Reuters
Zimbabwe opposition says candidate missing
Thu
March 31, 2005 10:14 AM GMT+02:00
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - The
opposition MDC said one of its
candidates had disappeared in the south of
Zimbabwe after an attack by
government supporters on the eve of Thursday's
parliamentary election.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
which is battling President
Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF in the parliamentary
poll, said Siyabonga Malandu,
of Isinza constituency in Matabeleland
Province, disappeared on Wednesday
night.
"He last contacted us
at around 7 p.m. last night saying they were
under attack. He said ZANU-PF
have started beating up people," MDC
Secretary-General Welshman Ncube told
Reuters. "Up to now we have had no
contact from him."
Police in
the capital, Harare, said they had not yet received any
report on the
incident but would look into it.
Mugabe has promised a big ZANU-PF
win against a weakened opposition in
what he says will be a fair poll, but
both the United States and Europe have
dismissed the election as a
farce.
Political violence was sharply lower in this campaign than
previous
elections in 2000 and 2002 but the MDC charges that its supporters
have been
intimidated and the vote will be unfairly skewed in ZANU-PF's
favour.
Newsday
Young, angry - and voting
BY NICOLE ITANO
SPECIAL
CORRESPONDENT
March 31, 2005
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Twenty-thousand
hands were raised in the open-palmed
salute of Zimbabwe's opposition
yesterday as the crowd shouted the party's
slogan in unison: "Change!
Change!" Twenty-five years after this country won
its independence from
Britain, a generation of young, urban voters is angry
because it can't find
jobs.
"I'm going to vote because I need the MDC [Movement for Democratic
Change]
to win," said Valentine Matemadombo, an unemployed 19-year-old who
will be
voting for the first time. "Three-fourths of the people don't have
jobs in
Zimbabwe, and our parents in the rural areas don't have
food."
Zimbabweans head to the polls today to elect a new parliament in
what many
see as a referendum on the 25-year rule of President Robert Mugabe
and his
ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, which have
been
widely accused of destroying the economy and using state-sponsored
violence
against the opposition.
Yesterday, Mugabe addressed more
than 10,000 wildly cheering supporters in
Harare, promising a free vote and
predicting a "huge, mountainous victory."
He has said his campaign is about
protecting Zimbabwe from re-colonization -
he has repeatedly accused the
opposition of being stooges of whites and
Britain - but such rhetoric means
little to the millions of "born frees"
like Matemadombo, those born after
independence.
"I don't have a problem with whites," said Michael Chari,
who is 22 and
unemployed. He and his friends are frustrated that despite
being more
educated than their parents, they are unable to find employment.
If the
opposition doesn't win, he plans to vote with his feet: Like 3
million
Zimbabweans before him, he will emigrate.
Local civil society
groups say the vote is unlikely to be free and fair, but
they also say
ZANU-PF may be surprised by the level of support for the
opposition. In
2000, ZANU-PF won 57 of 120 elected seats. Mugabe directly
appoints an
additional 30, making it extremely difficult for the opposition
to win an
outright majority.
Although overt violence has declined in the run-up to
this election,
opposition supporters say political intimidation, including
control of food
aid during a year of severe shortages, remains rife,
especially in rural
areas. Voter rolls may disenfranchise large numbers of
citizens, they say,
and they fear vote-rigging.
"This is an election
where I think any result is possible," said Brian
Kogoro, chairman of the
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a network of civil
society organizations. He
emphasized, though, that an MDC win would not
legitimize the
vote.
Young voters are a powerful voting demographic and a potential
center of
post-election protest in case of a stolen election, although few
here
believe there will be a popular uprising. Zimbabwe, like much of
Africa, is
disproportionately young - those aged 15 to 29 comprise more than
half of
the total adult population.
The government is well aware of
the power of young voters and has impressed
tens of thousands into joining
youth militias, which human rights groups say
have been responsible for what
politically motivated violence has occurred.
Like Matemadombo, Chari is
voting for the first time. Although eligible to
participate in the 2002
presidential election, fear of political violence
kept him from registering.
This year, he says he wants to help make change.
Already he has stopped
listening to some of his favorite musicians because
he feels they recorded
campaign songs for the wrong side.
