ZIMBABWE: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe literally received his marching orders from thousands of opposition supporters yesterday, in one of the last big rallies before next weekend's crucial elections.
At least 12,000 supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) turned out for a boisterous rally in Harare's Rufaro Stadium. They sang songs, repeatedly shouted their slogan "change your ways" and at one point held thousands of s referees' red cards aloft.
Nobody left the pitch but the message was clear: "Mugabe must go".
The rally was a show of strength for an increasingly confident opposition buoyed by an opinion poll suggesting it will take 70 of the 120 seats when the votes are counted next Monday, ending 20 years of domination by Dr Mugabe's Zanu PF party.
The well attended event contrasted sharply with an embarrassingly low turnout for a Zanu PF rally on Saturday. An estimated crowd of 5,000 came to hear President Mugabe speak at a venue where he drew hundreds of thousands at independence in 1980.
Violence had been feared at yesterday's event but it passed off largely peacefully. Police prevented people attending earlier rallies and several MDC supporters have died at the hands of the war veterans led by Mr Chenjerai Hunzvi.
The only hint of violence yesterday came when police brought a dazed Zanu PF supporter with a bloodied nose into the stadium. An MDC official claimed the man had been preventing others from attending the event.
The scores of international observers standing in the centre of the stadium appeared to have a beneficial effect. "Before when we had rallies the war veterans would come along and start beating people up while the police did nothing," said a young woman.
A small number of whites were sprinkled among the crowd or sat on the speaker's podium. One was 15-year-old Tom Spicer, who addressed the crowd in the Shona language, telling the police present to "tell your superiors what you have heard, that the MDC has brought president Morgan Tsvangirai."
While the seizure of white farms has caught the international spotlight, it is a secondary consideration for voters. With rampant inflation, soaring interest rates and a 55 per cent unemployment rate, their main interest is jobs. "Mugabe's ruling elite has betrayed us," Mr Tsvangirai told the crowd to rapturous applause.
Afterwards the exuberant crowd crammed into old green buses waiting outside. They hung out the windows as the buses lurched down the road, cheering loudly and waving their red cards.
Healing Donor Rift Tops Zimbabwe Opposition Agenda
HARARE, June 19 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's main opposition party has put healing a deep rift with Western donors at the top of its economic agenda to restore international investor confidence and resuscitate growth, analysts say.
Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will move to improve strained relations with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to unlock institutional and private foreign investment.
They will seek to reverse the latest moves in the United States, where the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a bill to suspend bilateral aid to Zimbabwe until an improvement in democracy and rule of law.
"By creating a friendly and transparent environment for investors, within a sound economy in a free market, we believe that foreign direct investment will return," Tsvangirai said.
"Our relations with donors are sour. We need their support in the short-term to get the economy going, so I would agree that is the top priority on anyone's agenda," said John Mukamure, chief economist at the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce.
The MDC poses the greatest challenge to the 20-year reign of President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party when crucial parliamentary elections are held on June 24-25.
MDC WIN COULD FORCE BUDGET REVISION
Mugabe's position does not come up for election until 2002, meaning the MDC's economic platform will remain largely theoretical unless it obtains a huge parliamentary majority to use as a weapon to demand a budget review.
The MDC wants that radical budget revision 30 days after parliamentary elections. It has vowed to eliminate spending on war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, slash government expenditure and privatise firms such as telecommunications.
Analysts see the opposition agenda as workable, but hasten to add that only an outright win in parliamentary elections would force their agenda on the national stage.
Many political analysts say MDC could win as many as 70 of 120 elected seats, but Mugabe has a right to nominate 30 more, giving him a huge advantage even before the ballots are cast.
"The programme is fairly radical," Mukamure said. "The question is whether it can be delivered within the time pledged. Zimbabwe has a terrible record of promising and not implementing afterwards."
Zimbabwe has one-third of its 33,000-strong army in the Congo, joining Angola and Namibia in defending President Laurent Kabila against a splintered rebel onslaught that has the support of former allies and now bitter foes Rwanda and Uganda.
MACRECONOMIC STABILITY CRUCIAL
Favouring a properly refined land reform programme to replace the violent occupation of white-owned farms by thousands of liberation war veterans, the MDC says it can also woo back hard currency-paying tourists and also restore the agricultural backbone.
