Thread: The Zimbabwe Situation

There are ominous developments in Zim, as the following piece by the Times newspaper aludes to. Is a situation similar to what happened in Kenya possible? Definitely. Are indications that ZANU-PF intends to rig the ballot? Yes, thare are too many inconsistencies, and reports of hundreds of thousands of ghost voters. Will SADC stand by and allow another election fraud to be perpetrated? We'll see, but let's pray not, although we should not expect too much from this grouping of old friends. They stand by each other in difficult times, and will not easily let the people hold sway.

Anyhow make up your own mind:

Jan Raath in Karoi, Zimbabwe

With elections only eight days away, President Mugabe looks like being overwhelmed by a wave of support for the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as the 84-year-old leader's grip on power falters.

Mr Tsvangirai's formidable backing in Zimbabwe's urban areas has been consolidated since the election campaign began five weeks ago and now, after a series of forays into the poverty-stricken rural areas where the ruling Zanu (PF) party has hitherto held control, it is clear that Mr Mugabe has a fight on his hands there, too.

On Wednesday Mr Tsvangirai pushed into Mashonaland West, Mr Mugabe's home province, to draw mostly large crowds of exultant peasants responding to his chant of chinja! - Shona for change - in a region where until very recently it would have been almost impossible for his faction of the Movement for Democratic Change to campaign.

In the small farming town of Karoi, 124 miles (200km) north of Harare, at least 8,000 people filled the local rugby ground to give the 56-year-old former national labour movement leader an ecstatic welcome, singing handidzokera shure (no going back) and waving red plastic cards to signify Mr Mugabe's “sending off”.

“It is unimaginable that we could have come to this place [before],” Mr Tsvangirai said in an exclusive interview after leaving St Boniface's Catholic mission in Urungwe district, where about 2,000 people respondedjoyously to his promise. “Bit by bit the rooster is going to be served up,” a reference to Mr Mugabe's symbol, the cockerel.

Mr Mugabe, by contrast, has been securing large numbers at rallies but by dragooning children and “rent-a-crowd” contingents, watched over by soldiers with automatic rifles and secret police. On Wednesday, after he held a rally 44 miles south of Karoi in his home town of Chinhoyi, I counted 11 heavy lorries, each laden with about 100 people, on the way back to the towns - some as far as 60 miles away - where they had been picked up.

About 18 miles outside Karoi a farmer said that Zanu (PF) had to call off a meeting with local officials on Sunday because only ten people turned up - in an area dominated by ruling party settlers occupying former white-owned land. “Zanu (PF) is finished,” he said.

In Magunje, a business centre near Karoi, Mr Mugabe cut short a rally last week after first the local electricity supply grid and then two diesel generators failed to power the public address system. “People at the back were shouting at him: ‘Can you see what is happening to the country?',” said one man who attended. Sources there said that two technicians of the national electricity utility were arrested on suspicion of switching off the power.

Last week a poll surprised analysts by reporting that a survey had given Mr Tsvangirai 28 per cent of the vote in the run-up to presidential elections on March 29. Mr Mugabe had 20 per cent and Simba Makoni, Mr Mugabe's former Finance Minister, 8 per cent. The election is being held simultaneously with parliamentary and local council elections. Mr Mugabe previously had been expected widely to be ahead.

The elation is overshadowed by what election watchdogs say is a determined effort to rig the ballot.

Mr Tsvangirai said that he was concerned about changes to the electoral law to allow policemen into polling stations, which could intimidate voters. He also said that there were too few polling stations in urban areas to cater for the large numbers of opposition voters. There are also fears about the hugely inflated voters' roll, which could disguise illegal ballots, and the denial of postal votes for three million Zimbabweans who have fled abroad from the economic collapse.

He also claimed to have evidence of an order to the state mint to print 600,000 postal ballots, permitted only for diplomats and members of the military serving abroad, when perhaps 20,000 might be needed. In addition, nine million ordinary ballot papers have been printed for an official electorate tally of 5.9 million voters.

