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Archived News
18th March 2002
Delays enrage exhausted voters
The pensioner on democracy's front line
Cops, vigilantes deter Zimbabwe voters
Mystery among the ballot boxes
Voting analysis
Mugabe wins
Mugabe aims to crush MDC with treason charges
It is up to South Africa to tell the truth about President Mugabe
Uneasy capital pulls down the shutters
Chicanery in the countryside
1 400 polling agents, observers arrested
Journos jeer SA for endorsing Zim poll
Zuma off to Zim for talks
US doesn't recognize Zimbabwe election, Bush says
Poll was not 'a free expression of will'
Observers disagree over Mugabe's 'flawed' poll
MDC takes Harare/Chitungwiza
Secret mission to solve Zimbabwe crisis
Zanu PF unleashes militias on commercial farms
Mugabe stumbles after victory
MDC rejects prospects of a coalition govt
Raids and press curbs mark new Mugabe era
South African poll observers criticise 'legitimate' finding
U-turn over Mbeki support for poll
Mugabe spurns proposal for unity government
Zanu PF caught red-handed
Tempers flare as postal ballots reported missing
Mugabe claims McGill doctorate
Big Three to judge Mugabe fate
Mugabe win rests on dead or absent voters, says MDC
Mugabe inauguration wins limited VIP attendance
How Mugabe stole democracy
Children of a lesser god
Victorious Mugabe mocks 'colonial' Britain
Opposition to present 'evidence' of rigging
Zimbabwe farmer found dead after 'attack'
Mugabe death squad thugs kidnapped and tortured me, says trade union leader
Top Zanu PF officials under probe over diamonds
‘Not free and fair’ - Church observers
No visa for general's wife
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 11 March
Delays enrage exhausted voters
Tension spiralled in Zimbabwe on Monday as polling station failed to open for several hours in the capital Harare despite a court order extending the hotly contested presidential election by a day. About 150 voters gathered outside a polling station in Harare's working-class suburb of Mbare early Monday, many from 3am - four hours ahead of the scheduled 7am start - after having been frustrated by long, slow-moving lines since voting began on Saturday. Yoko, a man at the front of the voting line, said: "I slept here last night and I hope to be able to vote quickly because I have to go to work." He was elated when polling officials announced that voting could begin, saying: "It's starting at last." Then suddenly a well-known leader of liberation war veterans, Joseph Chinotimba, appeared driving a minivan. He shouted in Shona at the electoral officials: "Don't you dare open" before speeding off again, his tires screeching.
After Chinotimba had left, the presiding officer asked Yoko and a second voter to leave. The crowd erupted in protest, shouting: "Let us vote!"; "This is our right, the courts have said so!"; "You are all a bunch of crooks!" The frustrated voters sat on the ground as police officers tuned in to two-way radios receiving contradictory orders from the election organisers, the justice ministry and Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF. About 50 people drifted away after officials said they were waiting for the go-ahead to start again. The presiding officer - just as exhausted as the voters - shook his head in exasperation. "It's a nightmare, the crowd is going to stone me if I don't open this polling station, and the big Zanu PF bosses told me I would be put behind bars if I did open it," he said. The official, who preferred not to be named, added: "I am tired of this. I just want to go home." Noting that only 1 700 of the 3 000 voters registered at his polling station had managed to vote at the weekend, he said: "It would only be fair to give people a third day to vote."
Mugabe is fighting for his political survival against opposition challenger Morgan Tsvangirai, who has widespread support in urban areas, where the number of polling stations was sharply reduced, resulting in the weekend logjam. Meanwhile in Mbare on Monday, hours ticked by as the morning sun grew hotter. "We're hungry, we're thirsty, you have no right to take away our rights," a voter yelled. He said he would lose his job if he stayed much longer. But about 100 voters, all men, refused to give up. At around 10am they crowded against the entrance to the tent serving as a polling station. "Let us vote now. This government listens neither to the voice of justice nor to the voice of its people," one of them shouted as the others cheered. "Shame on those who try to cheat in order to win." The confrontation continued until a dozen riot police arrived and ordered the voters to form a single-file line at a distance from the tent. "You call that free and fair? This poll is organised through fear and batons," said Edmore (19) gesturing at the armed police standing by a wall spray-painted "Viva MDC".
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 12 March
The pensioner on democracy's front line
The effort to ensure a fair vote in Zimbabwe
A wizened pensioner nursing bruised ribs formed part of the opposition's last line of defence yesterday to stop President Robert Mugabe stealing the presidential election in Zimbabwe. As lawyers went to and fro through the courts in Harare over extending the voting, 71-year-old Elias Ncube, wearing a dusty, borrowed baseball cap, patiently stuck to his job as an opposition polling agent. His role was to make sure there was no trickery with the ballot box from Mobile Polling Station 16, Bubi Umguza, one of Zimbabwe's most violent constituencies, and if that meant a third night sleeping on a dusty, cement floor then so be it. The job had already cost him a beating with sticks and clubs by a mob from the ruling Zanu PF party late on Saturday when he went to buy food. All of his clothes apart from his trousers were ripped off him by the mob. But his eyes were flashing with determination yesterday. "Someone has to do this," he said. "They said I was from the Movement for Democratic Change, but all I said was that I am a polling agent. I tried to show them my polling agent card, but the ink is red and that is the colour of the MDC, so they attacked me. I am a retired tailor and the reason I am doing this is that there must be an end to what this man Mugabe is doing to ruin our country." This determination is believed to have cost several MDC polling agents their lives. They were abducted shortly after they were deployed last Friday and have not been heard of since.
Mr Ncube's polling agent card was creased and crumpled but still pinned to his shirt as he spoke a safe distance from Mobile 16, a polling station that moved between two primary schools in the Matabeleland bush used for the vote on Saturday and Sunday. In theory the polling stations in Zimbabwe should have been protected from intimidation by so-called war veterans, the lawless thugs who have spearheaded Mr Mugabe's attempt to cling to power. But the opposition understandably finds that little comfort. Less than 100 yards from Mobile 16 a group of surly-looking men glowered as Mr Ncube handed over protection of the ballot box to a colleague to give an interview to The Telegraph. In the three minutes it took to pick Mr Ncube up in our car, one of these men dragged branches and wire across the road to try to stop him being driven away. He was too scared to walk back to the polling station as the protection offered by four Zimbabwean policemen was not very convincing.
Outside on the main road Mr Ncube was again among friends. Here was a four-wheel-drive vehicle carrying a handful of MDC supporters. Their job in this most sensitive of elections was to accompany the ballot box on its journey from the polling station to the site of the official count. It is this phase of the electoral process that observers have suggested is the most vulnerable to attack, with the ballot box being easy to stuff with fraudulent votes. The driver of the jeep, who was too scared to have his name published, said he and his fellow MDC supporters had been waiting for three days and two nights but they were determined to stick it out. At night they run shifts, with at least one sentry awake at all times to make sure that Mobile 16's precious box does not go missing. It all formed part of a game of electoral cat and mouse between a political elite using every lever of power to secure victory, from the state media to murder, and a mass movement determined to stand up against them. With the urban population overwhelmingly behind the opposition, Mr Mugabe's clear strategy has been to try to reduce the opportunity for people to vote in Harare and the other cities by, for instance, slashing the number of urban polling stations. In theory that would leave his supporters free to intimidate, massage and control the vote in the rural areas. But then he had not reckoned on brave men like Elias Ncube.
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From The Washington Times, 12 March
Cops, vigilantes deter Zimbabwe voters
Harare - Police and vigilantes loyal to President Robert Mugabe chased thousands of voters away from polling stations yesterday at the close of a presidential election marred by charges of fraud and intimidation. The action came as the Zimbabwe High Court rejected an opposition demand that polling be extended for a fourth day. Police also detained four American diplomats, who were attempting to monitor the election, for five hours. In addition, they arrested a high-ranking official of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the opposition party trying to unseat Mr. Mugabe. Yesterday marked the end of a chaotic three days of voting that marked the most serious challenge ever to Mr. Mugabe's 22-year presidency. Throughout the campaign, government supporters targeted MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai and his supporters. The election was to have ended Sunday night, but the High Court extended it for a day after hundreds of thousands of voters had yet to cast ballots.
Many had waited in line for more than 48 hours since polls opened on Friday. "They chased us away," said one angry voter who refused to give his name because the police who closed the poll still lingered nearby. "I'm very angry because it is my right to vote. I want to vote". The number of polling stations in the capital of Harare, an opposition stronghold, had been slashed in what opposition leaders said was a blatant attempt to disenfranchise opposition voters. Despite the court order keeping polls open yesterday, officials delayed the opening until midday and then closed them promptly at 7 p.m. At some polls, as many as a thousand voters were still waiting to cast their votes when police shut the stations down. Overall, 2.7 million of the nation's 5.6 million registered voters, or 48 percent, cast ballots by Sunday night, the government said. The opposition said the overall turnout figures were suspect and intended to guarantee Mr. Mugabe's re-election. Police used tear gas and batons to drive away voters at at least one polling station. Shots were reportedly fired at another. But in most places crowds dispersed without incident, in some cases chanting the MDC slogan: "Change, Change, Change," as they left. Earlier in the day, Mr. Tsvangirai called on supporters to wait peacefully for an announcement of the results, which are expected late today or tomorrow. "Let us first wait peacefully for your votes to be cast and counted," he said. "As you wait for the results, do not succumb to their provocative traps. I know they are trying very hard to provoke you."
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 12 March
Mystery among the ballot boxes
If the Zimbabwe turnout figures published by the government yesterday are to be believed, more people have voted in President Mugabe's stronghold of Mashonaland East province than anywhere else. The statistics are curious for a number of reasons. The province's transport links are inferior to those in the cities and literacy rates are much lower. So it might be expected that urban areas would attract greater numbers of voters to the polls. Yet Mashonaland East achieved a turnout of 57 per cent, compared to a pitiful 28 per cent in Harare. The figures cover the first day and a half of the two-day vote. Moreover, Mashonaland East's turnout exceeded that of every other province and was well above the national average of 43 per cent. It also did better than Manicaland, its immediate neighbour, where only 44 per cent appear to have voted. On the official figures, the opposition's strongholds of Harare, Chitungwiza and Manicaland simply failed to deliver their voters.
There are several explanations for these discrepancies. It is possible, though unlikely, that the people of Mashonaland East are more diligent and politically aware than the rest of their fellow Zimbabweans. Yet the outcome is so convenient for Mr Mugabe that suspicious minds may come up with other theories. This province saw the most closely fought contest in the parliamentary polls during the June 2000 parliamentary elections. Sydney Sekeramayi, the Zanu PF candidate for Marondera East, scraped through by a margin of just 62 votes. This result was challenged in court, but Mr Sekeramayi, the defence minister and a close ally of Mr Mugabe, has survived in parliament. Now Mashonaland East may have delivered another welcome boost for the president. One explanation may gain currency. The government carefully printed an extra 1.5 million ballot papers, over and above the five million needed to serve every registered voter, for use in the election. Some of those may indeed have been put to good use.