London-based emerging markets economists said land reform -- with specific compensation provisions for any seized land -- was key to investor confidence and trust in Zimbabwe's management.
In a move that would be welcomed by growers of the main commodity export tobacco, the MDC preaches freeing of the Zimbabwe dollar -- which has been held at an artificial rate of around 38 against the U.S. unit for a year. A thriving grey market has the Zimbabwe dollar at 53-60 on the greenback.
Tsvangirai told Reuters that Zimbabwe would initially require US$1 billion in programme and project funding to stabilise the economy and allow the state to take difficult options ahead.
"Macroeconomic stability is crucial. We have to get inflation down, deal with high interest rates," said Harare economist John Robertson. "Then you have to deal with civil service reform and lagging privatisation to convince donors that Zimbabwe is finally back on the reform path."
The state-owned Herald newspaper reported that accreditation had been denied to 10 Kenyans and seven Nigerians "who had apparently been planted by Britain in an effort to subvert the ban by government on the former colonial power not to send observers".
The European Union team have denied the observers had any connection with the UK - which has been highly critical of President Robert Mugabe.
With campaigning in its final week, the main opposition party will have been buoyed by a large turn out for their final major campaign rally in the capital, Harare, on Sunday and by a recent opinion poll suggesting they could win a majority of seats in the new parliament.
Five times as many supporters attended
the opposition organised event than went to President Robert Mugabe's rally
organised by the ruling party. He is now attending a G15 summit of developing
nations in Cairo.
Observers
A spokeswoman for the European Commission in Brussels, Susannah Rosson,
confirmed that the Kenyans had been refused accreditation, but expressed the
hope that the problem could be resolved.
She said Britain had left it to the Commission to decide which observers to
send in its absence. The spokeswoman said seven Nigerians, who had also reportedly been refused
accreditation, were not yet in the country.
President Mugabe's government - which has accused Britain of "interference"
in the country - announced last month that it would not accept any British
observers to the election.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has welcomed the arrival
of hundreds of observers, from a variety of international organisations, as a
way of reducing the level of politically-related violence in the run-up to
polling.
About 30 people have died in recent violence - most of them MDC supporters.
Rallies
The 25,000 turnout for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), at the
party's last major rally before elections next weekend was a big boost for its
leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.
By contrast, President Robert Mugabe's governing Zanu-PF could muster only
5,000 supporters for a rally in Harare on Saturday. She told journalists in Harare that about 70 miitants of the Zanu-PF party
arrived in a bus wielding sticks and something like a bottle of petrol,
They thoroughly wrecked the house and car and five people were seriously
injured.
She said that police in the area were very reluctant to confront the
attackers, some of whom she recognised as previous troublemakers.
When the attackers left, the house was litered with broken debris and
personal possessions.
A survey by the independent Public Opinion Institute suggests the MDC would
win 70 of the 120 parliamentary seats up for grabs.
A further 30 seats in the 150 seat parliament are appointed directly by the
president. Since then, Zimbabwe has suffered a spasm of political violence, crushing
economic troubles and sharp international condemnation, a spiral many blame on
the ruling party's scorched-earth blueprint for crushing its opponents. Many say the future rests on the voting Saturday and Sunday, determining
whether Zimbabwe moves further toward the autocratic rule that plagues many
African countries, or allows the opposition to have a voice in governing the
country. "Zimbabwe is already a pariah state. The election will determine whether that
will continue or be reversed," said John Makumbe, a political science professor
at the University of Zimbabwe. "If Mugabe remains in power and his ruling party
gains the majority, then I think Zimbabwe is doomed to relegation as a banana
republic." Cheered by 30,000 boisterous supporters at a rally in Harare, opposition
leaders predicted Sunday they would overtake Mugabe's ruling party. But the Commonwealth and other international groups have questioned whether
the elections can be fair in the atmosphere of violence and intimidation
pervading the country. If the polls -- watched over by hundreds of international observers and
journalists -- are rigged or marred by violence, the country will be further
wounded, Makumbe said. An election loss wouldn't likely threaten Mugabe's grip on power, at least
immediately. Mugabe himself is not up for re-election for two years, and the
voters are filling only 120 of the 150 parliamentary seats, with the president
naming the remaining 30. But Mugabe's ZANU-PF party controls 147 of the seats in the outgoing
parliament, and a strong showing by the main opposition group, the Movement for
Democratic Change, would signal the birth of the first serious opposition in the
country's 20 years of independence. That threat has spurred the ruling party to push hard for victory. Soon after Mugabe's defeat in the constitutional vote, mobs of armed ruling
party supporters began occupying the farms of white commercial farmers, who were
seen as strong opposition supporters. Mugabe then threatened to seize the farms
for redistribution to landless blacks. Many of the white farmers' laborers, a key opposition constituency, were
beaten and had their homes burned. At least 31 people, mostly opposition supporters, have been killed in the
political violence, which also targeted opposition candidates. Mugabe has blamed the violence on the opposition and implored his supporters
to retaliate. "Don't kill, but hit back wildly," he said in an April speech.
