Looking ahead

Amid charges of race-baiting to win elections, Zimbabweans turned out in record numbers to vote in the presidential polls which started last Saturday, writes Gamal Nkrumah
In one of the odd diversions to which Zimbabwean politics are prone, the country's news agenda has been taken over by an undignified argument about the validity of Saturday's presidential poll that is bound to determine the political fate of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwean opposition forces and western nations have cried foul. The leaders of neighbouring African nations have largely rallied to Mugabe's support.
Mugabe has survived an assassination plot, European Union sanctions and a deluge of damming Western media reports. How long can his luck hold out?
Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) predominates in the rural areas where ZANU-PF is supporting a controversial land-grab policy in which white-owned commercial farms are confiscated by landless black peasants.
The presidential poll has been characterised by a rural-urban divide. Some 65 per cent of the Zimbabwean population resides in the countryside. Opposition to ZANU-PF is strongest among the 45 per cent of Zimbabweans who live in urban areas. The opposition charged that polling stations in ZANU-PF's rural heartlands were increased at the expense of polling stations in the urban strongholds of the opposition MDC. The ruling party dismissed the charge.
The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai is most popular in the cities, especially the capital Harare and the African townships surrounding it. Figures released by the Zimbabwean government put turnout in government strongholds like Mashonaland at 68 per cent compared with just 47 per cent in Harare, where support for the MDC is strongest.
While European Union observers were regarded as biased, independent monitors ó including those from African and Commonwealth countries and the United States ó were permitted. Were the 22,000 government employees who monitored the presidential poll impartial?
The MDC protested that their supporters were intimidated on the first day of the elections and asked for an extension on Sunday which was granted. However, when the MDC requested a third day of polling, the government refused. The ruling ZANU-PF appealed against a third day of voting. Zimbabwe's High Court ordered polling stations to reopen across the country, and confusion ensued.
State radio quoted Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa as saying it was impossible to extend the vote nationwide since in some areas polling had already closed and ballot boxes had been turned. Chinamasa said that those critical of the presidential poll were "spreading malicious propaganda."
There were isolated incidents of violence. MDC secretary general Welshman Ncube was arrested in Plumtree in southwestern Zimbabwe. Two US diplomats were detained in Chinoyi, north of Harare. A US citizen was reported maltreated by ZANU-PF militants in Honde Valley, northeastern Zimbabwe.
Throughout the country there were long queues of voters, and the MDC protested that their supporters were not permitted enough time to vote.
The one-party state in Africa is dead and buried, but "ruling parties are a threat to democracy, a threat to good governance, a threat to human rights," protested Zimbabwean Information Minister Jonathan Moyo. "For an election to be free and fair in Africa, the opposition must win."
South African President Thabo Mbeki has emerged as a major moral supporter of Mugabe. There is nothing wrong with Mugabe's angling for another six-year term in office, Mbeki and other African leaders argue. Mugabe thanked African countries for their support and paid special tribute to Nigeria and South Africa, two key African countries which rallied behind him during the Commonwealth summit in Australia last week when British plans to suspend Zimbabwe's membership of the Commonwealth were rejected by a majority of the Asian and African member-states.
Nevertheless, the disciplinary Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) is still in force and will decide on Zimbabwe's position after the results of the elections are made public.
Mugabe threatened murder charges against Tsvangirai after state television repeatedly broadcast a video showing Tsvangirai discussing an assassination plot with Ari Ben-Manashe, an Iranian-born Israeli former intelligence officer. Tsvangirai, he alleged, solicited Dickens and Madison to murder Mugabe before Saturday's elections.
Western opinion is highly critical of Mugabe's government, and appears to have singled him out among all other African tyrants for retribution. Mugabe is intensely disliked in both liberal and conservative circles. "When the polls close, the international community must be clear and swift in its response should the legitimacy of the process be in question," warned Glenys Kinnock, co-president of the EU-African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) joint parliamentary assembly and wife of former British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. "The EU must continue to make it absolutely clear that this election will determine the future of Zimbabwe and the entire southern Africa region," she added.
There are reports that Britain plans to evacuate British passport holders after the Zimbabwean government banned dual citizens from voting. Under the General Laws Amendment Act, an omnibus of laws amending the Electoral Act, sweeping emergency powers and stiff residency qualifications linked to the right to vote were introduced. In addition to their identification cards voters must also produce electricity and rates bills ó a move the MDC suspects was designed effectively to disfranchise the unemployed youngsters who support Tsvangirai and his party. This the MDC says, was part of a plan aimed at the disfranchisement of the bulk of urban dwellers. There were 42,000 reported cases of displacement in the 2001 elections.
The brain drain of highly qualified professionals has hurt the Zimbabwean economy. On the eve of the Zimbabwean presidential poll, news leaked of 21 Zimbabwean social workers being interviewed in London and immediately offered jobs by the British authorities, terminating their contracts with the Zimbabwean government. Thousands of Zimbabwean doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other professionals left the country to seek greener pastures in Britain. The one million Zimbabweans living abroad are excluded from voting.
Inflation stands at 112 per cent and Mugabe's government introduced socialist-style price controls for staple foods in a desperate bid to ease matters.
The leader of the South African Observer Mission (SAOM) to the presidential elections in Zimbabwe, Ambassador Samuel Motsuenyane, expressed general satisfaction with the peaceful and calm way in which the first day of voting had taken place in Zimbabwe. "We hope all that through this process, the entire world will understand their expression, their real will and respect it," he told reporters in Harare.
Western media reports focused instead on the incidents of violence, gerrymandering and ballot-rigging. In sharp contrast, Motsuenyane said that pre-elections violence was not confined to Zimbabwe and did not necessarily render the polls invalid. He cited the example of the 1994 South African elections in which more than 1,000 people were killed in the month preceding the polls. Yet, the world proclaimed South Africa's 1994 elections free and fair. Observers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) concurred.
"The calm and patience displayed by the majority of the people today and the secret manner with which they voted augurs well for the success of the elections and indeed the future of democracy in Zimbabwe," Motsuenyane said. "It expresses the determination of the people of Zimbabwe to speak through the ballot box and build peace and democracy, which is so critical to the future of this country and the southern African region." In South Africa, a commission is at work settling land claims by black peasants evicted under apartheid.
In Zimbabwe, the opposition are confident of a victory if the people are given a fair chance to speak their minds. In the run-up to the elections, Tsvangirai said: "The people will vote for change." He claimed that police and soldiers were forced to vote for ZANU-PF. "Zimbabweans have gone through three years of non-stop violence, intimidation and political intolerance," Tsvangirai told his supporters on the eve of Saturday's presidential polls.
To compound matters for Zimbabwe's ruling party, ZANU-PF is split in Masvingo, Zimbabwe's most populous province and traditional ZANU-PF stronghold. Masvingo Provincial Governor Josaya Hungwe heads one faction under the auspices of ailing Zimbabwean Vice-President Simon Muzenda. Eddison Zvogbo heads another rival camp. A former ZANU-PF party stalwart in Masvingo, Zvogbo was unceremoniously thrown out of both cabinet and the ZANU-PF politburo by Mugabe. Zvogbo spurned all efforts to reinstate him in the party fold.
The elections come at a time of economic hardship for Zimbabwe's 12 million people. One million have already left the country in search of better economic prospects. Officially, two-thirds of Zimbabweans are unemployed. The Zimbabwean economy shrank by four per cent in 2001. And prospects for 2002 do not look too good either.
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