/ 29 June 2008

Mugabe rush to be sworn in

Robert Mugabe is expected to be sworn in as President of Zimbabwe again on Sunday after one of the bloodiest and most controversial elections in African history. Zimbabwean officials said that Mugabe had won a landslide victory with most of the count completed in Friday’s widely derided presidential run-off.

Officials were reported as saying that, with two-thirds of the count completed, there had been a dramatic reversal of Morgan Tsvangirai’s lead in the first round of elections three months ago, giving Mugabe a resounding victory before he heads to an African Union summit to confront growing criticism from the continent’s other leaders.

But the ruling Zanu-PF party’s claims that voters have deserted the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in droves to support Mugabe’s claim that the vote is part of a struggle to maintain Zimbabwe’s independence have met with incredulity and anger.

Washington called the vote a sham and said it will seek a United Nations Security Council resolution this week to send a ”strong message of deterrence” to Zimbabwe’s leader. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said Washington ”will use everything in our power for appropriate sanctions”. The US is also expected to press for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and a travel ban on its officials.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Saturday said that Zimbabwe had reached a new low point with the election. ”We will work with international partners to find a way to close this sickening chapter that has cost so many lives,” he said.

Voting out of fear
The head of one foreign election observer mission, Marwick Khumalo, who leads the Pan-African Parliament monitors, said that many Zimbabweans had voted only out of fear and that the turnout was in truth ”very, very low” after Tsvangirai withdrew from the race because of the violence.

Khumalo also suggested that many voters deliberately defaced their ballots after they were intimidated into going to the polls despite an opposition boycott. He said that at one polling place in rural Matabeleland nearly 40% of the ballots were spoilt, and that at another in Harare the combined numbers of opposition and spoilt ballots matched the vote for the president. ”There was a lot of intimidation for people to vote,” said Khumalo, a parliamentarian from Swaziland. ”You can tell people just wanted to get the indelible ink [on a finger to prove they had voted] to protect themselves from the hooligans.”

The ballot appears to have produced a low turnout in cities, but terrorised voters were herded to the polls in some rural areas and intimidated into voting for Mugabe. He is apparently in a hurry to be sworn in so that he can attend the African Union summit in Egypt on Monday as Zimbabwe’s newly elected president and face down his critics from what he perceives as a position of strength.

Tsvangirai last week called on the AU to oversee a transitional administration in Zimbabwe until legitimate elections can be held. ”It’s now a matter of peace and security,” said Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, Nelson Chamisa. ”We hope the matter gets the urgent attention it deserves. We should not wait for rivers of blood and the complete breakdown of order.”

Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to apartheid, urged African states to declare Mugabe an illegitimate leader and impose a blockade of Zimbabwe.

Divided AU
Mugabe said last week that he will tell his critics that many of their elections are worse than Zimbabwe’s.

The AU is divided. While countries such as Nigeria, Botswana, Kenya and Tanzania have all criticised the poll to some degree or other, there is less inclination for a confrontation with Mugabe from South Africa and his allies, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola. The AU commission chairperson, Jean Ping, has urged compromise.

Mugabe’s Foreign Minister, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, attempted to forestall a debate on Zimbabwe at a preparatory meeting on Friday and instead asked to be allowed to read a statement. But there were strong objections from a number of countries, including Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

The European Commission, meanwhile, upped the ante by calling for future talks on a political solution to be based on the first-round election result in which opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won most votes. AU diplomats say Tsvangirai now needs to radically revise his position away from the statement that he would not consider power-sharing or a transitional government.

”That was never going to happen,” said Zimbabwean political analyst John Makumbe. ”If Tsvangirai and his party want to remain politically relevant, they are going to have to swallow their pride. Don’t forget that the post-Mugabe era has already begun and there are many figures within the ruling party who are already jostling for positions,” said Makumbe. Tsvangirai fears that, as a prime minister under Mugabe, he will be emasculated, just as Joshua Nkomo was in the 1980s.

Reporters arrested
Meanwhile, two e.tv reporters have been arrested in Zimbabwe after being accused of working without accreditation, police said on Saturday.

”The two — a reporter and a camera person — were picked up yesterday [Friday] at Beitbridge border post where they were carrying out interviews,” said police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena.

Reporters Mahlaoli Tumaole (28) and Elelwani Rwamphumedzi (31), are being held in Beitbridge and are expected to appear in court on Monday, Bvudzijena said.

”They were arrested for practising journalism without accreditation,” he said.

Zimbabwean authorities banned the television station from covering the presidential polls on grounds it had previously breached media and security laws in a report on diamond smuggling last year.

Journalists operating in Zimbabwe without accreditation face a jail term of up to two years.

Several foreign journalists were arrested in the aftermath of the first round of the presidential election on March 29 but were later released. – guardian.co.uk