Almost every rule of honest election management has been thrown out of the window during the government-inspired chaos of the presidential poll. For the most crucial contest in Zimbabwe's history, every established procedure has been thrown into disarray. Many voters were simply barred from polling stations in Harare and the neighbouring city of Chitungwiza before most polls closed at 7pm on Sunday. Elsewhere in Zimbabwe, there was confusion over whether to begin the count yesterday morning, or wait for Harare and Chitungwiza to finish voting. State radio announced that counting would begin and confidently predicted that the first results would be known by last night. Then its news programme reported that officials in the town of Mutare had decided not to begin counting. The location of the ballot boxes was obscure. Some would have been under guard inside counting centres, in accordance with the rules. Others were, perhaps, en route from the polling stations. Those in Harare and Chitungwiza were still being used. Every stage of this process is filled with openings for trickery and independent scrutiny is minimal.
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From ZWNEWS, 12 March
Voting analysis
An analysis of voting data from the presidential election indicates a definitive voting victory for the MDC. Based on the government’s INITIAL turnout figures, together with polling percentages from the June 2000 parliamentary election and recent opinion polling data, the electoral arithmetic shows that the way voters are likely to have decided in this watershed ballot leaves Zanu PF and their presidential candidate in trouble.
The initial overall turnout for the whole country by the end of voting on Sunday evening as announced by ZBC - was around 2 980 000, or 53 percent of the registered electorate. Monday’s voting in Chitungwiza and Harare disrupted and cut short by administrative obstructions is not included in this total. By province, the turnout varied widely, according to the official release, from 46 percent in Bulawayo and Matabeleland North, to 69 percent in Mashonaland Central. Overall, the turnout was almost eight percentage points higher than in June 2000. Again, the figures vary from under one percentage lower in Bulawayo compared with the parliamentary elections, to around 14 percentage points higher in Manicaland and Mavingo, and 17 percentage points higher in Mashonaland Central. The Harare turnout by Sunday evening, at 47 per cent of those registered, was around 2 percentage points higher than in June 2000. These initial turnout figures have been subsequently revised considerably by the government. But on the INITIAL figures, the calculations show that an announced Mugabe victory will be totally at odds with the likely course of voting on the ground.
In order to calculate how these turnout figures translate into support for the two main presidential candidates, we have used two sources of data. Overall actual support for the two candidates, by common agreement amongst political observers, would have largely been decided in the swing provinces of Masvingo and the Midlands, and also, crucially, how voters have changed their preferences in the three Mashonaland provinces since June 2000. For these overwhelmingly rural - constituencies, we have taken the relative support for the two main candidates by those rural voters who were willing to reveal their intentions to researchers from the Mass Public Opinion Institute at the University of Zimbabwe. For the other areas, where the swing in the vote from June 2000 is likely to have been much lower, we have taken the relative shares of that actual vote in 2000. The arithmetic yields a total of just short of 1.7 million votes for Morgan Tsvangirai, compared with just over 1.2 million for Robert Mugabe a victory of over 58 per cent as against 41 percent for the MDC.
As with everything else connected with this election, however, the data comes together with a number of health warnings. The February opinion poll data recorded a huge percentage of voters who were unwilling to say who they supported. The figures for Harare’s extra day of voting are not included in the calculations, and they could be crucial at the margin. And, most importantly of course there is, no allowance made for the distinct possibility of fraud between vote and count. The initial turnout figures upon which we have based our calculations have subsequently been revised by ZBC, further inflating the rural versus the urban vote. The numbers for Harare later showed a fall in votes cast versus June 2000. The initial figures showed an increase. And those for votes cast in Mashonaland Central were later raised enormously. But of the vote itself, there is little doubt. Those who declined to reveal their voting preferences in the February opinion poll are more likely to have been MDC than Zanu PF supporters. And although we have assumed that the shares of the vote in the non-swing provinces stayed static compared with June 2000, it may have in fact increased in favour of the MDC since then. Masvingo is a particular case in point. The devil, as always, is in the detail. Why the large changes in the reports of voting totals on Monday? Those monitoring the count today will have to have their wits and calculators - about them.
| | Registered | Votescastby | Turnout | Turnout | MDCvote
|
| | Voters2002 | Sundaynight | %2002 | %2000 | share2000
|
| Bulawayo | 368028 | 169000 | 45.9 | 46.7 | 83.6 |
| Harare | 882176 | 415000 | 47.0 | 44.7 | 75.9 |
| Manicaland | 658694 | 363000 | 55.1 | 41.4 | 47.2 |
| MashCentral | 480092 | 331000 | 69.0 | 51.7 | 19.8 |
| MashEast | 589185 | 328000 | 55.7 | 47.2 | 24.0 |
| MashWest | 572677 | 293000 | 51.2 | 43.1 | 32.8 |
| Masvingo | 655122 | 380000 | 58.0 | 43.8 | 37.0 |
| Mat.North | 338186 | 157000 | 46.4 | 43.7 | 73.6 |
| Mat.South | 343993 | 165000 | 48.0 | 46.4 | 59.3 |
| Midlands | 724659 | 379000 | 52.3 | 48.4 | 33.2 |
| Total | 5612814 | 2980000 | 53.1 | 45.5 | 46.7 |
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From News24 (SA), 13 March
Mugabe wins
Harare - President Robert Mugabe won a new six-year term in Zimbabwe's election on Wednesday, according to official results. Results announced at 10:00 by Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede showed Mugabe with 1 634 382 votes, well over the 50% of ballots cast that he needed for victory against challenger Morgan Tsvangirai, who had 1 170 590. Mudede said 3.1 million people voted in the southern African country's three-day election, that ended on Monday. The vote was condemned by local and foreign observers and Western countries, who said it was scarred by violence, deeply flawed and unfair. Tsvangirai says Mugabe stole the vote through systematic cheating and there were fears of a violent backlash by opposition supporters. Security forces were put on high alert and police set up roadblocks on the main approach roads to the capital, Harare.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 13 March
Mugabe aims to crush MDC with treason charges
Bulawayo/Harare - President Robert Mugabe moved to neutralise the opposition Movement for Democratic Change as results in the presidential election came in last night. The opposition party's secretary-general, Welshman Ncube, was charged with high treason for his part in an alleged assassination plot against Zimbabwe's 78-year-old president. It is expected that other senior MDC figures, including the leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, could also face arrest on similar charges, reducing their ability to mobilise their supporters. In another development, Zimbabwe's police force launched a crackdown on anyone, black or white, in the north of the country who had offered support or assistance to the MDC during the poll. Dozens were arrested and harassed for what Mr Mugabe's supporters described as "despicable acts of political manipulation". Many of those arrested had simply worked as party representatives or polling agents. In Bulawayo, the country's second city and capital of Matabeleland, an MDC stronghold, army units were deployed into the townships of Phumula, Cowdray Park and Nkulumane. It was believed to be a move to deter public displays of unrest if Mr Mugabe is declared the winner in the election some time today. Mr Mugabe enjoys little popularity in urban areas and, if any popular unrest takes place, it is most likely in crowded townships such as those that surround Bulawayo's western suburbs.
The first of the country's 120 constituencies to declare a result came out in support of Mr Tsvangirai. The supposedly independent electoral officials, who were all appointed by the ruling Zanu PF party, announced shortly after 7pm Zimbabwean time that Umzingwane constituency in Matabeland South had given 11,226 votes to Mr Tsvangirai and 5,883 to Mr Mugabe. But any optimism within MDC ranks dissipated moments later when a Midlands constituency, Mberengwa, recorded an astonishingly high vote for Mr Mugabe of 21,182 and only 4,395 for his opponent. It bore little relation to what independent observers had expected. Official figures on state television news said that Harare, the opposition stronghold, had the lowest turnout of any province in Zimbabwe, at 41.6 per cent. In contrast, Mashonaland Central, where the ruling Zanu PF party holds all 10 parliamentary seats, achieved the highest turnout of 68.9 per cent.
Brian Raftopolous, head of a collection of Church and civic groups known as the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee said the electoral fraud had been so bad that a Mugabe victory was inevitable. "The election well has been poisoned to such an extent that there is unlikely to be any other result," he said. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a coalition of non-governmental organisations, produced a list of problems related to the election, including flawed voter rolls, intimidation and attacks on voters by police and ruling party militants, and the deployment of voting stations in a way that clearly favoured Mr Mugabe. Reginald Matchaba-Hove, chairman of the network, said: "The election is total confusion and chaos . . . There is no way these elections can be described as substantially free and fair." Kare Vollan, the head of a 25-strong team of Norwegian monitors, said the elections "were conducted in an environment of strong polarisation, political violence and an election administration with severe shortcomings". The Norwegian report also criticised the administration of the election in Harare as wholly inadequate, and said that thousands of voters had been deprived of their democratic right to vote.
This was denied by Zanu-PF, with Jonathan Moyo, the information minister, claiming: "This has been an exemplary election in our view." Patrick Chinamasa, the justice minister, angrily dismissed allegations of election rigging and said Zimbabweans had voted "freely and fairly and in a peaceful manner". Meanwhile, the MDC tried to put as positive a gloss as possible on the formal charging of Mr Ncube, claiming it indicated that Zanu PF was desperate and in a "state of panic". But there was no denying that it represented a setback for the party and raised the prospect of a blanket crackdown by Mr Mugabe's security forces and police on the entire leadership. As the police turned the screws on white farmers and MDC election agents and support staff, the state-controlled Herald newspaper said in an editorial yesterday: "Whites' actions [are] despicable. White people in Zimbabwe went for broke during the presidential election as they pushed for an unlikely MDC victory." Counting is expected to continue today amid numerous accusations of fraud against the Zanu PF authorities.
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Comment from The Independent (UK), 13 March
It is up to South Africa to tell the truth about President Mugabe
It is still - just possible that the voters of Zimbabwe have managed to defeat Robert Mugabe at the ballot box. The omens, however, are not good. We have already witnessed many weeks, indeed months, of intimidation of opposition politicians and their supporters. There is no longer a free press in Zimbabwe, as the travails of our correspondent Basildon Peta demonstrate all too clearly. The voting in the capital, Harare - an opposition stronghold - was suspiciously slow, and the ballot boxes are in the hands of forces fiercely loyal to Mugabe. Theses worries are confirmed in the verdicts of such monitors of the elections as have been allowed, notably the Norwegian mission, which said that the polling lacked "convincing independence and integrity" and that security forces used new laws to obstruct the opposition's political activities and observations of the election. "The observer mission concludes that the presidential elections failed to meet key, broadly accepted criteria for elections."
