Flame Lily News and Views

Boycott updates from around Zimbabwe
Sokwanele : 27 June 2008

No one queuing to vote at City Hall (12.50 pm), Bulawayo. Usually one of the busiest city centre polling stations.

THE BOYCOTT IS A RESOUNDING SUCCESS It is starting to look like the boycott has proven highly successful, particularly, as expected, in urban areas. The turnout is interesting because the country’s urban areas have been under an onslaught of violence, intimidation and hate speech. The towns have been swamped with people in Zanu PF regalia, and the omnibuses and taxis plastered with Zanu PF posters. So much so that many have been worried that this would force voters into the polling stations.

The Joint Operational Command’s strategy for the Presidential run-off poll
Sokwanele : 25 June 2008

On the 21st May 2008 the Solidarity Peace Trust (SPT) released a report titled Punishing Dissent, Silencing Citizens: The Zimbabwe Elections 2008. The report made it very clear that ZANU PF had embarked on a systematic programme of retributive violence in response to its electoral defeat on March 29th 2008. The report included an evaluation of the violence up until that point based on interviews with 681 people.In addition to this, Appendix 3 of the SPT report contained information provided by a key informant who relayed their knowledge about the Joint Operational Command’s (JOC) election strategy. Those who have been following events in Zimbabwe closely will see that much of what the source described to SPT has since come to fruition. (Appendix 3 of the report is included at the end of this mailing)

Boycotting the June 27 election is essential
Sokwanele : 24 June 2008

“The June 27 Presidential election is not an election, but a declaration of war against the people of Zimbabwe by the ruling party.” (SA Congress of Trade Unions statement 24/6/2008)

This is an important call to all Zimbabweans from civil society - you must boycott the forthcoming election.

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From Eddie Cross

I was stunned today when I watched Morgan Tsvangirai pull out of the June 27th election.  I had not expected this but since then have had a couple of calls from Zimbabwe that made the situation a bit clearer.

You must first understand how big a decision this was for the MDC.  We are a Party committed to a democratic outcome of this struggle.  Elections are our game -  we do not want to take to the streets or to pick up weapons to make our point.  We are democrats. We won the March 29th election by a wide margin - 73 per cent of the population voted against Mugabe.  The regime was forced to simply lie about the result to get a run off and only the protection of the SADC States prevented an outright MDC victory.

We were and are quite satisfied that in any free and fair contest the MDC would have walked away with the run off. In the event, what we have witnessed over the past two months since the run off was announced, has been a nation wide campaign of violence and intimidation, the closing down of all democratic space inside Zimbabwe, intensified restrictions on the media and the complete militarisation of the functions of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

Today armed militias were allowed to attack a MDC rally in Harare even though it had been given permission by the High Court and was entirely peaceful.  The MDC leadership meeting in crisis session reviewed the overall situation and finally, reluctantly, decided they had no option but to withdraw from this farcical process.

Having done so the way is now open for the new ZEC to declare Mugabe as State President and for him to resume office.

The MDC decision, although painful and difficult for everyone, is in fact a very strategic move.  It gives Thabo Mbeki the floor by virtually canceling the run off and opens the door to SADC intervention.  Any government that now includes Mugabe -  in any capacity, will not get recognition from the international community.  It will not therefore attract any international assistance and will be unable to deal with the humanitarian and economic crisis now facing Zimbabwe.  Both leave no room for maneuver and both demand immediate action.

On the humanitarian front we need to import 150 000 tonnes of basic foods every month just to feed the country.  Without external help Zimbabwe faces the very real prospect of starvation on a large scale.  Currently the country has no stocks at all.  On the economic front with inflation raging at 2 million percent or more and run away macro economic fundamentals, a complete economic collapse is not far off and could be triggered by the magnitude of this new political crisis.

The UN is bracing itself for a new flood of refugees -  both political and economic into neighboring States and in my view South Africa must prepare itself for a fresh influx at the worst time of the year.  Millions of Zimbabweans are preparing to leave the country and the only option for 90 per cent of them is South Africa.

From a political standpoint the global consensus is clear.  The Mugabe regime has gone too far.  There is now talk for the first time of the possibility of charges of crimes against humanity at the ICC.  The US is calling for the Security Council to meet urgently on the Zimbabwe crisis.  The UN Secretary General has become more vocal and outspoken on the situation and demanded action on several fronts.  In the SADC it really looks as if a new consensus is emerging on the crisis -  Angola and Swaziland becoming new critics of the Mugabe regime in the past few days.

The Zimbabwe crisis team -  Mafumadi and Gumbo were both in Harare over the weekend and I cannot imagine this decision by the MDC being taken without their input.  It would seem to me that the stage is set for another emergency SADC summit, that at such a summit the region will at last decide what to do and that the only way forward is the formation of a transitional government that will include all Parties elected to the new Parliament and that will then take the country through a period of stabilization and recovery before holding new elections.

It is quite clear that Mugabe simply cannot play any role in such a government -  he was clearly defeated in the March 29th elections and is simply no longer acceptable to anyone except the Joint Operations Command (JOC).  The only person who can head up such an interim administration, unless it is on a caretaker basis and will function for only a few months until new elections are held, would be Morgan Tsvangirai.  The rest would be up to negotiations sponsored by the SADC and the UN.  Clearly South Africa cannot continue in its role as a mediator and must step aside for someone more distant from the region and the current regime.  This would allow South Africa and the SADC States to assume the role of enforcer rather than a mediator.

