Paul Ohia
27 June 2008
analysis
Lagos — Will today's presidential run-off in Zimbabwe hold? That is the million dollar question on the lips of many observers as Zimbabweans prepare for this controversial exercise.
The two principal characters - President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - have heated up the polity so much that the international community seems to be fixated on the Southern African country with every other thing becoming secondary.
Mugabe has vowed that the election must hold and then negotiation with the opposition and whoever is worried about the trend of events would commence.
The road to the present impasse started after the March 29 presidential election which saw Tsvangirai beat Mugabe by 47 per cent of the vote against the president's 43 per cent. The opposition victory was not big enough for them to lay claim to the presidency.
The president of the country has clung to power since 1980 and Zimbabwe has become a broken country, both economically and politically. Its inflation is the highest in the world and the Zimbabwean dollar, the country's currency, has no value. The Central Bank has just issued a 50 thousand Zimbabwean dollar note; well, the paper in which it is printed costs more than what it can be bought with that note.
Just yesterday, former South African president, Nobel Laureate and world statesman, Nelson Mandela, described the problem in the country as "tragic failure of leadership".
His words: "We had seen the outbreak of violence against fellow Africans in our own country and the tragic failure of leadership in our neighbouring Zimbabwe."
Another South African Nobel laureate and apartheid-struggle figure, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, spoke out in stronger terms, telling Australian television that Mugabe had "mutated into something quite unbelievable. He has really turned into a kind of Frankenstein for his people."
For many Africans, Mugabe is an anti-colonialist hero who finished with the racist white regime that had the power in the former Southern Rhodesia, and any foreign intervention would be seen as another colonial invasion.
United Nations' Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon urged President Mugabe not to hold the second-round run-off as planned, saying its result would not be credible.
Former colonial ruler Britain has been at the forefront of international pressure on Mugabe. It is seeking an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, an investigation into post-election violence, and has called for the election results to be issued immediately.
Additional calls for the election to be postponed have come from Kenya, Senegal, Botswana, Angola, Zambia, and the security troika of the Southern African Development Community - Tanzania, Swaziland, Angola and Nigeria.
President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa has maintained his controversial "quiet diplomacy," but Mbeki's spokesman said that a high-level negotiator had been sent to try to mediate a settlement, including the postponement of today's election.
But in his final campaign speech yesterday, Mugabe said he would be prepared to negotiate with the opposition after the election.
"Should we emerge victorious, which I believe we will, sure we won't be arrogant, we will be magnanimous and say 'let's sit down and talk,'" Mugabe said but MDC leader, Tsvangirai said negotiations would not be possible if Mugabe went ahead with the run-off.
The Zimbabwean strongman, in his usual iconoclastic style, even said he would be going to an African Union (AU) summit in Egypt next week "and I understand there are some people who are daring themselves for an antagony with Zimbabwe,".
In a retrospective glance, this hardliner attitude of Mugabe helped to win independence for the country in 1980 but it came under hard knocks when in 1999 he started to redistribute land from white holders (predominantly large farms) to 250,000 Africans. The legality and constitutionality of the process has regularly been challenged in the Zimbabwean High and Supreme Courts; however, the policing agencies have rarely acted in accordance with court rulings on these matters
This resulted in face off with Britain and degenerated to sanctions. The country started experiencing a hard currency shortage, which has led to hyperinflation and chronic shortages in imported fuel and consumer goods.
However, Mugabe claims that massive financial isolation through American, British and EU legislation such as the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA) of 2001 is the actual cause of hyperinflation.
But Zimbabwe's current economic and food crisis, described by some observers as the country's worst humanitarian crisis since independence, has been attributed, in varying degrees, to government economic mismanagement, government prohibitions on relief efforts from foreign NGOs (non-governmental organisations), a drought affecting the entire region, and the HIV /AIDS epidemic.
Zimbabwe's first elections took place on March 27-29, 1980. In accordance with the Lancaster compromise , black Zimbabweans competed for 80 out of the 100 seats in the House of Assembly with 20 seats reserved for whites. Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) won a majority with 57 seats, while Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) won 27 seats and Abel Muzorewa's United African National Council (UANC) won three. The Rhodesian Front won all 20 white seats.
This election was won through violence and the chief of the army. Peter Walls, told the then British Prime Minister Magaret Thatcher to annul it but she refused.
After several unsuccessful assassination attempts on Mugabe, he asked Walls, "Why are your men trying to kill me?" Walls replied, "If they were my men you would be dead."
All appositions to Mugabe since then have been of ethnic background until Tsvangirai emerged in 1999 due to worsening economic and human rights conditions. Observers believe that if not for the division that surfaced within opposition in 2003, it would have won the presidential election since and the sting that led to this was planted by Mugabe.
This informs the reason why many do not find it apt to listen when the sit-tight leader points an accusing finger to the West. Pundits believe that whatever happens today, Zimbabwe will never remain the same again and Mugabe has lost any iota of credibility he enjoyed both locally and internationally.
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mugabe could not sort out which colour diapers to wear, let alone a country.
Considering the elections held in Nigeria over the last 20+ years this opinion seems rather out of place and frankly stupid, unless of course the writer was paid to write it and he's "just doing his job". Bottom line, it's the role of the Zimbabweans to sort it all out, not Nigerians who seem to be having enough problems of their own.