Thus Zimbabwe's presidential election of 2002 would appear to conform to the ideal set by the former Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza, who once said: "You won the election, but I won the count." Such a turn of events in Zimbabwe should not be allowed to persist without some serious objection. Mr Mugabe is used to the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom raising objections to his conduct, and he views such condemnations as an occupational hazard and with a certain degree of equanimity. The sanctions that have been imposed on him are not tough enough and were applied too late to make any difference to this election.
But there is one voice that Mr Mugabe does have to listen to; that of his powerful southern neighbour, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. For South Africa is, in effect, a regional superpower. Its attitude, more than that of any other single nation, matters to Mugabe. For South Africa has, in effect, bankrolled the Mugabe regime as it wrecked what was once a thriving Zimbabwean economy. Although Mr Mbeki cannot lay claim the huge moral authority of his predecessor, Nelson Mandela, a denunciation of President Mugabe would still carry enormous weight and would represent a serious embarrassment for the Zimbabwean leader. The immediate question is whether the South African representative on the Commonwealth's panel of three, with Nigeria and Australia, is prepared to say what has become increasingly obvious - that this election was not free and fair. That would represent a considerable push towards expelling Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth and increasing President Mugabe's international isolation.
The decision for South Africa is a difficult one, but it is one that is of supreme importance to the health of the whole region. For President Mbeki and his counterparts throughout the continent know the damage that President Mugabe's policies are doing to the South African economy and to the image of Africa as a whole. Lawlessness, racial conflict and fraudulent elections are not going to encourage investment in countries that have been neglected for so long. But it is the values of democracy, ideals that South Africa's ruling ANC fought for so long to secure, that are being abused in Zimbabwe. The long queues of voters outside Zimbabwean polling stations were poignantly reminiscent of those that formed in South Africa's first multiracial elections in 1994. President Mbeki is the one man who can make an immediate difference as Mugabe pushes Zimbabwe further towards anarchy. It is a time for leadership.
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From The Guardian (UK), 14 March
Uneasy capital pulls down the shutters
Frustrated residents cowed by fear of violent militias
Harare - A cloud of bitterness, dejection and anxiety about the future hung over Harare yesterday, but despite outbreaks of low-level violence there was no sign of any appetite for a mass uprising to unseat the reelected President Robert Mugabe. "We are all disappointed and depressed about the elections," said Gibson M, a laid off carpet layer, who was in Harare's city centre with his wife, a street vendor selling hair scrunchies. "What the MDC preached was something that gave me hope. But now, I don't have hope. People are afraid of more violence. We're not free. We are headed for more hardships and I don't think anyone can tolerate that. If I had wings I wish I could fly out. The Mugabe government always preaches peace but that is not what they practice. They don't want people to demonstrate because they know they cannot meet their demands."
Throughout Harare Zimbabweans of all walks of life responded to Mr Mugabe's victory with sentiments of frustration and loss of hope. "What's going to happen now? Mugabe has won, but what is he going to do now? He has beaten us, he has kept us from voting, he has cheated these elections big time," said factory supervisor Mabel Nyakudya. Ms Nyakudya's factory closed this week in expectation of electoral violence, so she spent the day working in a small maize patch and looking for cooking oil, which is a scarce commodity. "Is Mugabe going to control the Zanu PF militia that has been beating and killing people? Are we going to be safe? Is he going get more food in the shops at prices we can afford? These things scare me."
Armed police could be seen at key corners throughout Harare. Trucks of army troops stood by at strategic spots. In the city centre the supermarkets and department stores kept wire grilles over their display windows and were prepared to shut at any sign of trouble. Car showrooms were empty as they moved their valuable vehicles off to safety. "I am going home early and I am going to close the door and stay inside. I am frightened," said Tabila Mushonga. "In our neighbourhood there are Zanu PF militia and they are beating drums and singing chimurenga [liberation war] songs. They say they are going to go after everyone who supported Tsvangirai. I am going to stay inside because I don't want any trouble."
Roadblocks ringed the city and one couple was stopped and ordered to get out of their car and open the boot. "I was so angry, I started to get mad at the police," said the woman, who did not want to give her name. "But my husband told me to quiet down, or we would get arrested." Mr Mugabe's supporters were not so worried. Bands roamed the city singing and waving their fists in the air. One crowd carried a little coffin marked "Tsvangirai RIP". "Tsvangirai is a problem," said a woman wearing a Mugabe T-shirt. "Tsvangirai wanted to kill Mugabe, our president. We don't want to see Tsvangirai anymore." Herbert Kwayemba, 31, another Zanu-PF supporter, was optimistic that Mr Mugabe's victory would improve his life. "Things are going to get better now," said the unemployed township dweller. "Mugabe is going to give us land so that we won't be so congested. Harare is surrounded by farms and we will be able to move on to them. We will grow maize and wheat and that will boost our economy."
But 87-year-old Milka Nyakujara was worried. "This is a dark hour for Zimbabwe. If Mugabe has already failed us on food, where is he going to get it now?" She was a peasant farmer until last year when she moved into the city to stay with her daughter. She said land reform was good, but "people do not want to be farmers, they want jobs in the city". Mrs Nyakujara voiced worries about Mr Mugabe's leadership. "He has so much hate and he blames everyone else, like Tony Blair and the whites, for our problems. Even when we cut off Rhodesia and we became Zimbabwe there was not so much hate. We cannot eat all this hate. We need food and medicines. We need to get along together."
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 14 March
Chicanery in the countryside
Bulawayo - It was out in the countryside of Zimbabwe that Robert Mugabe stole the presidential election. Away from prying eyes, Mr Mugabe's loyal party henchmen executed a psephological sleight of hand that was as crude as it was ambitious. Ballot boxes were stuffed, opposition supporters were told to vote for Mr Mugabe on pain of death and turnouts were grossly inflated to favour the 78-year-old leader. In one rural polling station - Mobile 19 in the Bubi Umguza constituency - a ballot box containing 137 officially listed votes went missing. When it turned up again, it was full of more than 1,000 additional voting papers. At another constituency - Tsholotsho opposition polling agents carefully and, given the intimidation, bravely, counted 12,000 voters but when Zimbabwe's registrar-general declared the result the turnout had somehow surged to 21,000.
But while the two official voting days saw gross electoral fraud, Mr Mugabe's campaign to steal this election really began two years ago after the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's strong showing in the legislative elections. It was then that Mr Mugabe saw for the first time that Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, was a genuine threat and it was then that that he resorted to any measure to tip the electoral process in his favour. So-called "journalists" in the state-owned media demonised Mr Tsvangirai as a stooge of the white man, a puppet of Tony Blair and a terrorist waiting to destroy Zimbabwe's sovereign status. Thugs loyal to Mr Mugabe's Zanu PF party needed no urging and the MDC suffered unprovoked attacks. Members were abducted and murdered, offices firebombed and meetings disrupted. In parliament a series of bills massaged the electoral law to favour Zanu PF, made it difficult for the MDC to function by outlawing meetings of more than three people and crushed the independent media.
Zimbabwe's police force, once respected for its integrity, did nothing, meekly refusing to investigate charges raised by MDC members while acting harshly against any alleged misdemeanour, no matter how trivial, by MDC supporters. White farmers, a marginal political force with only a few thousand votes, were targeted by Mr Mugabe, who used the seizure of their land as a way to buy off penniless, landless Zimbabweans. But it was the intimidation of the millions of black people who dared to consider supporting the MDC that characterised the two years since the 2000 parliamentary election. Scores of MDC members were murdered and thousands harassed first by Zanu PF loyalists and then by youth militia trained to terrorise and intimidate. As police stood by, these thugs were deployed across Zimbabwe with orders to ensure that the rural hinterland remained clear of the MDC. They did their job, killing more than 30 MDC supporters in the last three months of campaigning. But when the vote came on Friday, the key to success for Mr Mugabe was keeping prying eyes away from these rural areas.
He knew the urban vote was largely lost to the MDC but this could be reduced simply by cutting the number of polling stations, leading to long queues and thousands turned away without voting. But in the countryside he needed privacy and this is what he got first by accrediting less than 400 out of 15,000 independent Zimbabwean monitors and then by targeting MDC polling agents. International observers were too few to cover all the rural areas and so the government machine focused on the MDC representatives who, by law, were meant to be at each of Zimbabwe's 4,000 or so polling stations. Some were abducted, some beaten up or chased away. The MDC is yet to finish compiling a list of abuses suffered by their polling agents but in many ways any list of grievances will be too late. The lack of proper scrutiny at the rural polling stations allowed the freakish results that enabled Mr Mugabe to claim victory.
From ZWNEWS: We have available a list by constituency of the official results of the presidential election. If you would like a copy, please let us know. It will be sent as an Excel spreadsheet attached to an email message - total size 175 Kb, or about 3 1/2 times the size of the average daily ZWNEWS.
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From The Financial Gazette, 14 March
1 400 polling agents, observers arrested
Amnesty International, the leading global human rights watchdog, expressed deep concern yesterday over the safety of 1 400 Zimbabweans it said had been detained by police during last weekend’s presidential election. The London-based organisation said most of those detained were polling agents of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai had posed the biggest electoral threat to President Robert Mugabe of Zanu PF in the weekend ballot. It said those arrested included election observers from civil society organisations such as the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), who were refused accreditation to observe the poll. About 130 of the detainees were from Manicaland province and 50 from Mutoko and Harare’s Mabvuku suburb. Amnesty said Zimbabwean human rights sources had accused the police and Central Intelligence Organisation operatives of targeting ZESN observers under instructions from their superiors. "We are deeply concerned for the safety of those arrested in the light of the well-established pattern of "disappearances", cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by Zimbabwean security forces," it said. It said a lawyer from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights who visited detained observers in cells at the Harare central police station had described the congested conditions as hazardous to the detainees’ health. Those held had been denied food and could not sleep because of the overcrowding in the cells. "The arrest of these Zimbabweans is politically-motivated," the human rights watchdog noted. "Government must either charge those in detention with a recognisable criminal offence based on solid evidence or release them immediately." Zimbabwe analysts said the arrest of MDC polling agents and violence against them left many polling stations, especially in rural areas, staffed only by ruling Zanu PF supporters, which made a free and fair poll impossible. The commentators said a free and fair election was also made difficult by widespread pre-poll violence, which is largely blamed on Zanu PF activists and has killed more than 100 MDC supporters since 2000.