One of the phone calls I had today spoke of widespread violence in Zimbabwe. People being forced to do things against their will and children not attending school for security reasons.  It is quite clear that not only do we have a rogue regime in Harare, but also it is a rogue out of control.  That wounded buffalo of mine is just staying in the Jesse and destroying what is left instead of coming out and facing his hunter one last time.  In effect the MDC as the hunter has prudently decided to seek help rather than try to deal with the old bull on its own.  It may well prove to have been the right decision.

For all our friends all over the world, do not despair, I think you can clearly see that our first shot was fatal - it is just taking a bit of time to take effect.  Whatever happens now, Mugabe is no longer capable of governing Zimbabwe.  He said on Friday ‘only God can remove me from power’.  He must know that his challenge would have been heard where such things matter and that his plea is being attended to.

Eddie Cross

Johannesburg,
22 June 2008

Subject: Fw: Mount Carmel farm - a weekend at home in Zimbabwe…
Sent: 16 June 2008 14:40

Dear all,

It has been quite a weekend.

We were made very aware of impending problems on our Mount Carmel farm before it even started. Various letters came in as well as verbal warnings from concerned people all over the district. People were told that Mt. Carmel cattle and potatoes would be dished out to them. The election campaign is being fought on “one hundred percent empowerment” ie. taking everything that belongs to people who are not black and giving it to Party faithfulls. The Party has got nothing else to offer the people…

People were told if they did not come they would be beaten.

President Mugabe arrived in our little town of Chegutu that afternoon and people were only informed that morning.

Everyone had to suddenly go to his rally whether they wanted to or not.
He apparently told the people that if the opposition got in it would be war. The unexpected Presidential rally must have thrown the organisation for the Mount Carmel “programme” [as it was referred to in a letter from one of the organisors].

That evening we only ended up with about 500 of the expected 1500 people that were to come. They were bussed in from all over on tractor trailors, lorries, car and busses. We even had one bus from Shamva hundreds of kms away.

The drums and chanting started soon after dark. Nearly fifty fires were lit all around. The leaders were waving guns around and had everyone doing their bidding. The chanting and sloganeering was military style - all in unison for hour after hour after hour all the way through the night. We could not sleep.

When dawn broke and the birds started to call the chanting broke into a noise that sounded like a terrible swarm of bees on the rampage. We knew that the beating had then started and we prayed. It turned out that anyone who they believed had been polling agents at polling stations was covered in cold water. We had frost that morning and it was cold.

They were then told to beat each other with sticks while the crowd egged them on. The noise went on for a few hours. Some of them had already run away. Those people will not vote; still less be polling agents in the next election because you have to vote in your own ward I understand and they are designating which polling station too so that they can check who you voted for.

They had been searched for any cell phones so that they not relay any atrocities on to anyone. They were told that they would be killed if information leaked out. Everyone is tight lipped about what went on.
Today they go through the day mechanically with terror written all over them.

A neighbor, Marius Erasmus, drove past on the main road and was stopped at a road block that they had set up on our road. He managed to get through that but at the next one they put burning logs on his bonnet and tried to get into the car. A couple of hundred people came out from the packshed where the indoctrination was taking place. He managed to reverse and turn around and get through the other road block taking some rocks on his windscreen and other places on the car.

Meantime Bruce [Lauras brother] had been at the Chegutu police station trying to get police out. We had been there on five occasions the previous week trying to tell Chief Inspector Gunyani and Inspector Manyota and Assistant Inspector Bupera of what was to take place. We had given two letters for the attention of the officer in charge, Chief Inspector Gunyani.

Bruce waited for six hours at the police station but could not get a reaction to stop the beating and dismantle the road blocks. He saw Chief Inspector Gunyani, Inspector Manyota and Assistant Inspector Bupera amongst others. It is clear that they are under orders not to react.

Our electricity went down and both cell phone networks also ceased to operate. We were left with no communications and our way out onto the main road was sealed off by a road block. We prayed and read Psalm 118.

Bruce eventually decided to come out himself. Miraculously, just before he arrived, the road blocks were dismantled and everyone disappeared. Shortly after the guards came to tell us of thieves in the maize - about 30 people were just helping themselves. We caught some of them and chased them off and recovered their booty.

That evening we got a call from Nettie Rogers who was very badly beaten up with her husband six weeks ago by Gilbert Moyo and his gang. They had also had everything from their house and workshops stolen in that raid including even their clothes. Gilbert Moyo was taken into custody by police but was then let out again as a hit man. He “hit” Billy and Nova Nicholson in the area a few nights ago and they had half an hour to get out of their home and off their farm or end up the same way as Bruce and Nettie had. We do not know what has been looted there yet.

Bruce and Nettie were staying in a cottage on another farm when Gilbert Moyo arrived with thirty people and said he was taking the farm for Senator Madzongwe. They managed to get to the main homestead with the Etheredge brothers while I went to police with Dirk Visagie.

We spent an hour at the police station but they refused to react as it was an “issue of land.” I told them that disposession of ones home and assault of ones workers were matters that were important for them to deal with; but after Bruces six hours fruitless wait for a reaction that morning I knew we were wasting our time; and so we eventually proceeded to Stockdale to give whatever support we could.