"I'm excited," he said on the eve of
the balloting. "Tomorrow, anything can
happen."
boston.com
Hope, anxiety as Zimbabweans go to polls
Mugabe power may
be eroding, many predict
By John Donnelly, Globe Staff | March 31,
2005
MABVUKU, Zimbabwe -- Sitting in a tiny room lit by a single overhead
bulb,
three men said they had been arrested a total of 44 times by security
agents
working for the government of President Robert Mugabe. They showed
scars on
their faces, arms, and backs that they said the agents had
inflicted. Yet
they insist they have grown ever more determined to end
Mugabe's 25-year
reign.
On the eve of today's parliamentary election,
these opposition campaigners
said they feel emboldened by a groundswell of
antigovernment sentiment after
years of repressive crackdowns. Several
million Zimbabweans are expected to
cast ballots today in an election that
many observers say could bring the
first erosion of Mugabe's power since the
end of white- minority rule in
this southern African country in
1980.
The two major questions are whether the main opposition party, the
Movement
for Democratic Change, can for the first time win a plurality of
the seats
at stake, and if not, whether the MDC supporters will mount
protests in the
country's largest cities that mirror the wave of recent
popular uprisings in
Ukraine, Lebanon, and Kyrgyzstan.
Many political
analysts in Zimbabwe are skeptical, believing that the vote
will be neither
free nor fair, that Mugabe's party will keep control of
Parliament -- and
that the country's army and police will violently disperse
any mass public
demonstration that might follow.
Yet in Mabvuku, an opposition stronghold
20 miles outside the capital,
Harare, feelings run deep about prospects for
change. ''If the MDC doesn't
win, we will do something," said Cosmas Ndira,
30, a grass-roots leader for
the MDC. ''We will resist. We will go forward
and fight for our country."
Last weekend, the Rev. Pius Ncube, the
Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo and
one of Mugabe's fiercest critics, called
for a ''popular mass uprising" if
voting is rigged in favor of the ruling
Zimbabwe African National Union
Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF. Ncube told his
Easter congregation,
''Somewhere, there shall come a resurrection for
Zimbabwe."
Mugabe, who helped lead the guerrilla war against the
white-led former
government of Zimbabwe -- known then as Rhodesia -- called
Ncube a traitor.
Mugabe repeatedly has said the vote will be fair, and he
has allowed in
foreign journalists and election observers this time to watch
the balloting.
He contends that the opposition movement has no actual
popular support and
is a creation of those who oppose his years-long
campaign to redistribute
wealth from the tiny white population to the
country's black majority.
But Ncube and other critics of Mugabe's rule
offer a litany of reasons for
their dissent, including hundreds of arrests
and torture of opposition
members; elections in 2000 and 2002 that
international observers said were
rife with voter intimidation and
vote-rigging by the ruling party; four
newspapers shut down in the past two
years; an unemployment rate of 70
percent; and annual inflation at 400 to
600 percent.
Of the Parliament's 150 seats, 120 are up for vote today;
Mugabe appoints
the remaining 30. In 2000, the opposition MDC won 57 seats,
a surprisingly
strong showing in its first election. Mugabe's position is
not at stake; he
was reelected in 2002, and his term runs until
2008.
The outcome is so uncertain that diplomats and analysts are
predicting
multiple postelection scenarios, from the MDC winning as few as
35 seats to
as many as 85.
''If this was a free and fair process,
there would be an MDC tidal wave,"
said a Western diplomat in Harare,
speaking on condition of anonymity. The
diplomat added that the biggest
concern is ''a manipulation of the voter
rolls. A lot of tombstones will be
voting."
A total of 5.7 million Zimbabweans are on voter rolls, including
about
200,000 added in the past two weeks after registration for today's
elections
had officially ended. The statistics department at the University
of Harare
estimated the country of 12 million should have 4.6 million
voters.
The European Union and the United States have said it is highly
unlikely
that the elections will be free or fair. But Reginald
Matchaba-Hove,
director of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, an
independent group of
election monitors, said he has been pleased with the
relatively peaceful
electoral campaign, and he applauded most of the
safeguards put in place at
the 8,000 polling places to reduce chances of
vote-rigging.
He said ''it's going to much more difficult to fudge" the
numbers compared
with during previous elections, because ballots will be
counted at each
polling station in front of monitors. His group, made up of
mostly of
churches, trade unions, and student organizations, will field
nearly 7,000
accredited observers.