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From The Star (SA), 13 March
Journos jeer SA for endorsing Zim poll
Harare - The South Africa Observer Mission to Zimbabwe has not delivered a pronouncement pleasing to the diplomatic and media contingents in the country. Grey-haired mission head Sam Motsuenyane sat stunned and flustered as journalists jeered and diplomats walked out after his endorsement of Zimbabwe's poll on Tuesday. His verdict contrasted sharply with that of the Southern African Development Community, which singled out "the prevailing climate of fear". Despite international criticism of an election marred by violence, murder, abduction and torture, Motsuenyane said the election was "legitimate". He sat stunned as journalists laughed when he dismissed snaking queues and the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters as "an administrative oversight". Motsuenyane explained that while there had been violence before and during the election, the fact that people had turned up in their millions meant the will of the people had been expressed. To jeers, the mission leader said the opposition MDC had endorsed the election by taking part in it. And he implied that the mission took into account only violent incidents its members had witnessed, while everyone else had prejudged the election. Shortly after the South African whitewash, the SADC team, led by Botswana's Duke Lefhoko, slammed the election and said it did not meet the organisation's norms and standards. Lefhoko slated Zanu PF and the Zimbabwean government for running an election in a climate of fear. There were numerous cases of torture, murder, arson and false imprisonment, he said. "The South Africans are sell-outs," said Joseph Marufu, a shop worker in a Harare supermarket. "They just want to say everything is fine so that Mbeki can do the same thing next time he has an election."
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From News24 (SA), 14 March
Zuma off to Zim for talks
Cape Town - Deputy-President Jacob Zuma left for Zimbabwe on Thursday morning for talks with government leaders a day after president Robert Mugabe swept to victory in a disputed poll. Zuma left around 07:00 and was expected in Harare mid-morning. South African high commissioner Jerry Ndou said it was expected that Zuma would meet his Zimbabwean counterpart and would also seek to pay a courtesy call on Mugabe. Speaking in the National Assembly on Tuesday, Zuma said while there had been a "lot of excitement" in the lead-up to Zimbabwe's presidential election, South Africa now had the opportunity to be "innovative" in its approach to engaging its neighbour. Replying to a question in the National Assembly, he said the South African government had always believed that "we must continue talking to our neighbours". President Thabo Mbeki told reporters on Tuesday that South Africa would help Zimbabwe with its economic recovery and address its land problems, regardless of who was elected president. The SA Observer Mission in an interim report said the elections was legitimate. However, at a press conference in Harare on Tuesday, observer head Sam Motseunyane stopped short at calling the election free and fair. Mbeki has declined to pronounce on the freeness and fairness of the election until he received several mission reports including from South Africa, the Commonwealth, the Organisation for African Unity and the Southern African Development Community. He was also consulting world leaders on the way forward and has already held talks with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the United States.
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From Reuters, 13 March
US doesn't recognize Zimbabwe election, Bush says
Washington - President Bush said Wednesday the United States does not recognize the result of the presidential election in Zimbabwe, won officially by incumbent President Robert Mugabe. "We do not recognize the outcome of the election because we think it's flawed," he told a White House news conference. "We are dealing with our friends to figure out how to deal with this flawed election," he added. Secretary of State Colin Powell said earlier on Wednesday the election result did not reflect the will of the people. "As a result, Mr. Mugabe may claim victory, but not democratic legitimacy,"Powell said in a statement. Powell accused Mugabe of a systematic subversion of democracy and said Washington was considering new sanctions following weekend elections that returned the veteran African leader to power. A senior State Department official said Washington was expected to freeze any U.S. assets held by Mugabe and his close associates, but said he did not expect it would announce new sanctions as early as Wednesday. Bush last month imposed a ban on travel to the United States by Mugabe and 19 of his top officials to protest the Zimbabwean government's handling of the presidential election campaign.
Powell said there was overwhelming evidence that the election, which ran from Saturday to Monday, was neither free nor fair. "The pre-election period was marked by a sustained government-orchestrated campaign of intimidation and violence, and the numerous and profound irregularities in the electoral process itself resulted in an outcome that does not reflect the will of the people of Zimbabwe," Powell said. "As a result, Mr. Mugabe can claim victory, but not democratic legitimacy," Powell said. "This fundamentally flawed election will only deepen the crisis in Zimbabwe and the suffering of the Zimbabwean people." Powell said that for more than two years Mugabe's administration had "systematically subverted democratic principles and processes" and his actions resulted in thousands of Zimbabweans being disenfranchised. He said Washington would consult with other countries on how to react. "Among the responses we are considering is a possible broadening of sanctions against those responsible for undermining democracy in Zimbabwe," Powell said. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the options included blocking assets of specific individuals or banning export licenses for defense-related items.
Defeated presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai said Mugabe stole the vote through violence and intimidation and by preventing hundreds of thousands of people from casting ballots. Mugabe's government disputed his claims. A senior U.S. official said last week that the United States was ready to freeze the assets of Zimbabwean leaders, as the European Union did on Feb. 18, if it concluded that Mugabe and his party stole the election. Official results gave Mugabe victory over Tsvangirai with a lead of more than 400,000 votes. The U.S. response added to a growing chorus of criticism of the poll by Western governments and independent observers. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner, on a visit to South Africa, said the entire electoral process failed to meet the standards of the Southern African Development Community to which Zimbabwe had committed. "Supreme Court rulings were cast aside ... the independent media was persecuted, civil society was marginalized and the will of the people was the chief casualty." Kansteiner said SADC criteria not met included allowing "unimpeded freedom to campaign throughout the country," and "free and unimpeded access to voters' rolls." Zimbabwe's woes have dented investor confidence in the region and contributed to a sharp depreciation in the value of South Africa's currency, the rand.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 15 March
Poll was not 'a free expression of will'
Commonwealth observers issued a trenchant denunciation yesterday of the conduct of Zimbabwe's election, ruining President Mugabe's hope of being quickly recognised by fellow African leaders as the rightful winner. By concluding that "the conditions in Zimbabwe did not adequately allow for a free expression of will by the electors", the observer team may also have saved the prestige of the Commonwealth torn by tensions between "black" and "white" members. Shortly before the report was issued, Helen Clark, New Zealand's prime minister, warned fellow leaders that the organisation's future was at stake. "If the Commonwealth then decides that really there's no problem I think that does pose considerable problems for the future of the organisation, because having seen the principles of the Commonwealth applied in other situations we're left wondering what was special about Zimbabwe," she told BBC radio. A day earlier, Africa's "Big Men" were lining up in support of Mr Mugabe after government observers from South Africa, Nigeria and the Organisation of African Unity endorsed the election as "free and fair" or at least "legitimate". The leaders of Kenya and Tanzania were quick to send laudatory messages. A Nigerian minister said the results "can be regarded as the authentic expression of the popular will of the people of Zimbabwe".
But the report of the Commonwealth team, comprising many African observers and led by the last Nigerian military ruler, Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar, gives the lie to the claim that criticism of the election is a white racist obsession. The report now makes it harder for the Commonwealth - in the form of a "troika" of leaders from Australia, Nigeria and South Africa - to avoid taking at least some form of action against Zimbabwe. The preliminary report provides a damning summary of events. "It was clear to us that while the actual polling and counting processes were peaceful and the secrecy of the ballot was assured, the presidential election in Zimbabwe was marred by a high level of politically motivated violence and intimidation, which preceded the poll," said the observers. "While violent acts were carried out by supporters of both of the main political parties, it is our view that most of these were perpetrated by members/supporters of the ruling party against members /supporters of the opposition."
The observers were particularly worried by the actions of Mr Mugabe's paramilitary youth group. "Members were responsible for a systematic campaign of intimidation against known or suspected supporters of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change. The violence and intimidation created a climate of fear and suspicion." They criticised police for not taking action to investigate cases of violence or intimidation and for being "lenient" towards supporters of the ruling Zanu PF party. The observers condemned security laws, curbs on freedom of speech and limitations on the opposition's ability to campaign freely. "We also found that thousands of citizens were disenfranchised as a result of the lack of transparency in the registration process and the wide discretionary powers of the registrar-general in deciding who is included in or omitted from the electoral register."
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From The Guardian (UK), 15 March
Observers disagree over Mugabe's 'flawed' poll
Some countries, such as South Africa and Nigeria, sent two groups and they differ on their verdicts
Harare/London - Most of the Commonwealth observers were glad of a drink on Wednesday night when they got back to Meikles, Harare's grand old colonial hotel. After days out in the country witnessing violence in the run-up to the election, the balloting and the count, the observers - among them former cabinet ministers and ambassadors - had good reason to believe they were justified in having a stiff drink. They may feel in need of another one now. The myriad groups of election observers have themselves become the story. In a welter of confusion, some groups are endorsing the re-election of Robert Mugabe for a fifth term as president, and some, like the Commonwealth group, insist that the process was "basically flawed". The division lines appeared initially to be along racial lines, with whites condemning the election and black Zimbabweans claiming that it had been legitimate. But the dividing lines are much messier and more complex than that.
In the coming weeks, a lot will hang on the reports of these various observer groups. There is the credibility of the already badly bruised Commonwealth. And, more important by far, the future of the most ambitious aid package yet to be dangled by the west in front of Africa. As the 42 Commonwealth observers sat with their beers in Meikles and discussed their various experiences, several recounted hair-raising encounters, with evidence of violence and torture by supporters of the ruling Zanu PF. One said he had seen opposition members who had been flayed, and men who had been castrated. He said he had had trouble sleeping since. Others had been surrounded by angry people who wanted to vote but were turned away; some had their vehicles stoned by Zanu PF youths.
The group will complete its full report by the weekend, but, against the background of differing verdicts on the election, it decided to put out an initial, unequivocal, statement. It said that the election did not adequately allow for the free expression of the will of the Zimbabwean people. Some members, notably the Namibian delegate, wanted a softer line. But other African observers wanted the statement to be stronger. Eventually, a troika, made up of the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, the Australian prime minister, John Howard, and the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, will have to decide whether the report provides sufficient grounds to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth. The initial report of the observers might suggest that the three will have no choice but to suspend. That will be the inclination of Mr Howard.
But Mr Mbeki and Mr Obasanjo will be reluctant to agree. The suspicion that the troika will not take action was heightened yesterday when Mr Mbeki's deputy, Jacob Zuma, flew to Harare to congratulate Mr Mugabe. Mr Mbeki and Mr Obasanjo can point to other observer groups' views. Although there was South African representation in the Commonwealth group, an official South Africa observer group dispatched by Mr Mbeki declared the results legitimate. The Southern African Development Community, comprising 15 countries, sent two observer groups. One from its council of ministers called the poll "substantially free and fair"; another sent by the SADC's parliamentary forum found that the vote failed to meet democratic standards. Meanwhile, missions from the Nigerian government endorsed the election as free and fair. The British government has complicated matters still further by hinting that Tony Blair's ambitious plan to try to reverse African decline may be put on hold unless the continent does more to put its house in order. If other African leaders do not deal with Mr Mugabe, the argument from Downing Street is that it will be more difficult for Mr Blair to sell the plan to the G8, the world's wealthiest countries, when they meet in the spring.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 15 March
MDC takes Harare/Chitungwiza
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has made a clean sweep in the Harare and Chitungwiza mayoral and council elections confirming its hegemony in the capital. In Harare, MDC candidate Elias Mudzuri polled 262 275 votes while the Zanu PF candidate, Amos Midzi, won 56 796. National Alliance for Good Governance candidate, Billet Magara, polled 3 467. The MDC picked up 44 of the 46 council seats in Harare. Two MDC candidates, Michael Laban and Dale Dore, were disqualified on the spurious grounds that they were not citizens. They have taken the matter up with their lawyers. In Chitungwiza Misheck Shoko of the MDC polled 47 340 votes to clinch the mayoral seat ahead of Joseph Macheka of Zanu PF who only got 16 953 votes.
