President Robert Mugabe’s party has dubbed this week’s parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe an opportunity to ‘bury Blair’, claiming the British premier is the puppet-master of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
News bulletins on state-controlled radio, the sole source of news for about 60% of Zimbabweans, refer to the opposition as the ‘Blair-run MDC’. At a rally Mugabe told supporters: ‘You will be lost if you vote for the opposition because it would be as good as voting Blair into power.’
There is even a pop song attacking Blair, referring to a latrine common in Zimbabwe’s villages whose inventor shares the PM’s name. The lyric includes the line: ‘The Blair I know is a Blair toilet.’
Government-run newspapers regularly portray Blair as a warmonger. The state press also seized on a recent interview Blair did with the gay magazine Attitude, in which he said Britain might have a gay prime minister in future.
Mugabe’s critics say the focus on Blair is an attempt to remind voters of 1980, when Mugabe led the struggle to free the country from Ian Smith’s white minority rule.
‘It’s about the frame in which Mugabe wishes to set the contest,’ said Iden Wetherell, group projects editor of two privately-owned newspapers, the Zimbabwe Independent and the Standard, sister newspapers of the Mail & Guardian Online in South Africa.
‘He was obviously at the peak of his success as a liberation war leader. He was able to dine off that particular table for many years after. The challenge of the 1990s was for people who could govern, and maintain an economy, and deliver GDP growth. He was an utter failure on that front.’
Mugabe’s homophobia is an attempt to position himself as the champion of ‘authentic African ideals,’ Wetherell suggested.
‘[Gay rights campaigner] Peter Tatchell’s attempt to arrest Mugabe has been presented as incited by Blair. It has even been said in the official media that Tatchell and Peter Hain are an item.’
In campaign advertising, the Zanu-PF Party blames Zimbabwe’s economic woes on ‘racist’ whites and other foreigners who deliberately caused the collapse of their businesses in order to ruin the country.
There are food shortages in the countryside, while inflation running at 400% slashes the value of the cash in people’s pockets.
Analysts say Zimbabwe’s economic plight is caused by years of government corruption and mismanagement, compounded by the seizure of commercial farms, which destroyed foreign investor confidence.
Lack of foreign currency means that Zimbabwe’s petrol stations are short of fuel. At filling stations, the queues snake around the block. What fuel is available is not petrol but ‘blend’, a mixture of petrol and sugar cane ethanol.
By contrast, the MDC’s campaign focuses on the country’s economic woes.
An opposition newspaper advert illustrates the impact of soaring inflation by describing how Z$1 500 could buy a car 25 years ago, a bus ticket three years ago, and a nail today.
Privately, senior MDC sources admit that references to Blair are political poison for them.
In a country where majority rule was achieved just 25 years ago, suggestions that they are collaborating with the former colonial masters are dangerous.
A remark Blair made in the House of Commons last June, that he was ‘working closely with the MDC’ was gleefully seized on by the ruling party and sent shudders through the opposition.
Yet for most people the constant references to Britain’s prime minister are baffling. ‘We hear the name, but we don’t know this fellow,’ said Million Ndlovu, a villager in the drought-stricken province of Matabeleland.
For Ndlovu, and thousands of villagers like him, there are more pressing concerns. An MDC voter, he claims he is being denied food by local party officials who control the delivery of emergency grain supplies.
At the upcoming elections, Zimbabwe’s electoral authorities are introducing transparent plastic ballot boxes, replacing the old wooden boxes. Opposition supporters fear this innovation will make it easy to see who voted against the government.
‘Now they are saying all those who voted for the MDC will be identified, and won’t get any food,’ Ndlovu said.
Ruling party upbeat about victory
Zimbabwe’s ruling party is confident it will win a two-thirds majority in this week’s parliamentary elections, an official said, while the opposition countered that worsening poverty would drive people to the polls to protest President Mugabe’s policies.
The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front was predicting low voter turnout in urban areas, said the party’s director of elections, William Nhara.
”There are definitely areas where we will have apathy,” which will cost the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Nhara said Saturday.
”We have been conducting internal polls to determine our strength and our predictions. That’s why I am saying we are bubbling with confidence,” Nhara said. ”We are nearing 76-78 (seats) for the ruling party, with the opposition getting about 36, and about three going to independents.”
He did not explain who the party expected to win the remaining two seats in the 150-seat parliament. The election will be held over one day on Thursday, instead of the usual two-day vote, in an attempt to minimise opportunities for rigging.
Nhara said Mugabe’s party had been improving its organisation with its support base. ”It is only that party that is able, in that one-day timeframe, to marshal and ensure that its supporters come out on that day, that will win this election,” he said.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai disagreed, saying economic hardship would draw out voters to cast ballots against Mugabe and his administration’s policies.
The economy has shrunk 50% over the past five years. Unemployment is now at least at 70%. Agriculture, the economic base of Zimbabwe, has collapsed, and at least 70% of the country’s 12,7-million people live in poverty.
”Ninety five percent of Zimbabweans think that this election is very, very important,” Tsvangirai told the Associated Press on Friday. ”We are not going to have a problem of apathy … I think we are going to have an overwhelming turnout that is even going to surprise us.”
Some local observers also predicted a strong opposition challenge, after the party’s leaders spent the last five years quietly building support after 2000 elections, when it won 57 of 120 contested seats.
”We have done our own internal polling. There are factors, like 65% of Zimbabweans think that their life has not improved in the past five years, which means that those are disgruntled Zimbabweans,” Tsvangirai said. ”It is food and jobs that will determine this election, and that is our message.”
After the opposition’s strong showing in 2000 – despite what independent observers called widespread violence and rigging – Mugabe began redistributing white-owned farms to black Zimbabweans in an apparent bid to rally support.
The often-violent land redistribution campaign and an accompanying crackdown on dissent plunged Zimbabwe into international isolation and political and economic crisis.
The European Union imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe’s leaders after EU observers were kicked out of the country during the 2002 presidential polls. The African Union endorsed a report criticising violence and intimidation that marred the 2002 polls. U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called Zimbabwe an outpost of tyranny.
”The international community had already forecast that this election is going to be very violent … That’s failed to materialize,” Nhara said. ”For us, it is a watershed election, that we are proving our detractors wrong.”
A successful election also would strengthen Mugabe, as he prepares to pick a successor and retire, ruling party officials said.
”He wants to leave a legacy, where there is peace, stability and development, where every Zimbabwean would be proud to be Zimbabwean,” Nhara said. – Sapa-AP, Guardian Unlimited Â