Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was to return home on Saturday bidding to deliver a knockout blow to weakened President Robert Mugabe in a run-off election scheduled for June 27.
Mugabe acknowledged on Friday that he had suffered an electoral disaster in losing a first-round poll against Tsvangirai on March 29 and lambasted his party for being unprepared.
After leaving Zimbabwe in early April, Tsvangirai was to return to Harare to begin campaigning despite evidence of violence and intimidation against his supporters and the risk of a treason charge hanging over him.
”Mugabe lost that first round; 57% of the people who cast their vote did not vote for him,” he said defiantly on Friday. ”I am so confident that in spite of the violence, come the second round they will reconfirm that rejection.”
The election process has been marred by delays, violence and allegations of electoral fraud and the country’s economic woes are growing deeper, with official inflation at 165 000% and unemployment of 80%.
Mugabe (84), who has ruled the former British colony since independence in 1980, lost the first round by 43,2% to 47,9% against Tsvangirai and is now fighting for his survival.
Despite numerous reports from human rights and civil society groups in Zimbabwe stating the contrary, Mugabe accused the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of fomenting post-election violence on Friday.
”The MDC and its supporters are playing a very dangerous game. They should know they cannot win that kind of war which they have carried to rural constituencies in the hope of destabilising our supporters,” he told leaders of his Zanu-PF party.
Zimbabwean doctors, unions and teachers have reported a campaign of terror conducted by pro-government militias in rural areas against supporters and activists of the MDC since the March elections.
The MDC says at least 32 of its supporters have been killed in the unrest.
These reports have been bolstered by the United Nations, whose representative says the majority of violence has been directed at MDC supporters, and rights group Amnesty International.
Tsvangirai has made a series of demands to ensure a free and fair run-off election, including the presence of foreign peacekeepers and election monitors, but these have been brushed off by the authorities.
On Friday, an independent home-grown network of monitors that observed the first round said dozens of its activists had been assaulted by suspected Zanu-PF supporters since the March 29 election.
”We are already receiving a number of reports where our observers are saying it is no longer safe for them to observe the [run-off] election,” the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Elections Support Network, Noel Kututwa, told reporters.
Tsvangirai, who was brutally attacked in police custody last March, also faces a threat of a treason charge after being accused of plotting with former colonial power Britain to bring about regime change.
Seen as a post-colonial success story in the first decade-and-a-half after independence, Zimbabwe’s economy has been in freefall since 2000 when Mugabe embarked on a land-reform programme that saw thousands of white-owned farms expropriated. — Sapa-AFP