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IWPR
By Chipo Sithole

CONSTRUCTION has been completed of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe’s controversial £5 million mansion in Harare’s leafy northern suburbs.

The 25-bedroom private house, built by a Serbian construction company Energoproject to a Chinese architectural design, has two lakes in its 44 acre landscaped grounds and is protected by a multi-million pounds radar system.
Approach roads to the mansion, topped by a Chinese-style roof clad in midnight blue tiles from Shanghai, are off limits to the general public.

It is understood that some 50 police riot response officers guard the Mugabe palace on a 24- hour basis in cooperation with the much-feared Central Intelligence Organisation, CIO.

Sources in the President’s office told reporters that chemical and biological sensors are strategically positioned on all approaches to the mansion, around 30 kilometres north of the centre of Harare.

“The sensors are supplemented with radiological detection equipment, including radiation pagers on the belts of some of the law enforcement officers,” the presidential source said. “CAAZ (the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe) is policing the area above the house [by helicopter and spotter plane] to ensure that it is a no-fly zone. In addition, the CIO is providing dogs that can sniff out explosives.”

The project, which took three years to complete, is the most visible symbol of how Mugabe and his acolytes have prospered while more than five million of his 11.5 million people are near starvation and will need food aid this year, according to the World Food Programme.

Zimbabwe Standard

ZIMBABWE has several bodies dealing with elections and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) believes this is a ploy to confuse voters.

David Coltart, the MDC secretary for legal affairs, says the government has successfully hoodwinked the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) into thinking the recently enacted Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Act had levelled the electoral playing field. He said the SADC Guidelines governing democratic elections were clear on the need for non-partisan electoral bodies.

Part of the SADC guidelines stipulates that member states shall: “Establish impartial, all-inclusive, competent and accountable national electoral bodies staffed by qualified personnel, as well as competent legal entities, including effective constitutional courts to arbitrate in the event of disputes arising from the conduct of elections.”

Coltart listed the electoral bodies as the Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC), the Delimitation Commission, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), the Observers’ Accreditation Commission and the Registrar General’s Office, which registers voters.

“The Electoral Supervisory Commission is appointed by Robert Mugabe and therefore cannot be impartial. The Delimitation Commission is appointed by Mugabe and therefore cannot be impartial, the Observers’ Accreditation Commission is headed by the chairperson of the ESC, who is an appointee of the President. The Registrar General is accountable to Cabinet. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission goes some way towards being inclusive in its nature but it does not include civic society, churches and the public. In any case, its chairperson is appointed by Mugabe.”Coltart said

The ESC is a product of constitutional provisions and was formerly headed by Sobusa Gula-Ndebele, now the Attorney General.

A commissioner in the ESC, Joyce Kazembe, told a workshop organised by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) in Bulawayo last week that although soldiers would not supervise elections in March, the ESC would continue to employ them at their secretariat.

Seattle Post

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has increasingly turned to hard-line military commanders to cow his factious country and now is relying on them to ensure a ruling party triumph in March 31 parliamentary elections.

He appointed a former colonel to run the new Election Commission last month and passed laws that placed the army in charge of polling stations and allows military officers to serve as election officials.

Analysts said it follows a trend in recent years of militarizing Zimbabwean society. Mugabe clings to power, they said, by placing men who unflinchingly follow orders in charge of strategic industries and ministries, the secret police, justice system, youth militias and food and fuel distribution.

“The strategy is to get people in key positions that share the hard-line attitudes of the government,” Lovemore Madhuku, the chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly, an opposition coalition of churches and unions, said in a telephone interview.

“You appoint the military because they follow orders. They will do what is required,” Madhuku said.

Senior military officers are closely aligned politically to Mugabe, a strongman who has led this country since independence in 1980s, and many have lucrative business ties to ruling party stalwarts.

“Mugabe has never been comfortable with people not in the military. As his popularity has progressively declined, he has run back to the military for his own protection,” said University of Zimbabwe political scientist John Makumbe. This proclivity became more pronounced this winter as the ruling party fractured in December from political infighting.

“He is a frightened man,” said Makumbe, speaking by telephone from the United States, where he is a guest lecturer at Michigan State University. “The infighting shook him greatly. His party is weaker than ever before, more vulnerable. It has enemies without and now seemingly enemies within.”