The Zimbabwe Situation

Shire (l) predicts a Mugabe victory - Mbanga (r) disagrees

Zimbabweans are going to the polls on 29 March to elect a president, members of parliament and some local councillors. The key issues will be the economic crisis, land reform and the entry of former Finance Minister Simba Makoni to the political race.

Academic and ruling Zanu-PF supporter George Shire and Wilf Mbanga, critic of President Robert Mugabe and publisher of the Zimbabwean newspaper, discussed how they thought the elections would go.

George Shire: I think Robert Mugabe will win the presidency and Zanu-PF will win the House of Assembly and local elections.

They will do so because they have a well organised electoral machinery in place, they have a better sense of purpose this time than before.

They seem to have a coherent narrative that speaks to what Zimbabweans are concerned about.

Wilf Mbanga: We know for a fact that people around Mugabe are in panic mode.

The army chief has warned Zimbabweans that if they voted for anyone other than Robert Mugabe they would stage a coup and the chief of prisons a couple of weeks ago told his staff to vote for Robert Mugabe and nobody else.

Soldier in front of Mugabe supporters
Will the army intervene in the election?

Mugabe himself is saying he will walk it, he will win by a landslide. I don't know where he gets that from because the economy has collapsed, services have collapsed. I don't know why anyone would vote for a continuation of the suffering we have in our country.

What will happen is that Mugabe will stuff the ballot boxes, he will rig the election.

That's the only way he can win. For example, soldiers and Zimbabwean diplomats around the world vote in private - there are no international or local observers in place - this allows them to rig the elections, as their votes are added to votes from their constituencies.

If you look at the polling stations, Harare, for example, has 733,000 voters and they have only been give just over 300 polling stations. This means voters have to vote four times in less than 12 seconds. This is impossible.

Whereas, for example if you look at Mashonaland Central, which is seen as a Mugabe stronghold, they have 500,000 voters and over 1,200 polling stations.

George Shire: Zimbabwe is not like that. South Africa has been pilloried for its stance on the Zimbabwe situation.

The last thing South Africa wants is to be aligned with an electoral process that has holes in it. The Sadc [Southern African Development Community] countries are the same, and the African Union.

All the people that have been supportive of Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF up to now want to see this as transparent as is possible. It is in the interests of Zanu-PF to make it transparent. It will be free and fair.

Man carrying bundles of banknotes
Zimbabwe has the world's highest rate of inflation

If you compare it to any other elections, or any other period leading up to it, it is as peaceful as Zimbabwe has ever had it.

I haven't seen a statement from the army saying they would not accept the results. What I have seen is remarks made by the head of the prison service, who said if any other candidate won, he would resign his post and go back to his farm.

He would not salute them, he did not say he would defy the laws of the country.

You have to read that comment with what is in the MDC [Movement for Democratic Change] manifesto - it says, when we come into power, we will REVIEW the personnel of Zimbabwean diplomats and other civil servants.

Civil servants are reading that as saying, if the MDC comes into power, we will lose our jobs. That is why you get these remarks. I have not seen anything to say that March 29th will not be peaceful.

Politicians must tell people what they would do if they come to power in a given situation. How will people deal with spiralling inflation?

One of the things that Zanu-PF has done so well over the last 10 years is to keep its membership base involved about what is the reason for inflation. That's why people will deliver.

It's not that people don't know that inflation is rising, it's not because they think things will be the same.

They have an understanding of what Zanu-PF will do. The problem for the opposition is that they have failed to convince people of an alternative.

Wilf Mbanga: Mugabe has told Sadc leaders he would not accept defeat. The army has told us it would not accept any defeat of Robert Mugabe, so there is a problem there.

Why has Zanu-PF decided to only invite their friends to come and observe the elections? If the elections are going to be transparent, if they are going to be free and fair, surely they should invite their critics, to satisfy them that this time round, the elections will be free and fair.

George Shire: My view is that everybody in Zimbabwe is going to accept whatever the result on 29 March will be. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise.

Zimbabwe is a sophisticated, complex, mature country. No-one will want to die for anybody just because they say we don't want to accept the election.

Wilf Mbanga: Simba Makoni will play the role of a spoiler for Mugabe because he is coming from Zanu-PF - he says he is still Zanu-PF.

