Reuters
Sat 12 Apr
2008, 21:49 GMT
HARARE, April 13 (Reuters) - The Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission will recount
all votes cast in the country's March 29 election
next Saturday, state media
reported on Sunday.
The Sunday Mail quoted
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairman, Justice
George Chiweshe, as
saying the ballots cast in parliamentary, presidential
and council votes
would be counted again in the presence of party
representatives, candidates
and election observers.
The bombshell announcement came as regional
leaders met in Zambia to discuss
a two-week delay in release results of the
presidential election which has
raised fears of violence in Zimbabwe.
The Sunday Times
April 13, 2008
Christina Lamb
“WHEN you join in a
political fight by way of an election you must be
prepared to lose,”
President Robert Mugabe told a rally in Nyanga, just
three days before the
March 29 polls.
Getting fewer votes than your opponent clearly does not
constitute losing in
the lexicon of the Zimbabwean leader, who has
stubbornly stayed in power for
28 years. Instead, it means people have
“voted incorrectly” and must be
taught otherwise by the usual methods of
violence and withholding food. The
lists of results published at polling
stations to make the vote more
transparent have proved useful for
identifying the areas most in need of
such voter education.
The
84-year-old president’s refusal to step down following elections in
which
even his own party admits that his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai received
more
votes, should not have come as a surprise.
The first time the people of
Zimbabwe stood up to Mugabe was in the
referendum of February 2000, when
they overwhelmingly voted to reject his
new constitution. I was in the
country at the time and was caught up in the
excitement of people asserting
themselves against their leader. Mugabe
appeared on state TV to concede
defeat, declaring: “Government accepts the
results and respects the will of
the people.”
He looked old and tired, and as this was only my third visit
to the country,
I confidently predicted his demise. “No, this is very bad,”
said a
Zimbabwean friend who, like many, had once been a great supporter of
the
liberation leader. “You will see.”
Within weeks, the retaliation had
started. It began with the farm invasions,
for white farmers had funded the
newly formed opposition. Across the
country, “youth training camps” sprang
up for the so-called Green Bombers
who used violence and rape to spread
terror throughout the countryside.
Violence was nothing new for Mugabe,
who famously once declared: “I have
degrees in violence.” As many as 20,000
people are believed to have been
massacred in the 1980s in his campaign
against the people of Matabele-land
who had supported Joshua Nkomo, his
rival in the independence movement. What
was new in 2000 was the
international criticism – until the mid 1990s Mugabe
was still receiving
honorary degrees from around the world and in 1994 was
awarded an honorary
knighthood.
Elections for parliament in 2000 and 2005, and for president
in 2002, were
marked by further violence and intimidation. On each occasion,
an atmosphere
of hope was followed by a sense of anticlimax when results
were rigged and
nothing changed.
In 2005 it was the cities that had
voted most heavily against him and he
soon retaliated again. Operation
Murambats-vina, a so-called “urban
beautification programme”, meant sending
bulldozers to demolish vast
townships in Harare and elsewhere, destroying
the homes of more than 700,000
people.
Last month’s elections were
the most peaceful of the last decade. The
unexpected freedom of the
opposition to campaign led many to believe Mugabe’s
own security forces were
refusing to do his bidding.
I was surprised, then, when, after a day of
following Tsvangirai to rallies
in Mugabe’s heart-land, I went to see the
opposition leader and found him
downcast.
“I feel I may go into the
Guinness Book of Records for winning the most
elections and never getting
power,” he said. “Suddenly you find you’re 60
and you’re still at it. Of
course you think, what’s the point?”
For the Zimbabwean president, there
is more than just political power at
stake. “You cannot underestimate the
Charles Taylor effect,” said a former
confidant of Mugabe, referring to the
Liberian warlord turned president who
accepted exile in Nigeria, only to
find himself being tried in the
International Criminal Court, accused of war
crimes. “He is terrified of
ending up in the Hague, as, by the way, are many
of those around him.”
Even if Mugabe decided he had had enough, he would
have to face the fact
that he has become a hostage of his own system. Over
the years, he has
cleverly woven a web of patronage. Party officials, senior
military and
police, high court judges and even bishops have been kept on
side with
handouts of farms and access to perks such as cheap fuel and an
official
exchange rate that enables them to buy foreign currency for a
hundredth of
the market rate.
This has created a mafia of several
thousand people, many of whom have blood
on their hands. Should any
contemplate switching sides, meticulous records
kept on file in a special
archive in the Reserve Bank could be used against
them.
Key figures
who see their survival at stake include Constantine Chiwenga,
the army
chief, Augustine Chihuri, the police commissioner, Henry Muchena,
an air
vice-marshal, a number of former military commanders, Gideon Gono,
the
powerful governor of the Reserve Bank, and long-time politburo members
such
as Didymus Mutasa.
Although Tsvangirai says he has promised Mugabe “an
honourable exit”, he
cannot give guarantees to all these others. “No matter
what Tsvangirai says
about guaranteeing President Mugabe’s safety, we cannot
trust the man,” said
a member of Zanu-PF. “If one day he gets a call from
Gordon Brown or George
Bush and is told to arrest Mugabe, do you think he
won’t do that?”
