Photo: SA Govt After 32 years in power, will Robert Mugabe try to fix one last election or stand down and give his party a five-year lifeline?
After three years of seemingly fruitless talks about a new constitution that would loosen Robert Mugabe's 32-year grip on power, Zimbabwe is reaching a decision point.
Despite the pressure being applied by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), led by South Africa's President Jacob Zuma, to adhere to an internationally agreed process of democratisation, Zimbabwe's political leaders appear to be preparing to abandon constitutional talks and hold a snap election in September or October.
Zimbabweans are bracing themselves for the announcement of an election, to be followed by a campaign of violence and another rigged result that will entrench Mugabe's rule over this beleaguered, bankrupt country for a further five years.
Insiders say the military are in charge, and there are reports that the dreaded youth militia, who answer directly to Mugabe's Zanu PF party, have already been deployed in the countryside to intimidate the population into voting for Mugabe.
This follows a pattern established in previous elections where Zanu PF operatives have beaten, tortured and murdered perceived opponents of the regime, mainly supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party. People told me that they were seeing faces in the rural areas they hadn't seen since the 2008 election.
I have just returned from a two-week tour of the country where I grew up and last visited during the 2008 elections. On that trip I watched Mugabe's political machine turn defeat at the polls into victory under the noses of international observers.
Now, four years on, the country is limping, unproductive, unkempt and unsustainable, while the clique who rule have found untold riches in the recently discovered diamond fields in the east of the country.
According to several farmers I met, Zimbabwe is still unable to feed itself and they are predicting an even more serious food crisis this year. The gigantic grain silos that I passed on my drive from Kariba to the capital Harare were once beacons of the most productive farming country in Africa. Now they stand empty.
This year Zimbabwe will depend on food aid and the import of a million tonnes of maize from Zambia. The cruel irony here is that the Zambian maize is being produced by displaced white Zimbabwean farmers who have been welcomed by a Zambian government that, a decade ago, was importing that maize from the very same farmers in Zimbabwe.
Evidence of a country running on empty is everywhere. In Bulawayo, the second city and an MDC stronghold, the streets are so pot-holed that drivers are nervous of driving at night lest their headlights miss a crater and they rip their wheels off. The electricity supply is erratic with long daily power cuts the norm.
And the country has neither a national currency - it now trades in the US dollar - nor a national airline. Air Zimbabwe ceased operating a proper schedule in February. It cannot fly abroad as its aircraft would be impounded for unpaid fuel and airport charges. Although it does fly occasionally between Harare and the Victoria Falls, the planes are all but empty.
Meanwhile, the political partnership forced on Mugabe by SADC after the last election has been largely unproductive. Morgan Tsvangirai, former opposition leader turned prime minister to Mugabe's president, has described the coalition government as 'a mule - stubborn, sterile and stupid'. What it has given the country is three years of relative stability while the two parties wrangle over a new, more democratic constitution, a new voting roll, a referendum and then free elections, all due to be delivered by March 2013.
It is this very process that Mugabe, his generals and Zanu PF hardliners are threatening to scupper. One insider told me that in a properly monitored election Zanu PF would be 'swept away and would thereafter cease to exist'.
These generals and political hardliners have calculated that the outside world is too pre-occupied with the global recession to be bothered about human rights abuses in far-away Zimbabwe, and having got away with widespread ballot-fixing (the Zimbabwe voters roll contains 3 million deceased citizens, all of whom doubtless vote for Mugabe) and campaigns of intimidation in previous elections they feel they may just about get away with this one.
It is a risky strategy as South Africa has threatened sanctions if Zimbabwe doesn't follow the agreed course of a new constitution, referendum and internationally monitored elections. Some inside the MDC - including Tsvangirai - believe that Mugabe cannot pursue this course because the South Africans have made direct threats to close the borders and shut the country down. Zimbabwe has a seven-day stock of fuel, 14-day stock of food and 40 per cent of its electricity is supplied by neighbours, mainly South Africa.
This would be a high stakes gamble, but one can never underestimate Mugabe.
At the forefront of everyone's minds is the issue of Mugabe's health. He is reported widely to be suffering from prostate cancer and has been seeing doctors in Singapore on a monthly basis for the past year. A combination of the treatment he receives and his advancing years means he regularly falls asleep in cabinet meetings.
But just as rumours spread that he was on his deathbed in Singapore in April, he appeared at Zimbabwe's Independence Day celebrations looking in good health and walked around the stadium for 30 minutes unaided, reviewing a military parade.