He said Mugabe's decision to open
up the electoral process gave the
opposition a great opportunity. ''Mugabe
is a brilliant tactician in terms
of survival . . . but I think he will eat
humble pie," he added.
Mugabe, 81, was not conceding anything yesterday
during a rally in Glen
Dora, a community on the southern outskirts of Harare
that voted for an MDC
candidate five years ago. Before an estimated 10,000
people, he danced along
the edge of the crowd, vigorously shook hands, and
smiled broadly. A dwarf
dancer swung her hips for him. The crowd, with
nearly everyone decked out in
ZANU-PF shirts, roared.
Mugabe gave a
90-minute speech in the midday heat, reviewing minute policy
accomplishments, bashing President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of
Britain for interfering in Zimbabwean politics, and saying the country had
been unfairly maligned by foreign media.
''Even with our difficulties
we are far better than most African countries,"
Mugabe said. ''I want you to
show me people freer than here. They are not as
free in the United States as
they are here. Show me the conditions of the
blacks in the United States and
the standing of all the nonwhites in the
economic sector. . . . It's a very
rare instance in which they are treated
on equal footing as
whites."
Outside the grounds, Darlington Chirimanye, 35, a father of
four, said he
supports ZANU-PF because it has helped many people reclaim
land, through
property seizures from white farmers in the past five years.
He also hoped
both sides accepted the outcome of the vote. ''Democracy
doesn't require
people to go to the streets," Chirimanye said. ''It is down
to the ballot.
It's going to be the best election we've had."
In
Mabvuku, people expressed a mixture of hope and resignation.
Albert
Gatsi, 58, a security officer at a hotel, said he and his dog were
badly
beaten by security officers after the 2000 elections because his
family
worked with the opposition. ''This Mugabe regime even beats dogs," he
said,
with disgust in his voice. But he added that even if ZANU-PF rigs the
election, people will think twice about engaging in a
revolution.
''People have not taken to the streets before because they
are afraid of the
army," Gatsi said. ''And if we have a demonstration now,
they will shoot --
with live ammunition."
© Copyright 2005 Globe
Newspaper Company.
Reuters
Mugabe unlikely to win Zimbabwe's south
Thu March 31, 2005 8:20 AM GMT+02:00
By Emelia Sithole
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe is widely
expected to
win Zimbabwe's election on Thursday but is given little chance
of taking the
important province of Matabeleland, still bitter over an army
offensive 20
years ago.
Failure to win the province would likely dash Mugabe's
bid for a
two-thirds parliamentary majority that would enable him to modify
the
constitution to favour his ZANU-PF party.
The province, in
Zimbabwe's southern region, has been a thorn in
Mugabe's side ever since a
rebellion against his rule just two years after
independence in
1980.
Asa Sibanda said she would vote for the opposition Movement
for
Democratic Change (MDC) "because I was a victim of ZANU-PF cruelty"
during
the army crackdown.
"We were made to lie down on the
ground and they whipped us," recalled
the 82-year-old
grandmother.
"They tried to entice us to join them after the unity
accord but I
will never support them," Sibanda told Reuters at her home in
the Insiza
district of the provincial capital Bulawayo.
Civic
and human rights groups say the army clampdown spearheaded by a
North
Korean-trained brigade killed 20,000 and poisoned the region's
relations
with the central government.
The assault followed government
accusations that Matabeleland
supported plans for an armed revolt against
Mugabe's rule led by a rival
nationalist leader, Joshua Nkomo.
Matabeleland overwhelmingly supported the MDC in general
elections
in 2000 and a presidential vote in 2002.
The province's Roman
Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube is probably the
most vocal domestic opponent
of Mugabe and ZANU-PF. A week before Thursday's
election he said in a
newspaper interview Zimbabwe was ripe for a mass
uprising against
Mugabe.
ETHNIC TENSIONS
That crackdown in the minority
Ndebele-speaking region fuelled ethnic
tensions with the Shona -- who
dominate Mugabe's government -- that only
subsided with a 1987 peace
pact.
Tensions have resurfaced with the expulsion from ZANU-PF of
Mugabe's
former propaganda chief Jonathan Moyo -- a Ndebele -- after he
decided to
stand as an independent in the polls in the most visible sign of
rifts
within the ruling party.