Mr Mugabe's victories against the MDC in the last three national elections since 2000 have been dismissed by independent election observers as the work of violence and comprehensive rigging. With the climate of violence significantly reduced, “fraudulent activity may be his target now”, Mr Tsvangirai said.

“We will declare victory because the people will have won,” he said. Mr Mugabe would claim victory again but, Mr Tsvangirai said: “We know this is a people's victory which he is trying to deny.”

The MDC went to court to challenge its previous election losses but this time “we are not going to court,” he said. “If he steals the people's victory, what will the people do? They will not accept that.

“The people must defend their victory,” he said. He would not elaborate and declined to speculate on what might happen.

Yes, but .....! I will reserve my comments until the official outcome has been announced

Agree with Oneword. Let's wait and see.

Gentlemen - with all due respect, you are being naive. If only half of the accusations of vote rigging levelled by a large number of civic orgnaisations are true, the voting process is already comprmised. Read this, and wonder. Want to know something else? SADC is turning a blind eye to all of this:

http://www.theshebeen.org/governance...html#post10642

Not naïve - just careful. That the vote will be rigged is a fact! I am afraid of Tsvangirai winning and the whole of the armed forces causing wholesale mayhem!

I see your point - but this is exactly the reason why the vote MUST be free and fair, otherwise we will have another Kenya coming our way.....I'm not sure the people will stand for another stolen Mugabe and ZANU-PF victory. I suppose it's a catch 22 situation: Damned if the vote is rigged, damned if it isn't because then those people who benefit most from Mugabe's patronage (army, police, green bombers) will take up arms. In this respect I was glad the ANC sent a strong signal to the Zim security establishment: Respect the vote. Will it make a difference? Not sure. But still, the starting point has to be a free and fair election, either way. If the process is not legitimate and flawed then either option is a continuation of the status quo, and ZIm ends up in a deeper crisis. I feel I'm preaching to the converted.

The longer I look at the conumdrum, the more I am thinking of a sort of Super UNTAG that will not only supervise the elections, but RUN the election to the exclusion of all party participation. I am aware that this is completely taking away the independence, autonomy and territorial integrity of Zimbabwe, but I cannot think of any other way of how to have the playing field can be levelled to some extent. I know it is unpardonable interference in the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation. I also know that - were to have been a good idea at all - it is much too late. Typical 20/20 hind vision. Maybe just a type of Rhodes mentality coming through.

I trust that the UN and all other so-called "interested bodies" (and countries) take due cognisance of the events as from this week onwards to see exactly what should have been done.

Blather and invoking all kinds of laws may not always provide the answer needed.......

leave zimbabwe to the zimbabweans. they have to sort it out by themselves.

Sure johannes105 - if they can actually do that. Now who knows.

Here we are speculating that Mugabe and ZANU-PF will rigg the vote, and all indications so far is that they will.

But there seems to be a change in tone, if not heart.

Mugabe actually said at a ralley in Bulawayo today that he expects the MDC to win the vote. I couldn't believe my ears, but this is what he said: "This time we are sure the MDC is going to win, ZANU-PF is split, split into two and some of the top leaders have left,". Could this be the beginning of the end for Mugabe and ZANU-PF? Have they finally seen that their end has come? If so, then there is yet hope that MDC will win and the result will be accepted.

I think this is what Oneword is alluding to: The possibility that although the vote itself will be deeply flawed, the parties will accept an MDC/Tsvangirai victory. Picture this: MDC/Tsvangirai win the elections, Mugabe accepts defeat and urges his party and its followers and the security establihsment to respect the result. Suddenly he is the democrat, the hero who was villified (also by myself I must admit) and can parade himself to the world as such. Mugabe is thus rehabilitated te hero he proclaims to be and can retire as an elder statesman. All his critics are left with egg on theifaces. Or is Mugabe bluffing? How do you read his comments?

Shebeen posted this: http://www.theshebeen.org/governance...-election.html