he had
stocked his farm with has all been slaughtered in the last few years
or has
fled through holes cut in the fence by squatters. The gun is now just
a
small measure of protection for himself and my mother should they be
attacked by thieves or bandits who periodically roam their land.
It
was with some trepidation that I returned to Zimbabwe last month, the
country in which I was born and spent the first 22 years of my life. I was
last here a year ago, and then things were bad. My parents had just received
a Section Five: a notice that the government intended, with or without their
assent, to acquire their 730-acre game farm "for resettlement." They had not
yet received a Section Eight, their final marching orders, but their
prospects looked bleak. For the first time since the liberation war more
than 25 years ago, they slept with a gun by their bed, and my mother had
taken to hiding her diamond ring in a window pelmet.
Via intermittent
e-mails my father had sent in the interim, I gathered
things had got worse:
Most of their remaining friends had emigrated, their
housekeeper had died of
AIDS; the next-door farm, one of the most productive
in the country, had
been trashed by police and the youth militia, and its
4,000 workers and
their families had been made homeless. The bush was
rapidly closing in on my
parents.
This is Zimbabwe 25 years after Robert Mugabe came to power.
Initially he
was seen as a unifier, and my parents, longtime liberals, chose
to stay on,
even as 150,000 of the 250,000 whites fled, unwilling to live
under black
rule. Despite a decade of relative prosperity, the last four
years have seen
the country descend into political turmoil and economic
ruin. After losing a
referendum in 2000, Mugabe accused whites of being
racist colonialists and
began violently seizing their farms. Blacks who
opposed the regime suffered
even more.
The government has become
increasingly corrupt, violence is endemic, human
rights violations are among
the worst in the world. Despite all this, race
relations are surprisingly
good. Most whites and blacks tend to see the wild
rantings of the regime for
the cheap opportunism they are.
My parents' farm is in the Eastern
Highlands, four hours east of Harare,
close to the Mozambique border. It was
early evening, under a blood-red
sunset, when I arrived, and my parents were
locking their front gate. There
were uniformed guards on the perimeter, and
I saw the fence around their
house had been electrified. "We've just been to
a farewell," my mother
laughed. "Soon we'll be the only ones left!" Today, 3
million of us live
outside the country. In Harare, they call London "Harare
North."
My parents refuse to leave. "We are Zimbabweans, this is our
country," they
say. My mother was born in Zimbabwe and my father, a South
African, moved
there in the 1960s. But they no longer rail against those
whites who do
leave. "We can't blame anyone for going," said my
mother.
My parents' rental cottages are routinely burgled, entire living
room sets
and fridges dragged away through the bush. When my mother phoned
the police
about one robbery, the officer in charge barely stirred: "I have
no car," he
said. "Can you pick me up?" That's Zimbabwe: Just when you think
it's
Orwellian nightmare, it turns into Evelyn Waugh farce.
It is
hard to imagine that just a few years ago Zimbabweans, black and
white,
stood strong in the face of the political corruption of Mugabe's
government.
Even during the height of the 2001-2003 violence, the opposition
party,
Movement for Democratic Change, was ascendant; people really believed
change
was coming. The 2002 presidential elections felt as momentous as
South
Africa's in 1994. Despite threats and intimidation, people lined up in
the
millions to vote, and for the first time in 22 years whites - my father
included - moved out from behind their high walls and sports clubs and got
involved in the campaign.
But the election was stolen by Mugabe
through widespread vote-rigging and
intimidation - and the backlash was
swift and brutal. The opposition has
been virtually silent since, its
leaders beaten and jailed. Four newspapers
have been closed since 2002, a
dozen journalists expelled. And there's no
reason to expect this week's
parliamentary elections to be any less corrupt
than those that have gone
before.
Four thousand of the country's 4,500 white farmers,
overwhelmingly MDC
supporters, have lost their land through forced
takeovers. There are now
fewer than 50,000 whites in the country, out of a
population of 12 million.
Whites were targeted because they owned the best
farmland, but they also
employed 3 million workers, produced the maize that
fed the country and the
cash crops that provided 60% of the nation's
revenue.
