Zimbabweans ordered to vote

With longtime incumbent Robert Mugabe continuing to campaign despite his opponent’s withdrawal, Zimbabwean voters were warned of violent repercussions if they fail to vote in today’s presidential runoff.

Mugabe, campaigning in a lime-green jacket bearing the ruling ZANU-PF party logo, declared that Zimbabwe would not accept calls from African leaders or anyone else to postpone the vote.

In recent days, Mugabe has been the subject of unprecedented criticism from normally silent African leaders, including a rebuke from former South African President Nelson Mandela, seen as the continent’s elder statesman. Mandela decried Zimbabwe’s “tragic failure of leadership.”

“We have some of our brothers in Africa making that call, pushing us to violate our own law and we have refused to do so -- we are sticking to our law,” said Mugabe, who refused to postpone the vote after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out Sunday because of violence that has left 85 supporters dead and 3,000 injured.

Tsvangirai warned Thursday that the election was a sham that would be rejected by the international community as illegitimate. But Mugabe, 84, who has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980, said the nation would not accept solutions imposed from outside.

“I know some people are gearing themselves for an attack on Zimbabwe,” Mugabe said. But “all our elections have been free.”

Tsvangirai said people would be forced to vote “because the military were mobilized to accompany this process.”

“Traditional leaders are being forced to tell their communities . . . they have to vote tomorrow,” he said in comments reported by Reuters news agency. “So the violence and pressure on the people is continuing.”

If he remains in office, Mugabe faces the prospect of governing without a parliamentary majority and the task of turning around the country’s broken economy in the face of increasing international isolation. Many analysts see the economy as the biggest threat to his future, given that the annual inflation rate is running at millions of percent and most industries have shut down.

In his final day of campaigning, Mugabe handed out minibuses and carts to various communities and said the government would act to keep down the prices of basic goods. Several days ago, he launched shops that he said the government would stock with basic goods at low prices.

As advertising by the ruling ZANU-PF party blitzed state-run television with messages to resist neocolonialism, anti- regime cellphone text messages bounced around the country: Some said voting was pointless. Others urged voters to spoil their ballots by putting a cross beside both Mugabe’s name and Tsvangirai’s.

ZANU-PF officials, war veterans and youth militias at bases around the country have been warning people that door-to-door inspections will be carried out by militias after election day, to check that people have ink on a finger to prove that they voted, according to opposition officials. Voters’ fingers are inked in Zimbabwe to prevent duplicate voting.

“They are telling people, ‘We will move around checking your fingers to make sure you have ink on your finger,’ ” said Prosper Mutseyama, an official of Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change. His assertion was backed up by several people forced to join the youth militias, who were interviewed Thursday by The Times.

ZANU-PF militias “are saying that they will go to each homestead to find out if everybody has voted for the ZANU-PF party. If not, they will destroy your house and you can go to Britain. Or they can give you poison to drink so that you can die. They’re serious because they say that they’re prepared to go to war against anybody,” said Andrew, who was forced to join a youth militia at a base near Harare, the capital.

The ruling party accuses Britain, Zimbabwe’s former ruler, of plotting to recolonize the country. Andrew asked that only his first name be used.

Several voters said this week that they were told that serial numbers on ballots would enable the ruling party to identify those who voted for the opposition so they could be killed.

Army soldiers who cast ballots in the last week so they could be on duty on election day had to vote in front of their senior officers, said an army captain who asked to be identified only by his first name, Morris. He said army brigades were undergoing intensive training.

“As I speak now, the defense forces are ready for war,” he said. “They are on 100% standby. They have suspended all leave and resignations.”

A senior ZANU-PF official said the regime was ready for an uprising. “Everybody is expecting that [the opposition] will take up arms,” he said.

Meanwhile, the MDC’s No. 2 official was freed on bail Thursday, the Associated Press reported, two weeks after he was arrested and charged with treason.

Tendai Biti returned to his home in Harare late in the afternoon, looking tired and frail but still sounding defiant.

“Some people stay 27 years in prison, so two weeks is nothing,” he told Associated Press Television. “It wasn’t easy though, but we have to continue fighting.”