The two candidates present at the Harare results announcement, the MDC's Mudzuri and NAGG's Magara had to wait for an hour before the announcement. Conspicuous by his absence was the Zanu PF candidate, Amos Midzi. Speaking soon after the announcement, Mudzuri said he was humbled by Harare's residents for elevating him to be their mayor. "I intend to work closely with the community in running the affairs of the city in a transparent manner and providing an efficient service. I also want to scrutinise the city's finances to ensure that the community is well-informed on how the finances are utilised," he said. There was a strong police presence at Harare's Town House during the announcement.
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From The Independent (UK), 15 March
Secret mission to solve Zimbabwe crisis
Britain and the United States are backing a secret South African plan to persuade the Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to form a government of national unity with the Movement for Democratic Change. The South African President Thabo Mbeki sent his deputy Jacob Zuma on a mission to Harare yesterday to persuade Mr Mugabe to embrace the opposition and make its leader Morgan Tsvangirai his vice-president. Mr Mugabe, 78, won a fifth term in office after an election over the weekend that has been widely denounced as unfair. The Nigerian leader, Olusegun Obasanjo, is also sending a message to Mr Mugabe urging him to move quickly to form a government of national unity with "substantial representation" from the opposition.
Tony Blair and the 14 other European leaders gather for a summit meeting in Barcelona today where they will plan further sanctions on the Mugabe regime. In a Commons statement yesterday, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, accused Mr Mugabe of "stealing" the election and heading an "undemocratic and illegitimate government". Mr Straw said yesterday that Britain would not recognise Mr Mugabe's re-election, and added that the Government would "oppose any access by Zimbabwe to international financial resources until a more representative government is in place." He did not explain what he meant by a "more representative government". President George Bush gave the first hint that negotiations were under way, when he said this week: "We are dealing with our friends to figure out how to deal with this flawed election."
With international outrage growing and Zimbabweans preparing to flee the country en masse, Mr Mbeki wants to head off a clash between the West and Zimbabwe that would have catastrophic consequences for Southern Africa. The Mbeki initiative is discreetly supported by London and Washington as a face-saving way out for both Mr Mugabe and Mr Mbeki's own government which has yet to criticise the outcome of the election. Both Mr Mbeki and Mr Obasanjo are on the Commonwealth troika that is to adjudicate on the elections next week the organisation's observer mission has already decried the elections as unfair, because of the violence and intimidation. A senior official in the ruling Zanu PF party told The Independent yesterday: "Mbeki and Obasanjo want Mugabe to make it easier for them to resolve the Zimbabwe issue within the Commonwealth. They think the only way to achieve an acceptable solution is for Mugabe to move fast and unite the country by bringing the opposition into the government."
The 54-member Commonwealth's credibility is now on the line, with pressure to throw Zimbabwe out of the organisation. Mr Mbeki and Mr Obasanjo believe the only way forward is for Mr Mugabe to make peace with Mr Tsvangirai. President Obasanjo, who unsuccessfully tried to broker a meeting between Mr Tsvangirai and Mr Mugabe during his last visit to Zimbabwe in January, is expected to travel to Harare to attempt to broker a deal. The plan calls not only for Mr Mugabe to embrace the opposition in a coalition but also insists he show more tolerance to other political opponents in civic society. A Commonwealth observer group has already dismissed the weekend presidential election as being neither free nor fair, putting pressure on Mr Mbeki and Mr Obasanjo, who have previously defended Mr Mugabe. The Australian Prime Minister John Howard is part of the Commonwealth troika. The initiative faces grave difficulties. While Mr Zuma was still in Zimbabwe, the police were breaking up a meeting of the country's largest civic group, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. The ZCTU, which has in the past led successful national strikes against Mr Mugabe, was meeting to discuss how best to respond to the election. It is understood that it is mobilising civic society to begin a series of mass protests.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 15 March
Zanu PF unleashes militias on commercial farms
Zanu PF militias have been unleashed on commercial farms whose owners are accused of giving logistical support to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in its bid to oust President Robert Mugabe. Commercial Farmers Union spokesperson Jenni Williams said the situation on the farms was very volatile. "So far 15 farmers have been visited by groups of youths of varying size - up to 50 in a group - and given up to six hours to leave. Five were in Mashonaland West, three in Mashonaland East and five in the Chegutu area," said Williams. The militia has also gone on the rampage looting and slaughtering cattle on the farms. "Of the 15 farmers visited, five had their homes looted with Bruce Douglas's house in Lions Den being cleaned out. The farmers have stayed put and in some instances so have small contingents of the groups who demanded to be fed. Two dairy cattle were slaughtered by the invading party on one farm," she said. The Zimbabwe Independent was yesterday inundated with calls from farmers around Norton who said they were being ordered off their farms by militias at one hour's notice. Farmers in Banket and Raffingora also reported threats from militias.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 15 March
Mugabe stumbles after victory
Harare - President Robert Mugabe finally appeared in public last night for the first time since his victory, but his brief and faltering performance fuelled speculation that there was something wrong with his health. State television news showed him apparently stumbling and gripping a table for support after he met South Africa's deputy president, Jacob Zuma. But there was still no public statement from the veteran leader. Zimbabweans were astonished that he did not revel in his victory. It is the first time in the history of independent Zimbabwe that Mr Mugabe has not addressed the nation on state television in the immediate aftermath of an election. His absence is even more mysterious because the latest ballot was so important. Senior diplomatic sources in London have long suggested that Mr Mugabe is seriously ill, and may have kept up his hectic campaign schedule by being "pumped up on drugs". Senior British sources said yesterday they had "no reports that Mugabe is incapacitated". They said Mr Mugabe's absence was because of his dilemma about his next step after winning an election widely condemned as rigged. "We expected him to make a conciliatory statement on television, and then order a crackdown on the opposition. He has done neither," said one diplomatic source. "I think he is still deciding what to do."
In Harare there were unconfirmed reports that Mr Mugabe had flown to Libya to consult his backer Col Gaddafi, and had returned only yesterday in time to meet Mr Zuma. After the referendum and parliamentary polls of 2000, Mr Mugabe was quick to broadcast to Zimbabweans, even though the results of both of those contests were deeply embarrassing for him. But after the greatest election victory of his 22-year rule, Mr Mugabe has not uttered a word. Instead his minions are hailing his re-election. Nathan Shamuyarira, the spokesman of the ruling Zanu PF party, told The Herald, the official daily, that the "people have triumphed over imperialism". Mr Mugabe had achieved a "personal triumph" despite a "pack of lies peddled around the globe by Tony Blair and the mandarins of Fleet Street". The Herald said Zimbabweans had greeted Mr Mugabe's re-election with "orgies of celebrations". Simon Khaya Moyo, Zimbabwe's high commissioner in South Africa, offered a personal message to the president: "The young, the old and indeed the unborn cannot help but cherish your principled and visionary leadership," he said.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 15 March
MDC rejects prospects of a coalition govt
Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai has rejected the prospect of a government of national unity as a South African initiative to bring the MDC and President Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF together ran into a brick wall. Yesterday, as South Africa's deputy president Jacob Zuma arrived in Harare to help rescue Zimbabwe from isolation, international condemnation of Mugabe's stolen victory reverberated around European capitals and Washington. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday Mugabe could not claim democratic legitimacy "Mr Mugabe may claim victory, but not democratic legitimacy," said Powell. Yesterday US Assistant Secretary of State, Walter Kansteiner, in a radio interview said "something had to be done" about Mugabe before there could be any international assistance. "We can't just live with it," said Kansteiner. "Living with it would, in fact, spell economic doom for Zimbabwe because the greater international community is not going to come in and give the Zimbabwe government the assistance that is so desperately needed. Not when you have a very flawed electoral process like that," he said. Asked what the US would do now he said: "The most interesting thing we do is what we don't do, in the sense that there won't be economic assistance coming. There won't be the rebuilding of the infrastructure that is in such dire straits right now in Zimbabwe."
Zuma's visit is part of an attempt by Pretoria to sell to Mugabe's government the idea of a government of national unity, diplomatic sources said yesterday. Details of the meeting between Zuma and Vice-President Joseph Msika were not immediately available. But sources yesterday said MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai had been in touch with Chief Shonekan, Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo's special envoy, regarding the issue of a government of national unity. Yesterday Tsvangirai dismissed the possibility of the MDC participating in such a government aimed at reconciling the 1,2 million voters who opposed Mugabe with the Zanu PF regime. "First of all Mugabe has to reconcile himself with the people of Zimbabwe," said Tsvangirai. "This is not about appointing people to certain positions without first achieving stability. Mugabe cannot buy legitimacy by forming a government of national unity with the MDC." Speaking yesterday, MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube said his party would like to see a significant expansion of the targeted sanctions already in place, to cover a broader section of individuals associated with Zanu PF who he said were guilty of manipulating the electoral process to deliver a fraudulent victory. "We also recommend that targeted sanctions be extended to include those businessmen whose financial wealth stems from their close affiliation and loyalty to Zanu PF," Ncube said. "Essentially we want all those pampered by Mugabe's elitist system of patronage to be exposed to the full impact of targeted sanctions."
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From The Times (UK), 16 March
Raids and press curbs mark new Mugabe era
Harare - As President Mbeki of South Africa endorsed the result of the Zimbabwe election yesterday, a wave of witchhunts and attacks took place on opposition supporters and draconian legislation to gag the press was put into effect. Hundreds of people were reported to be fleeing the three Mashonaland provinces in northern Zimbabwe, while two people were reported murdered since Mr Mugabe’s disputed election victory was announced on Wednesday. Mobs of ruling party youths were also marching on to white owned-farms and ordering the owners to leave within six hours, the Commercial Farmers’ Union said. However police in most cases were "acting decisively" and the farmers had so far been able to stay. In his first comment on the presidential contest Mr Mbeki, on the website of the ruling African National Congress, asserted: "The will of the people of Zimbabwe has prevailed. Amid chronic polarisation of the Zimbabwean people, claims of widespread intimidation, and in the context of clear flaws in the electoral process, President Robert Mugabe has won the presidential elections with an overwhelming majority . . . While the process was clearly not perfect, the ANC believes that the people of Zimbabwe have spoken."