The military hierarchy is particularly worried. A leaked
memo reported
Muchena, the air vice-marshal, as stating that Zanu-PF “did
not fight a
liberation war to have Zimbabweans vote incorrectly. The
military has now
taken over the organisation of the campaign and five senior
military
officers have been assigned to each constituency to ensure that in
the next
round the people vote correctly”.
For his part, Tsvangirai
has resisted pressure from younger members of his
party to call a mass
uprising. He told me last month: “If I’d put people on
the streets last
time, they would have been mauled to pieces. I don’t want
to be responsible
for this.”
Tsvangirai’s main hope is international pressure. Brown has
stepped up his
criticism of events in Zimbabwe, and African leaders who
gathered in Zambia
yesterday want to break the deadlock. However, even if
fellow African
leaders finally stand up to Mugabe, it is unclear what they
can achieve.
The leader best placed to apply pressure is Thabo Mbeki, the
president of
South Africa, but he has long shown reluctance to act against
the veteran
leader and has no love for Tsvangirai, making clear that he
would prefer
Zimbabwe’s ruling party to find a replacement for Mugabe.
The Sunday Times
April 13, 2008
The ballot failed, so the lynch mob arrived
Douglas Marle in
Harare
THE grim reality of Zimbabwe’s postelection violence as President
Robert
Mugabe clung to power was hammered home last week when an elderly
white
farmer was abducted by so-called “war veterans” who tried to lynch
him.
“He had a real hard time. He was handcuffed. Someone tried to
strangle him
with wire,” said Trevor Gifford, president of the Commercial
Farmers’ Union
(CFU), whose own property was seized by militants during a
week of violent
attacks on white-owned farms.
The farms of at least
two black farmers were also targeted by Mugabe
militants, apparently because
they were thought to support the opposition.
Scores of workers’ homes were
burnt down on one of them, Silver-stream, as
Mugabe’s thugs set about
bludgeoning opposition voters into submission after
results from a polling
station set up on the farm showed they had voted
against their 84-year-old
ruler in elections two weeks ago.
Gifford, 40, said the name of the
abducted white farmer was being withheld
at the request of the British
embassy, pending contact with his daughter in
Britain. He is 76 and has a
British wife. His ordeal began on Thursday
morning when he was attacked by
war veterans lying in wait to ambush him.
They had chopped down trees and
laid the trunks across the road.
When the truck stopped they punctured
the tyres, dragged the farmer out,
cuffed his hands behind his back and
drove him away in another vehicle.
At one point one of the war veterans put a
wire noose round his neck and
began to strangle him. He stopped before it
was too late. Meanwhile, the
police had been alerted and managed to persuade
the war veterans to release
their prisoner. It took a long time: they freed
him only after six
terrifying hours.
Yesterday the farmer was
recovering at his home in Chipinge about 220 miles
southeast of Harare.
Gifford said that he was “shaken” but well enough to
speak to the
authorities about his ordeal.
The incident echoed the gruesome murders
that marked the first seizure of
white-owned farms in Zimbabwe eight years
ago. That government-backed
campaign followed Mugabe’s unexpected defeat in
a referendum to entrench his
presidential powers and saw nearly 4,000 white
farmers eventually deprived
of their land, homes and livelihood.
Last
week, just as he had done in 2000, Mugabe was waging a fresh antiwhite
scare
campaign, mobilising militants against the few hundred remaining white
farmers and reviving resentment of them to drum up support for him in a
presidential run-off.
Far from being a lame-duck leader who has lost
his parliamentary majority
and failed to secure his sixth term as president,
Mugabe and his stalwarts
were digging in to stay in power.
He seemed
determined to win a forced run-off with Morgan Tsvangirai, leader
of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who, if unofficial
estimates
of the undeclared March 29 election results are correct, defeated
him with
just over 50% per cent of the vote. Mugabe is believed to have won
about
43%, with the remainder going to Simba Makoni, his former finance
minister.
Although outwardly calm, the country is on a knife-edge as
it awaits fresh
developments. Mugabe’s personal security has been
reinforced. Troops and
riot police are on standby. According to Amnesty
International, the regime
recently spent £1m in scarce foreign currency to
import tear gas and other
antiriot materials from China and
Israel.
One insider’s report listed 200 names of senior army and
intelligence
officers who would lead Mugabe’s run-off campaign in the 10
provinces. They
would direct paramilitary units of war veterans and a youth
brigade to
intimidate the rural population into voting for Mugabe next
time.
Mugabe’s lieutenants have selected the emotive theme of land as the
reason
why he should stay in power, claiming that he and his Zanu-PF party
are
defending the resettled farm-land from the displaced white farmers who
are
preparing to return if the MDC takes power. The whites deny this; many
have
rebuilt their lives abroad.
Gifford has spent a frantic week
trying to help his fellow farmers cope with
their own invasions. At least 60
have been driven from their land in seven
areas. In one of the worst
affected, Centenary, a prime tobacco-growing area
north of Harare, 15 farms
were invaded by gangs of war veterans. They were
mostly far too young to
have fought in the independence struggle but were
armed with sticks and
machetes and fuelled with alcohol as they forced the
owners to
flee.