As it happened an army Major by the name of Indora spoke to Gilbert Moyo and the Etheredges and Bruce Rogers eventually ended up transporting Moyo and his gang back to their base 20 km away on Ranwick farm in the early hours of the morning as the “hit” had not got official sanction. They got to a road block of 50 ZANU people on the main Concession Hill road but they were allowed through and back without incident.

Such road blocks are now common at night to stop observors and anyone from “outside” getting to any pungwes and seeing the atrocities that are taking place. A friends worker went to their rural area near to the Nyamapanda border post to see his elderly mother last month. In these areas any movement needs official sanction from the Party and written ZANU permits are even required to visit the next ward in many places. I have seen such permits.

The friends worker was stopped at a road block and had to wait 2 days to get someone to vouch for him. During that time 4 people who had not got anyone to vouch for them were asked if they wore long sleeves or short sleeves. The first replied “short sleeves”. They cut his right arm off at the top with an axe. The other three replied “long sleeves”. They cut each of their right hands off.

He said that he saw the hands wriggling on the ground detatched from their owners. Those hands can not vote any more. I have heard of many other hands like that.

It seemed macabre that Bruce who was so badly assaulted by Moyo 6 weeks ago was taking him back to “his” home scott free. Presumably all Bruce’s worldly possessions are now in that place that they took him to.
Nettie asked Bruce to look out for their dog which also disappeared on the 6 May; but they most probably killed it. Bruce saw no evidence of it.

There appears to be no sign of any SADC observors out here. A friend said he had seen some sipping drinks and reading the newspapers in the Meikles hotel in Harare over the weekend. Voter registration goes on even now. The old people at Greenways Old Peoples home say they are now off the voters role but the ones that are dead are still on…

Meanwhile the atrocities go on at the all night pungwes and the people tremble with fear. I read that the observors are officially not allowed out after dark because their safety can not be guaranteed. They need to defy that and get out and see with their own eyes these things if they care at all.

We ask you to pray and send brave people and peace keepers to stop the atrocities before they get even worse. Maybe I write this in vain; but I write this crying.

With love in Christ who is our Saviour whatever happens,

Ben.

By Judith Todd, Harare Tribune Syndicated Columnist

Sunday, June 15, 2008 13:16

opinion@hararetribune.com

http://www.hararetribune.com 

“What we witness today is a tremendous blow to the forces of negation, the forces of division, the forces of destruction, may they be within or without this country, and indeed, let them be murdered and laid to rest for eternity.” President Canaan Banana on the signing of the Zanu (PF) PF Zapu Unity Accord, December 22, 1987.

Those who broke the heart and the spirit of Joshua Nkomo and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, Zapu, in the 1980s are still in place.  Their gruesome tactics, including deceit, used to crush hope and resistance remain the same, only more widespread, flagrant and violent.

The only change since the 1987 “Unity Accord” is the name and the face of the unity facilitator.  Then it was Zimbabwe’s hapless President, Canaan Sodindo Banana, almost certainly already then a victim of blackmail.

Today it is South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki.  In considering Zimbabwe’s present quandaries it may be salutary to recall the relentless background to, and the consequences of, the 1987 accord.

At Zimbabwe’s Independence then Prime Minister R.G.  Mugabe established a government of apparent reconciliation including Zapu leader, Nkomo.  The apparent integration of former warring combatants, Zanu’s ZANLA and Zapu’s ZPRA, into one Zimbabwe National Army proceeded.  But, behind what eventually was revealed as a continuing charade, the ruthless accumulation of all power by Zanu (PF) proceeded apace.

In July 1980 ZPRA members of Zimbabwe’s High Command, Lookout Masuku and Dumiso Dabengwa, wrote to Minister of Defence R.G.  Mugabe warning about possible consequences of discrimination and incitement against ZPRA.  Masuku wrote again that September raising the plight of destitute ex-combatants and enquiring why ZANLA was sending men outside the country for military training.

There was no reply to either letter.  In October 1980, less than six months after Independence, Mugabe signed an agreement in North Korea with Kim Il Sung.  Within this lay the seeds of his personal militia, the Five Brigade.  In January 1981 he demoted Nkomo from the important portfolio of Home Affairs to that of Public Service, and then later to Minister without Portfolio.  In August 1981 Mugabe mentioned that 106 North Koreans were in Zimbabwe training ‘a new force’, the first public reference to the Five Brigade.  That October 1981 he toured the nation, emphasising the urgent necessity of a one-party state.  In February 1982 Mugabe announced the “discovery” of a plot to overthrow his government stating that arms caches had been found on Zapu properties bought with demobilisation allowances.

All these properties were seized by the State, Mugabe stating that Zapu was a cobra in the house and that “the only way to deal with a snake is to strike and destroy its head.” On 17 February he sacked Nkomo and other Zapu members from his cabinet.  On 5 March 1983 police cordoned off Pelandaba, Nkomo’s neighbourhood in Bulawayo.  Soldiers of
5 Brigade searched for him within the cordon but, after the explicit threat from Mugabe, he had moved house.  That night be learned that his driver and two others had been shot dead in cold blood in his home, the killers then destroying his cars and furniture.  Nkomo fled to Botswana the following morning.

