/ 19 March 2008

The president, the army chief, his wife and her rival

As campaigning began in earnest for Zimbabwe’s elections, President Robert Mugabe’s government announced a five-fold pay increase for the lowest-ranked soldiers to Z$1,5-billion a month. Soldiers were not impressed.

In the parallel market for foreign exchange the new salary was worth about $60 in mid-March. The hike will improve soldiers’ living circumstances for barely a month, before inflation and currency depreciation obliterate it.

The loyalty to Mugabe of rank-and-file soldiers is by no means guaranteed. But among the army’s top brass, some powerful forces are not ready to contemplate defeat. Their loyalty is one of several important advantages retained by the wing of Zanu-PF loyal to the president — Zanu-Mugabe for short.

Zanu-Mugabe benefits from advantages of incumbency — including a firm grip on the joint operational command. Army Commander General Constantine Chiwenga announced recently that he would not serve under a president from one of the opposition parties.

Some analysts suggest that Mugabe could still win a mathematically legitimate — though not a free and fair — election.

Zimbabwe’s next Parliament will be larger, but not more representative. The National Assembly will expand to 210 seats, from 150, with the total number of senators in the upper chamber rising to 96, from 60. The new constituency boundaries overwhelmingly favour Zanu-Mugabe’s core support base in the countryside.

Electors from numerous small rural constituencies will be grossly over-represented in the new Parliament, while urban voters will be seriously under-represented. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will lose millions of potential votes as a result of the disenfranchisement of Zimbabweans living outside the country and the juggling of constituency boundaries.

The long-winded negotiations brokered last year by Thabo Mbeki under the auspices of SADC yielded few improvements. Control of the delimitation process has been a key element of Zanu-PF’s negotiating strategy. The government has retained effective control of the electoral commission and the voter registration process, which excludes most of the pro-opposition Zimbabweans living in South Africa and beyond.

The main opposition grouping under MDC leader Morgan Tsvan­girai has fought a vigorous campaign. But Zimbabwe’s opposition has not overcome damaging divisions. While Tsvangirai refuses to contemplate an alliance, his more technocratic rival Arthur Mutambara, who leads a smaller faction of the MDC, has backed former finance minister Simba Makoni’s presidential bid.

Mutambara’s group includes other leading opposition figures, including lawyer and academic Welshman Ncube. Despite backing Makoni’s presidential bid, Mutambara’s MDC will run its own slate of parliamentary candidates.

Meanwhile, a former Tsvangirai loyalist, Lucia Matibenga, has broken away to form a third MDC faction. Her supporters will stand against Tsvangirai’s parliamentary candidates in 18 constituencies — at the risk of further dividing opposition votes.

For Makoni much depends on his ability to convince weightier political figures within Zanu-PF that he is a credible challenger. An important potential ally in this regard is the former army commander, General Solomon Mujuru. His wife, Joice, is Mugabe’s deputy and might harbour undeclared presidential ambitions of her own.

Few incontrovertible things can be said about Mujuru. He is tremendously rich, with large holdings in mining companies. He is reluctant to jeopardise his fortune by quarrelling openly with other members of the ruling elite, but is known to be a long-standing friend of Makoni.

In recent years Mujuru appears to have become detached from Mugabe. Yet for all his supposed political weight Mujuru has not been able to protect his political allies from opportunistic attacks and humiliation by Mugabe’s ruling clique.

Makoni’s campaign manager, the publisher Ibbo Mandaza, has long been considered loyal to the Mujurus. Their most serious rival in the race for a post-Mugabe presidency comes from within Zanu-PF, in the imposing shape of former intelligence chief Emmerson Mnangagwa, a veteran securocrat.

Mujuru and Mnangagwa are long-standing rivals in politics and business. But Mnangagwa’s ambition to succeed Mugabe has intensified the competition between the two men. Beyond these bald facts, political relationships within the ruling party’s upper ranks are harder to discern.

Mugabe and his allies have resisted launching a head-on attack on Mujuru for his supposed disloyalty. Nor has Mujuru made any public show of criticism of Mugabe, although this is clearly implied by his public friendship with Makoni and some ambivalent briefings to journalists or “friends of journalists”.

Attempts to predict the post-election political situation are fraught with difficulty. Any claim of victory for Mugabe is certain to be disputed by the opposition.

Although the campaign so far has been relatively free of violence, at least compared with elections in 2002 and 2005, renewed violence is probable if militia formations loyal to Zanu-Mugabe target opposition groups. But this time, perhaps prompted by the post-election battles in Kenya, the opposition might just find the means and popular support to fight back harder.

Patrick Smith is the editor of Africa Confidential