The crisis has left Gifford little time to dwell on his own
predicament.
Early in the week a mob of 30 men wearing Zanu-PF T-shirts
arrived at the
gate of his farm, also at Chipinge, to take it over. Late
that night he
received a telephone call from a man calling himself “son of
the soil” who
told him that from now on they would be managing the farm and
he was never
to return.
Gifford is used to invasions having endured
several before. He has seen his
coffee, macada-mia and avocado plantations
damaged or destroyed, so there
was not much more left for the militants to
take away last week. But he
remained determined not to lose it all without a
fight � the farm has been
in the family since his great-grandfather, Alfred
Samuel Gifford, founded it
in 1894.
The strain of the week’s events
could be seen on the tanned but anxious
faces of some of those driven off
their land as they gathered at CFU
headquarters on Thursday evening to hear
Deon Theron, the union’s
vice-presi-dent, urge them to stand together.
Theron is the first
Zim-babwean farmer to be convicted by the courts of
resisting eviction so he
has a lot of credibility in the tough farming
community.
His long and acrimonious legal battle to stop an influential
Zanu-PF
official stealing his farm at Beatrice with its 700 cattle, 150
sheep and 30
breeding crocodiles is still going on. But already for his
defiance he has
received a suspended prison sentence and has been ordered to
vacate the farm
by April 27.
“I do not know what is going to happen,”
he said. “I told the court that I
loved this country and its people. I do
not want to farm anywhere else. They
saw that as defiance but I see it as
patriotism, wanting to produce food for
the nation.”
Reports from the
occupied Centenary farms said that a series of police
interventions had
calmed the violence down yesterday. But some farmers had
been warned in text
messages from their staff that it was too dangerous to
go back.
They
found the inactivity galling, emphasising how impotent they felt about
protecting their black staff. “While we are sitting in Harare complaining,
Joseph [the black farmer on Silver-stream] has been left with nothing. The
huts and what little possessions his staff had have been destroyed,” said a
farmer using the pseudonym Brian Smith.
He was evicted last Monday
and his children forced to run the gauntlet of
“drunken war veterans” baying
for blood. Yet he longs to go back to his
land.
“I am like a
tractor,” he said. “You can park me in the shade and I will go
rusty. But
give me a piece of land and I will cultivate it and grow crops.
That is my
gift from God. The politicians are creating the turmoil. Without
them we
would all get along together, black and white.”
Mail and Guardian
Chris Otton | Lusaka, Zambia
12 April 2008
10:15
An emergency summit of Southern African leaders on
Zimbabwe's
post-election crisis opened on Saturday with a plea from its
chairperson not
to turn a blind eye, but President Robert Mugabe stayed
away.
With no result declared two weeks after Zimbabwe's
presidential
election, Zambia's Levy Mwanawasa told leaders of the 14-nation
Southern
African Development Community (SADC) that doing nothing was not an
option.
"SADC cannot stand by and do nothing when one of its
members is
experiencing political and economic pain. It would be wrong to
turn a blind
eye," the Zambian president said in his opening address in
Lusaka.
Before retreating behind closed doors for talks with
heads of
state, including South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, Mwanawasa insisted the
summit
was "not intended to put President Mugabe in the
dock".
Mugabe -- accused by the opposition of holding back
the result
of the March 29 election and leading a campaign of intimidation
to hold on
to power -- turned down an invitation to attend but sent a
delegation of
four ministers.
However, Zimbabwe's
opposition leader and self-proclaimed
presidential victor Morgan Tsvangirai
was seated in the front row for
Mwanawasa's opening remarks and broke into a
smile amid a gaggle of
photographers.
'No
crisis'
If Tsvangirai had hopes that leaders might issue a
hard-hitting
statement and even put pressure on Mugabe to stand down, they
were dealt a
blow when Mbeki stopped over in Harare en route to the Zambian
capital.
After his first face-to-face talks with Mugabe since
the
elections, Mbeki seemingly ignored pleas for outside pressure to be
levied
upon the veteran Zimbabwean strongman and suggested things be allowed
to run
their course.
"There is no crisis in Zimbabwe," he
told journalists. "The body
authorised to release the results is the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.
Let's wait for them to announce the
results."
Mbeki, who was the chief mediator between
Zimbabwe's governing
Zanu-PF party and Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic
Change in the
build-up to the election, has since come under fire for
refusing to condemn
the delayed result.
Mugabe made no
mention of the election, but denied he was
snubbing the summit, saying: "We
are very good friends and very good
brothers. Sometimes you attend,
sometimes you have other things holding you
back."
The
head of Mugabe's delegation in Lusaka, Justice Minister
Patrick Chinamasa,
said before the summit started that the meeting was
unnecessary. "There is
no need to regionalise the Zimbabwean crisis," he
said, adding angrily that
asking an opposition leader such as Tsvangirai to
attend a heads-of-state
summit was "unheard of".
Tsvangirai did not join the SADC
leaders for the closed-door
meetings. A final statement was expected at the
end of their deliberations,
but discussions were continuing late on Saturday
after several hours.