On 11 March 1983 Dumiso Dabengwa, Lookout Masuku and others were arrested and then charged with treason.  In April 1983 they were acquitted by Mr Justice Hillary Squires who described Dabengwa as ‘the most impressive witness any of us have seen in court for a long time’ saying Dabengwa’s actions were the antithesis of anyone ’scheming to overthrow the government’.  They were redetained, Mugabe saying the government had more information on the men than did the courts.  Masuku died in custody.

Dabengwa was released only in December 1986 by which time the killings by Mugabe’s Five Brigade and the consequent shattering of Zapu party structures had been completed.  “Dissident” activity surged, fuelled partly by South African destabilisation, partly by former ZPRA men desperately fleeing for their lives and partly by Zanu (PF) agents provocateurs promoting violence as a pretext for State intervention and repression.

Many of Nkomo’s contemporaries were held and charged with treason.
Some were tortured, others “disappeared”or, like Jini Ntuta MP, were openly murdered and most with any kind of Zapu tag from the past materially eliminated from society like veteran journalist Willie Musarurwa, sacked as editor of the Sunday Mail.  What probably made Nkomo suffer most was to know that even children were being terrorised and deprived of food .

So, at considerable risk, he returned from exile trying to construct an oasis of peace for his country.  The years of terror thus culminated in the December 1987 accord consolidating all power in the hands of R.G.  Mugabe and leaving no space for democratic values.  Under clause 9 of the 10 point accord Zanu (PF) and PF Zapu were meant to convene respective congresses to give effect to the agreement, but only one congress was ever held, that of Zanu (PF).  Eventually political prisoners were released, dissidents pardoned and calm seemed to return to a silenced land.  Once again this proved a charade.

In 1989 founder member of Zanu (PF), Edgar Tekere, formed an opposition party, ZUM.  Mugabe promised that ZUM would zoom into a grave, and it did.  Then, that October, State agents using massive violence stormed onto Zimbabwe’s University campus to stop a demonstration against corruption.  Student leader Arthur Mutambara, protesting against this teargassing and beating of students, was arrested Secretary General of Zimbabwe’s Congress of Trade Unions, Morgan Tsvangirai, springing to Mutambara’s defence, was also arrested and denied access to his lawyers.  In 1999 the Movement for Democratic Change was born into the usual storm from Zanu (PF) of violence, theft, destruction of property, spurious charges of treason and other crimes.  Then, after losing the March 2008 elections, the Mugabe regime turned its weapons onto their very heartlands in a campaign of such vicious retribution that shouts of outrage from Zimbabwe’s silent neighbours could have been expected.  Instead, it is reported, MDC representatives are being inveigled to negotiate an end to the evils being visited upon them through a government of national unity - unity with the authors of Zimbabwe’s unspeakable suffering.

People, standing along Zimbabwe’s roads in the hope of food from passersby, are described as now “so thin that it hurts to look at them”.  Yet, it is said, Zanu (PF) representatives at alleged secret talks in Pretoria are the unelected “Minister of Justice” Chinamasa, and “Minister of Public Service, Labour & Social Welfare” Nicholas Goche, the very man responsible for banning all NGO help needed to keep over one third of Zimbabwe’s population alive.

If so, this must be one of the crudest forms of pressure ever exerted on the MDC - having to negotiate with a man who, if you cave in, has the power to restore antiretrovirals he took away from Aids victims; food he took from the starving.  The 1987 unity accord with Zanu (PF) yielded little more than an enduring triumph of violence over democracy.  A pre-poll 2008 unity accord with Zanu (PF) could well cement that triumph of violence over the voices and votes of brutalised, brave people.  END.

* Judith Todd is the author of the best selling memoir “Through the Darkness: A life in Zimbabwe”.

From Eddie Cross 

It is quite interesting being in South Africa for a few days recuperating and waiting for clearance from my doctors.  I have watched Mbeki speaking to the national assembly on Zimbabwe and listened to the debate in the country at large.  I am struck by the fact that there is little or no debate or discussion about what will happen after the election on the 27th June.

Newspaper reports talk of discussions to try and get a government of national unity, they argue that a free and fair election is impossible and that therefore the only answer is a GNU with Mugabe as President and Tsvangirai as Prime Minister.  They talk about emulating the Kenyan solution.  I have said to anyone who asked, that the MDC would not accept such a solution at any price. We want the run off to take place and whoever wins then picks up from there, forms a government and we go on.

But of course it is not as simple as that ?  just yesterday the Vice President in Zimbabwe said that a vote for Morgan Tsvangirai is a vote for war.  He said they would not accept a MDC government and those same sentiments have been repeated in recent weeks by all sorts of people in the Mugabe administration. So what is this election process all about then?  Even last night I heard Mbeki saying that they were not seeking regime change via their facilitation process! But he also said that it was important that the run off take place and that the people of Zimbabwe enjoy the right to choose their leaders.

So we have an election on the 27th June.  An election run by the security establishment which has now taken over the running of the Zimbabwe Election Commission, after a campaign characterized by political violence instituted and managed by the military and the State, a campaign during which the MDC has not been able to campaign freely, has received no exposure in the State run media and has had its leaders harassed, beaten, detained and denied all the rights taken for granted in true democracies.  Yet on these matters Mbeki and others remain mute.

But what happens if, against this background the MDC wins by a wide margin and its victory cannot be disputed?  What then?  It is clear at this point that the administration and security chiefs in Zimbabwe will simply not accept such an outcome.  They only have one choice and that is to act illegally against the will of the people, override the outcome and force the continued administration of the country by an illegal regime.  Can you really imagine that, after all they have stated and their own behavior in recent weeks, that they will accept an MDC victory?

