NEWS of a second Khampepe report, the analysis Judge Sisi Khampepe wrote with Judge Dikgang Moseneke for President Thabo Mbeki of the skewed 2002 Zimbabwean presidential election and which he has sat on since then, has got a number of people hot under the collar.

The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) is baying for Mbeki’s blood. And murmurs are growing among the African National Congress’ tripartite alliance partners for a more robust approach to dealing with Zimbabwe and President Robert Mugabe. They may be reassured, however, to know that the same report has also been a source of great frustration to Mbeki.

In 2004, Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) dropped a bid to force Mbeki to release the report under access to information legislation. While the party did not say at the time why it was giving up the chase, senior party member David Coltart now says it was under pressure from Mbeki.

“He quashed our attempts to use South African legislation to compel the production of the report. He was very angry about it. It was a warning that it would endanger their relationship.”

The report by Khampepe and Moseneke, now deputy chief justice, cited a range of problems with the 2002 poll that the MDC said allowed Mugabe to steal the election. These included a failure to properly constitute the Electoral Supervisory Commission; a change in the Electoral Act to give Mugabe, rather than parliament, authority to amend electoral law; and the change of wording in the Electoral Act to stymie challenges to election findings.

Mbeki has not publicly released the report. Back in 2002, his government endorsed the view of SA’s official observer mission led by businessman and former ambassador Sam Motsuenyane that the poll “should be considered legitimate”.

According to Advocate Jeremy Gauntlett — who represented the MDC in its challenges to the election report and who wrote about the report earlier this week — it confirms details of abuses that were widely reported at the time.

However, analysts say it was very unlikely Mbeki would have ever released such a report.

To publicly criticise Mugabe with it would only have alienated him and reduced any negotiating hold Mbeki had with him, both as neighbour and, from last year, as the nominated negotiator for the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
“One of the more striking things about Zimbabwe has been the polarisation of the two sides and the lack of a middle ground. Mbeki’s tried to occupy that middle ground,” says Chris Maroleng, a senior researcher at the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies.

“This limits his ability to make what you could describe as telling public condemnations of the clearly skewed political environment.”

Mbeki’s spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga agrees.

“Our efforts are concentrated solely, wholly on ensuring that the mediation, the current mediation process succeeds. We are not going to be diverted to discuss things which for all intents and purposes militate against the success of that process. We can’t. It would not be responsible,” Ratshitanga says.

Mugabe, who reacts with “intransigence” when faced with public criticism, would have labelled Mbeki a lackey of western powers and refused to deal with him, had he released the Khampepe-Moseneke report, Maroleng says.

“President Mbeki has tried to manoeuvre this minefield and steer away from this trap. In many cases it’s resulted in a decline in confidence in him by the MDC because they don’t see the efficacy of the approach”.

Where Mbeki’s approach has succeeded, says Maroleng, was in the successful agreement late last year to amend Zimbabwe’s constitution to make changes ahead of this year’s election that saw individual polling stations release their own results locally, as well as curbing Mugabe’s ability to nominate members of parliament of his choosing.

While this policy of working at the level of structural reform did bear some fruit, it did not “tinker with the small aspects” such as election violence and left Mbeki open to charges that he was a willing accomplice of Mugabe, Maroleng says.

Siphamandla Zondi, an Africa analyst at the Midrand-based Institute for Global Dialogue, says it is likely Mbeki used the report at the 2002 SADC leaders’ summit in Dar es Salaam. At that summit, the SADC’s organ on politics, defence and security co-operation paid a level of attention to the Zimbabwean problems that put Mugabe on the defensive.

“Where did the organ get all this information?” Zondi says. “It must have been this report fed into the organ. It was unusual for the SADC to pay so much attention to this topic. There was coverage. Mugabe was uncomfortable with the attention paid to his country. He was uncomfortable with the SADC saying it was in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe. That was different from saying they were in solidarity with the government of Zimbabwe.”

Not everyone agrees with the idea that Mbeki used the report.

“As far as I’m aware the report was buried,” says Coltart. “We don’t have any information it was ever used anywhere .”

The DA, which also tried for the release of the report, says the same thing.

“I don’t think he would have acted on it at all,” said Joe Seremane, DA federal chairman and a member of Parliament’s committee on foreign affairs.

“I don’t see why it should be under wraps. I wouldn’t want to keep under wraps something that shows where the problem lies,” he said.

Despite the recent noise by African National Congress president Jacob Zuma and ANC allies about a harder line on Zimbabwe, Maroleng says a Zuma presidency would not differ much in its foreign policy.

“Jacob Zuma was the deputy president during the exact period we’re looking at and I don’t recall him during that period making statements that were significantly in variance to what he approach was.

“It has more to do with our domestic politics than really a foreign policy imperative.”

