Robert Mugabe is desperate to be declared president this weekend to ensure any inter-party negotiations proceed on his terms.
Mugabe said this week he is willing to talk to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, but only after the “legal process” of Friday’s run-off election is fulfilled. Critics, he said, “may scream all they like”.
“People are saying we should talk. We never said we were unwilling to talk. But not now. For now, we need to follow the legal process of getting our people to June 27 and enabling them to vote. We will proceed with that election,” Mugabe told supporters on Tuesday.
Mugabe, standing against a tide of regional and international revulsion, said he would not buckle to “those who seek to impose themselves on us and make idiotic noises”.
The MDC withdrew from the election on Sunday after being prevented from holding a mass rally in Harare. The party’s top leadership was initially divided over the strategy, with some leaders seeing the boycott as a dangerous gamble.
“Some felt it was late to withdraw; we could never inform our grassroots in time,” said a member of the MDC national council.
Tsvangirai himself was strongly against withdrawing, but gave way after a two-hour meeting with his executive.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa insisted on Wednesday that Tsvangirai’s withdrawal had no basis in law, as voting began last Friday when the army, police and diplomatic service cast their ballots.
“The law says he should have withdrawn 21 days before the first round. Voting has already begun,” Chinamasa said. Tsvangirai, in his withdrawal letter, argues the 21-day requirement refers only to the first-round vote.
But Mugabe loyalists, recognising that patience even among allies such as Thabo Mbeki has worn thin, now concede an accommodation with the MDC is inevitable.
“We are mature, we will be accommodative,” said Bright Matonga, Deputy Information Minister. But reflecting the Zanu-PF line, Matonga added: “But we want to win first.”
Mugabe is keen to regain some legitimacy for his rule, and Tsvangirai is bargaining that his slender Parliament majority, reinforced by a boycott, which deepens Mugabe’s international isolation, will force him to the table.
But Mugabe can still appoint 33 supporters to the upper house of Parliament to dilute Tsvangirai’s influence. And Zanu-PF sources say the hard-line military figures backing Mugabe have advised him to tough out the next few weeks and talk to the MDC only as a last resort, and on his own terms.
“They would be telling him ‘what more can they [the international community] do apart from shouting at you’. And it’s likely that’s the path we’ll take,” a senior member of Mugabe’s politburo told the Mail & Guardian.
“Each time the West shouts in support of Tsvangirai a day is added to Mugabe’s rule.”
Mugabe defiantly said on Tuesday that “whoever refuses to recognise our legitimacy, let them”. But behind the bluster, few doubt that he realises he will have to talk to his opponents.
Tsvangirai too has said he is prepared to talk, but wants the violence to stop and the elections postponed first.
Former information minister Jonathan Moyo said neither Mugabe nor Tsvangirai could rule without accommodating the other. Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliament observer group, said that there could be no “business as usual” after the election — dialogue would be needed to defuse tensions.
Assuming Mugabe is declared winner by Sunday and talks are agreed, Zimbabwe would face new hurdles. Lengthy discussion would be needed on how talks should be structured and what the desired outcome would be.
Mugabe would not accept a junior role in a transitional authority or unity government as he would have been legally declared president, his loyalists said. Nor is it likely that Zanu-PF will relinquish the key security portfolios.
The Zanu-PF politburo member said Mugabe will never accept an arrangement in which he is “the less powerful player” — hence his insistence on the election going ahead.
Zanu-PF stepped up its campaign this week in a bid to show the election is legitimate. Mugabe’s spokesperson, George Charamba, said Zanu-PF is mobilising its supporters ahead of Friday, as it sees Tsvangirai’s announcement as an attempt to “throw the Zanu-PF constituency into disarray, demobilise it so it relaxes and the MDC minority vote can carry the day”.
Despite the MDC’s withdrawal, George Chiweshe, chair of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, was adamant that “we will be able to hold credible elections on Friday”.
A member of a foreign observer mission told the M&G that his group has received reports in Mashonaland East, a Mugabe stronghold, that villagers will be herded to polling stations on Friday.
“Voters will have red ink on their finger,” the observer said. “It will be easy for them to identify who didn’t vote.”