Criticism
Southern
African leaders have been heavily criticised over their
traditional
reluctance to speak out against Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe
for 28 years
and is the oldest leader in the region.
Nevertheless, many in
SADC are fed up with the economic mess on
their doorstep, with inflation in
Zimbabwe now well into six figures,
unemployment at more than 80% and
average life expectancy down to 36 years
of age.
About
three million Zimbabweans have left their homeland to find
work or food,
most ending up in its giant neighbour South Africa.
Zanu-PF
says neither Mugabe nor Tsvangirai won a clear victory
in the election and
insists the battle must go to a second round. But the
opposition has ruled
out Tsvangirai's participation as it says a second
ballot would be
undemocratic due to Mugabe's intimidatory tactics.
"The
military has basically taken over," MDC number two Tendai
Biti, accompanying
Tsvangirai in Lusaka, told journalists. "There is a
constitutional coup
d'état that has taken place there and that's why this
meeting is very
critical," he said, calling on SADC to "speak out clearly
and decisively
against his dictatorship and the status quo".
The MDC has
called for a general strike to be launched from
Tuesday, the day after a
court is due to rule on its bid to force the
publication of the election
result.
Mugabe's Zanu-PF lost Parliament to the opposition
for the first
time in the legislative elections, also on March 29, but the
ruling party is
contesting enough seats to win back
control.
'Secret document'
Meanwhile,
Zimbabwe's state television reported on Saturday that
it had unearthed a
secret document written by the opposition detailing plans
to rig the March
29 elections.
The document, allegedly written by the MDC's
Biti, "had clear
details on how to rig the elections", the report
said.
The document stated that a number of teachers employed
by the
electoral commission as election officials had "agreed to overstate
the
vote" for a payment, Zimbabwe Television reported.
The strategy was meant to "ensure they got a landslide victory
to take over
the country and implement a number of changes meant to please
their
international friends who sponsored the MDC campaign", the report
said.
Zimbabwe Television is a mouthpiece for Mugabe and
Zanu-PF.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa dismissed the document
as
Zanu-PF-engineered propaganda aimed at justifying the delay in the
publication of results and the ruling party's push for another round of
voting.
"The document has nothing to do with the MDC; it
is a Zanu-PF
generated document. These are old and tired Zanu-PF antics. It
is very clear
they want to justify the delay in the release of election
results," said
Chamisa. "This election was not run by the MDC, but by the
Zanu-PF
government."
At least 15 Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission officials have been
arrested in recent days for alleged fraud. --
Sapa-AFP
Canadian Press
Angus Shaw, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
HARARE, Zimbabwe
- Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai called on President
Robert Mugabe to
step down on Saturday, even as he accused the country's
longtime leader of
plotting a campaign of violence to steal victory in an
expected run-off
election.
Amid increasing signs of a government crackdown, armed police
barred
opposition officials from filing a court challenge demanding
publication of
results from the country's March 29 presidential vote. The
opposition vowed
to try again Sunday.
"Mugabe must accept that the
country needs to move forward," said
Tsvangirai, head of the Movement for
Democratic Change. "He cannot hold the
country to ransom. He is the problem
not the solution."
The opposition leader accused the ruling ZANU-PF party
of "preparing a war
against the people," and said a run-off was unnecessary
because he had won
the presidential election outright.
"In the
run-off, violence will be the weapon. It is therefore unfair and
unreasonable for President Mugabe to call a run-off," he said, accusing
Mugabe of mobilizing armed militias.
Tsvangirai's party claims he won
50.3 per cent of the vote. Independent
projections indicate he won the most
votes but not the 50 per cent plus one
needed for an outright
victory.
Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga dismissed fears of
violence as "a
lot of nonsense."
"Zimbabwe held a very peaceful
election," he told Sky Television. "There was
no violence. Nobody was
killed."
But on Friday, feared veterans of the guerrilla war that ended
white
minority rule marched through the capital with a police escort. The
veterans
have been used in the past to beat up Mugabe's political
opponents.
Opposition party offices also have been raided and armed
police in full riot
gear have detained foreign journalists.
Mugabe,
84, has held power in Zimbabwe since his guerrilla army helped
overthrow
white minority rule in 1980.
But his popularity has been battered by an
economic collapse following the
often-violent seizures of white-owned
commercial farms since 2000. A third
of the population has fled the country
and 80 per cent are jobless.
Inflation is raging at more than 100,000 per
cent a year.
Official results for parliamentary elections held alongside
the presidential
race showed Mugabe's ZANU-PF losing its majority in the
210-seat parliament
for the first time in the country's history. Final
results for the largely
ceremonial 60-member senate gave the ruling party
and the opposition 30
seats each.
There is mounting international
pressure on Zimbabwe to announce the
presidential results. But South African
President Thabo Mbeki, who was
appointed mediator in Zimbabwe last year,
urged patience.
"It's time to wait," Mbeki said as he arrived for a
meeting near London of
government leaders hosted by British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown. "Let's see
the outcome of the election results," said Mbeki,
who advocates quiet
diplomacy rather than public criticism.
