Zimbabwe’s Neighboring Nations Turn Against Mugabe

From Free Internet Press

June 19, 2008

Zimbabwe’s neighboring nations turned against Robert Mugabe Thursday as pre-election violence against opposition supporters intensified and spread to new areas of the country.

Pro-government militias were reported to be hunting supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) through the densely-populated townships around Harare, which had hitherto escaped the worst of the violence.

The “heavily tortured” bodies of four opposition activists were found Thursday in the biggest Harare suburb, Chitungwiza, according to the MDC.

The wife of the mayor-elect of Harare, Abigail Chiroto, and her four-year-old son were abducted from another township, Hatcliffe, on Monday. Her body was found in nearby fields the next day and the boy was left at a police station.

The MDC say 70 of its supporters have been killed during the campaigning for next week’s presidential run-off vote.

“It’s time really that we moved beyond calling this a campaign of violence. This is terror, plain and simple,” a western diplomat in the region said Thursday. “The atmosphere is violent. The violence is not abating, indeed it is spreading to areas where it has not spread before”. Three of Zimbabwe’s neighbors in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) turned decisively against Mugabe Thursday.

“There is every sign that these elections will never be free nor fair,” said the Tanzanian foreign minister, Bernard Membe. He was speaking on behalf of his country plus Swaziland and Angola, who are leading a 380-strong SADC election observer mission.

Membe said some of the 211 observers already in the country had seen two people shot dead in front of them.

“We have told the government of Zimbabwe to stop the violence,” he said. “We have told our observers not to be threatened, that they do their work without fear. People of Zimbabwe are hurting and it pains us.”

Membe said he and his fellow foreign ministers would ask their respective presidents to “do something urgently so that we can save Zimbabwe”.

At a press conference with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in Paris, France, and Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, called on Mugabe to allow into the country more international observers, as well as a U.N. human rights envoy. At the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the elections could not be free and fair under current conditions.

It is the turning of the tide in Africa, however, that is likely to have the strongest effect within Zimbabwe. Inside SADC, the Zambian president, Levy Mwanawasa, has long been critical of the Mugabe regime. Thursday, the Kenyan foreign minister, Moses Wetang’ula, condemned the “roadblocks” hindering the MDC campaign and urged Mugabe to hold a fair election.

“Anything less is an affront to the evolving democratic culture in Africa and unacceptable to all people in Africa,” Wetang’ula said in a statement.

Last weekend, as Kenya hosted Zimbabwe in a football World Cup qualifying match, the 36,000-strong crowd chanted: “Mugabe must go, Mugabe must go”.

The Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, described Zimbabwe’s election process as a “joke” and wondered why Mugabe had taken the trouble to hold a vote at all. Botswana, fearful of a wave of political refugees flooding across its borders, has also protested to the Mugabe government.

In South Africa, the head of the ruling African National Congress, Jacob Zuma, has expressed grave doubts over the fairness of the election and offered to send 1,000 ANC observers, although it was unclear whether such numbers were available or would be allowed to enter.

The most conspicuous voice missing from the regional chorus has been the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, who has sheltered Mugabe on the world stage, even questioning earlier this year whether there was a crisis in Zimbabwe.

Mbeki travelled to Zimbabwe on Wednesday and held talks with both Mugabe and the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, although Tsvangirai has refused to recognize the South African president as a mediator.

Mbeki has said nothing, but South Africa’s Business Day newspaper reported that he had tried to persuade both men to drop the second-round vote and form a government of national unity. Tsvangirai has vowed not to join any government while Mugabe remains in power.

While SADC poll monitors trickled into the country, observers from Zimbabwean pro-democracy groups were still waiting today for accreditation from Zimbabwe’s election commission. Diplomats said that unless accreditation began tomorrow, it was unlikely all the observers would be accredited in time to witness the vote at the 9,000 polling stations on Friday next week.

If Mugabe claims victory in the current conditions, there is likely to be a fresh outpouring of refugees and deep splits within SADC over how to react, with Mbeki risking isolation within the group.

Zimbabwe faces the possibility of a descent into lawlessness, as the ruling Zanu-PF might find it hard to demobilize its militias, made up of young unemployed men who now have a taste for violence.

FCJ Editor

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