Moyo has since accused ZANU-PF
of being run by a "clique of
tribalists".
Analysts say Mugabe
has failed to ease Ndebele bitterness over the
deaths and voters there
handed all but a couple of the 20 contested seats in
2000 parliamentary
polls to the MDC.
"ZANU-PF is not going to win Matabeleland because
ZANU-PF has not
dealt with the fundamental question of apologising publicly
and unreservedly
for the 1980s massacre of civilians," said Brian Kagoro,
chairman of the
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition that groups local rights
groups..
Analyst Eric Bloch forecast that ZANU-PF may win only 4 of
the
region's 19 contested seats.
Jacob Songelwa, an 84-year-old
pensioner, said he would vote for the
opposition as he was "tired of
ZANU-PF's broken promises".
"From 1980 we were never free here
because people were persecuted for
supporting ZAPU," he said, referring to
the Ndebele dominated party of the
late Joshua Nkomo which later merged with
ZANU-PF.
From The Cape Times (SA), 31 March
Hate speech, intimidation and
threats have marked campaigns, says pressure
group
By Moshoeshoe
Monare
Harare - No Zimbabwean province has shown a satisfactory
election climate
and hate speech, intimidation and threats have
characterised the campaigns
for today's elections. These are the findings
given by the National
Constitutional Assembly in its second report, released
yesterday. "According
to the data received for March, 96% of constituencies
reported forms of
political violence and 63% of the reports alleged that
torture took place,"
the report said. "Most of the victims are MDC
supporters (41%), with Zanu-PF
supporters (14%), ordinary citizens (11%),
and civics (3%). The perpetrators
are alleged to be Zanu-PF supporters
(52%), the militia (17%) and the police
(17%), the Central Intelligence
Office (12%), and the army (8%). The MDC and
war veterans were also
mentioned, but their figures were negligible." The
report comes amid threats
by the police to arrest National Constitutional
Assembly chairman Lovemore
Madhuku over the first report.
The National Constitutional Assembly
said it had sampled eight of Zimbabwe's
10 provinces between March 1 and 24.
"No data had been submitted from
Manicaland or Masvingo by the time of
writing, but it is submitted that the
data nonetheless do give a good
overview of the national picture in March. A
total of 209 reports were
submitted, with an average of three to a
constituency," the report said. The
incidence of political violence was
worst in the Harare province and seemed
least in the Midlands. "It is
evident that the trend... accords with the
observations of previous
elections. Harare and the Mashonaland provinces
have shown more frequent
instances of election irregularities than other
provinces. "Harare was
particularly bad ... this shows that the battle is
really in the urban areas
where the MDC has been the stronger of the two
main parties since 2000.
Zanu-PF is confident that it has the rural votes in
the bag."
Although the police and President Robert Mugabe had called
for a
violence-free election, the psychological damage caused by the
intimidation
and threats following several years of physical violence and
torture could
not guarantee a climate conducive to free and fair elections,
the National
Constitutional Assembly said. Bases for trained Zanu-PF
militiamen remained
in some constituencies. "In the urban areas, the bases
are reported to be at
public halls, beer halls, schools, shopping centres,
and government
institutions. This is something of a change from previous
elections when
militia bases were more likely to be found in rural areas.
The presence of
militia bases (has been) extremely important in recent
elections as there
(has been) a decided correlation between their presence
and political
violence and other irregularities in a constituency." Reports
about food
being used for political leverage were also cause for concern.
"Of the
constituencies sampled, 75% reported the political use of food."
Most of
these reports said that presenting a Zanu PF party card "guarantees
food
supplies". "In the run-up to a highly contentious election, and in the
context of a manifestly serious humanitarian crisis, reports that food is
being used as a threat must be immediately investigated. It is the view of
the National Constitutional Assembly that this election is now so seriously
flawed that there can be absolutely no confidence in the outcome."
From SW Radio Africa, 30 March
Frequencies till Sunday
Work is
continuing to counter the Zimbabwe government's jamming of the
short-wave
frequencies. Please try the following frequencies up to and
including Sunday
3 April: 3300 kHz in the 90m band, and 12145 kHz in the 25m
band from 6pm to
9pm Zimbabwe time; 15145 kHz in the 19m band from 6pm to 8
pm; 11770 kHz in
the 25 m band from 8pm to 9pm. Please also see
www.swradioafrica.com for up to date
information. The medium-wave broadcast
between 5am and 7am each morning, at
1197 kHz, is not being jammed. Outside
the broadcast area, listen over the
internet at www.swradioafrica.com .