Morgan Tsvangirai was right to decide to return to Zimbabwe to contest the second round runoff. His departure, over a month ago, to lobby the governments of southern Africa was initially a shrewd move, and did much to undermine Thabo Mbeki’s attempts to shield his embattled friend Robert Mugabe. But staying away from his homeland, when his supporters were being killed, tortured and chased out of their homes, was a different matter. Had Mr Tsvangirai spent the time instead visiting the war veterans’ victims in their hospital beds, he would have been able to keep the region’s focus on what is happening in Zimbabwe.

The leader of the Movement for Democratic Change is not going back on his own terms. He has failed to achieve a halt to the violence, a new Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), unfettered access for international observers or a peacekeeping force manned by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). Indeed the justice minister Patrick Chinamasa said yesterday that his country would not allow in election monitors from western countries or the UN until sanctions were lifted.

However, Mr Tsvangirai’s principal handicap is that he has not yet got an assurance about the timing of the run-off. Since he lost control of parliament, Mr Mugabe and the rump of Zanu-PF have been playing for time. The delay allowed them to chase 40,000 farm workers from their homes, kill at least 22 people and torture 900 others, according to the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights.

MDC stalwarts, like the senator and human rights activist David Coltart, say that the violence will not work. Even the massacres of 20,000 people carried out by a North Korean trained army unit in 1985 failed to deter Matabeleland from voting for the opposition, he said. Perhaps it is for this reason that Zanu-PF is still prevaricating. Mr Mugabe can not be sure that he has yet bludgeoned enough of the opposition into submission. The ZEC has yet to set a date for the second round and Zanu-PF has said it could be delayed for up to a year. The SADC must insist that the run-off happens within weeks, not months.

The MDC leader is returning with some advantages. Mr Mugabe no longer has a majority in parliament and if he goes back to ruling by decree, his orders can be annulled. In fact, the opposition is only 30 votes away from the numbers needed for impeachment. Another major task for Mr Mugabe is to find more than 200,000 votes, if he is to overturn the results of the first round. There is, still, all to play for if the run-off is held promptly. It is up to Zimbabwe’s neighbours to ensure that it is. Otherwise, they too will have blood on their hands.

Even if President Mugabe bludgeons his way into a victory in the runoff he will find governing during a sixth term untenable, warns Zimbabwean opposition legislator and legal expert, Mr David Coltart.

He spoke as it finally dawned on election weary Zimbabweans that a second round of voting was now necessary after the country’s electoral body on Friday announced the long awaited outcome of the March 29 presidential elections.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) released the results over a month after the polls were held giving opposition leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai the lead, but not the simple majority needed to avoid a runoff with Mr Mugabe, the second-place finisher.

Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) rejected those results as fraudulent and on Saturday held off a decision on its participation in the second round.
The opposition has threatened that it will not take part in the runoff because it believes that it won outright.

Legal experts say the MDC has no option but to contest the runoff, which must be held after 21 days as a decision not to take part would automatically hand victory to Mr Mugabe.
Analysts warn the run off will not be a run in the park for the opposition as evidenced by the current wave of political violence in rural areas that human rights groups and aid agencies say has killed several people and forced hundreds to flee their homes. Rights groups and the MDC say the violence is mainly aimed at opposition activists or people who voted for the opposition and is designed to intimidate them into voting for Mr Mugabe in a second round.

But some analysts say if the 84 year old manages to use violence to win the runoff he would not be able to rule the country with the iron fist that has characterised his 28 year-old rule.

Mr Coltart who is also the legal affairs secretary of the smaller faction of the MDC believes the end to Mr Mugabe’s tyrannical rule is near regardless of the outcome of the next round of voting.

He said the veteran ruler’s unbridled power had been already been shaken by the ruling Zanu PF’s defeat in parliamentary elections.

The two MDC factions now control parliament with 109 seats against Zanu PF’s 97 in the 210 member assembly - the first time the opposition has controlled parliament since independence.

“The political logjam has been finally broken,” Mr Coltart said. “And as is the case when a logjam is broken on a swollen river it is going to be tumultuous but Mugabe’s dictatorship is coming to an end.”

The new balance of power hammered at the watershed polls meant that the opposition will select a speaker of parliament from its own ranks and for the first time it is in a position to block any legislation that Mr Mugabe might try to rail road through the assembly. “He will need us to push through the national budget for example,” Mr Coltart observed.

“Mr Mugabe will also not be able to rule by decree because even legislation introduced through the notorious Presidential powers must be ratified through parliament before they come into force.

“That’s a harsh legal reality that Mugabe faces even if he tries to rig his way into a sixth term.”

But a more unsettling reality for Zanu PF hardliners who are reportedly pushing for the second round because they do not want a compromise with the MDC is that the opposition just needs to find 30 ruling party MPs willing to impeach Mr Mugabe.