I said goodbye to my parents one Friday morning and headed west
toward
Harare, the capital, where my sister threw a dinner party for me on
my final
night - all friends and relatives and other white Zimbabweans who
are
sticking around, just like my parents. There is a calm resilience to
them as
they insist that they are Zimbabweans and that this is still their
home. It
made me feel a little guilty for not sticking around too. But were
they
really that confident about the future? "Sure," one said. "If you can
avoid
getting sick, being arrested, losing your house or your farm, you can
still
live a really good life here." He wasn't joking.
Radio Netherlands
Zimbabwe ballot: will it be free or fair?
by the RN
internet desk, 28 March 2005
Many commentators on Zimbabwe say the
country's upcoming parliamentary
election on 31 March will be yet another
unfair contest. President Robert
Mugabe's party is again expected to remain
in power despite his country
teetering on the brink of economic
collapse.
Critics accuse Mugabe's Zimbabwe National Union-Patriotic Front
(Zanu-PF)
party of buying votes with much-needed food, and the police of
suppressing
rallies by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC).
Few observers
Human rights organisations are concerned about
the fact that very few
international observers will be allowed to monitor
proceedings; only
representatives of countries which supported the country's
2000 and 2002
polls will be present. Neither the Commonwealth - which
suspended Zimbabwe
in 2002 - nor the EU will be present.
Gabriel
Shumba is a human rights lawyer for the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum. He
currently
lives in exile in South Africa, after suffering torture in his
homeland. He
told Radio Netherlands that he doesn't hold out much hope for
the outcome of
the 31 March ballot:
"We have given up any hope. What gives
testament to the fact that the
election won't be free and fair is that the
international community has been
prohibited from observing that election. If
the ruling party ZANU-PF has
nothing to hide, why then has the international
community to be barred from
observing the elections?"
Bitter
disappointment
He feels bitterly let down by the absence of outside
observers, and would
like to see the rest of the world taking steps to make
Robert Mugabe comply
with their own calls for a democratic
Zimbabwe:
"We are extremely disappointed, because we would have thought
that the
international community would do much to pressure Zimbabwe into
turning to
the democratic path. All efforts taken so far by the
international community
have been met with disdain and contempt by Robert
Mugabe. We hope that maybe
some innovative, creative ways will be found to
bring Mugabe back to his
senses."
In particular, he firmly believes that
pressure should be brought to bear on
the South African
President:
"What we wish to see happening is the international community
forcing Tabo
Mbeke into pressuring Mugabe for an internationally-monitored
election.
Mbeke is complicit in the human rights violations that are
happening in
Zimbabwe."
"Mbeke is still supporting Mugabe, so I'll
say it's extremely disillusioning
and disappointing. I think the world now
knows what is happening, and I
think the international community should read
the warning signals and step
in before it is too late."
Slide into
violence
Mr Shumba thinks that the longer the people of Zimbabwe experience
an
oppressive regime, the more likely they are to rebel:
"I'm talking
about the likelihood of people being frustrated for a very long
time, people
being brutalized for a very long time and ending up at civil
disobedience
which can even result in violence - if the government acts
violently against
the people."
Although he sees the possibility of a violent reaction,
Gabriel Shumba doesn't
believe that need be the only means of throwing off
tyranny. Rather, he
looks to the United Nations to set an example, and
believes there might even
be a repeat of recent events in former the Soviets
states:
"You can try and bring unanimity within the thinking of the UN [.]
So, you
could also have a situation where the Security Council could try and
reach
unanimity in condemning abuses in Zimbabwe. An alternative could also
be
like what happened in Ukraine, for example: people just refusing, just
saying 'enough is enough,' which is a scenario likely to happen in Zimbabwe
if the international community doesn't act soon."
Vote-rigging
If
a situation arises, after 31 March, where it becomes clear that the
ballot
has been rigged, Mr Shumba thinks the only possible reaction from the
rest
of the world should be to shun relations with Harare and all its
supporters:
"The international community could simply say 'we don't
recognise Robert
Mugabe.' Then they seek to extend sanctions. I think the
situation of
sanctions is that they have not been very effective. They have
not barred
him from keeping on oppressing. So, I think there must be some
creative ways
through which sanctions could be extended. Even to the extent
of extending
them against countries that continue to support Mugabe in his
brutality."
© Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, all rights reserved
News24
High turn-out expected in Zim
28/03/2005 09:10 -
(SA)
Johannesburg - The large number of people attending election
rallies boded
well for a high voter turn-out in Zimbabwe's general election,
the South
African observer mission (SAOM) said on Sunday.
"... The
mission is encouraged by the high turn-out at rallies by Zanu-PF
and the
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)," the mission said.
"As a result the
mission anticipates high voter turn-out on voting day," it
said, adding that
campaigning had been peaceful.
Zimbabweans go to the polls on
Thursday.
The observer mission said it had been in Zimbabwe since March
14, and had
observed 31 rallies held by Zanu-PF and the MDC.
The
observers, led by Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana and advocate
Ngoako
Ramotlhodi, had also monitored voter education sessions, party
canvassing
sessions and visited polling stations.
The mission had met
representatives from Zanu-PF, the MDC, the Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission,
the Electoral Supervisory Commission, the Zimbabwe
Electoral Support
Network, the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, the Zimbabwe
Crisis Coalition and
the National Constitutional Assembly.
The mission still plans to meet the
Zimbabwe Republic Police and Zimbabwe
Broadcasting Holdings.
Globe and Mail, Canada
Again in Zimbabwe, the voters stand to
lose
Monday, March 28, 2005
Based on outward appearances,
Zimbabwe's parliamentary election this
Thursday lacks much of the violent
intimidation that turned the past votes
into cruel jokes. Autocratic
President Robert Mugabe has loosened his tight
grip on the campaign just
enough to make his opposition think it could
actually defeat his bloody,
disastrous regime. But don't be fooled. Mr.
Mugabe hasn't grown soft; he has
simply grown a bit more subtle.
He has ordered his goons to refrain from
the violence they used to silence
his opponents in the 2000 parliamentary
vote and the 2002 presidential
election. Opposition candidates are freely
campaigning in crucial districts
they were previously restricted from
entering. Citizens are openly attending
public opposition rallies, something
few would have dared in the past.
All this has given Mr. Mugabe's
opponents renewed hope they can finally
unseat the increasingly unpopular
81-year-old leader, who has ruled Zimbabwe
with an iron fist for 25 years
and driven it into the ground over the past
five. Thanks to his corrupt
"land redistribution" program -- under which
rich farmland was seized from
wealthy white owners, handed to Mr. Mugabe's
friends and left to waste away
-- Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk by 35 per
cent, unemployment is at 80 per
cent and the country is gripped by famine.
Even in 2000, before the
nation's downward spiral, the ruling ZANU-PF party
barely won, and that
required thuggery and vote-rigging. In a truly free and
fair election, it's
a good bet Mr. Mugabe's party would get trounced this
time. But after years
of seeing government critics killed, expelled,
imprisoned and threatened,
many voters would be too frightened to vote
against Mr. Mugabe's party even
if the election were clean.
Which, rest assured, it is not. Mr. Mugabe
continues to stack the deck in
his favour. Since the last election, the
government has gerrymandered
constituency boundaries to dilute opposition
support. It is using an
out-of-date voters list that is believed to contain
the names of hundreds of
thousands of dead and non-existent voters. Mr.
Mugabe is allowing only a
handful of foreign observers in to monitor the
election. And earlier this
month, Zimbabwe's Supreme Court (which is
populated by Mugabe cronies) ruled
that the more than three million
Zimbabweans living outside the country --
many of whom are opposition
supporters forced into exile -- are ineligible
to vote. The court has
thereby eliminated more than a third of potential
voters.
Intimidation
abounds. Government forces have been quietly telling opposition
supporters
that they are taking names and will deal with dissenters after
the election.
Voters will face these same soldiers staffing the ballot
boxes -- which,
incidentally, will be transparent, allowing the soldiers to
see each ballot
as it is dropped in the box.
But the most despicable element is the
threat of starvation. With roughly
half the population in need of food aid,
ZANU-PF officials have suggested
that aid will go only to those ridings that
support their party. As The
Economist has written, "Voting the 'wrong way'
looks to many [Zimbabweans]
like a death sentence." It's little wonder that
Amnesty International and
New-York-based Human Rights Watch have declared
that a free and fair
election in Zimbabwe is
impossible.
