Michael Hartnack
With the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Brisbane, Australia, scheduled to start on October 6, hopes are high in Zimbabwe that President Robert Mugabe will face censure from world leaders.
Leaders of the 53-nation grouping will consider whether Mugabe’s regime is beyond the pale on human rights after nearly two years of systematic terror against its opponents.
Western diplomatic sources believe the 77-year-old president is reluctant to fulfil pledges made to Commonwealth leaders at Abuja, Nigeria, to rein in state-funded “war veterans” because they represent his last hope of winning a further six-year term in elections set for next April.
This week talks between white farmers and officials over land seizures and lawlessness collapsed. In a by-election last week in the Chikomba constituency that was left vacant by the death of war veterans’ leader Chenjerai Hitler Hunzvi, Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) polled 5207 votes against 15570 for Zanu-PF despite massive intimidation, including the murder of a headmaster.
Operating in a ruling-party stronghold, the MDC relied entirely on a word-of-mouth message to reach its supporters. MDC organisers say it will be impossible for Zanu-PF to sustain a similar virtual ban on all open campaigning, with economic conditions worsening daily for Zimbabwe’s 13-million people.
Following the visit of a five-member assessment team, the International Monetary Fund ruled out any resumption of aid, frozen in 1999, until Mugabe makes moves to restore fiscal probity and begins repayment of $53-million in debt arrears.
Zimbabwe’s new Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku reserved judgement in an application by the government for a declaration that it has a comprehensive land-reform programme in place, and that there is law and order on the country’s white-owned farms.
Advocate Adrian de Bourbon, representing the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU), told the Supreme Court that efforts to open a post-Abuja dialogue with the government had been totally blocked at a meeting with Minister of Justice Patrick Chinamasa.
The accord envisaged new British and foreign funding in return for a transparent land-reform programme that benefits the rural poor rather than the Zanu-PF party faithful, as in the past. “Chinamasa wasn’t interested in Abuja and he stopped the CFU from talking to anyone else in government,” said a member of the CFU legal team.
The CFU, and journalists who quoted it, were called “economic terrorists” by Minister of Information Jonathan Moyo for announcing that, despite Abuja, there had been 20 new invasions, 900 farms were suffering production disruption, 350 were shut down and 25 farmers were forced to flee.
Mugabe told his party’s central committee he would be able “to take a position on compliance” with Abuja once its terms had been explained to militants occupying farms.
“We will win. We are winning. For at no stage and time in the history of mankind has colonial occupation ever lasted forever,” Mugabe said.
He claimed continuing violence was contrived by underground “colonial military structures” among whites.