I think this is the most likely outcome and predict that Morgan Tsvangirai will receive a huge majority on the 27th June.  A political commentator with whom I am staying asked what if Mugabe and the security establishment simply bulldoze a victory for Mugabe ?  succeed with their campaign of violence and intimidation and then rig the outcome.  Mugabe would be declared the winner and the region would accept this, including South Africa and Mugabe would then govern with a minority in Parliament.

In either event we need to think through the consequences for the region and for South Africa in particular.  A Mugabe led regime in Harare will not be accepted by any of the major western nations.  The country will have to get urgent help to meet its needs for food imports, urgent help to stabilize its economy and bring inflation under control and immediate assistance with fuel and other essential imports.  Only South Africa could do so and if it was to avoid a complete collapse in Zimbabwe it would have to act to meet these essential needs very quickly.

But even if it did so, the added burden to the South African fiscus might be all that is needed to put the South African economy into a tailspin.  The Rand is trading at 8 to 1 against the dollar, inflation is up and rising and growth is sluggish at 3 to 4 per cent.  Whatever they do, we must accept that this year the winter crop in Zimbabwe is already a casualty of the delays in a transition, preparation for the crop in the summer of 2008/09 has not even started and therefore there is unlikely to be any recovery in food supplies this year.  Inflation is out of control at over 2 million per cent per annum and a wide-ranging economic collapse is well under way.

Under these circumstances any outcome on the 27th that leaves Mugabe in charge will trigger a mass exodus of economic and political refugees into South Africa.  Estimates put the net arrivals in South Africa from Zimbabwe at 750 000 in the past year.  In my own view a victory for Mugabe in any form in June, will lead to an exodus of not less than an additional 2 million people in fairly short order.  Do I really have to spell out the consequences of such an event on South Africa?  Yet there is no debate here about such a possibility after June 27th.  It is a nightmare scenario.

The tragedy of this situation is that it need not be like that.  If the SADC and South Africa stated right now that they would respect the outcome of the election and would expect everyone else to do so as well ?  including the present leadership in Zimbabwe, this would help.  It would reinforce the role of democratic elections as the only means for effecting regime change and respect for the views of the people when it comes to the selection of leadership.

Despite their reluctance to intervene in any active sense, South Africa has little or no choice when it comes to reigning in those in Zimbabwe who blithely talk of ?war?  if Tsvangirai wins.  Such rhetoric is simply unacceptable and the Mugabe team in Harare needs to be told that.

If Tsvangirai wins and is then allowed to take power as is his right, then the situation can be turned around in short order.  The international community has made no effort to disguise the fact that they would back a new democratically elected government in Harare.  They would step in and feed the country, they would back a stabilization program to curb inflation and get the economy onto a recovery path.  Most importantly the flight of people to South Africa would stop and be reversed as people decide to come home and participate in reconstruction and development.  This would reduce pressures on the South African social system and economy and give much needed breathing space.

It is not too late to get this right, but South Africans need to recognize that they have as much at stake in Zimbabwe on the 27th June and its immediate aftermath as every Zimbabwean.

Eddie Cross
Johannesburg, 13th June 2008

By R.W. Johnson in Zimbabwe

The sequence of events that produced the current deadlock in Zimbabwe began on 11 March last year when Morgan Tsvangirai and a number of other members of the Movement for Democratic Change were arrested, tortured and beaten. Robert Mugabe had banned all MDC meetings and rallies in the hope of suppressing the MDC completely before this year’s elections. The local churches entered the fray and organised a prayer meeting in Highfield, a suburb of Harare. Tsvangirai drove to the meeting, but found that the area had been cordoned off by riot police and the meeting closed down on presidential orders. Informed a little later that a large number of civic leaders and MDC activists had been arrested and were being held at Machipisa police station in Highfield, he drove there straightaway. As soon as he arrived, he was pulled from his car and his head repeatedly slammed against the wall by police. Inside, the police used rifle butts, army belts, whips and sjamboks. ‘They were mostly targeting my head and my face,’ Tsvangirai recalled. He passed out three times and was revived with buckets of cold water so that the beatings could continue, the most determined assailant being a woman with an army belt.

The pictures of Tsvangirai as he emerged several days later from hospital, his face so swollen that he couldn’t see, went round the world. He had had a fractured skull and needed several transfusions. One of his bodyguards, who had been beaten along with him, later died of his injuries; another MDC activist was shot dead; scores more were tortured and beaten. But it was the TV footage of Tsvangirai, smuggled out of the country, that elicited international protest so vociferous that even Thabo Mbeki, Mugabe’s most loyal supporter, politely asked, through his deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, that the Zimbabwean government ‘ensure that the rule of law including respect for rights of all Zimbabweans and leaders of various political parties is respected’. Mugabe realised the harm the footage had done and tracked down the cameraman who had taken the pictures, Edward Chikombo. His body was discovered some days later.

These events brought about a change in tactics by Mugabe and Mbeki. Mbeki’s fundamental position was that, as a fellow national liberation movement (NLM), Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF had to be maintained in power at all costs.