Even before the referendum, Zimbabwe was suffering its worst economic slump
since independence, with more than 70 percent inflation and 50 percent
unemployment. That crisis has been blamed for Mugabe's declining support. The economy has become more bleak since the charter vote. The farm
occupations and an overvalued currency have hurt sales of tobacco, the nation's
biggest export. Mine operators have not been able to buy supplies because the
country is short of foreign currency. The tourism business has dried up, and a severe fuel crisis, blamed on
corruption, is adding to the toll. Zimbabwe's participation in the Congo war also is hurting. It has 11,000
soldiers there, at a reported cost of more than $15 million a month. Mugabe's threat to seize white farms and his statement that
non-Zimbabwe-owned mines are next in line for black ownership have raised
questions about the government's stance on private property and frightened
investors. The ruling party has promised to create 800,000 jobs, mostly through
redistribution of land. But that is impossible under its economic program, said
Moses Tekere, a professor of economics at the University of Zimbabwe. "You create jobs when you have industries and agriculture, when you have
investments coming in," he said. "We're destroying those very entities that
create jobs." Phineas Kadenge, another economics professor at the university, said that
regardless of the vote's outcome, the support shown for the opposition has
permanently changed Zimbabwean politics. "In the past, there was no incentive for government to deliver," he said.
"But now, with the emergence of competition, there is incentive for government
to perform. Things will change." HARARE, June 19 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party on Monday tried
to put on a brave face after a disastrous weekend rally, while the opposition
gained momentum from a strong turnout at its gathering ahead of elections next
weekend. ZANU-PF suffered a psychological blow on Saturday when its last planned rally
in Harare -- addressed by President Robert Mugabe -- attracted only 5,000
people. A second rally on Saturday, in Zimbabwe's second largest city Bulawayo, drew
10,000 supporters. In contrast, at least 20,000 jubilant supporters of the main opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) gathered in Harare on Sunday in a key test
of the party's ability to mobilise its forces ahead of the June 24-25 poll. Jonathan Moyo, a senior member of ZANU-PF's campaign directorate, said the
foreign media had understated the turnout at the Mugabe rallies and accused the
international press of being part of a Western conspiracy to back the MDC. "We have held major rallies in all the 10 provinces and they have been all
well attended, but that fact is not being recorded because it is not in the
interest of the MDC agenda," Moyo said. He said at least 25,000 people were at the Harare rally and 70,000 in
Bulawayo's White City Stadium on Saturday. The Bulawayo stadium's seated
capacity is just 15,000. Organisers publicly apologised for the low turnout, which they blamed on fuel
shortages and people at work, despite it being the weekend and an unemployment
rate of 50 percent. A visibly angry Mugabe acknowledged at the end of his address that the party
faced a serious challenge. "We must accept that we have a real battle here," he
said. MUGABE FURIOUS Mugabe was later furious with his lieutenants over the poor turnout at
Harare's Zimbabwe Grounds, where he had attracted over 150,000 people before
independence elections in 1980 which swept the 76-year-old former guerrilla
leader to power. "The old man was very angry," the official told Reuters. In a bid to wipe out Saturday's failure, the party is planning another rally
in Chitungwiza, near Harare, for Wednesday or Thursday, ZANU-PF organisers said.