The new violence and lawlessness came as scores of foreign election observers and journalists were leaving the country. "Zanu PF are systematically hunting down people who voted for the Movement for Democratic Change, and our election agents," said the opposition group’s secretary-general, Welshman Ncube. The attacks started on Thursday, he said. "People have fled, others are missing and no-one knows what has happened to them." Kare Vollan, head of the Norwegian observer mission, was able to confirm some of the reports. "These are very serious allegations. We have pretty good evidence of some incidents, but we are still looking into it. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do." The delegation, regarded as the most professional of all the international observer groups here during the election, leaves on Sunday. A spokesman for the Amani Trust, a local charity dedicated to helping victims of political violence, said there had "definitely been a marked increase" in the past few days. "There are a lot more torture victims attempted drownings, attempted murder, burnings, beatings," she said. "Now we have got more work than we have ever had before. I am not sure we can cope with this." Yesterday in Marondera, about 50 miles east of Harare, Zanu PF squatters beat to death a farm security guard, named only as Darlington, and severely injured the farm owner, John Rutherford, 31, according to Steve Pratt, the local CFU administrator. Mr Rutherford had been accused of telling his workers that squatters’ huts would be burnt after the elections. Police later arrested "some" of the alleged assailants.
The first reported death after the election result was in the central town of Kwekwe, where the body of Funny Mahuni was found "with his stomach cut up with a knife", according to the independent Daily News. It quoted relatives as saying that Mr Mahuni had been told by a local Zanu PF leader that "he was going to be killed for refusing to obey Zanu PF orders". Earlier he had barred his daughters from attending a night rally at a party militia base. While militia mobs encountered resistance as they tried to drive white farmers off their land, black commercial farmer Tawanda Nyambirai, a former lawyer and agricultural college graduate, was trying to protect his property from being grabbed by a local Zanu PF MP, Bernard Makokova. Last month Mr Nyambirai, who bought the farm three years ago with borrowed finance, obtained a court order to stop the MP’s earlier attempts to seize the farm. Also yesterday, the so-called Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act was gazetted as law, in what is expected to be the regime’s next move towards silencing the country’s independent press. When it was first introduced in parliament in January, the legislature’s legal watchdog denounced it as "the most calculated and determined assault on our liberties".
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From The Independent (UK), 15 March
South African poll observers criticise 'legitimate' finding
Johannesburg - Some members of South Africa's observer mission in Zimbabwe broke ranks yesterday to criticise the delegation's decision that the re-election of Robert Mugabe was "legitimate". Bobby Godsell, who was a member of the 50-strong South African team, said: "I am both confused and uncomfortable about the use of the word 'legitimate' to describe the Zimbabwean poll." Another observer, who preferred not to be identified, said he and two other South African observers had been taken aback by the "hardline police harassment of government opponents" in the election, both in urban and rural areas. When the observer mission leader, Sam Motsuenyane, a South African businessman, announced their findings in Harare on Wednesday he was reportedly jeered by journalists and diplomats.
South Africa's Deputy President, Jacob Zuma, who held talks in Harare with President Mugabe yesterday, said the government in Zimbabwe was "happy" with the observers' report that concluded the election "should be considered legitimate" but not "free and fair." But Mr Godsell said that he was confused by the conflicting terminology used. He said: "I don't understand the difference between legitimate and free and fair. I don't understand how an election can not be free and fair but can also be legitimate." Mr Godsell was an observer in Harare where there had been some "distinct problems". "I understand that the mission is to release a final report and I am assuming that there will be an opportunity to debate and discuss the findings that have been made," he said. "So I am hoping that there will be a chance to clarify the irregularities but I concede that the damage has been done already by now."
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 16 March
U-turn over Mbeki support for poll
South Africa's ruling African National Congress said last night that a statement endorsing the Zimbabwe election result was attributed in error to President Thabo Mbeki. The declaration on the ANC website under Mr Mbeki's name said: "While the process was clearly not perfect, the ANC believes that the people of Zimbabwe have spoken." A party spokesman said later it was a party statement, not the president's. The U-turn came as European Union leaders meeting in Barcelona pressed for further sanctions against the regime. Peter Hain, minister for Europe, said the joint communique was almost certain to conclude that the election was not fair. He said foreign ministers would be told to consider further measures against the government. These go beyond the present travel ban and asset freeze on President Mugabe and his inner circle.
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From The Independent (UK), 16 March
Mugabe spurns proposal for unity government
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe yesterday firmly rejected a plan, backed by the UK and the United States, for a government of national unity to save his country from plunging into anarchy after the presidential elections. The secret plan for the unity government, which would include Mr Mugabe's defeated rival, the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, was put to the Zimbabwean president on Thursday by the South African deputy president, Jacob Zuma. But Mr Mugabe's chief spokesman, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, ruled out unity with people "who were pandering to interests that did not put Zimbabwe first". Mr Mugabe, who was re-elected in the chaotic elections last weekend, accuses Mr Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of being an "extension" of the British Labour Party.
Many people feel that the unity government deal, brokered by Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, is the only way to put Zimbabwe on the path to economic recovery, after the majority of international observers concluded that the elections were anything but free and fair. But the MDC has also dismissed the proposal. The MDC shadow Justice Minister, David Coltart, said a unity government was inconceivable because Mr Mugabe would hardly consider it. But Presidents Mbeki and Obasanjo are not giving up. Mr Obasanjo will fly to Harare on Monday for a day's talks with Mr Mugabe to urge him to accept the proposal to "heal the deep divisions" in Zimbabwe. Mr Obasanjo will then travel to London for a meeting with Mr Mbeki and the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard. The three were mandated by the Commonwealth to take action against Zimbabwe if the elections were undemocratic.
The EU is considering stiffening sanctions against Mr Mugabe and his top aides and was due to issue a tough statement after the Barcelona summit said the election was invalid. Mr Mugabe has also moved to consolidate his de facto dictatorship by signing into law a draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Bill that will ban foreign correspondents from Zimbabwe and muzzle the local press. Correspondents can now be jailed for two years for working illegally under the law. The country's Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, will, however, retain the discretion to admit foreign writers into the country to cover specific events. Last year, the Zimbabwean government expelled several foreign journalists long before the media law had been tabled in Parliament. Mr Moyo then banned foreign media organisations, particularly those from the UK and South Africa, from covering the election.
Critics of the law say it makes Mr Moyo an editor of all the newspapers in Zimbabwe. It requires all Zimbabwean journalists to get renewable accreditation from a statutory media council appointed by him. It also forbids local journalists from publishing a wide range of information held by the government without specific authorisation to do so. It particularly bans journalists from reporting on the proceedings of Mr Mugabe's cabinet or on the work of any government department or commission appointed to give advice to Cabinet. Journalists offending the provisions face hefty fines and two year jail terms. All media organisations, except state-owned statutory media outlets, will be required to register with the media commission for two year periods. It was also announced without explanation yesterday that the ceremony to swear Mr Mugabe in to another six-year term of office would be postponed until tomorrow. The move prompted fresh speculation about his failing health, after national television news on Thursday showed him stumbling and apparently gripping a table after his meeting with Mr Zuma.
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From The Zimbabwe Independent, 15 March
Zanu PF caught red-handed
Cases of vote-buying by ruling Zanu PF supporters were unearthed last week in Bulawayo where party members were caught in the act by South African election observers and international journalists in the Lobengula-Luveve constituency. A group of women operating from a house in Lobengula was seen taking down names and identification numbers of potential voters promising them money if they voted for President Robert Mugabe. One of the women approached by the Zanu PF supporters, Ethel Moyo, tipped off South African observers and the media who rushed to the house and found the women with lists of people who had already been paid for voting for Mugabe. The Zanu PF members claimed they were only registering the names of supporters who wanted to vote. The exercise was also seen outside a polling station in Makokoba and at MacDonald Hall in Mzilikazi. The women in Makokoba were allegedly paying $100 to anyone promising to vote for the ruling party candidate.
Meanwhile, scores of Zanu PF youths, who disappeared before the weekend polls, resurfaced at a polling station in Sauerstown on Saturday where police allowed them to form their own queue and to vote ahead of other people who had been queuing for hours. When the Independent together with the foreign press arrived at the polling station, scores of the militia were seen milling outside the polling station while a sizeable number were inside casting their vote. Independent election monitors stationed about 100 metres from the polling station said the youths were initially turned away but later allowed to vote after the intervention of Zanu PF officials. The election agent for the Movement for Democratic Change at the polling station, Dave Mnkandla, claimed the youths were not on the voters' roll but were still allowed to vote.
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From The Daily News, 14 March
Tempers flare as postal ballots reported missing
Mutare - Tempers flared on Tuesday between Zanu PF and MDC officials in Mutare Central constituency after the constituency registrar, Lena Nhiwatiwa, failed to account for 25 postal votes. This led to the rejection of the postal ballot box. Two thousand people were registered to vote through the postal ballot in Mutare Central and only 180 cast their votes. Of those, 155 were accounted for and there was no immediate explanation as to what happened to the remaining 25. Postal votes are for registered voters who, for one reason or another, were unable to cast their ballots in their respective constituencies. Verification at all 14 command posts in Manicaland kicked off at 7am and the missing postal votes came to light during the process at Mutare Teachers’ College. These include soldiers on duty outside the country or deployed to other parts of the country, the police and voters at diplomatic missions. Nhiwatiwa said: "I don’t know what happened to the votes. I can’t explain it. The problem originated in Harare from where the postal ballot box was dispatched to us for verification and counting. Meanwhile, the box has been rejected."
An argument broke out between Kenneth Saruchera, President Mugabe’s election agent, and Innocent Gonese, for Morgan Tsvangirai, when Saruchera said counting of the votes should proceed, with Gonese arguing the box had been tampered with. Saruchera said: "Although there was a shortfall, this should not stop the counting because we would be denying the 155 people who voted their constitutional right to be heard. I sternly objected to the rejection because the problem originated from Harare and not from here. I recommended that since it’s not a local problem, we should continue with the counting." Saruchera refused to comment on the constitutional rights of the 25 who had also cast their votes. "Gonese said: "We cannot proceed to count when some votes are missing. There was definitely some tampering with the ballots. The constituency registrar failed to account for the missing votes. They may have been deliberately removed."
