Zimbabwe on a razor’s-edge due to weekend Elections violence

Zimbabwe on a razor’s-edge due to weekend Elections violence

special to USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
USAfricaonline.com , NigeriaCentral.com
and The Black Business Journal

 

Zimbabwe remains on a razor-edge with presidential elections this weekend that promise a violent outcome whether the incumbent Robert Mugabe or opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai emerges victorious. Also, Mugabe, 78 years old, and his supporters have charged that international intervention and funding are the sources of support for the increasingly popular MDC, telling British and some European election observers and officials to leave Zimbabwe elections to Zimbabweans since Zimbabwean and other Blacks do not “monitor or intrude” into elections in European or American countries.

In another development, President Mugabe (in picture, right) has put Zimbabwe’s army in charge of this weekend’s presidential election and vote count, compounding fears that his government’s campaign of intimidation will follow voters right up to the ballot box and that widespread vote tampering will be used to try to keep him in power. Most of Tsvangirai’s support base come from urban workers and young voters. In the 2000 poll, Tsvangirai, born in 1952 was not elected and decided to turn down a seat in one of the cities, where the MDC’s support is strongest. He instead stood in his rural home district and was defeated by on a candidate from Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party.U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian by birth, has demanded that the Zimbabwe poll be fair and that the results be respected. “I attach the highest importance to the vote count being completed without interference or manipulation and the result announced without delay,” Annan said in New York. 

Tension rose as opinion surveys showed majority support for Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, and Mugabe’s government tinkered with poll arrangements in ways the opposition charged were clearly designed to boost his chances. Reports of political violence in the major cities, Harare

and Bulawayo, and in outlying areas continued to reach Zimbabwean human rights groups. Early this week 40 homes in a Bulawayo township thought to belong to MDC supporters were razed by fire.

Zimbabwean-based journalist Peta Thornycroft, who reports for the British Daily Telegraph and the Mail and Guardian, described the situation as being “like a powder keg”.

The fear is that MDC supporters will feel robbed if Mugabe wins, while Mugabe, Zanu-PF and some security force chiefs will not accept an MDC victory – making a major clash inevitable.

By Thursday, the Mugabe government had caused 79 rallies planned by Tsvangirai to be cancelled, either because of police disruption or under orders in terms of the Public Order and Security Act – which replaced repressive legislation used by the white supremacist regime of Ian Smith between 1965 and 1980.

At least seven MDC MPs are awaiting trial or face charges laid by the police. Between 500 and 1, 000 MDC members are on bail on public violence and related charges, as opposed to about 50 Zanu-PF members.

These aggravations occurred in a situation of 60% unemployment and 120% inflation. Many parts of the country have had no supplies of the staple mealie meal and cooking oil for six weeks; milk is seldom available and, when it is, it is rationed; sugar is available only periodically; in about five weeks little beef and no chicken will be available.

Zimbabwe elections special report And Thomas Mapfumo, the revolutionary musician who once sang songs in praise of Mugabe, now sings songs against him.

The opposition MDC brought a number of urgent legal actions before the courts on Thursday to overturn what it saw as fiddling with the electoral process by Mugabe and the ruling party.

But the courts have come under government pressure over the past year and Mugabe has installed a number of loyalists in the most senior of them, the Supreme Court.

Early this year (2002), the Mugabe government declared that only civil servants, army and police officers would be able to act as polling officials.

Against this backdrop, Zimbabwe’s registrar general Tobaiwa Mudede caused shock this week when he announced his department was preparing a “supplementary voters’ role” to include people who had registered between January and March 3. The fact of this additional registration period had never been publicized; it is not known how this supplementary role was drawn up; nor has the need for it ever been explained.

The MDC was also shocked to hear from Mudede that voting for some soldiers and police had started. Mudede gave no details about when this exercise began, how many people had voted, and who was present to monitor and observe the process.

In one affidavit before the Supreme Court on Thursday a member of the public reported crashing into the back of a police Land Rover two weeks ago, causing one ballot box to fall to the road, spewing out voter slips marked in favor of Mugabe.

In another development, a man claiming to have been trained as a member of a Zanu-PF militia was presented to members of the Commonwealth monitoring team. He gave an account of the training and instructions he had been given.

Meanwhile, South Africa has plans in place at Messina, near the Beitbridge border post, to receive up to 50 000 Zimbabwean fleeing either political violence or hunger over the next month. A former military base in the area, Artonvilla, has been equipped for the purpose. The Department of Home Affairs, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Red Cross, the South African National Defence Force, and the Police are all involved in the operation.

Major western diplomatic missions in Harare had all completed contingency planning to evacuate their citizens if serious violence spread throughout the country in the wake of the election, due to be held on Saturday and Sunday. Britain (with about 25 000 citizens in the country), Australia (about 300), Canada (about 100) and New Zealand (300) were reportedly cooperating on a joint plan.

A well-placed South African security source said on Thursday there was no indication that these countries had pre-positioned aircraft in South Africa or Botswana. This suggested they were “not expecting a large non-combatant evacuation to be necessary for Zimbabwe as it was in Sierra Leone.”

One Zimbabwean white woman interviewed by the Mail and Guardian took a skeptical view of her embassy’s evacuation plan. She suggested the British contingency plan sounded no more sophisticated than “drive to the border, and get given tea and buns on the other side.”
USAfricaonline.com with reports from The Mail and Guardian newspaper of South Africa, March 7, 2002.