ZANU-PF's Harare rally was a severe blow for Mugabe, who had been promised at
least 100,000 party faithful. "They (ZANU-PF) did not get the numbers and they know its not good for their
image or the morale of their supporters," political commentator Alfred Nhema, a
lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, told Reuters. Sunday's MDC rally was marred by violence, including attacks by ZANU-PF
supporters on people going to the venue and also by MDC youths on three men
suspected of being Mugabe loyalists. But opposition officials were energised after drawing 20,000 people to hear
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. "We have demonstrated here with this large crowd that the MDC is not just an
opposition party. We are the government in waiting," Tsvangirai told cheering
supporters. Political scientist Masipula Sithole said the weekend rallies had underscored
the fact that the MDC was gaining ground and stood a good chance of beating
ZANU-PF. Sithole was the main researcher for a public opinion poll published last week
which suggested the MDC could win 70 of the 120 parliamentary seats up for
grabs. At least 29 people, mostly MDC adherents, have died in political violence
since February when liberation war veterans and pro-Mugabe militants began
invading white-owned farms. Zimbabwe has refused to allow 17 Kenyan and Nigerian members of a European
Union-sponsored observer mission to monitor the elections, an election official
said on Monday. HARARE (June 19) XINHUA - British citizens who own vast tracts of land in
Zimbabwe should choose between acceding to the government's land redistribution
program or facing another armed struggle, according to Zimbabwean Vice President
Joseph Msika.
Addressing his party's supporters in Mutare North of east Zimbabwe Sunday,
Msika said the land issue was a thorny one, over which Zimbabweans would not
hesitate to wage another armed struggle.
He, however, hoped that things would not degenerate to that extent and urged
the minority whites to genuinely embrace the hand of reconciliation extended to
them by the government and the people of Zimbabwe.
About 4,000 white commercial farmers own two-thirds of the country's prime
land while more than 10 million blacks are struggling to eke out a living on
infertile soils.
Critics of the government would never detract the government from resolving
the land imbalances, Msika said, noting that while the war of liberation had
brought about political freedom, economic independence would remain a pie in the
sky if the land issue was not resolved.
There would be no going back on land redistribution, he said. The Zimbabwean
government has since independence acquired 3 million of a targeted 8 million
hectares of land for resettlement. To date, 73,000 families have been resettled
while another 44,177 landless families have been earmarked for resettlement
under the new Land Acquisition Act.
The Act enables the government to take land without paying compensation,
except for improvements made on the farms. Zimbabwe to Deploy 30,000 Police for Polls BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, June 19 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe will deploy 30,000 police in
a massive countrywide security operation to ensure peaceful voting in this
weekend's elections, Home Affairs Minister Dumiso Dabengwa said on Monday. "We need to ensure that there will be sufficient security across the
country," Dabengwa told Reuters in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city
where he is campaigning for his parliamentary seat. At least 29 people, mostly opposition supporters, have died in violence
linked to the election or invasion of hundreds of white-owned farms by
pro-government militants since February. Mugabe has backed the land invasions, saying black Zimbabweans should reclaim
land stolen during the British colonial era. But he has denied responsibility
for the violence. Dabengwa said there would be enough police to guarantee a peaceful election.
"We will ensure all voters are protected and are allowed to exercise their
right to vote in a peaceful atmosphere," he said. Dabengwa said 20,000 police would be supported by another 10,000 reservists
in one of the country's biggest security operations. Zimbabwe goes to the polls on June 24-25 with President Robert Mugabe's
ruling ZANU-PF facing a strong challenge from the Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) led by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai. "We might also have to ask for the assistance of the army in certain areas
where we have a shortage of policemen and women," Dabengwa said. Zimbabwean police have been accused by critics at home and abroad of doing
little or nothing to end the violence that has swept the country since February.
Human rights monitors have said more than 13,000 rural people had sought
refuge in towns and cities to escape the violence and others had their identity
books destroyed by government supporters, making it impossible for them to vote.
MDC officials in Bulawayo, seat of the Ndebele warrior King Lobengula more
than a century ago, said that they were unable to campaign in certain rural
areas sealed off by war veterans and ZANU-PF supporters. "Some areas are inaccessible and we are looking at the option of using
aircraft to access them," David Coltart, MDC legal affairs secretary and a party
candidate. But Coltart said the situation in Matebeleland was far better than
Mashonaland which has borne the brunt of the violence. Dabengwa dismissed the opposition charges. Zimbabwe Holds Watershed Election amid Economic Crisis,
Violence
Mugabe Party Puts on Brave Face after Rally Blow
Zimbabwe Threatens another War Over Land Issue