According to Zimbabwe’s constitution, a two thirds majority is needed to impeach the president and this adds up to 140 MPs. Amid growing disaffection in the ruling party ranks, dramatised by former Finance Minister, Dr Simba Makoni’s decision to run for the presidency in the elections, finding dissenting MPs in Zanu PF will not be that difficult for the MDC.
Mr Coltart added: “We don’t know how many Zanu PF MPs support Makoni or Tsvangirai so finding the 30 MPs to support the impeachment will not be a difficult job to do.”
Besides, the political intricacies, Mr Mugabe would be confronted by an inclement economic environment.

With inflation galloping towards 200, 000 per cent and neighbouring South Africa and Botswana who have been credited with keeping Zimbabwe’s already battered economy limping are showing signs they are no longer prepared to support an unpopular regime in Harare.

Botswana’s new President Seretse Ian Khama has already banned the export of fuel in bulk by Zimbabwe’s informal traders who have kept the troubled country’s cars on the roads since fuel stations ran dry around 2000.

Meanwhile, the MDC is still undecided on whether Tsvangirai will participate in the runoff. On Saturday it called on the nation’s neighbours to verify the vote count from the first round saying Friday’s results were fraudulent.

Brutal campaign

Mr Tsvangirai’s deputy Ms Thokozani Khupe said the party still believed a runoff was unnecessary, maintaining the opposition leader won outright on March 29.
“We still need to be convinced before we participate in a runoff,” Ms Khuphe said.

International observers have questioned whether a runoff would be legitimate, given the violence the opposition has faced. The opposition’s top leaders, including secretary general Mr Tendai Biti and Mr Tsvangirai, have been staying out of Zimbabwe for fear of arrest by security forces who have vowed that the opposition will rule the country even if it wins elections.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said “the ruling ZANU-PF party, the army and so-called war veterans have conducted a brutal state-sponsored campaign of violence, torture and intimidation against (opposition) activists and supporters.”

Not guaranteed

But Mr Coltart who led research into the 1980s massacres in southern Zimbabwe blamed on government forces during the 1980s said despite the violence Mr Mugabe was not guaranteed of victory.

“I have information from credible sources, a group of doctors which says 600 people have been hospitalised throughout the country because of the ongoing violence,” he said.

“The violence does not guarantee that Mugabe will win the elections because we have a scenario where in 1985 the people of Matabeleland voted overwhelmingly for the opposition despite the violence unleashed by the army.” An estimated 20 000 people were killed in Matabeleland and Midlands, which were opposition strongholds in the 1980 at the hands of the North Korean trained army unit.

Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, came under growing pressure yesterday to take part in a second round of the country’s presidential election.

His party, the Movement for Democratic Change, insists that Mr Tsvangirai won the vote in March outright and that no run-off is necessary. It is threatening to boycott the second round called by the Zimbabwe Election Commission, which claims that Mr Tsvangirai beat Robert Mugabe but fell short of an absolute majority.

A boycott would automatically hand victory, and a sixth term in office, to Mr Mugabe, 84.

David Coltart, a senior MDC figure and a newly-elected senator for Bulawayo, said: “I have spoken to individual leaders and supporters and some are adamant that they should not participate.

“I think we all have no choice but to participate although the brutality is just shocking.”

Armed gangs of Mr Mugabe’s supporters have been attacking opposition activists for several weeks in a campaign of intimidation designed to boost the president’s chances of re-election. The two factions of the MDC have agreed to campaign in the second round for Mr Tsvangirai, who has stayed outside Zimbabwe in the weeks following the poll.

John Mattison, a political commentator, said: “He’s got to participate because otherwise Mugabe just becomes president. Having come this far, I don’t see that he has any other choice.
“It’s a terrible double bind. You know people are going to die. You know there’s going to be corruption and rigging and he’s at risk from that.”

As leaders of the MDC met to decide on their next move, an insider said it was considering what conditions to demand for its participation.

“International supervision should be mandatory – the whole African Union should be allowed in,” he said. “Over and above that there has to be an end to politically motivated violence.”
Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party may not agree to, or abide by, such terms without substantial pressure from Zimbabwe’s neighbours.

Some observers believe the threats of a boycott are a negotiating ploy by Mr Tsvangirai, who has visited several regional African leaders in recent weeks.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), is not Tom Cruise. Tendai Biti, the MDC secretary-general and one of Zimbabwe’s top lawyers, says Tsvangirai, the former mineworker who looks set to rule Zimbabwe, is no actor, nor is he manipulative in the way that politicians often are.

When the MDC split because of Tsvangirai’s decision to vote against the introduction of the senate to the houses of parliament in October 2003, Biti was forced to choose between the leadership of Tsvangirai and the leader of the faction, Arthur Mutambara.

“I chose Morgan because he is a human being with very strong points and weak points also. If he makes mistakes you know they are bona fide and this draws loyalty out of people. What you see is what you get,” says Biti.
Our political proclivities determine what we see and Mugabe’s people did a good job of discrediting Tsvangirai. But even as the crisis over the March election rages, (despite the MDC’s clear win), we are undoubtedly looking at a winner.