SABC
MDC optimistic about voter turnout
March 31, 2005,
09:15
Welshman Ncube, Zimbabwe's opposition MDC secretary-general, says
they are
optimistic that Zimbabweans will turn out in large numbers to vote
in
today's parliamentary elections. He has voted in the Bulawayo East
constituency, where many people are reportedly waiting in long queues to
cast their vote.
Pius Ncube, the outspoken Catholic Archbishop of
Bulawayo, has also cast his
vote in Bulawayo East this
morning.
Meanwhile, the MDC says one of its candidates in today's
election has gone
into hiding following intimidation by Zanu(PF) supporters.
Ncanyiso Maqeda,
an MDC spokesperson, says Siyabonga Malundu, their
candidate in the town of
Nzisa, north of Bulayawo, was forced to
flee.
Maqeda says truckloads of ruling party supporters descended on the
town
yesterday. "Two truckloads attacked a group of MDC polling agents and
the
candidates who were gathering to prepare for the deployment of polling
agents to the different polling stations.
"The full details of what
then happened after the attack are not clear
because we have not been able
to establish contact with Malandu and his
elections agents since last
night."
The Times
March 31, 2005
Mbeki stands by
'free and fair' election despite global
criticism
From
Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg
IN A lonely show of
support for Zimbabwean workers, several
hundred South African trade
unionists gathered at the country's main Beit
Bridge border crossing
yesterday to protest against human rights abuses and
the suppression of
basic workers' rights in neighbouring Zimbabwe.
The
demonstration by the country's powerful Congress of South
African Trade
Unions movement - one of the members of the tripartite
alliance that makes
up the ruling African National Congress - contrasted
starkly with President
Mbeki's official Zimbabwe policy of "quiet
diplomacy" - now dubbed "See no
evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil".
Commentators have
contrasted the South African President's
outbursts against anyone who even
mildly criticises his Government's
policies - such as the recent
dressing-down he gave to Archbishop Desmond
Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate -
with his embarrassing silence on events in
Zimbabwe.
Some
say that the inaction by one of the few men with influence
over President
Mugabe threatens South Africa's own democratic process and
has undone much
of the good derived from the country's active participation
in peace
initiatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast and,
most
recently, Togo.
Mr Mbeki has sought to portray himself as the
champion of
democracy and good governance in Africa, but his refusal to
criticise Mr
Mugabe is believed to be rooted in his humiliating failure as
Deputy
President in 1995 to persuade Sani Abacha, the Nigerian dictator, to
spare
the life of the Nigerian activist and playwright Ken Saro Wiwa. That
was
post-apartheid South Africa's first real foray into African politics and
a
disaster.
Critics say that it is also his own
intolerant character,
sharpened by bitter experiences as an ANC exile, that
has rendered him
unable to criticise leading figures of the struggle to end
white minority
rule in Africa - such as Mr Mugabe. They say that he is
terrified of laying
himself open to taunts of being close to Western
imperialism.
"Our policy is not even-handed . . . it is
solidly supportive of
the current regime. Our Government has repeatedly
issued statements
supportive of the Zimbabwean authorities while remaining
silent about
restrictions on opposition activity," Steven Friedman, senior
research
Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, said.
"We could and should be really even-handed . . . and insist on
the same
standards for Zimbabwean democracy that we rightfully demand for
our own.
Support for Zimbabwe is eroding the promise of a new democratic
start on the
continent and even threatens our own democratic progress."
So
far, the only public comment Mr Mbeki has made on the
forthcoming poll is to
say that he has no reason to think it "will not be
free and
fair".
Under his prompting, a delegation of monitors from the
South
African Government is expected to bless the elections with the words
"sufficiently free and fair", despite mounting evidence to the
contrary.
Mr Mbeki's advance approval of a process that at
best is likely
to be flawed has done serious damage to recent initiatives,
such as the New
Partnership for Africa's Development, of which he is one of
the architects,
to encourage good governance and economic growth on the
poorest continent.