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From The Montreal Gazette, 11 March
Mugabe claims McGill doctorate
London As President Robert Mugabe , the tyrant of Zimbabwe, prepares to continue to ride roughshod over his terrorized nation, he does so covered in academic honours from one of Britain’s leading universities. Mugabe also claims to have an honorary doctorate from McGill University in Montreal. In 1984 the University of Edinburgh awarded Mugabe a doctorate in law, honoris causis. This just happened to coincide with the time when his army was slaughtering the opposition, breaking the law and trampling on human rights all over Matabeleland, as the Roman Catholic Justice and Peace Commission has fully documented. Yet this week, senior Edinburgh university officers said there were "no current plans" to revoke Mugabe’s degree. Indeed, they did not even appear to find it controversial. Those who made the decision in 1984 are all now retired, the officials said. A university spokesperson said: "The degree was awarded in 1981 on the merits of the case at the time. The University of Edinburgh has no procedures for withdrawing such degrees and we have a concern that a withdrawal…might rebound on any in the country associated with the university. We understand that the government, with our full support,, is applying diplomatic pressure as appropriate."
David Orr, president of the Edinburgh University Student Association, was a little more forthcoming. Admitting to his own personal reservations about the award "in the light of current circumstances," he said he would be "discussing the issue with his fellow office bearers." Robin Harper, a member of the Scottish Parliament and the University’s 40th rector said: "I am not sure…whether in fact a degree can be rescinded, but certainly I would not be against the university considering whether perhaps they would like to rescind it. I think we should wait for a few weeks to see the outcome of the elections…but in principle I am not against the idea of…discussion." No one could say whether those on the honorary degree committee in 1984 had ever considered the human rights atrocities attributed even then to Mugabe and his ruling Zanu PF party. Yet the Roman Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, reporting on the disturbances in Matabeleland, showed 1 437 people had died between 1982 and 1987, victims of human rights violations. Numerous other reports of the time also revealed the brutality of a man who was masquerading in public as a reconciliator. Indeed, Mugabe has a record of misery, murder and mayhem that outranks some of the most appalling in post-independence Africa, a continent not short on atrocity.
Born at Kutama Mission north-west of Harare, Robert Gabriel Mugabe had a Jesuit upbringing and likes to lecture his people on morality. He is a professing Roman Catholic and basks in the prestige of his hard-won higher education. He boasts a BA from Fort Hare, a Bed from Unisa, a BSc from the University of London, a BAdmin from Unisa, an L.LB, L.LM and MSc (Economics) all from London. His Who’s Who entry claims an honorary doctorate from McGill University, an assertion firmly rebutted by that university, which says it has a "strict policy" on its awards and clearly, by implication, one that Mugabe does not match up to. The McGill reference is made in the second and third editions of Who’s Who in Africa. A spokesperson for the university said its rules preclude the awarding of honorary doctorates to sitting politicians. No one would say whether the university would attempt to press the publisher to edit the entry. Author Ruth Weiss said: "Mugabe is a terribly vain man." In the early days of Zimbabwean independence, Weiss was one of his strongest supporters but she fell out with him over the slaughter in Matabeleland. "He places much store on his academic achievements. It would be symbolically significant for Edinburgh to remove his honorary doctorate…and it would hurt his vanity.
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From The Observer (UK), 17 March
Big Three to judge Mugabe fate
Zimbabwe's leader under world pressure to give way before London meeting
Harare - In a last-ditch attempt to stave off Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth, Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria fly into Harare tomorrow for talks with President Robert Mugabe, 78. As Mugabe prepared to rush through his swearing-in today for another six-year term, Mbeki was expected to press him to accept a compromise which could be presented to a Commonwealth meeting in London on Monday. But the opposition and civil leaders said that a government of national unity would be acceptable only if it led to fresh elections, under Commonwealth supervision, after a fixed interim period.
International pressure mounted on Mugabe as European leaders meeting in Barcelona joined the Commonwealth and other groups in denouncing the violence-scarred elections as fundamentally flawed. Several countries, including the United States, say that they will not recognise the new Mugabe government. In a draft communique, the EU leaders said they would consider additional targeted sanctions. The question of Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth will be decided in London on Tuesday by Mbeki and Obasanjo together with Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Mbeki wants a government of national unity to include opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and other key members of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). John Makumbe, chairman of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee, which represents 250 non-governmental organisations, said: 'Mugabe knows full well how to use a government of national unity to destroy the opposition. That's what he did to Joshua Nkomo and Zapu in the 1980s.' Tsvangirai said: 'A government of national unity will only be valid if it is for a transitional period, let's say for six months, in order to establish the conditions for free and fair elections.'
General Abdulsalami Abubakar, the former Nigerian President who headed the Commonwealth observers' mission to Zimbabwe, said the possibility of the Commonwealth overseeing new elections in Zimbabwe was one of a range of options. 'We are looking for ways the Commonwealth can assist Zimbabwe to resolve its crisis. There are many complex issues to be addressed, including the land issue, the economy, and the political situation,' said General Abubakar, whose condemnation of the Zimbabwean election will be the basis of the troika meeting. Abubakar guided the 42 observers in drafting the report, which describes how the elections were compromised by state-sponsored violence, unfair application of the rule of law, repressive legislation, restrictions on civic groups, the disenfranchisement of substantial numbers of voters and the blatant bias of the state media. According to Commonwealth observers who met until late Friday night to draft the full report, there was emphatic agreement over the findings. Only one of the 42 Commonwealth observers, the Namibian delegate, was unhappy with the report, and other African members firmly supported it.
An eerie, uneasy vacuum has settled over Harare, as Mugabe has not uttered a public word since he was declared the election victor on Wednesday. But his signing into law of the repressive new media bill signalled his intention to silence the critical independent press. Civic leaders say his swearing-in is being rushed because his term does not expire until 31 March. The leader of an election monitoring group said: 'His rush shows there is a problem, and that he has a huge credibility problem.' Hundreds of opposition supporters, polling agents and election observers are still in custody, according to local reports, which say that many are being held without charge.
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From The Sunday Telegraph (UK), 17 March
Mugabe win rests on dead or absent voters, says MDC
Harare - The turnout in some rural Zimbabwean constituencies which voted overwhelmingly for Robert Mugabe in last weekend's elections effectively exceeded 100 per cent, according to the opposition's first detailed analysis of the results. The startling findings of the Movement for Democratic Change report, disclosed yesterday to The Telegraph, point to widespread vote-rigging in isolated country polling stations after opposition election agents were chased away by government thugs. Mr Mugabe was declared victor on Wednesday with 56 per cent of the vote. There had, however, been panic at his official residence at the halfway stage of last weekend's two-day poll when he met a small group of trusted ministers and aides. They gathered to discuss emergency tactics after long queues built up on Saturday at polling stations in the cities, where MDC support is high, while turnout was much lower than they hoped in Zanu PF's rural heartlands.
The kitchen cabinet put into action plans for a massive last-ditch vote-grabbing operation on Sunday in countryside districts where MDC agents - the only non-government representatives at most rural polling stations - had already been forced to flee by government militia. President Mugabe reportedly retreated to his private rooms in Zimbabwe House on Sunday, fearing defeat after 22 years in power. By the time polling finished, however, there had been a dramatic turnaround. In the cities, a sharp reduction in polling stations contributed to an urban turnout of below 50 per cent, while by Sunday evening the figure in rural areas had mysteriously soared, even though many polling stations were almost empty on the second day.
The MDC analysis makes dramatic reading. Although the party had been refused access to the final voters' rolls for the presidential poll - itself a clear contravention of electoral law - it had commissioned an independent audit of a January list. That investigation found that only about 50 per cent of registered voters were living at the addresses given on the roll. Between 10 per cent and 20 per cent were living elsewhere in the constituency, but the rest had emigrated, moved away, died or disappeared. Indeed, a random check of more than 500 Zimbabweans whose deaths had been registered since 1980 revealed that four-fifths were still listed as voters. Any percentage turnout officially reaching the high 60s would probably have required every voter in the constituency to cast their ballot, the MDC says, while turnouts of more than 70 per cent effectively represent more than 100 per cent.
Several rural constituencies recorded such high figures, particularly in the northern Mashonaland agricultural belt where Zanu PF support is strongest. For example, in Uzumea-Muraba-Pfungwe (73.5 per cent turnout), Mr Mugabe gained 37,341 votes against 3,197 for the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai; and in Rushinga (71.6 per cent), the vote split 26,669 to 2,523 in the president's favour. MDC leaders believe that ballot boxes were stuffed with papers or that Zanu PF supporters indulged unhindered in multiple voting in the knowledge that thousands of registered voters would not turn up as they were either dead or no longer lived there. "The voters' roll was Zanu PF's master-stroke," said Topper Whitehead, a prominent MDC activist analysing the results. "It was a deliberate shambles and the discrepancy left them with enormous scope for stuffing ballot boxes and multiple voting in areas where we had no polling agents."
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From allAfrica.com, 17 March
Mugabe inauguration wins limited VIP attendance
Harare - President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe will be sworn in for another six years on Sunday, after a controversial election deemed flawed by the West and many other independent groups in Africa and abroad, but considered acceptable by some African governments. Zimbabwe's state-owned media said about twenty African leaders had been invited to the inauguration ceremony at State House in the capital, Harare. But allAfrica learned that only a limited number of them were expected to attend, prompting observers to speculate that disapproval by a section of the continental leadership is more widespread than acknowledged. Time may also have been a factor. The Harare government announced the swearing-in on Friday. Reports late Saturday indicated that Presidents Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Bakili Muluzi of Malawi would be present and perhaps, Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano. But two influential African leaders, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria will not be there. Instead the Nigerian and South African leaders are expected to fly into Harare on Monday, the day after the investiture, to talk to both Mugabe, 78, and Zimbabwe’s defeated presidential opposition challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, 50. Tsvangirai has described the election as "daylight robbery", saying Mugabe rigged the poll.
The task facing the Nigerian and South African presidents is significant. Both men are seen as leaders for the African continent by the G8 wealthy nations and are under considerable pressure to find a solution. They are expected to propose the formation of a national unity government to Mugabe and to ask him to invite Tsvangirai to join it. Through this personal intervention, Mbeki hopes to convince the Zimbabwean opponents to agree and thus help to defuse the political tension. After their Harare negotiations, Obasanjo and Mbeki are expected to leave for London, where they have a scheduled Commonwealth meeting with the Australian prime minister, John Howard, on Tuesday. Nigeria, South Africa and Australia have been mandated to report to the organisation’s secretary-general, Don McKinnon, about the conduct of the poll and propose recommendations. After this, the Commonwealth should decide what action - if any - it should take against Zimbabwe.