The law
requires a run-off within 21 days of the initial election, but
diplomats in
Harare and at the United Nations said Mugabe was planning to
declare a
90-day delay to give security forces time to clamp down.
Tsvangirai
appealed to African leaders and the United Nations to intervene
to "prevent
chaos and dislocation," and urged Zimbabweans not to be cowed.
"At this
difficult moment, there comes a time when citizens take their
destiny in
their own hands and say 'No.' A time when we put aside fear and
rise to the
moment."
Tsvangirai also held out an olive branch, saying he would
welcome dialogue
with Mugabe and promising his party would not exact revenge
for any crimes
committed during his rule.
"Please rest your mind, the
new Zimbabwe will guarantee your safety," he
said.
Meanwhile, several
foreign journalists detained by police remained in
custody Saturday. Lawyers
said they were blocked from submitting an
application for their
release.
An employee of U.S.-based National Democratic Institute who was
detained
Thursday as he tried to leave the country was released from jail
but his
passport was confiscated and he was not allowed to depart, the group
said.
He has been ordered to report to police Sunday.
Bill Keller,
executive editor of The New York Times, said its correspondent,
Barry
Bearak, was being held "in a frigid cell without shoes, warm clothing
or
blankets."
"He was interrogated for hours by police seeking to identify
sources he may
have interviewed," Keller said in a statement.
The
government had banned most foreign journalists from covering the
elections
and barred western election observers.
The Times, SA
Paddy Harper and
Charles Molele:
Zimbabwe Published:Apr 13,
2008
This
week Zanu-PF invoked heroes of Zimbabwe’s war of liberation — and so
did
those in opposition
On Friday, Zimbabwe will celebrate 28
years of independence at a time when
its ruling party, Zanu-PF, is
struggling to reclaim its revolutionary
credentials in the face of massive
electoral losses to an opposition party —
many of whose members are drawn
from the ranks of the former liberation
movement.
As Zimbabweans
await the result of the presidential election of March 29,
the names and
legacies of those who fell in the struggle for liberation are
being invoked
in a bid to re-establish those credentials.
Each day Radio Zimbabwe, in
true Marxist-Leninist style, dedicates
programming to the history of the war
for freedom and repossession of the
land.
Haunting Chimurenga songs
are played, and listeners are read profiles of
heroes of the 16-year “civil”
war against Rhodesian forces.
Newsreaders introduce hourly bulletins by
exhorting listeners to take
forward the legacy of those who fell for
freedom.
On television, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC)
carries repeats
of the speech President Robert Mugabe made as he was sworn
in on April 18
1980 as the first president of the Republic of
Zimbabwe.
“The liberation of Zimbabwe was not given to us at the
Lancaster
Constitutional Conference,” a radio presenter reminded listeners
on
Thursday.
“We fought for it. It was the result of years of a
protracted armed struggle
to get our land back from the British
imperialists.”
About 5km from Harare is the National Heroes Acre, a
shrine designed and
built by North Koreans, a burial ground for Zimbabwean
heroes and heroines —
selected for the honour by Zanu-PF’s Politburo. Among
them are Sally Mugabe,
Ruth Chinamano, Herbert Chitepo, Joshua Nkomo and
Leopold Takawira.
But perhaps the most significant of these heroes was
Josiah Magama
Tongogara, Mugabe’s main rival for power in the exiled
liberation movement.
The 41-year-old Tongogara was the commander of the
Zimbabwe African National
Liberation Army, Zanu’s military wing. He is
considered a major figure in
Zimbabwe’s independence movement and, according
to many , would have been
incensed at the state of his country
today.
“He would not have allowed things to degenerate to this,” said a
former
soldier at Heroes Acre this week.
“He was not a power-hungry
person. He fought for equality and justice, and
wanted to see all
Zimbabweans enjoying the same constitutional rights.
“He was our
favourite leader here in Zimbabwe. He had balls and was not
afraid of Mugabe
or of speaking truth to power. If you check our post-
independence history,
you will see that Mugabe has always tried to erase his
contribution in the
liberation struggle. Is it because he was a threat to
him?”
Like
South Africa’s Chris Hani, Tongogara died on the eve of his country’s
independence, on Christmas Day 1979, four days after the Lancaster House
agreement was signed in London.
He had played an important
conciliatory role in the talks leading up to the
agreement and often clashed
with Mugabe over his views at the negotiation
table.
To this day, war
veterans who fought under Tongogara in the front lines in
Mozambique accuse
Mugabe of having had a hand in his death.
Two years ago, a Zanu-PF
veteran was quoted in an article by the Institute
for War and Peace
Reporting, relating how Tongarara addressed a base in
Mozambique after the
Lancaster House agreement.
“Tongogara slung his AK rifle on his back and
announced to us that he was
going to be the first black prime minister of
independent Zimbabwe,” said
the veteran.
“We all supported him. He
was our leader and we hardly knew Robert Mugabe.
To our shock, he was killed
a few days later.”
Bina Dube, vice-president of the Zimbabwe National
Students Union, said that
if the likes of Tongorara and Chitepo were alive
today, they would see that
what they had fought for had been
abandoned.