According to this theory, the NLMs of southern Africa are those movements which used armed struggle to overthrow white rule – that is, the ruling parties of Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. In Mbeki’s and Mugabe’s minds Western imperialism is engaged in a struggle to overthrow the NLMs and restore, if it can, the preceding regimes – apartheid, colonialism or white settler rule. In so doing it will use various local parties as lackeys: Inkatha and the Democratic Alliance in South Africa, Renamo in Mozambique, Unita in Angola – and the MDC in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is the weakest link here, which means that the other NLMs must defend Zanu-PF to the death, for if Zimbabwe ‘falls’ South Africa will be the next target.

Ever since the Zimbabwe crisis first erupted in 2000, Mbeki had seen it as his role to support Mugabe (while insisting that he was using ‘quiet diplomacy’ to solve the problem) and give him time to carry through his land revolution (i.e. to get rid of the white farmers), extirpate the imperialist lackeys of the MDC, and restabilise his country, with Zanu-PF then regaining its de facto position of unchallenged single party in a re-equilibrated Zimbabwe. The problem was that Mugabe had damaged his economy beyond repair by getting rid of more than 90 per cent of the white farmers. Decline continued rapidly and the MDC, despite endless persecution, refused to disappear. The reaction that followed last year’s attempt to make them do so shook the Southern African Development Community (SADC), most of whose member states are not ruled by NLMs, do not share the paranoid imaginings of Mugabe and Mbeki about the reimposition of white/colonial rule, and are in any case heavily dependent on Western aid. SADC has adopted a code of conduct, fully up to Westminster standards, which is supposed to apply to all elections within SADC, and Western donors (who finance much of SADC’s affairs as well as those of its constituent states) wanted to see it observed. SADC, though normally deferential to South Africa, the regional great power, was now pushed by its Western donors, as well as by some among its own ranks, to work towards a mediated resolution to the Zimbabwe crisis, with no more flare-ups of state terrorism. Mbeki was, accordingly, appointed as mediator.

Mbeki led the SADC team in long negotiations which eventually produced a new Zimbabwean constitution, a new Electoral Act and amendments to the Public Order Act. The number of parliamentary seats was increased from 120 to 210, the president’s right to name 30 extra MPs was abolished, and it was determined that to win the presidential election a candidate must get at least 50 per cent of the votes in the first round or, failing that, face a run-off within 21 days. SADC emphasised that they did not wish to be embarrassed again by the state-sponsored violence that had marred previous Zimbabwean elections and Mugabe agreed to allow in election observers – but only from SADC and other friendly states thought likely to sign off on a Mugabe victory as ‘free, fair and credible’.

In effect, this new dispensation represented a deal between Mbeki and Mugabe that was supposed to see Zanu-PF returned to power, though by more genteel means. Mbeki, who is concerned that Zanu-PF rule has become too identified with Mugabe, wanted the 84-year-old to stand down in favour of a younger moderniser, Simba Makoni.

When Mugabe refused, Makoni, with Mbeki’s tacit support, ran as a dissident Zanu-PF candidate, hoping to split the vote sufficiently to make it through in the second round.

But on one thing Mbeki and Mugabe were agreed: Tsvangirai and the MDC must not be allowed to win. And they were confident that the new arrangements were sufficiently loaded against the MDC to guarantee that. ‘Sure, they thought Mugabe would win and SADC would be quite happy with that,’ Willias Mudzimure, an MDC MP for Harare, told me when I was there for the election. ‘They had seen how Mugabe had the rural vote locked up solid and the idea was that by increasing the number of parliamentary seats, there would be a large increase in the number of rural seats, all of which Mugabe would win. And because there’s been such a reign of terror in those rural areas in past elections, frankly we often couldn’t get good candidates to stand for us there – people were just too scared.’ The prospects were good. The MDC would, as in the past, be barred from all state-owned media, including radio and TV. With the only MDC-supporting newspaper, the Daily News, suppressed and its presses blown up, the MDC would be at a huge disadvantage in getting its message across. Besides, the MDC had split and the two rival movements were running against each other: one an essentially Ndebele party, with support in rural Matabeleland, the other Tsvangirai’s majority faction. This was bound to be a major handicap for the opposition, now so conscious of its problems that it was frantically appealing for the election to be postponed for three months.

The state had complete control of the electoral register – large numbers of dead and fictitious voters were registered to vote – and the MDC was denied any access to it. This was enough for Mugabe and Mbeki to feel that a Zanu-PF victory could be guaranteed even in a peaceful election, though, leaving nothing to doubt, Mugabe decreed at the last moment that policemen could be allowed inside the polling stations to ‘assist’ voters. It was all so outrageously one-sided that when election day closed some of the SADC observers could be seen vigorously shaking their heads even as their mission head gave his blessing to it all.

But the best-laid plans . . . It is unlikely that Mbeki paid attention to the detail of the administrative changes made by his SADC underlings, but a few of these were crucial. One was an amendment to the Public Order Act which removed the need to get police permission to hold private meetings. In the past the police had used their powers to prevent MDC leaders from meeting local activists but now these meetings were classified as private, which made it much easier for the MDC to organise on the ground. This was particularly important in rural areas in hitherto safe Zanu-PF territory, where the Tsvangirai forces staged huge rallies and ultimately won many seats.