Tsvangirai has brought 99 seats to parliament, while Mutambara’s faction gained 10. Together this makes a majority and it means that Mugabe has no power to vote for a national budget, no small feat; certainly a vindication for Tsvangirai.

This week after the two MDC factions united against the repressive regime, Mutambara said in an interview: “…given the attempts by [Robert] Mugabe to sabotage the votes of the people, we are closing ranks and saying we are going to work together in defending the people’s vote. On March 27, we voted for change. Morgan Tsvangirai is the embodiment of that change.”

Tsvangirai embodies revolution. He has always spoken truth to power. He took on Mugabe, and was, with Arhcbishop Pius Ncube in the 1980s and Edgar Tekere in the 1990s, a singularly powerful voice of opposition. The son of a bricklayer, the eldest of nine children, he was forced to abandon his education to support his family. This was possibly the making of Tsvangirai, but it has also been his albatross.

His character and leadership are under scrutiny - on the continent, where he has moved under the shadow of Mugabe’s Pan-Africanism - and at home where struggle credentials were valued as highly as the tertiary education he lacked. He was made to suffer by Mugabe because he had not fought in the chimurenga war: the Struggle for Independence.

In 1972, in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, job reservation for whites was in place. But the white men had gone to war with Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) soldiers and Tsvangirai got a job in a textile factory, where his union work began.

In a 1990 interview with Richard Saunders, a Canadian academic turned journalist and researcher, Tsvangirai said: “I was one of the few, maybe 10 or so, “lucky” blacks to have been offered a “white” job at the mine.

“I worked at Trojan [mine] from 1975 to 1985, but within that period I had risen up to the rank of plant foreman, almost up to the level of general foreman of the plant, which was considered a middle management position.”

He has not lost that common touch. He is powerful and he is popular - for his empathy as well as for his errors. Solomon “Sox” Chikohwero, the vice chairman of the Zimbabwe Diaspora Forum, who was the MDC’s head of intelligence until 2003, says: “I don’t know if Morgan is a Christian - he acts like a Christian, though I have never seen him going to church. If he finds something on someone he takes a long time to act on it. He is empathetic, as if he was always trying to feel how I am feeling.”

Daniel Molokele, a human rights lawyer who, as head of the student union of the University of Zimbabwe in 1997, worked with Tsvangirai when he was the secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), is less flattering: “At the moment he is the only credible leader to challenge Mugabe but that does not mean we should treat him like an angel. He is not holy, he is not infallible, he is not the pope.

“He is affable and has a good personality. You can work with him, but he is not a decisive leader and as a chairperson he does not come across as a strong leader.”

For a time, recently, after the refusal of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF to release the election results, Tsvangirai went into hiding, leaving Biti to face the music. Biti made it plain that the movement “was not in exile but in transition”. Tsvangirai has been criticised for this absence, unfairly, given the violent tactics of Zanu-PF, say those close to him.

There have been problems. But you cannot forget, says Brian Raftopolous, who worked closely with Tsvangirai at the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s, that Tsvangirai has led the party, which he merged from the trade unions and civic organisations, in the most difficult of circumstances and managed to shift people from a liberation movement.”

Raftopolous, who is the programme manager of Transitional Justice in Africa at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, says Tsvangirai has been immensely brave. “He has the capacity to win the people over. He has a very good touch with ordinary people. He relates to people’s struggles and has had problems with intellectuals in his party as have many political parties on the continent.”

In May 2006, at a Mutambara faction rally in London, Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, a Harare MP, accused Tsvangirai of having failed to respect the party’s constitution. She said he had used coercion and violence to hold onto his position, Mugabe-style.

Welshman Ncube, the MDC’s former secretary-general who joined Mutambara’s MDC, said that 24 youths had been recruited as a kind of mini-army to defend Tsvangirai’s cause. Two months previously, David Coltart, an MDC senator and shadow justice minister, left Tsvangirai’s faction to join Mutambara’s. Coltart says that he disagreed with Tsvangirai’s handling of intra-party violence. “I did not accuse him of being personally involved in the violence. I felt that he was not direct enough in stamping it out,” he said.

Raftopolous says the violence within the MDC should be seen within the wider context of Zanu-PF’s repression and violence. In response to its own organisational problems, the MDC set up its structures along parallel lines with Zanu-PF’s, he says. Still it faced problems with accountability, corruption, uncontained violence and tribalism. These, and problems with Tsvangirai’s “kitchen cabinet”, are on the table.

But, these are stressful times for the MDC. And Tsvangirai has concentrated on - and virtually succeeded in - getting Mugabe out of power.

George Bizos, the advocate who defended Tsvangirai in his high-profile treason trial in 2004 in Harare, says that Tsvangirai’s political nous is evident in the fact that he has resisted resorting to violence in the face of Zanu-PF’s attacks.

“He understands his constituency, is in touch with what the people want,” says Bizos. “Like [the late] Walter Sisulu, with whom he has in common a limited education, he is street smart. He is intelligent, but his lateral intelligence is less developed than Sisulu’s, but nonetheless is there,” says Bizos.