Mugabe's health presents a dilemma for his supporters. If he dies in office, his vice-president, Joice Majuru, will step in for 90 days and then face an election which Tsvangirai appears bound to win and by such a majority that it would be impossible to fake a credible Majuru victory.
At a stroke, this would spell the end of the Zanu PF rulers and their grip on diamond revenues. This scenario has convinced some in Zimbabwe that Mugabe will proceed on the path of a new constitution, a distasteful option but one that would give the current leadership a five-year breathing space.
According to Eddie Cross, the MDC's policy co-ordinator, Mugabe has no option but to follow the programme of democratisation. He believes that a deal is being done behind closed doors between Mugabe and Tsvangirai that will pave the way to Mugabe stepping down at the Zanu PF congress at the end of the year, and Tsvangirai running for president against Mugabe's anointed successor, probably Majuru, next March. The deal will stipulate that, whoever wins, the current coalition government would continue to operate for another five years.
The tensions over Mugabe's future are already apparent in a power struggle inside Zanu PF. Vice-President Majuru appears to be the strongest candidate to succeed Mugabe, but being seen as the (almost) acceptable face of the party by the MDC has made her an enemy of the hardliners. Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Defence Minister and a Mugabe confidant, announced in May that he was 'ready to rule' if chosen.
Will Mugabe bow out at the end of the year to give his cronies five more years of power? Or will he cling on to his last breath, believing that the Zimbabwe he created would collapse without him?
At his recent 88th birthday celebration, Mugabe declared: 'I have died many times. That's where I have beaten Christ. Christ died once and resurrected once.'
This is a man who surely will not go gentle into that good night, whatever the cost to his country.
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Graham_Boynton;
Well, we know you as the bitter Boer who never thought that you will ever be shown the door out of Zimbabwe. It is interesting to note that you have not changed; you still believe that white people are superior to blacks. By chasing you out of our country we wanted to prove to you and ALL your kith and keen that there is nothing special about you.
An entrenched system like the Rhodesia system needed to be destroyed COMPLETELY for it not to leave any trace that it ever existed. The process of destroying the Rhodesia system is on going and for the next 100 years we shall be removing bolt after bolt until even the Mosia-a-Tunya is named properly as such instead of being called the Victoria Falls.
Your fellow Boers that are now farming in Zambia are not in Zimbabwe and should NEVER EVER be allowed to come back to our country. We have given our backs to you and that is final. The best favour you can do for us and yourself is to just leave us alone to do what we know best; running our country effectively and efficiently.
The farm products that are being delivered daily to Mbare Musika are from black farmers who do not have the slightest of assistance that you used to get; without even paying back. Anything that we have today is ours and is in our hands and control. Any dreaming of wanting to come back to control our resources shall remain a rallying point and a point of resistant on our part.
Graham Boynton;
What the “people” meant when they said “they were seeing faces in the rural areas they hadn't seen since the 2008 election” are YOU and your fellow Boers that are going to them pretending to be concerned about their plight when in actual fact you want to re-colonise them once again.
They are seeing you only now after more than five years of not showing up. What this means is that you and your fellow CIA and MI6 agents that have been deployed SPECIFICALLY to destabilise our country are the ones scaring them.
The people of Zimbabwe know what you are capable of doing – exterminating them by use of various lethal weapons (chemical and biological), at your disposal, that include the HIV/AIDS virus, Cholera, foot-and-mouth, agent orange, dioxin, swine and bird flue viruses and what have you. The people of Zimbabwe have not forgotten what that Apartheid Boer President, Peter Botha, said in his speech to a Boer cabinet in 1985.
“…the White man is created to rule the Black man. Come to think of what would happen one day if you woke up and on the throne sat a Kaff*ir! Can you imagine what would happen to our women? Does anyone of you believe that the Blacks can rule this country?”
Peter Botha goes on to reveal thus;
“I wish to announce a number of new strategies that should be put to use to destroy this Black bug (black people are now “bugs”). We should now make use of the chemical weapon (underline CHEMICAL WEAPONS). Priority number one, we should not by all means allow any more increases of the Black population lest we be choked very soon. I have exciting news that our scientists have come with an efficient stuff. I am sending out more researchers to the field to identify as many venues as possible where the chemical weapons could be employed to combat any further population increases. The hospital is a very strategic opening, for example and should be fully utilized. The food supply channel should be used". (And the juicy part is); "We have enveloped excellent slow killing poisons and fertility destroyers”.