“They believed in the idea that one day Zimbabwe would be
free. That’s what
they fought for,” said Dube.
“The ideas that they
fought for are now being suppressed. If they were here
today, maybe they
would even go into another war.
“We really have the Animal Farm
situation, where all animals are meant to be
equal but in reality some
animals are more equal than others. What was
promised to the people has not
been delivered.”
Lucia Matibenga, first vice-president of the Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade
Unions (ZCTU) is a former Zanu-PF activist; her husband,
Saviour, was
Zanu-PF MP for Midlands from 1980 to 1985. She is also the
newly elected
Movement for Democratic Change MP for Kuwadzana and an
outspoken critic of
the Mugabe regime.
Matibenga said that while
Zanu-PF had abandoned the principles it once stood
for, it was not shy to
invoke the names and legacies of its fallen heroes in
a bid for legitimacy —
and to garner support in the face of public
criticism.
“Herbert
Chitepo and all those comrades stood for something totally
different from
what is happening today. Their names are still used, and in
particular that
of a comrade like Joshua Nkomo. It is so hypocritical.
“When Comrade
Nkomo was alive, he was treated very unfairly, but now that
the going is
hard for the party, they use his name and the respect for him
and other
fallen comrades whose names are important in our history.
“There is a
deliberate strategy of using the names of those comrades, to
eulogise them
and continue to try to manipulate the pride we have in those
gallant heroes
who fell, in a bid to hoodwink the people.
“They try to convince people
that they are about the legacy of those who
fought for this nation, while on
the ground they have replaced oppression by
one colour of people with
another kind of oppression by another colour of
people.”
Matibenga
said that the build-up to the independence celebrations was being
used to
distract people from the manipulation of the presidential election
result —
and to demobilise them ahead of a run-off .
“In my mind all indications
are that there will be a run-off. Mugabe’s
emphasis on independence while
there is silence on the elections is a means
of avoiding addressing the
issue of the results and a potential run-off —
the issue which has frozen
the minds of the people,” she said .
As an example of how Zanu-PF had
lost its way, Matibenga pointed to the
souring of relations between the
government and the trade union federation
it helped form in 1981
.
“The government has declared the ZCTU an enemy of the state because it
is
the cradle in which the MDC was nursed and was at the forefront of
forming
the MDC along with 30 other civil society organizations ... Zanu-PF
has
never forgiven the ZCTU for this.”
The Public Order and Security
Act — used to ban meetings and stop opposition
activity — states that trade
unions need not apply for police permission to
hold meetings , she said, but
“ police have been told to clamp down on the
unions”.
“Even on May
Day, a declared public holiday in this country and around the
rest of the
world, we have to get police permission to hold our May Day
rallies,” said
Matibenga .
The honeymoon period between the ZCTU and the government
ended in 1990, said
Matibenga, when the labour movement “realised that those
guys were
indicating to turn left but were turning right”.
The point
of departure came when the ZCTU grew critical of the government’s
failure to
go beyond the Lancaster House agreement’s 10- year moratorium on
the land
issue.
“Lancaster House had a 10-year period where there would be no
addressing of
the land question, but after that the government was still
doing nothing
about land, the number one issue on the agenda of the
struggle, when we
called each other ‘son of the soil’.
Zanu-PF’s
eventual solution to the land problem, the land-grab policy, was
just a
“mechanism to spruce up the image of Zanu-PF, a survival mechanism
politically for Zanu-PF”, said Matibenga.
She said Zanu-PF had
been “hijacked by certain elements” capitalising on the
death of a crop of
leaders, like Tongorara, who were firmly rooted among the
people
.
“That initial crop of leadership was lost along the way. Newcomers came
in
and said, ‘we will steer the ship in the direction we want it to
take’.
“The party was hijacked, from my perspective as a person who
participated in
the struggle in trying to understand what went
wrong.
“Then came the corruption, where everyone was thinking of what
they could
amass and how quickly they could amass that wealth.
“That
is when the looting, the stealing started.”
She recalled discussions she
had with her husband while he was in
Parliament.
“He would say to me:
‘My friend, I see the party changing. People are busy
here with estates,
with farms, with huge places at Borrowdale. People are
taking the party to
the right.’ Things have progressed in that direction
ever
since.
“There has been a gradual takeover of the party, even
ideologically, losing
the whole thrust of what the party stood
for.”
Matibenga said she held the people of Zimbabwe partly to
blame.
“We didn’t insist on the creation of mechanisms with which we
could then say
that leader who has gone wrong is going to be
replaced.
“There was a feeling that because people had fought the war of
liberation,
they deserved to rule us, with no mechanisms to hold them to
account.
“We gave them a blank cheque and abdicated our role as a nation
to those we
trusted.”
This week, South Africa celebrates the legacy
of one of its most beloved
heroes — who, like Tongorara, did not live to see
liberation: Chris Martin
Thembisile Hani.
Like Tongorara, Hani was a
man of war who sought peace, who fought in the
trenches but, when the time
came, preached reconciliation.
Like Tongorara, he died young, never
seeing the birth of the nation he had
fought for.
To observers from
the south this week, the parallels — and perhaps the
lessons — were
inescapable.
