General Says Mugabe Rival Is a Threat to Zimbabwe

New York Times

By Celia W. Dugger

June 23, 2011

As regional leaders push for free and fair elections in Zimbabwe, a high-ranking general in the country’s army has vowed that the security services will ensure that President Robert Mugabe, 87, remains in power, calling his chief political opponent a “national security threat” who “can only be dealt with by people in uniform.”

“President Mugabe will only leave office if he sees it fit or dies,” a state-controlled newspaper, The Herald, quoted Brig. Gen. Douglas Nyikayaramba as saying in an article on Thursday. The general added, “We will die for him to make sure he remains in power.”

The general justified the military’s involvement in politics by describing Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Mr. Mugabe’s longtime rival and opponent in a presidential race, as a “major security threat” who “takes instruction from foreigners.” Mr. Mugabe reluctantly agreed to share power with Mr. Tsvangirai after a discredited election in 2008.

“Soldiers are not going to sit back and watch while the foreign forces want to attack us,” the general was quoted as saying.

The remarks were the most public declaration of the army’s determination to interfere in elections. Senior officials in Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, have been saying much the same thing privately for months. Human rights groups say the military is already deploying soldiers in rural areas to intimidate those who would vote against Mr. Mugabe.

Nelson Chamisa, the organizing secretary for the Movement for Democratic Change, Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, said the general’s statements were “basically a declaration of war on the democratic forces.”

“When they look at our leader Morgan Tsvangirai as a security threat,” Mr. Chamisa said, “it means that they’re trying to argue that he’s a legitimate target for either elimination or to be in harm’s way.”

M.D.C. leaders said the statements in Thursday’s Herald reinforced their belief that elections held without international monitoring and strict conditions would almost certainly lead to a repeat of the violent 2008 elections in which Mr. Tsvangirai’s supporters were tortured, beaten and killed. That campaign of violence was organized and directed by a clique of military commanders and senior politicians close to Mr. Mugabe.

The same circle was with Mr. Mugabe in the war to end white minority rule. Zimbabwe gained its independence in 1980, and Mr. Mugabe has remained in office ever since. Echoing statements by military commanders before the 2008 elections, General Nyikayaramba said he would not serve under a commander in chief who had not fought in the liberation war. Mr. Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader, did not fight in the war.

The prominent display of General Nyikayaramba’s comments in The Herald was not the only recent indication of the leanings of the president’s loyalists.

This week in The Sunday Mail, another state-controlled newspaper, a Politburo member, Jonathan Moyo, wrote that the leaders of Zimbabwe’s neighbors were wrong to be pushing for “an election road map” with stringent new conditions. The existing rules were sufficient to ensure fair elections, he contended. Efforts to push for such a road map “will raise national security issues which will have to take precedence over politics as happened after the March 29, 2008, elections in the run-up to the presidential runoff election.”

After Mr. Mugabe won fewer votes than Mr. Tsvangirai in the 2008 election, the military mobilized its violent drive to ensure that Mr. Mugabe retained power, forcing Mr. Tsvangirai to drop out days before the runoff. Mr. Moyo concluded his column with a warning that history risked repeating itself.

ZANU-PF and high-ranking military officials, fearful that Mr. Mugabe’s health is weakening, have been pushing hard for elections this year, but regional leaders, led by South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, have insisted that institutions to guarantee freedom of the press and a functioning electoral process must be strengthened.

Education Minister David Coltart, a leader in a small M.D.C. faction, said the hard-liners feared that ZANU-PF would lose if regional leaders imposed tougher electoral conditions.

“They know that free and fair elections are a kiss of death,” Mr. Coltart said. “The last thing they want is a new voter roll and the prospect of Zimbabweans in South Africa being allowed to vote. They’d all vote against ZANU, and none of them would be subject to intimidation as they sit safely in South Africa, far from thugs who could beat them up.”