Unfortunately, one of the few world leaders who carries some
influence over
Mr. Mugabe -- South African President Thabo Mbeki -- doesn't
agree. He
believes the election will be a fair one, and his country is
providing the
only significant contingent of election observers to
rubber-stamp it.
The only hope is that the South African observers will
take their jobs
seriously, or that Mr. Mbeki will decide to lean on his
friend Mr. Mugabe to
allow a clean election. That seems unlikely. Zimbabwe's
citizens may be left
with only two choices to gain democratic rule: seize it
through a popular
uprising, as in Ukraine, or wait for Mr. Mugabe's
inevitable death.
Comment from The Cape Times (SA), 28 March
Mugabe will get re-elected
thanks to the reanimated zombies who'll vote for
Zanu PF
By Peter
Fabricius
On Thursday, as on the Day of Judgment, the graves of
Zimbabwe will yawn and
hundreds of thousands of zombies will clamber out,
dust themselves down and
march to the polls to elect a new parliament. And
though election polling is
never an exact science, you can predict with
absolutely certainty that all
the zombies - the ghosts of long-dead voters -
will vote for the current
ruling Zanu PF party. So too, no doubt, will the
millions of people who have
left Zimbabwe, either because of the repressive
political climate, or, more
likely, because of the dying economy. A zombie,
the Chambers dictionary
says, is "a corpse reanimated by sorcery". The
sorcery that will enable
Mugabe to reanimate all these dead or absent
voters, is the manipulation of
Zimbabwe's voters roll. A voters roll should
be the most public document in
any democracy. But Zanu PF treats it like a
classified document. It was only
last week that the latest printed version
of it was made available to the
MDC. That was too late to mount any
challenges to it. And the government has
refused to give the MDC the roll in
electronic form. That would allow them
to use computers to check whether
everyone on the roll is still alive or
still living in the constituencies
where they are registered on the roll.
One MDC MP, Trudy Stevenson,
laboriously checked the roll in part of her
Harare constituency by going
door-to-door. She estimated some 60% of voters
on her roll were dead or
otherwise missing from the constituency. If you
extrapolate these missing
voters nationally, there may be millions of such
fictitious voters on the
rolls. And it will not be too difficult for the
authorities to reanimate
these corpses with sorcery - such as stuffing
ballot boxes with ballots in
their names. The MDC is convinced that's how
Mugabe won the presidential
poll in 2002, as evidenced by voter turnouts in
some constituencies that
were larger than the entire population. The zombie
vote then, will very
likely carry the day for Mugabe again this week. It is
a vote he badly
needs, as by all accounts, living voters will either not
feel animated
enough to vote at all, or will vote for the MDC because they
are hungrier
and poorer than they were in 2000 when nearly half of them
officially voted
for the opposition. Will the election observers be able to
disenfranchise
the zombies? It seems not. No Western observers are there and
so most of the
observers are South Africans.
Judging by his remarks on arrival, the
now-sidelined head of the SA
government elections observers, Membathisi
Mdladlana, will only be looking
out for very obvious fraud such as MDC
candidates being murdered in the
polling booths by Mugabe personally or MDC
votes being removed from the
ballot boxes and burnt on public pyres - both
of course, before the TV
cameras. The head of the SADC observers, SA's
minister of mineral and energy
affairs, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, seems more
willing to tackle the problem -
but also bemused. She said this week that
her team had taken up the MDC's
claims with the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission, but it was difficult to act
on them because there was no
evidence to back them up. Of course the
solution to this would have been to
insist a long time ago that the voters
roll be made completely public in its
electronic version so that the zombies
could have been struck from the roll
before it was closed. To her credit,
Mlambo-Ngcuka did ask, with apparent
humour: "What happens then when these
dead people start walking?" What
indeed. Presumably, as described above,
what happens is that these zombies
will walk into parliament, carrying a
triumphant Zanu PF on their ghostly
shoulders. And Mugabe, armed with his
zombie mandate, will then try to
reanimate his dying nation. That will
require powerful sorcery indeed.