Now that it is virtually certain that the deadlocked March 29 presidential election in Zimbabwe is heading for a run-off, the worrisome question is whether, and how far, the embattled Robert Mugabe turns to scorched-earth campaign tactics — unleashing the military, police, national intelligence and war veterans, with traditional leaders’ support.
He will most likely do this, trying to get away with whatever he can. But the tactics will not work this time; he will lose a run-off.
There are growing media and NGO reports of widespread and unusual activity by the security forces and war veterans, who have been deployed across the country after the crisis triggered by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s (ZEC) scandalous failure to announce the result of the presidential election.
All the country’s 58 rural districts are under siege and the tactics could go horribly wrong given that Zimbabwe does not have a lawful government in place. Mugabe is ruling with his unaccountable securocrats who are used to using violence on the electorate.
Inside and outside Zimbabwe the fear is that the electorate will be cowed into voting for Mugabe against its better judgement.
Many voters will remember the Gukurahundi atrocities soon after independence when 20 Â 000 people in Matabeleland and the Midlands provinces were massacred. Many more people lost their limbs, livelihood and homes in Operation Murambatsvina in 2005.
The securocrats have become Mugabe’s real political commissars since the collapse of Zanu-PF’s structures as a result of divisions over Mugabe’s failed succession. They have taken advantage of the ZEC’s delay to pour millions of dollars, from an unknown source, into rural areas to bribe chiefs and village headmen and to underwrite the cost of a paramilitary run-off campaign.
The core of Mugabe’s campaign strategy is to present the run-off as an opportunity for the villagers and peasants to “correct the mistake they made” when they voted for the MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai on March 29.
Chiefs and village headmen are being bribed so they can tell villagers about Mugabe’s military power and the effect it will have if the villagers do not “correct their mistake”.
This is being driven by the heavy presence of security forces and war veterans, who have set up bases and camps across the country.
But none of it will work. Things have changed so radically since the March 29 electoral stalemate that Zimbabwe will not be the same again.
Short of nullifying the poll and imposing martial law, there is no conceivable electoral formula Mugabe can use to win the run-off. His political unpopularity is so deep both inside and outside the government that certain members of his own family are worried that the 84-year-old president has lost the plot by clinging to office when he has no more to offer.
Even significant sections of the security forces and traditional authorities have had enough of his failed rule and are not prepared to put up with it for another day, let alone another five years.
Despite the violence in some districts, there is growing evidence that in many rural areas chiefs, headmen and soldiers are forging a silent front with the villagers and leaving them alone as they wait for the run-off, which they say will be “freedom day”.
In fact, in a number of places, security force members are said to be blaming the villagers for failing to vote Mugabe out on March 29 and telling them that they are lucky to have a second chance to finish the job.