"The collateral damage Zimbabwe has
inflicted on the region, if
not on Africa as a whole, is immeasurable,"
Dumisani Muleya, the Harare
correspondent of the South African Business Day
financial newspaper, wrote.
"Those efforts depend on African leaders'
ability to tackle issues of
democracy and governance in return for funding ,
but Mbeki and his
colleagues have not fulfilled their side of the bargain.
Zimbabwe is the
test case."
Sunday Times (SA)
Editors alarmed about Zimbabwe
Thursday March
31, 2005 09:00 - (SA)
The South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef)
has expressed alarm on the
eve of parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe that
the country's government
"has failed to lift all restrictions on journalists
and media, especially
foreign media".
In a statement by deputy
chairperson Liz Barrett and general secretary
Hopewell Radebe, they said:
"While it appears that South African journalists
have now all gained
accreditation to cover the elections from inside the
country, it is clear
that the Zimbabwean government, by barring many foreign
news organisations,
has not demonstrated a full commitment to the free flow
of information
concerning the elections.
"These actions do not bode well for free and
fair parliamentary elections
tomorrow. It suggests that the 'Burma syndrome'
- the attempt to prevent
news from reaching the outside world - still
infects Zimbabwe."
Sanef noted that the Zimbabwean independent media and
correspondents based
in the country continued to face harassment which had
an impact upon their
ability to cover the election "without
hindrance".
"In addition, the State broadcaster, the Zimbabwean
Broadcasting
Corporation, has not effectively opened up the airwaves to
opposition
parties as the Zimbabwean government pledged to in the Southern
African
Development Community guidelines for free and fair elections," Sanef
noted.
"Monitoring agencies report that the ruling Zanu-PF still enjoyed
a
disproportionate amount of airtime across public television and radio. All
of this has meant that the media playing fields remained skewed for the
election campaign and suggests there is a lot of post-election work to do to
ensure a free and fair media in Zimbabwe."
Zimbabwean voters elect
120 seats out of a parliament of 150 seats today.
Press Telegram
Showdown in Zimbabwe
Opposition could wrest power
from President Mugabe.
By Rodrique Ngowi
Associated
Press
HARARE, Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe, widely accused of
rigging
previous elections, predicted a huge victory Wednesday, the eve of
parliamentary elections. Opposition leaders urged supporters to go to the
polls in defiance of intimidation and fears of violence.
The ballot pits
Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front
party against the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which won
nearly half the seats
in the legislature five years ago in a stinging rebuke
to the 81-year-old
leader.
Mugabe, increasingly isolated globally for repressive measures
during 25
years in power, said the election would prove once and for all
that
Zimbabweans reject interference from the rest of the world.
But
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said the Mugabe regime's days are
numbered.
"The end is near. Five years of your efforts in fighting
against this
illegitimate regime may be ending tomorrow," Tsvangirai told
some 4, 500 MDC
supporters in the eastern Chimanimani region, where the
party candidate is
the wife of a white opposition lawmaker jailed for
brawling with two
government ministers.
At stake are 120 elected
seats. Mugabe appoints members to 30 other seats,
virtually guaranteeing his
ZANU-PF party a majority.
Mugabe, pumping his arm while addressing more
than 10, 000 wildly cheering
supporters at an opposition stronghold in the
capital, promised a free vote
and predicted a "huge, mountainous
victory."
Mugabe accuses British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other
Western leaders
of backing the 6-year-old MDC, the first party to seriously
challenge his
rule. He dubbed today's vote the "anti-Blair
election."
Tsvangirai has said Mugabe, and not Blair, is to blame for
Zimbabwe's
condition.
Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk 50 percent during
the past five years, and the
unemployment rate is at least 70 percent.
Agriculture, the economic base of
Zimbabwe, has collapsed and at least 70
percent of the population live in
poverty.
Opposition leaders blame
the country's economic woes on the government's
often-violent seizure of
thousands of white-owned commercial farms for
redistribution to black
Zimbabweans.
"The land is ours. It is not European," Mugabe told
reporters after a rally
Tuesday. "We have given it to the right people."
An observation...
Has anyone realised that the reason why there is
limited harassment and intimidation in the run up to the 2005 election, is
because the result is already known, and thus violence is
unnecessary.
PG