The Daily Telegraph
21st Jun 2000
Anonymous
THREE days remain before Zimbabweans vote in a general election after a campaign which has been both a disgrace and an honour to their country. The disgrace falls on President Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF.
They have conducted a wicked war of intimidation against their opponents, from white farmers and their employees to candidates of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Murder, human torching, beating, gang rape and arson have been the instruments of their terror.
The government has ignored a court ruling on the illegality of occupying white farms. It has emasculated the Electoral Supervisory Commission to the extent that yesterday it decreed that only one neutral Zimbabwean monitor would be allowed at each of the 4,600 polling stations on Saturday and Sunday. The commission had trained 20,700 for this task. Since he lost a constitutional referendum in February, Mr Mugabe has shown he will stop at nothing to keep Zanu-PF in power.
British concern at these flagrant violations of human rights has been dismissed as neo-colonialist, the typical retort of a tyrant seeking to divert attention from his own misrule. Shamefully, the Blair government has in part compromised with this nonsense by ceding to Mr Mugabe’s dictate that no Britons be included in the election monitoring teams. Give a villain an inch and he will take a mile; Harare has now barred 17 Kenyans and Nigerians as observers on the absurd charge that they are British plants.
Xenophobia has also been extended to the World Council of Churches, the International Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, and two American non-governmental organisations, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute; all have been refused a monitoring role, cutting the total number of international observers from 600 to about 400. According to David Coltart, the MDC’s legal secretary, in such dire conditions even a team of 1,000 would be inadequate.
Honour is due to the opposition, led by Morgan Tsvingarai. Their courage and resourcefulness in the face of government-sponsored terror have exceeded all expectations. On Sunday, they drew 25,000 people to a rally in a Harare football stadium. Elsewhere, as David Blair, our Harare correspondent, reports in today’s news section, they have devised more unorthodox means of campaigning. The latest opinion poll predicts they will achieve an absolute majority in the House of Assembly.
A MDC victory would be richly deserved. However, it would be wrong to underestimate the determination of Mr Mugabe and his henchmen to defy public opinion. Government predictions that the opposition will win only three seats, the same as in the dissolved parliament, suggest that if Zanu-PF cannot persuade voters, it will rig the poll. The monitors, too few and tardily deployed, may not be able to prevent such gross irregularities but they must cry out whenever they occur. No shred of legitimacy should attach to Zanu-PF’s attempt to steal the election from the people of Zimbabwe.