Simba Makoni
What difference will Makoni make?

He says there are some supporters from Zanu-PF who back him, although we have not seen much evidence of that but we have put that down to fear within Zanu-PF because everything in Zanu-PF is dependent on this patronage system.

If you are seen not to be backing Mugabe, you can be punished and there is evidence of this in the past. Makoni will get some support from Zanu-PF, he will get some support from the academics and from the business community in the urban areas.

So he will take votes both from Mugabe and the MDC, but mostly from Zanu-PF.

George Shire: Zimbabweans are not persuaded by personalities. Is there a difference of policy and principle between Makoni and Zanu-PF?

One of the reasons why he was thrown out of government is he was opposed to the land question. He might not say it in public, but he is.

Opposition supporter with a red card for Mugabe
The opposition wants to give Mugabe the red card

Presumably he is opposed to black economic empowerment.

To Zimbabweans, they translate that as the local version of neo-liberal politics. It has no buyers in the region.

He might be the flavour of the month for the literati or the academics. They are not the majority.

To the majority, what matters is whether the land revolution continues - whatever imperfections there may be.

Whether or not there is a widening of participation in the economy.

Whether the assets of the country are held in trust by the state on behalf of the people.

He will get support from those people who see the political discourse of the country as an individual story [Robert Mugabe]. That's why, from some sections of the MDC, he is popular.

All Zanu-PF has to do is to hold its support base. It does not have to increase it. If it does that, it will have a landslide victory.

I have not seen any evidence to suggest that any one of these opposition figures has done anything to erode the support base of Zanu-PF.

Wilf Mbanga: There is evidence. The MDC has been holding rallies in rural areas, where they have attracted large numbers. [The MDC's presidential candidate] Morgan Tsvangirai was in Bindura Zhamva and Thsolotsho where he addressed huge rallies. This is the first time he has been able to penetrate rural areas, which were previously under the control of Zanu-PF.

George Shiri: I am encouraged that Morgan Tsvangirai has been participating nationally - that demonstrates what I have been saying all along - that the political landscape in Zimbabwe is much more fluid, much more open, much more viable than what most people seem to think it is.

Wilf Mbanga: It is not. The radio and TV are owned by government, the two national dailies are controlled by the government. Up to now, the government newspapers are still refusing to take adverts from the MDC.

George Shire: In 1980 - there was no media access to Zanu-PF, it came up with 80% of the vote. People in Zimbabwe are politically savvy. Probably, the election is won already.

They vote not because of the media but because they are connected to what is going on in their country. They are much more politically astute. These are highly sophisticated electorates, much more sophisticated, much more engaged than people give them credit for.

17 March 2008 06:00

The death rate for children under five in Zimbabwe has almost doubled over the past decade. (Photo: AP)

The numbers ceased to mean much to Sarah Chekani about the time inflation in Zimbabwe surged past 50 000% late last year. It has doubled again since then, to the alarm of Robert Mugabe heading into this month's presidential election. But that hardly matters to Chekani and others like her who survive in an orbit touched only fleetingly by cash or the spiralling exchange rate.

Nor do the other numbers that the central bank governor has called "an economic HIV" -- half the population living on $1 a day, 80% unemployment and 45% of Zimbabweans malnourished -- mean much when what you are worried about is your own young children.

To Chekani (31) the figures now only represent desperation and death; one death in particular, but also the fear that more might follow.

"I try not to eat too much so there is enough food for my children, but even if I ate nothing there wouldn't be enough," she said. "I didn't think it was possible that people could starve in Zimbabwe or just die because the hospital has nothing. That's what we thought happened in Angola and Mozambique."

Chekani's home in Highfield, a crowded township on the edge of Harare, is bare. There are no chairs, only cloths on the floor. No bed, just a mattress for her and the two remaining children, boys of seven and eight.

She has a gas hob but no oven, and the only decoration is a print of Jesus Christ -- a white man with a golden halo.

It wasn't always this way. Chekani and her husband were relatively poor, but his labours as a casual construction worker and her trading in secondhand clothes filled their three-roomed home with the things that marked rising living standards in Zimbabwe after independence: a radio and then a television, a couch, armchairs, a bed.