The Commonwealth observer team issued a stinging report of the Zimbabwe election, detailing intimidation, violence and a catalogue of abuses before and during the election. Commonwealth observers said both sides had been involved, but blamed Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party activists for the lion’s share of the violations against the opposition MDC. Most Western governments denounced the poll results, concluding that the election was flawed and did not reflect the will of the people of Zimbabwe. The European Union and the United States have indicated that they may impose more sanctions on Mugabe and his loyal lieutenants, who have already been penalized by the EU and the US with targeted sanctions. The European Union has announced that its representatives will boycott the swearing-in ceremony on Sunday. Whether or not the presidential election was free and fair has been a hot topic, and the cause of considerable controversy, since the outcome of the ballot was announced on Wednesday, giving Mugabe a comfortable victory. This prompted immediate condemnation and rejection of the results by Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, who claimed the government had disenfranchised opposition supporters. South African and Nigerian governments, and the majority of other African observers, later declared the poll "legitimate", though - pointedly - not free and fair. South Africa’s deputy president, Jacob Zuma, was dispatched to Harare on Thursday, where he warmly congratulated Mugabe on his electoral victory, causing raised eyebrows, annoyance and some surprise in the West when he wrongly said South African observers had judged the poll "free and fair". Later, it was reported that Mbeki had endorsed the poll and that the will of the people of Zimbabwe had prevailed. Published on the internet web site of South Africa's governing African National Congress party, it was later reported, causing some confusion, that these comments were part of a "party document".
But Mbeki’s keenly-awaited first public comment came on Friday night and hardened the South African position, with its implied criticism of the Zimbabwe. At the end of an ANC party meeting, Mbeki is reported to have said" "The world has got a right and a duty to express itself on things that are going on there, including wrong things - to say these things are wrong, we do not like them, they should stop, and so on. It’s correct that the world must be concerned and express itself quite openly, quite frankly, quite forcefully." Mbeki added: "Whatever happens to Zimbabwe in future must be a matter that centrally gets decided by the Zimbabweans." The view of the South African leader is important because it carries political weight in and outside Africa and considerable leverage within the region. Mugabe’s southern neighbour supplies both fuel and power, helping Zimbabwe’s shattered economy. The Zimbabwean leader is well aware of the high post-election stakes, but Mugabe is known to be his own man. Political analysts say he will not be dictated to, either by countries such as the former colonial power, Britain - which he accuses of neo-imperialism - or by his fellow Africans. Mugabe, say observers, is not inclined to share power and is unlikely to respond favourably to the proposal the he include the MDC in a government of national unity.
Tsvangirai is adamant that his party would not be satisfied with just a handful of cabinet seats. Tsvangirai has already been strongly critical of the South African role in his country, calling on Pretoria to be an honest broker in the Zimbabwe crisis. After hearing that the Organisation of African Unity, and the regional Southern African Development Community, SADC, had given their blessing to the election, Tsvangirai said on Friday that continental leaders were damaging their reputations by endorsing Mugabe ’s victory. "In my view, what the African brothers are doing is to undermine their integrity and their credibility in the face of the world," the MDC leader told Reuters news agency. He said: "We will not be party to any Caesarian operation by South Africa. We are not going to have short-cuts - and force issues on Zimbabweans." Tsvangirai has insisted on one condition, that Mugabe commits himself to fresh elections, because the MDC considers him an 'illegitimate’ president of Zimbabwe.
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Comment from The Financial Mail (SA), 14 March
How Mugabe stole democracy
By Elinor Sisulu
"It is not fair that Zimbabweans, who paid a heavy price to hold their first democratic elections in 1980, should pay so early 22 years later." The real battle in the Zimbabwean elections was not between President Robert Mugabe and his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai. The real battle was about democracy. Distinguished figures in our own country, and continent, and even further afield may well make lofty pronouncements on the triumph of democracy. Observer teams may pronounce the elections free and fair, as may some voters. "Zimbabwe is a democratic country," declared Bulawayo voter Jabulani Sibanda on the eve of the election. "Democracy is before, during and after the elections." Ironically, Sibanda is a staunch member of Zanu PF, the party that has ensured that the process has been anything but free and fair.
It has not been free and fair for the judiciary who, since the land invasions began a year ago, have been continuously threatened and harassed by Zanu PF war veterans. It has been anything but free and fair for the judges whom government pressured to resign. It has not been free and fair for members of the police who were told they would lose their jobs if they supported the MDC and who have been forced to compromise their professional integrity by following "orders from above" that they should not attend to MDC complaints. It has not been free and fair for Tapiwa Matunya, who had his identity document confiscated by the police at a roadblock. Thousands of Zimbabweans have had their IDs taken away in a similar fashion, by police, the army or Zanu PF militants. Without their IDs they cannot vote.
It has not been free and fair for Linda Moyo, who was beaten on her genitals by Zanu-PF youths "so that she does not give birth to MDC supporters". Even her exalted status as MDC member of parliament for Mutasa did not protect Evelyn Masaite from a severe beating, just two days before the election. Masaite was investigating a case in which 10 MDC polling agents were arrested. She was assaulted at Ruda police station in Honde Valley. It has not been free and fair for tens of thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans who have had to flee the violence and intimidation of the 9 000-strong Zanu PF militia. It has not been a free and fair process for Sitshengisiwe Mpofu, Agnes Dube and David Nyoni, whose rural homesteads in St Peter’s village in Matabeleland were torched by Zanu PF militants. This was their punishment for not attending Mugabe’s campaign rally in Bulawayo. Anna Sibanda, of the same village, was in her hut with her one-month-old-baby Happiness when it was set alight. She just managed to escape with her baby. The Midzi family of Bindura was less fortunate. Their son was killed for campaigning for the MDC. Their uncle was abducted and murdered for attending the funeral. After death threats forced the family to flee to Harare their house was ransacked and occupied by Zanu PF supporters.
It has not been fair that there has been a lack of moral condemnation from the governments of the region and regional institutions like the Southern African Development Community and the Organisation of African Unity. It has not been fair that observers have talked about "violence on both sides". Of the 91 cases of torture, violence and intimidation recorded in the Zimbabwean Human Rights NGO Forum report, MDC supporters were identified as perpetrators in five cases, and arrests were made in three of those. No arrests were made in more than 70 human rights violations attributed to Zanu PF. Clashes between members of rival political organisations are one thing; state-organised violence in which trained militia, the police and the army are involved is quite another.
There are those in this region who dismiss the fuss over the violence. What are 150 lives lost and a few hundred tortured in the greater scheme of things? After all, more than 1 000 people died in the 1994 election in SA, but that election was still considered fair. What is happening in Zimbabwe "is a Sunday school picnic compared to what happened in East Timor", noted one SA election observer. The first democratic elections in SA and East Timor were the culmination of protracted and bitter struggles and violence was to be expected in that context. It is not fair that Zimbabweans, who paid a heavy price to hold their first democratic elections in 1980, should pay so dearly 22 years later. There is no reason one single Zimbabwean should have died in the past two elections. It makes a mockery of the notion of democracy. The concept of a free and fair election has been stretched so far that for many Zimbabweans it has lost all meaning. That is why we hope and pray, with every fibre of our being, that tomorrow will be another country.
Born in Zimbabwe, Elinor Sisulu worked for the Zimbabwean government in the early eighties. An academic and writer, she published an award-winning children’s book, When Gogo Went to Vote, in 1994, and is currently working on the authorised biography of ANC leaders Walter and Albertina Sisulu.
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Comment from The Sunday Times (SA), 17 March
Children of a lesser god
Mondli Makhanya
Zimbabweans are a lesser people. They deserve to be treated as subhumans. They are certainly not entitled to the same basic rights that we take for granted. This is not an easy conclusion to reach. But it is certainly one which is inevitable. Take the case of the Marondera East residents, who were abducted at 2am on February 25 and taken to a Zanu-PF militia camp. They were beaten up and cut with knives. One resident woke up with burns on his buttocks. On the same day another man was abducted from the farm he worked on. He was beaten with sticks, cut up and had cigarette butts applied to his buttocks. He suffered bruising and lacerations. Their sin: they were suspected of being opposition supporters. But these men, who told their stories to human rights organisations, probably deserved what they got. They are, after all, mere Zimbabweans - a lesser species.
This savage treatment of political opponents was characterised by the South African observer mission as "polarisation, tension and incidents of violence and intimidation". The mission, headed by former businessman and ambassador Sam Motsuenyane, even patted itself on the back for helping to keep "tensions and conflicts" at a "minimal" level. The "minimal level" they were talking about was the daily assault, abduction and torture of civilians. It included the deaths of more than 30 people since January. And because they were Zimbabweans it is quite fine that many were disenfranchised by a government that made it extremely difficult for them to get their names onto the voters roll. The government went even further and defied the courts' reversal of its edicts.
But despite this, Zimbabweans turned out in their millions, determined to defy those who wanted to prevent them from exercising their basic human right of voting. They stood in the rain and in the scorching sun. Hungry and tired, they persevered and defied the batons and teargas of the police. But instead of condemning this flagrant violation of human rights, our caring observers praised the Zimbabwean electoral authorities, saying they had "discharged their work satisfactorily". And as for those who were teargassed and driven away from polling stations on Monday night, the Motsuenyane brigade said this deliberate rigging was an "administrative oversight". But these are just Zimbabweans. Why should they aspire to South African standards of being treated like human beings while waiting in the queues?
And then, our observers further told us, they were "heartened by the fact that the opposition actively participated in the campaign" and therefore legitimised the elections. Never mind that the leadership of this opposition was regularly thrown in jail, had treason charges trumped up against them, had their meetings disrupted and were painted as devils by the taxpayer-funded media. After all, it is just a Zimbabwean opposition party. Why should they expect the respect accorded to the likes of the Democratic Alliance and the United Democratic Movement and even the Pan Africanist Congress? Whereas the mission declared that the "people of Zimbabwe have spoken" it is in fact we South Africans who spoke. And we said very clearly that we believe Zimbabweans are an inferior species undeserving of dignity.
In coming months Zimbabweans will stream across the borders, seeking a better life in South Africa. We will take the labourers and exploit them on our farms, in our sweatshops and in our gardens. The educated ones we will employ in our restaurants where they will have to swallow their pride and respond to our snapping fingers. The lucky ones will find their way into the professions, where we will resent them for "taking our jobs". Because they are a lesser breed.
The diplomatic constraints that the government of South Africa was operating under in the past two years were understandable. There would never have been any point in standing on mountaintops and hurling abuse at Robert Mugabe. There would also have been no point in joining the chorus of Western nations lecturing him from across the ocean. But to then go and tell Zimbabweans that the repression they have been experiencing over the past two years was merely "incidents" is brutally insensitive. To further tell them that their deliberate disenfranchisement was "administrative oversights" is to insult their intelligence. And then, finally, to tell them that they "have spoken" when their government did all in its power to muffle their voices is thoroughly dishonest. South Africans should feel a sense of shame for the utter disrespect with which the Motsuenyane mission treated the people of Zimbabwe. We are unlikely, however, to feel this shame. Human rights, after all, are something to be enjoyed only by full human beings and not by lesser species.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 18 March
Victorious Mugabe mocks 'colonial' Britain
Harare/Johannesburg - After being sworn in yesterday as president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe boasted that the Zimbabwean people ha |