The treason trial essentially was the result of a set up. Tsvangirai, Ncube and Renson Gasela, the shadow agriculture minister, had been contracted by Ari Ben-Menashe, whom Bizos describes as an Israeli “professional fraudster”. Unbeknown to Tsvangirai, Ben-Menashe had already been hired by Mugabe. According to Tsvangirai, Ben-Menashe invited him to a meeting to discuss fundraising. Unbeknown to him the conversation was being videotaped. When Ben-Menashe mentioned plans to “eliminate Mugabe”, Tsvangirai became suspicious and immediately left. On the basis of doctored evidence from the video, Tsvangirai was charged with treason.

“He [Ben-Menashe] held himself out as a former Mossad agent, an arms dealer, a commodity merchant and influential peddler, all of which our clients had naively believed was true”, Bizos wrote in his 2007 autobiography, Odyssey to Freedom.

Bizos says: “In the witness box Tsvangirai was brutally honest with himself, he paid tribute to Mugabe for his role in the liberation struggle.” He had after all started out in Zanu-PF, before Mugabe’s aversion to trade unions became apparent.

Saunders remembers Tsvangirai in the 1980s as “a brave, charismatic figure. Morgan was younger and more dynamic. He managed to get people to rally around him. Strategically he was always thinking ahead all the time and was willing to compromise with his enemies.”

My own impressions of Tsvangirai bear out this bravery. He was the secretary general of the ZCTU when I interviewed him in August 1999. It was the week after the union had endorsed the national MDC, which had been formed that May as a broad civic movement, but not yet as a formal political party. Tsvangirai was among the leadership candidates.

He pointed out the sheer drop from his 10th floor office in Chester House in Harare’s Speke Avenue. The previous December he had almost been thrown out of the window. He was beaten by men who he was certain were sent by Mugabe.

In 1989, he was detained repeatedly. Among his alleged sins was the accusation of spying for the South African government. “I have grown used to harassment. I don’t care if I get killed. We cannot live like this, we cannot go on being so poor.”

In 1990 inflation was soaring, to what was considered an intolerable 63,7 percent and the International Monetary Fund was getting anxious and calling for a cutback of 30 percent. Current unofficial estimates place inflation for the year to April 2008 at higher than 400 000 percent.

I had asked Tsvangirai then if Zimbabwe was on the brink of revolution. “Of course,” he’d answered.

The fruits of that revolution have yet to be realised. The land issue that Tsvangirai earmarked in 1999 is yet to be resolved. He spoke specifically in our interview about the consideration of skills in land redistribution.

Tsvangirai was pleasant, respectful, very sympathetic. He apologised profusely that the lift at Chester House was broken and that I had walked the 10 flights to his office. He was warm, accessible.

He was focused. He answered the questions. He did not flaunt the knowledge I have learned he has in good measure. Tsvangirai, by the account of those in the know, reads widely, focusing on the lives of leaders, in particular on Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton. He is an avid reader of The Economist, New African and Newsweek, and newspapers.

Mugabe’s characterisation of him as an ignoramus is ridiculous.

Stephen Chan, professor of international relations at the University of London and dean of law and social sciences at the School of Oriental and African studies, who in 2005 published a series of interviews with Tsvangirai, says he has “an instinctive intellectual sense”.

Biti describes him as quick on his feet. Everybody I have asked to characterise Tsvangirai has said that he is a good listener.

Some say that this listening is inclusive, considered and useful. For some this deference to the collective and to consensus is a weakness. But when he leads a party that is so directly the opposite of Mugabe’s tyrannical rule, an alternative style of politics will be necessary, says Raftopoulos.

A criticism: Tsvangirai is impressionable. He takes as gospel what the last person he has spoken to has said. Biti suggests that “… perhaps he listens too well. He will have to restrict entry at his door when he assumes office.”

Chan, the author of several books on Africa, including Grasping Africa: A Tale of Tragedy and Achievement (2007), proposes that Tsvangirai ” … give more time to framing his responses and to reflection after having talked to a wide number of people”.

Whether he is cut out for the hot seat is not yet clear, but Biti says he is confident that Tsvangirai “…has this quiet acknowledgment of the fact that he has a duty and a responsibility and that history has chosen him”.

Bizos, and many others I have spoken to say that Tsvangirai is “a good man”. In Africa and elsewhere, such a man is notoriously hard to find. And he is humble, by all accounts.

Chan says that while Tsvangirai, like most of the Southern African Development Community leaders, likes a bit of bling, at home he tends his garden in shirt sleeves. He enjoys a quiet night in. He is attached to his wife and his six children. Hopefully, he is never going to become a “Big Man”. He’s learned the hard way that Africa has had one too many of those.

But it is early to judge him as a ruler, Raftopolous says. “We must give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Taking part would allow Mugabe to steal election, opposition leaders fear

Zimbabwe’s opposition leaders face an agonising dilemma today as they meet to decide whether to contest the second round of the presidential election against President Robert Mugabe.