Willias Mudzimure told me that in the rural areas two factors had been crucial. ‘Mugabe’s land reform has been a catastrophe, so he couldn’t talk about that. Moreover, when he tried to win votes by giving out tractors and farm implements these just went to the fat cats who now have the land. People were saying: “Is that the meaning of independence, that these people must now eat for us?” So he fell back into talking about the 1970s war against Ian Smith. This meant nothing at all to young people and it addressed none of today’s problems.’ Second, in past elections Zanu-PF had distributed food and seeds to those with a Zanu-PF card: if you didn’t vote Zanu-PF you didn’t eat. ‘But now everyone has a party card and there’s still no food because the state simply has no more resources.’ And when Mugabe tried to blame Britain and sanctions for this, ‘people would say, you’ve said that before but what are you doing about it? They were in no mood for more excuses.’ Moreover, Zanu-PF was clearly destabilised by Simba Makoni’s campaign. To hear a senior Zanu-PF figure admit that none of what Mugabe said about the harm done by Britain and targeted sanctions was true, and that the dire economic situation was entirely Mugabe’s own fault, was deeply disillusioning for the party faithful. Normally the combination of violence and ballot-stuffing has meant that the campaign didn’t matter: this election was different.

Ultimately, allowing a peaceful campaign in the rural areas completely undid the assumption that those areas were ‘safe’ Zanu-PF territory.

What no one seems to have noticed was that SADC’s drafters had inserted into the new Electoral Act Section 64(1)E, requiring all votes to be counted at the polling station where they were cast and the results, witnessed by the party agents, to be posted publicly on a V11 form outside the station. This gave the opposition a virtually foolproof way of detecting and preventing cheating, and MDC election agents were instructed to photograph the V11 forms to provide cast_iron proof of each polling_station result. Nobody doubts that without this provision the election would have been stolen in the usual way. But neither Mbeki nor Mugabe has any experience of free competitive elections and, initially, they simply missed the significance of the new requirement.

Some eighteen hours after the polls closed the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) gave the Zanu-PF Politburo its first private prediction of the presidential result: Tsvangirai 58 per cent, Mugabe 27 per cent and Makoni 15 per cent. In fact these estimates were based on too narrow an urban sample and were too favourable both to Tsvangirai and Makoni, but the message was clear: Mugabe had lost. Enraged, he ordered the ZEC to declare him elected with 53 per cent. He was also angry at Makoni’s ‘treachery’ and demanded that his vote be reduced to 5 per cent. This produced resistance both from the ZEC and from the army, police and intelligence chiefs. The ZEC objected that manipulation of the results on such a massive scale would be too obvious, while the security chiefs were concerned that the country might become ungovernable if the popular will was so blatantly flouted.

At this stage Mbeki, continuously on the phone from Pretoria and with his own emissaries in Harare, intervened.

Could not the results be ‘adjusted’ so that Tsvangirai was brought back under the 50 per cent mark, while Mugabe got 41 per cent and Makoni 10-12 per cent? With no candidate getting more than 50 per cent there would have to be a run_off; Mugabe would then withdraw, leaving Zanu-PF to rally behind Makoni and, provided the security forces were given a strong role in the way the run_off was conducted, Makoni could be given just over 50 per cent and Tsvangirai kept out. This was acceptable to all parties except Mugabe, who again refused to stand down.

Dismay and indecision followed – and serious discussion of a military coup. In the end that idea was discarded for fear that it might tempt a British military intervention. The interesting thing is that on the day after the election, key Mugabe supporters – including his cousin Perence Shiri – concluded that Mugabe could no longer save himself, despite his furious avowals, only the week before, that he would ‘die in State House’ and that ‘Morgan Tsvangirai will never rule Zimbabwe.’ Not long before he died, the former Rhodesian premier Ian Smith said that he hoped to live to see Mugabe’s funeral. He didn’t. But now even Mugabe’s closest supporters were conscious that the old man was mortal.

Meanwhile the parliamentary results dribbled out, disguising for as long as possible the fact that the opposition had won 111 seats to Zanu-PF’s 96 (with three seats – all safe MDC – vacant). There were discussions about Tsvangirai heading a government of national unity that would include some Zanu-PF ministers and grant complete amnesty to Mugabe and his henchmen, but the real struggle was going on inside Zanu_PF and the armed forces. It was a desperate time to be trying to write about the crisis since there was rising euphoria but no news. One heard that Mugabe’s family had flown out to Malaysia. But the guards outside State House were still there with their bayoneted automatic rifles. In the end I decided there were other ways of checking. Some discreet inquiries revealed that the Mugabe supporter and ‘self-styled emissary of Beelzebub’, as one British judge described him, Nicholas van Hoogstraten, had left the country on election night. One had to assume he knew something. I drove along Churchill Avenue, past Normandy and Arundel Roads and Dunkirk Drive – echoes of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia – and stopped outside a house guarded by a soldier with a rifle. The house belonged to the former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, convicted in absentia of genocide but shielded for many years now by Mugabe. The soldier advanced threateningly. I said I’d come to see Mr Mengistu. ‘He is not in.’ I asked if he’d gone away and was told that he had and that, like Titus Oates, he ‘might be away some time’. Mengistu’s alternative choice of exile is probably North Korea. So, if he’d done a runner, Mugabe really was in trouble.