As if the above was not enough, the racist Boer Botha went on to say;
“…most Blacks are vulnerable to money inducements. I have set aside a special fund to exploit this venue. The old trick of divide and rule is still very valid today. Our experts should work day and night to set the Black man against his fellowman. His inferior sense of morals can be exploited beautifully. And here is a creature that lacks foresight. There is a need for us to combat him in long term projections that he cannot suspect. The average Black does not plan his life beyond a year”.
Just wanted you to know which strange faces, the people of Zimbabwe, in towns and in the rural areas, are seeing for the first time since 2008 and which are SCARING THEM!!
Graham Boynton;
Zimbabwe has never had and shall never have a so-called “dreaded youth militia”. Just like in all other countries of the world, Zimbabwe in general and ZANU-PF in particular has a youth wing whose purpose and pre-occupation is to campaign for its party and leaders. South African President Jacob Zuma was elevated to the presidency of both the ANC and the government by, through and because of the ANC Youth League led by Julius Malema.
I have never heard anyone (you included) saying that there is a “dreaded ANC youth militia” in South Africa. Why should the youth league be “dreaded” only when it is in Zimbabwe and ZANU-PF. MDC-T actually has a military wing (not militia) called Democratic Resistance Committees (DRCs) that was responsible for the attacks on police stations, maiming those two women police officers in their sleep; bombing bridges and trains; and cold-bloodedly killing police officers on duty.
This immediately exposes you as a bitter Boer who is myopically anti-ZANU-PF, its members and supporters and anti-President Mugabe. It is no secret that we are soon going to go for elections and the revolutionary party needs to campaign vigorously so as to counter propaganda, misinformation and disinformation from people like you.
The revolutionary party, therefore, has not even started deploying its youth members and supporters to campaign for President R.G. Mugabe. We have learnt from our mistakes and are now not going to seat on our laurels. The year 2008 taught us a VERY GOOD LESSON (in a bad way) and I am sure you know the saying; ‘Once beaten twice shy or the Shona version which goes thus, Tsuro haiponi rutsva kaviri!’
Graham Boynton;
I am hearing it for the first time that “South Africa has threatened sanctions if Zimbabwe doesn't follow the agreed course of a new constitution, referendum and internationally monitored elections”. When was this said and by whom? If there is any link for some of us to follow this story please provide!!
Who made these “direct threats to close the borders and shut the country down”? Or should we assume that this is the same “old trick of divide and rule” that you are employing once again to “set the Black man against his fellowman”?
The way I see it, before you or anyone else even provides the link, is that you are desperate to create tension between ZANU-PF and the ANC, thus, destroying the last two strong revolutionary parties of the liberation movement. That is why you have paddling the white lie that ZANU-PF is sponsoring Julius Malema to go to attend a conference in Britain.
It was all meant to create this tension and hence the envisaged fight that will spill over to economic warfare between our sisterly countries and brotherly people. I am sure you will agree with me that this same “old trick of divide and rule” has not worked.
However be that as it may, I do not think, even in his dream that Zuma would think about imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe. I do not know how much lucre you will have given him to agree to such a stupid proposal that is sure to also destroy him.
Our black brothers and sisters in AZANIA are fully aware that the current BIGGER FIGHT is not between Zimbabwe and imperialists but between the ANC (as a former liberation movement that is yet to liberate AZANIANS ECONOMICALLY) and remnants of Apartheid and their imperialist backers. South Africans, I mean the black AZANIANS, are FULLY aware of the Boer machinations in all this and will not abandon Zimbabwe.
What I know for sure is that Chamatama has in the past called on South Africa to “cut electricity supplies, cut trade and transport links to Zimbabwe to see if the Mugabe regime does not fall”. This was said live by Tsvangison on SABC’s ‘The Ambassadors’ programme and the interviewer was a Zimbabwean going by the name Daniel Makokera.
If that is what you are referring to then you are just day dreaming!!!
My brother Takunya_Ndebvu you have yet again done great research and made excellent commentary that should be read by all Africans, on the continent and in the Diaspora. It should be read especially by those brainwashed victims of white magic who spend all their time mouthing the western lies and distortions against the African leaders who have done the most to help the indigenous Africans regain their resources and their dignity so that they will not forever be on their knees begging the white man for assistance (aid, jobs, etc).
Thanks again for all the great work you’re doing. As the great “Brown Bomber”, Joe Louis, once said in another context, “We’ll win because we’re on God’s side”.
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