On Friday, nearly five weeks after Zimbabweans went to the polls, the country’s nominally independent election committee finally announced that Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had beaten Mr Mugabe. The margin of victory, 47.9 per cent to 43.2 per cent, contrasted with independent counts which put Mr Tsvangirai much closer to an overall majority and the MDC’s claim that he had won 50.3 per cent of the vote, giving him outright victory.

Since the poll, on 29 March, MDC spokesmen have insisted that to take part in a run-off would amount to allowing Mr Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party to steal the election. The long delay in releasing the results, and the wave of violence that has engulfed former Zanu-PF strongholds, heightened suspicions that the government wanted to manipulate the first-round results and ensure victory the next time. “They needed to narrow the gap, so that they can justify a ‘win’ for Mugabe in the second round,” said David Coltart, an opposition senator.

No date has yet been announced for any run-off. But the decision now facing Mr Tsvangirai and his colleagues is whether to refuse to take part, which would immediately hand victory to Mr Mugabe, or to go ahead, knowing that thousands of MDC supporters have already been assaulted, burned out of their homes, and in some cases killed. Since the poll, the MDC leader and his deputy, Tendai Biti, have remained outside the country, mainly in South Africa, for fear of arrest or attack. Mr Tsvangirai, who was badly beaten a year ago during a “prayer rally”, has hinted that he fears for his life.

In Johannesburg Mr Biti reflected the difficult choice facing the MDC. He acknowledged that a boycott would give another term to the 84-year-old Mr Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for the 28 years since independence. But he said there could not be a run-off because Zimbabwe “is burning”, with economic collapse as well as violence. He said the only way out of the stalemate was a power-sharing government led by Mr Tsvangirai, but with no role for Mr Mugabe.

International organisations have also cast doubt on whether conditions for a fair contest exist. Georgette Gagnon, Africa director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), said: “The ruling party’s bloody crackdown on the opposition makes a free and fair run-off vote a tragic joke. The violence must stop and an impartial process be put in place before any new vote is held.”

Apart from the violence in rural areas, police have arrested 15 to 20 officials of the Zimbabwe Election Commission on charges of vote-rigging for the MDC, raided the offices of the country’s largest independent poll monitoring group, and staged a raid on the MDC headquarters in Harare, where hundreds were arrested.

The situation is worst in Zanu-PF’s former strongholds in northern and eastern Zimbabwe, where it lost many seats to the MDC, forfeiting its parliamentary majority, and narrowly holding on in several others. Zanu-PF youth militias and “war veterans” have sought to punish voters for their disloyalty, with the crackdown reported to be most violent in Mashonaland East, near Harare.
Tiseke Kasambala, an HRW researcher who has travelled throughout Zimbabwe during the crisis, told The Independent on Sunday that during her latest tour, ending a week ago, she had been unable to return to several areas she had previously visited. Mashonaland East was “totally inaccessible”, she said. “There are roadblocks everywhere, and nobody is allowed in or out. We have been told of people sleeping in the bush because their homes, crops and animals have been burned.

“Some have been injured in beatings, but are unable to get treatment. People have been forced to attend meetings and swear allegiance to Zanu-PF. If they don’t, they are assumed to be MDC and beaten.”

Ms Kasambala said she had seen burnt homesteads in Mashonaland West and Central provinces, and interviewed refugees in the eastern Manicaland region who spoke of widespread intimidation. “If the MDC goes for a run-off at this time, it can’t win,” she concluded, adding that Human Rights Watch was increasingly concerned at the humanitarian crisis caused by “state-sponsored violence”.

The UN children’s agency, Unicef, said there were growing reports of families fleeing their homes and added that aid groups were finding it increasingly difficult to operate.

THE newly elected MDC Senator for Khumalo constituency, David Coltart says there is need for the transformation of both the public and private media into critical and analytical institutions of the government of the day and opposition political parties.

Addressing journalists in Bulawayo during the eve of this year’s world Press Freedom celebration, Coltart said the MDC if elected into power during the forthcoming presidential run–offs will allow the public media to criticize its shortcomings.

“If the MDC forms the next government, we will create enabling conditions for the independence of both the public and private media. Allowing the media to be in the hands of government or the ruling party is an unhealthy situation for democracy,” said Coltart who is a lawyer.

Coltart said in the post Mugabe era there is a need for the private media to critically probe opposition parties and the government unlike the present situation where the private media is seen as a mouthpiece for the opposition.

Coltart said the MDC government will push for the amendments of media laws in the country—in view of creating freedom of the press and more players in the industry— which is presently dominated by state controlled media.

The Senator said he strongly believes that foreigners should not be allowed to control the press, but funding of newspapers and radio stations from foreigners should not be restricted.

If elected, Coltart said, the MDC government will put more resources into the training of journalists as well as promote investigative journalism.