It was not until the Thursday after the vote that we got the picture. Perhaps foolishly, I had that morning sallied into MDC headquarters at Harvest House in central Harare, a place watched by the security police and frequently raided by them. Failing to find Tsvangirai, I sat around making a nuisance of myself until I was slapped on the back by a bevy of MDC MPs from Bulawayo whom I knew. They’d arrived for their caucus meeting only to discover – the usual MDC shambles – that the meeting had started five minutes before, 12 miles away, and that there was no transport to take them there. I put my car at their disposal and we happily drove there together. I then went to Meikles Hotel to hear the MDC’s press conference. The lounge there is always abuzz with journalists, but I don’t like it. It’s full of spies and electronic surveillance, so I left quickly and went back to the lodge where I was staying.

That was the day, it turned out, that Mugabe finally reasserted control: the crackdown began. A few minutes after I’d left Harvest House the riot police raided it, smashing things up as usual and arresting anyone remotely like me. Then, not long after I’d left Meikles, the police surrounded the place and arrested the journos they found inside. Finally, that night, 30 armed police arrived at the lodge where I was staying. They had caught some journalists at a neighbouring lodge and arrested the owner. He, poor man, was sitting on the back of an open lorry, being taken away God knows where, his lodge now shut down for the newly invented crime of harbouring journalists. I was lucky enough to bluff my way through this visitation. After the police had gone I poured myself a large drink, reflecting that three close shaves in a single day meant I was pushing my luck. But the story was now quite clear. Mugabe would do whatever it took to stay in power.

Which is what has happened: ZEC officials arrested, appeals to overturn the parliamentary results, a presidential recount even before the first count has been released, and a new campaign of violence against anyone suspected of not having voted for Mugabe. In other words, Mugabe has rejected Mbeki’s new softly-softly approach and we’re back to ballot-stuffing and terror. Mbeki has, of course, tried frantically to cover for Mugabe. (‘There is no crisis in Zimbabwe,’ he told journalists after an hour’s talk with Mugabe. He was, as he spoke, holding hands with Mugabe.) Even within South Africa there has been ridicule and protest. Mbeki’s credibility is threadbare.

Where do we go from here? In two directions. First, by June inflation in Zimbabwe will reach 500,000 per cent. All normal life will become impossible sometime before then. Mugabe’s rule can continue so long as there are well_armed and well_paid men willing to protect him, but we are now close to the Papa Doc model and rule by the Tonton Macoute. Mugabe has suffered a huge blow to his legitimacy both domestically and internationally and clings on only by brute force. Even Mbeki and SADC can’t really pretend otherwise.

Second, Mbeki’s great rival, Jacob Zuma, has picked up the issue and adopted a more critical attitude towards Mugabe. Zuma could be president of South Africa in a year’s time and there is a good chance that he will pull the rug from under Mugabe. One way or the other, the end game in Zimbabwe could be near. Whether it will be accompanied by a final paroxysm of terror as Mugabe realises he is cornered is an open question. Mbeki, having been heavily voted down by the ANC at its Polokwane conference in December, is also cornered. He and Mugabe clearly live in a paranoid world all of their own. There’s no knowing what they might attempt before the final Götterdämmerung.

Perhaps the most important thing about the election was that, because Mbeki and Mugabe had miscalculated so spectacularly, Zanu-PF was caught off-guard and for several days there was complete uncertainty. That period provided an aperture through which Zimbabweans could glimpse an alternative future – and many did. It was clear that, with a new democratic government, there would be immediate British and American help, quickly followed by the EU, the World Bank and IMF, with the emphasis on food aid and the restabilisation of the currency. One consequence would be that Zimbabwe would cease to be a client state of South Africa and instead become more generally dependent on developed country donors and investors. Doubtless, Mbeki and Mugabe would see this as a victory for neocolonialism, though one is bound to say that even if the prospect was described in those terms, ordinary Zimbabweans would happily vote for it. And, in no time at all, as the Zimbabwean economy revived, South African companies of every kind would move in.

This merely highlights the absurdity of the Mbeki-Mugabe theory. To be sure, for many years their parties took an orthodox Marxist-Leninist line and aimed to set up people’s republics in their liberated states, replete with Soviet and Chinese advisers. Had this occurred and the Cold War continued, then doubtless it would have been correct to see the major Western powers as intrinsically hostile to these new Cubas_in_Africa. But nothing of the sort happened. Not just Zimbabwe and South Africa but all the other states ruled by NLMs have retained mainly capitalist economies, and everywhere a new black middle class is attempting to establish itself. Indeed, the intransigence of the Zanu-PF leadership derives essentially from the fact that it has used state power to enrich itself and is determined to hang onto its enormous gains.

When such an elite feels its power threatened, it tends to fall back on its original self-definition as a national liberation movement. If one posits the problem in those terms then it follows that the defeat of an NLM can only mean the triumph of the forces of colonialism and apartheid which it came into existence to fight. In that view national liberation, once achieved, is the end of history. There can never be a point when it would be desirable for the gains of liberation to be lost, so the theory provides a watertight rationale – and a legitimating self_righteousness – for the ANC, Zanu-PF and the region’s other ruling NLMs to cling to power indefinitely. Seen this way the drama of Zimbabwe may indeed prefigure a more general crisis as these movements age and decay.

We have seen enough of movements that believe they will remain to see the state wither away or to usher in a thousand-year Reich to know that bringing them to accept a less intransigent view of themselves is seldom a gentle business.

London Review of Books

24 April 2008

R.W. Johnson, an emeritus fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, now lives in Cape Town.