The Times, SA
Suthentira Govender Published:Apr 13,
2008
The
wife of a Lenasia satellite services’ technician has vowed that her
husband
will never set foot in Zimbabwe again after he and a colleague were
arrested
and detained in the embattled country for two weeks.
Abdulla
Gaibee and Sipho Maseko, who both work for a Johannesburg-based
broadcasting
company, Globecast, went to Harare two weeks ago to provide
satellite
services for local and international broadcasters covering the
country’s
elections.
Despite having received accreditation from the Zimbabwean
government, the
pair were arrested and detained a few days after their
arrival on charges of
contravening the Information and Protection of Privacy
Act.
According to Gaibee’s family, Zimbabwean authorities claimed they
were
trying to gather information by posing as “media people”.
The
charges were withdrawn but subsequently reinstated after the state had
appealed against their acquittal.
This week they were released on
bail of Z200- million (R52000) and are now
on trial.
They have also
been charged with defeating the ends of justice for allegedly
colluding with
a magistrate to have the first charge against them withdrawn.
Judgment on
the first charge is expected to be delivered tomorrow, while the
trial for
defeating the ends of justice started on Friday.
This week, Gaibee’s
wife, Shenaaz, told the Sunday Times Extra that her
husband’s arrest had
taken a toll on the family.
They were devastated that Gaibee had to
celebrate his 29th birthday behind
bars.
“He would have spent it with
family, and we would have gone away for the
weekend. Instead, he was alone
in a jail cell,” she said.
“I am hoping and praying that the charges will
be dropped and that he can
return home to us. He will never set foot on
Zimbabwean soil ever again.
Abdulla and our family have been through hell
over the past two weeks.
“I have been so anxious about this situation.
It’s been particularly
difficult because we have a one-and-half-year-old
child. The days are
excruciatingly long and the nights are
worse.”
She said she had no faith in the Zimbabwean legal system. “I
don’t even know
whether it exists. The conditions in the jail were so
difficult. I have
spoken to Abdulla twice since his release, and he is just
happy to be out of
that jail cell.
“He wasn’t allowed any shoes and
there were no beds, so he had to sleep on
the floor. That has been really
traumatic for him. He can’t wait for the
ordeal to be over. He can’t wait to
get back home.”
Gaibee’s brother, Eb- rahim, said: “We can’t understand
why they were
arrested, because they had full accreditation from the
Zimbabwean
authorities. As far as their [Zimbabwe authorities’] reasoning
goes, Abdulla
acted outside the scope of a technician. He was just there to
do his job.”
Newsweek
Mugabe may well succeed in holding onto
power in the end. But the cost for
Zimbabwe will be terrible.
By
Martin Meredith | NEWSWEEK
Apr 21, 2008 Issue
For a few brief days
following last month's elections, it seemed the long
night of Robert
Mugabe's reign over Zimbabwe was ending. Against all odds,
opposition
parties succeeded in winning a majority in Parliament. But what
matters most
is the presidential election, and there, neither Mugabe nor his
main
opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, gained an outright majority. This gave
Mugabe
room to manipulate the results and to use his militias, youth groups,
the
police and the Army to ensure he wins a second round of voting.
The brief
mood of euphoria is now gone. A climate of fear has returned to
this
country, which faces economic collapse and catastrophic food shortages.
Mugabe, who has ruled for 28 years, has been very clear about his
determination to hold power till the end. "No matter what force you have,"
he once declared, "this is my territory and that which is mine I cling [to]
unto death."
The "Old Man," as locals call him, may be 84, but there
are still reasons to
fear him. He has held onto power by rigging elections,
violating court
orders, suppressing the independent press and using thugs to
attack his
opponents. Violence has been his stock in trade for more than 30
years:
Mugabe once referred to himself as a "black Hitler" and has boasted
of
having "a degree in violence." A teacher by trade who has six university
degrees, Mugabe was also one of the first black leaders to advocate violence
against Ian Smith's white minority regime in Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was then
called. Given Smith's intransigence, no other method would likely have
succeeded in ousting him. But during the seven-year-long civil war that
preceded Smith's overthrow, Mugabe became addicted to the use of
violence—not just to establish a new order, but to gain total control over
it.
Though Mugabe initially advocated democracy, it was always of a
particular
type. In 1976, he declared: "Our votes must go together with our
guns. After
all, any vote we shall have shall have been the product of the
gun. The gun
which produces the vote and should remain its security
officer—its
guarantor. The people's votes and the people's guns are always
inseparable
twins."
After winning Zimbabwe's first democratic election in
1980, Mugabe wanted
more: the kind of power he would have obtained through a
military victory,
which he once described as "the ultimate joy." Power was
not the means to an
end for him. It was the end.
And sure enough, no
sooner did Mugabe take office than he set out to
establish a one-party
state. His first target was Matabeleland province, a
seedbed of opposition.
After a minor outbreak of rebel activity there,
Mugabe unleashed a military
campaign in 1983 that featured the use of North
Korean-trained troops and
culminated in the mass murder of as many as 20,000
civilians.