Meanwhile the Minister of Information and Publicity Sihkanyiso Ndlovu is expected today to address the journalists on World Press Freedom day.

MDC members fail to make a decision as their leader Morgan Tsvangirai remains abroad amid fears for his safety

After a day of top level meetings, Zimbabwe’s main opposition party yesterday failed to make a decision on whether it will take part in presidential run-off elections scheduled for next month.

Observers now fear that there is a fierce dispute within the Movement for Democratic Change - whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai is staying out of the country for his safety - over whether to boycott the second round of voting that was announced on Friday by Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission.

Tsvangirai claimed an outright majority after the polls and the MDC says the results released this weekend were doctored. Election officials announced on Friday that Tsvangirai had beaten Mugabe in the 29 March presidential poll but failed to win the absolute majority necessary to avoid a second ballot.

The MDC has accused the officials of rigging the results, which showed Tsvangirai won 47.9 per cent of the vote to Mugabe’s 43.2 per cent - falling short of the 50 per cent needed to avoid a runoff. The party says Tsvangirai won the election outright with 50.3 per cent of the vote and that Mugabe’s rule is over.

But the MDC has not signalled how it will handle the run-off. Many believe that participating would legitimise Mugabe’s rigging and worsen a volatile situation in the country where 20 of its supporters have been killed, thousands displaced and hundreds are in hiding from marauding ruling party militias.

Yesterday a senior member of the smaller faction of Zimbabwe’s opposition warned Tsvangirai against a boycott, saying it would effectively hand the presidency with some legitimacy to Mugabe. David Coltart, whose party led by Arthur Mutambara announced last week that it would back Tsvangirai if he took part in the run-off, said that the veteran opposition leader had no option but to contest the run-off.

‘My advice is that he should participate in the run-off under protest,’ said Coltart, who is also the MDC secretary for legal affairs. He said that, despite evidence that Zanu-PF was preparing for a violent fightback, the odds were still stacked against Mugabe winning because of the bad economic situation.

The election stand-off has been accompanied by a wave of political violence in rural areas that human rights groups and aid agencies say has killed several people and forced hundreds to flee their homes. Rights groups and the MDC say the violence is aimed at people who voted for the opposition and is designed to intimidate them into voting for Mugabe in a second round.

‘I have information from credible sources, a group of doctors, which says 600 people have been hospitalised throughout the country because of the ongoing violence,’ said Coltart.

There are also signs of widening divisions within the ruling Zanu-PF. Simba Makoni, a former finance minister in Mugabe’s cabinet, stood against him in the 29 March vote and is thought to be garnering support within his old party for a possible government of national unity, a plan ruled out by Tsvangirai.

Mugabe’s waning popularity among the rank and file in his party could work against the 84-year-old leader’s electoral chances, as will the pressing need for action to tackle the inflation rate - now estimated at 200,000 per cent - unemployment, the health crisis and food and energy shortages within Zimbabwe.

Both the police and the civil service are becoming increasingly disaffected.

Information and Publicity Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu last week disrupted a function for journalists celebrating World Press Freedom Day when he took issue with the organisers after they asked him to respond to a keynote address by Senator David Coltart.

Ndlovu, who arrived shortly before the meeting at the Bulawayo Press Club ended, claimed he had been invited as guest speaker and accused the organisers of “disregarding protocol”.

He dashed to the high table, where the speakers were sitting, drawing boos from journalists who had been given the opportunity to ask questions after Coltart of the Arthur Mutambara-led MDC addressed them on the prospects of press freedom in the new political dispensation.

Coltart is the Senator for Khumalo in the city.

‘You cannot invite the government and expect me to just come here and respond to an address by someone else,” Ndlovu protested. “It now looks like I am gate-crashing… the government does not gate-crash. Others gatecrash into government.”
After about 10 minutes, Ndlovu appeared to calm down but only to protest for another five minutes, when he was asked to address the journalists as the patron of the press club.

He walked out after it was explained to him that he had confused the dates as the journalists had invited him to be the main speaker at a function organised by the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, scheduled for yesterday evening.

Later in the evening, Ndlovu was involved in more drama when a ZBC news crew from Bulawayo was accused of stealing his cellphone during a press conference he held at a hotel.

The phone was reportedly recovered stashed in the wheel of the news crew’s car and the journalists were still being questioned by the police yesterday morning.

ZBC was hosting a party for its employees at the same hotel which was attended by top management, including chief executive officer, Henry Muradzikwa.

The incident happened in full view of journalists and about five police officers were quickly dispatched to deal with the case. But police were not immediately available for comment.

Meanwhile, Coltart told journalists the outcome of the recent elections gave Zimbabweans a rare “window of opportunity” to push through reforms to guarantee freedom of expression and ensure the public media was not used to advance partisan politics.

He said there was real danger that if checks and balances were not put in place soon after the new government comes into power, the new leaders would fall into the same trap of wanting to control everything.