Then, five years ago, shortly after the birth of her only daughter, Chekani's husband died. She says she doesn't know why -- he just got sicker, and nothing could save him.

By then, his work had dried up as the economy crashed under Mugabe's maladministration, and they were selling off their belongings to those who still had means. The television fetched enough money to feed the family for a month. The bed went for almost nothing. Chekani even sold off most of her plates and cutlery, keeping only what the family needed for a meal.

With the money she did what large numbers of Zimbabweans are doing to survive: she bought up basic foods, keeping some for her family and making a small profit from the rest. There is almost nothing left in the house to sell, but Chekani gets by.

Her latest acquisition is two litres of cooking oil, which she sells at a pavement stall, five tablespoons at a time, in return for a handful of near-worthless notes. Other women are selling bars of soap by the slice and flour by the cup.

Chekani's trading kept her children alive until last November. Then her five-year-old daughter fell sick with diarrhoea and fever. Chekani hesitated to take her to Highfield's government clinic because charges have risen several times over, but as the child's condition worsened she carried her there.

The nurse said there was nothing she could do. There were no antibiotics to treat the child's condition. All she could offer was a spoonful of syrup to help bring her temperature down.

"The nurse said she was sure she would be fine. She said lots of children were coming in with diarrhoea because of the sewers," said Chekani.

Burst sewer lines are increasingly common in Highfield and other Harare townships as the infrastructure collapses from lack of maintenance. On occasion, groups of women with babies strapped to their backs have marched to Highfield clinic to demand treatment for their children, sick from the filthy water.

The situation is not helped by months without clean water in the taps in most of Harare. Even residents of wealthy suburbs are collecting water in buckets and jerry cans from borehole-stand pipes. Swimming pools are now mostly used for water to flush toilets.

Chekani's child did not get better. "I took her back to the clinic three times," she said, "but every time they said that she would get better soon if I give her food and lots of water -- that it was just the fever and there was nothing they could do because they had no drugs.

"I thought about taking her to the Harare central hospital, but it costs so much money and people said things are no better there. I just hoped." A week later the child was dead.

The death rate for children under five in Zimbabwe has almost doubled over the past decade. So has the number of women dying in childbirth because, doctors say, so many more are giving birth at home because they can no longer afford hospital charges.

There is a desperate shortage of vaccines to protect children from measles and other diseases. Thanks to foreign donations, some of those with HIV get antiretroviral drugs to keep full-blown Aids at bay, but most who need them do not, and the supply is often irregular, which undermines their effectiveness.

The biggest government hospital in Harare, the Parirenyatwa, has ceased operations because of the shortages. The two hospitals share a single radiologist because so many medical staff have decamped to South Africa or Europe to find work that can feed their families.

That is not an option for Chekani. "I don't know what to do if my other children get sick. Where can we go? The hospital tells you to buy the drugs yourself, but where do I get the money?" she said. "Some people say this election will change things. I don't know. I don't have hope. It will not bring back the dead." -

Mugabe: We're facing food crisis
Robert Mugabe has, for the first time, admitted that Zimbabwe faces a grave food crisis amid the collapse of the country's agriculture. But he blamed it on "racist" Britain trying to oust him at this month's presidential election.

Responding to pleas at a campaign rally in Plumtree, in the province of Matabeleland South, Mugabe accepted there was a crisis. "There is hunger in the country and a shortage of food," he said, according to the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper. Mugabe promised to speed up food imports, which have so far met only a fraction of the country's needs.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says 45% of Zimbabweans are suffering chronic malnourishment because of "poor agricultural policies and a declining economy". The WFP feeds about 2,5-million people and other agencies are providing food to about one million. But large numbers of people are surviving on far fewer calories than they need, leaving them vulnerable to illnesses, particularly the large proportion of the population with HIV at risk of developing Aids.

The government promised "the mother of all agricultural seasons" this year after repeated crop failures.

But agriculture has again been hit by the weather, compounded by a fall in production since the redistribution of white-owned farms to black farmers. The situation has been worsened by a shortage of fertilisers because of a lack of currency for imports, and frequent power cuts that have hit irrigation.

Overall food production has fallen by about 70%. -- © Guardian News & Media Ltd 2008

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