As
Mugabe acquired ever-greater powers, he ruled Zimbabwe through a vast
system
of patronage and used his secret police to harass, intimidate and
even
murder dissidents. In the process, he developed a monstrous ego,
insisting
that only he was capable of running the country.
The reality, however, is
that Mugabe reduced his once prosperous country to
a wreck. In recent years,
as opposition mounted, he struck back with
increasing ruthlessness. Hoping
to bolster his popularity, he sent gangs of
party activists to rural areas
to seize control of white-owned farms, which
were distributed to his
supporters. The result was the collapse of the
agricultural industry, the
backbone of Zimbabwe's economy.
Facing the possibility of defeat in last
month's election, Mugabe returned
to the tactics of fear that have served
him so well in the past. In rural
areas that voted for the opposition, the
repression has already begun.
Villagers are being beaten up en masse and
told "vote Mugabe next time or
you will die." Mugabe may well succeed in
holding on to power in the end.
But the cost for Zimbabwe will be terrible:
most of the population now faces
abject poverty, starvation or the prospect
of seeking refuge abroad.
The tragedy is that Zimbabwe, with its huge
agricultural and mineral
resources, has such high potential. But like many
other African countries,
it has been driven to ruin by disastrous
leadership. Time and again, the
failure of Africa's leaders to provide
effective government and abide by
constitutional rule has produced enduring
crises. The ruling elites have
managed to prosper. But the mass of ordinary
Africans struggle to survive.
Meredith is the author of “Mugabe: Power,
Plunder and the Struggle for
Zimbabwe” and “The State of Africa: A History
of 50 Years of Independence.”
africasia
HARARE, April 12 (AFP)
Zimbabwe's state television reported Saturday that it
had unearthed a secret
document written by the opposition detailing plans to
rig the March 29
elections.
The document, allegedly written by Tendai
Biti -- second only in the
Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) to opposition
leader Morgan
Tsvangirai -- "had clear details on how to rig the elections,"
the report
said.
The document stated that a number of teachers
employed by the electoral
commission as election officials had "agreed to
overstate the vote" for a
payment, Zimbabwe Television reported.
The
strategy was meant to "ensure they got a landslide victory to take over
the
country and implement a number of changes meant to please their
international friends who sponsored the MDC campaign," the report
said.
At the time the allegations were reported Biti, the MDC secretary
general,
was out of the country with Tsvangirai attending a summit of
regional
leaders discussing Zimbabwe's post-election crisis.
A
fortnight after Zimbabwe's presidential election there has still been no
announcement of the result. The ruling ZANU-PF party is contesting enough
seats to overturn a slim opposition victory in the simultaneous
parliamentary elections.
Zimbabwe Television is a mouthpiece for
President Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa
dismissed the document as ZANU-PF-engineered
propaganda aimed at justifying
the delay in the publication of results and
the ruling party's push for
another round of voting.
"The document has nothing to do with the MDC, it
is a ZANU-PF generated
document.
"These are old and tired ZANU-PF
antics. It is very clear they want to
justify the delay in the release of
election results," said Chamisa.
"This election was not run by the MDC,
but by the ZANU-PF government.
Tsvangirai has claimed victory in the
presidential race, but Mugabe's party
says no outright winner emerged from
the poll and the election has to go to
a run-off.
At least 15
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission officials have been arrested in
recent days
for alleged fraud.
The Telegraph
Notebook
By W F Deedes
Last Updated: 12:01am BST
07/04/2006
Why we can do nothing about Mugabe
I get more angry letters about Robert Mugabe's tyranny in Zimbabwe,
where
things go from bad to worse, than on any other topic. Most of them
make the
same point. Why do we busy ourselves in Iraq, Afghanistan and
elsewhere, yet
ignore the ruin of a country for which we were once
responsible?
It is a question that can be answered only in
terms of Yes, Minister.
"Humphrey, we must take action against
Mugabe's destruction of
Zimbabwe."
"No, minister, it would do a
disservice to our best interests in
Africa."
"Why not, for
heaven's sake? He's a villain."
"Not in the eyes of all Africa,
minister."
"Humphrey, are you mad?"
"No, minister, I'm
only suggesting that many Africans do not see him
as we do."
"Why not? He's starving his own people, Humphrey."
"Yes, minister,
but he has managed to hold power in Africa for longer
than any other leader.
That earns him high esteem."
"From other African leaders, perhaps,
but not from most Africans."
"Minister, for many years most
Africans were under European rule. When
Mugabe rants against 'imperialism'
he strikes a chord with many of them."
"No imperialist, Humphrey,
behaved as brutally as Mugabe does."
"That is as may be, minister,
but he is 'one of them', which gives him
a certain licence to behave badly.
In Africa, it is recognised that 'the
winner takes all'."
"Humphrey, you're doing Africa a gross injustice. The vast majority
there
would cheer if we gave Mugabe a hiding."
"No, minister, the
majority would resent the intrusion. African
governments are sensitive about
outside interference. They would rally round
Mugabe, and we would lose
valuable interests there."
"So you are saying that we must stand
idly by?"
"Yes, minister."
You may think I am taking
the mickey out of the Sir Humphreys of this
world. On the contrary, I fear
the old booby is right.