Suspiciously delayed poll results, army trucks fanning out through villages, police ransacking opposition party offices, and reports of torched huts and broken-limbed civilians _ such has been the ugly face of democracy for nearly a decade in Zimbabwe, and by now most political experts have given up asking whether millions of Zimbabweans will ever reach a violent breaking point.

Indeed, even as fresh reports of government brutality seep out of Zimbabwe in the wake of the still-unresolved March presidential election, there are virtually no reports of unrest on the streets.

A call for a mass protest two weeks ago by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which claims it won the vote, fizzled as usual. Hungry citizens queued obediently for bread in the capital, Harare, last week even as cops rounded up hundreds of opposition activists. And the lone report of a violent backlash _ an alleged attack by opposition members on a rural army barracks on Tuesday _ remains unconfirmed. Human rights activists suspect it may have been planted by the regime of strongman Robert Mugabe to justify further arrests.

This deep well of stoicism _ or, as some critics sneer, passivity _ in Zimbabwe’s victimized population has for years been a source of puzzlement to many Africa analysts, humanitarian workers and foreign journalists, who contrast Zimbabweans’ seemingly inexhaustible acceptance of suffering with deadly explosions of electoral fury elsewhere in Africa, most recently in Kenya.

“This is the single greatest mystery of Zimbabwe,” marveled a Western diplomat in Harare who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. “In most other countries there would’ve been riots and violence years ago. But not here. These people are just too nice.”

The latest test of Zimbabweans’ restraint came on Wednesday, when the United Nations Security Council announced that it would not dispatch a special envoy to Zimbabwe to help resolve the election standoff. South Africa and China opposed the measure.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian group Human Rights Watch reported that Mugabe’s security forces were intensifying violent attacks on opposition voters in remote areas. In Manicaland province, the Zimbabwean army was equipping Mugabe-allied “war veterans” with trucks and rifles, the group said.

So far, at least 20 people have been killed nationwide, the opposition says.

Such organized brutality is by no means new.

Mugabe launched similar attacks in 2000 against white farmers and their black workers, as part of the government’s disastrous land reform policy. Since then, there have been two more dubious elections, reports of “rape camps” for opposition activists, and an economic meltdown that has seen 150,000 percent inflation - the highest in the world - 80 percent unemployment, near-starvation and such critical fuel shortages that ox wagons have replaced ambulances in some areas.

Through it all, hapless Zimbabweans - who favor sunny first names like Goodwill, Anyhow, Primrose and Everjoy - have managed to behave, if not like Africa’s Tibetans, then at least like the continent’s peaceful and law-abiding Canadians.
Theories for this abound: Some point to the lack of standing armies or a warrior caste in Zimbabwe’s majority Shona culture. Others cite the debilitating effects of malnutrition and a huge HIV/AIDS epidemic. Still others note that millions of frustrated young people, the natural base for an armed opposition, have simply voted with their feet. Between a quarter and a third of Zimbabwe’s 12 million people have fled political intimidation and economic ruin in their country to seek work in South Africa, Botswana or other neighboring states.

Another explanation is death by a thousand cuts. After eight years of watching their world fall apart in slow motion, Zimbabweans are ground down, deeply demoralized. An oft-repeated word in their conversations is a toneless “hopefully.”

“We’re also too proper - more English than the English,” said Foster Dongozi, the Secretary General of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists, naming Zimbabwe’s former colonial overlord. “Instead of picking up weapons, we go to court.”

Dongozi wasn’t kidding.

“Mugabe has made a specialty of sham legality, lots of useless laws, phony rules that mean nothing,” he said. “He knows how far to push us. He knows how to distract us with a veneer of normalcy. He knows how to beat us way down, but not so far as to embarrass his African neighbors.”

As an example of calibrated repression, Dongozi told how two Zimbabwean journalists were arrested after the elections on spurious charges of arson; an electrical fire had charred a bus in Harare that day. When that charge didn’t stick, police simply switched the crime to attempted murder, and finally settled on public mischief. The reporters remain in jail.

Meanwhile, the city of Harare was hosting an arts festival this week just as pro-government militants armed with guns and machetes were reported to be fanning out to torch the distant homes and granaries of villagers.

“Right now Mugabe may be desperately trying to provoke us into a low-grade civil war,” said David Coltart, an opposition senator from the western Zimbabwe city of Bulawayo.

“We won’t take the bait. That’s where our people’s tradition of rejecting violence pays off,” Coltart said. “It’s taken us longer to go the Martin Luther King route, but I think we’re close to winning.”

Others weren’t so sure.

Reuters reported Wednesday that Zimbabwean election officials would soon announce that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had indeed won the election - but without the majority needed to assume power. A runoff would then need to be called, and Mugabe could spool out that process for months.

“This is a regime that won’t ever give up power easily,” said Elinor Sisulu, a Zimbabwean human rights organizer who lives in South Africa. “It’s going to require extraordinary things from us to get it out.”