Politics of Intimidation Cloud Zimbabwe Vote

Voters in this southern African nation will go to the polls this weekend in what many analysts consider the most fiercely contested and violence-marred parliamentary elections since Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980.

The competition for political power has churned up a caldron full of provocative issues, including land, race, nationalism, poverty and the rescue of a crumbling economy.

It is with these concerns in mind that Zimbabweans will decide whether to maintain the status quo, which has seen two decades of domination by the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF, headed by President Robert Mugabe.

For the first time in 20 years, the nation has strong and legitimate political opposition in the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, under the leadership of Morgan Tsvangirai.

Whether the country’s 5 million registered voters will feel confident enough to exercise their right to choose has become the crucial question. A campaign of violence and intimidation and the government’s rejection of scores of international election monitors have cast serious doubt over whether the balloting Saturday and Sunday will be clean.

“The prospects for a free and fair election were dimmed quite a while ago,” said Paul Carter, a spokesman for Friends of Zimbabwe, a South African-based group made up mostly of Zimbabweans who fled their homeland. “The level of intimidation and violence against prospective voters has been high for a long time. A lot of the dirty work had been done long before the international press and community got more involved with the Zimbabwean issue.”

Mugabe appoints 30 of parliament’s 150 members, which means that the opposition must win nearly two-thirds of the remaining races to gain power. The ZANU-PF, which needs only 46 contested seats to retain a majority, has 147 seats in the outgoing parliament.

The run-up to the elections has been marred by a relentless campaign of violence linked to the invasion of white-owned farms by militants of the ruling party. At least 30 people, most of them opposition supporters, have been killed; hundreds of other people have been beaten, tortured or forced to flee. There have been widespread reports that opposition supporters’ national identity cards have been seized and destroyed and that voters have been intimidated.

“The crux of the matter here is that a liberation elite has thoroughly worn out its welcome with the voters and is trying now to use essentially terrorist methods to stay in power,” said Bill Johnson, director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Johannesburg, South Africa, that promotes democracy. “The crux is whether it can hang on or not. It has said it will hang on by undemocratic means, because there’s no democratic way it can win now.”

“The real story here is the intimidation of Zimbabweans--by Zimbabweans--who might otherwise support political change in this country,” said a Western diplomat based here in the capital.

Zimbabwe has refused to accredit 200 international observers from nongovernmental organizations, along with 40 monitors from the Washington-based groups the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute, and 17 Kenyan and Nigerian members of a European Union-sponsored observer mission. The latter were accused of being informants for Britain, the former colonial ruler here. Foreign diplomats in Zimbabwe also have been denied observer accreditation.

ZANU-PF Official’s Powers Expanded

In another controversial move, the government recently extended the power of the registrar general, a member of the ZANU-PF, giving him control of the election process. The Electoral Supervisory Commission, constitutionally responsible for carrying out that task, is challenging the action in court.

Some opposition candidates have complained about the lack of access to government-controlled airwaves. Others have been targeted and beaten. Margaret Dongo, president of the Zimbabwe Union of Democrats and a former ZANU-PF member, was attacked in her home earlier this week. MDC officials are challenging irregularities relating to voter registration among government troops serving in neighboring Congo.

Meanwhile, scores of white farmers have fled the country ahead of the elections, and few intend to return to cast ballots.

The International Republican Institute has called the election process the “worst” it has seen.

“Zimbabwe’s pre-electoral administration and environment are so flawed that the election process as a whole will inevitably fall below even minimal international standards,” institute President Lorne Craner said this week.

In retribution for Zimbabwe’s undemocratic behavior, the International Monetary Fund has suspended its loan programs here, and Washington has warned that it will scrutinize the vote before considering a $15-million aid request. Some potential investors reportedly have been scared away.

Viewed by his supporters as the father of the struggle for liberation from colonial rule and the master of black empowerment, the 76-year-old Mugabe commands deep respect and admiration among some, particularly in the country’s rural areas. He and his cronies, many of them veterans of the independence struggle, have emphasized the issues of nationalism, race and the redistribution of land to blacks in urging people to keep the ruling party in power.

Squatters led by veterans of Zimbabwe’s independence war have occupied about 1,500 white-owned commercial farms since February. The government recently selected an additional 804 farms for seizure without compensation and for distribution to landless blacks after the elections.

“This is not an election gimmick,” Mugabe said at a rally Wednesday. “We will intensify the program of acquisition of land after the election.”

Tsvangirai’s MDC, a haven for younger candidates, has promised to investigate corruption, spur economic growth and privatization, and prosecute perpetrators of political violence. The rhetoric has caught on among a large segment of the elite and among ordinary Zimbabweans hungry for change.

An MDC rally here last weekend attracted about 25,000 supporters, while a similar event held by the ZANU-PF a day earlier mustered a turnout of 5,000.

On Thursday, Tsvangirai predicted that the MDC will win a majority of the vote. He urged Mugabe, whose term doesn’t end until 2002, to accept an “honorable exit.”

Thrown into the mix and presenting another variable are 20 ZANU-PF members, many of them Mugabe critics who lost their party’s endorsement during the primary election and intend to run as independents. Analysts said these candidates could either split the vote within the ZANU-PF or reduce the number of ballots won by the opposition.

“The trend of independents is natural now in the sense that this is an expression of their displeasure with the way [the ZANU-PF’s] primary elections have been conducted,” Solomon Nkiwane, a political scientist at the University of Zimbabwe, recently told a local newspaper. “It is a move for democracy against the dominance of one party.”

Other observers agreed that this desire to break with the ruling party fuels a widespread belief that, no matter what the outcome of this weekend’s vote, the ZANU-PF’s 20-year grip on politics is about to end.

“These elections represent an important step in the evolution of Zimbabwe’s democracy,” said the Western diplomat, who requested anonymity.

As they cast their ballots, Zimbabweans probably will be contemplating the country’s high unemployment and poverty, inflation that tops 50% and the high cost of education and health care.

Economy Has Faltered in Recent Years

The economy, once among the continent’s strongest, has come close to collapse in recent years. A World Economic Forum assessment of 24 African countries that was released Wednesday placed Zimbabwe at 23, followed only by Madagascar.

“The economic issues are paramount, but [Mugabe] has made the campaign of terror and the violence an issue in itself, and that’s obviously now a big thing in people’s minds,” said Johnson of the Suzman foundation.

Johnson noted that a national poll conducted by his organization earlier this year found that 63% of Zimbabweans agreed that it was “time for change” in their government.

But the ZANU-PF is not about to give up power because of some negative poll results. Some leaders of war veterans have threatened to wage another war if the ZANU-PF suffers defeat. And Mugabe spokesman Jonathan Moyo has said his party will never allow the MDC, which draws support and financial backing from many whites, to take up a single seat in parliament.

“They’re British-backed racists whose very existence is provocative,” Moyo recently told a British newspaper. “For us to accept them would be the same as Jews accepting a Nazi party.”

Mugabe has been equally vocal in rejecting the MDC’s chance of victory. “Yes, they will win overseas in Britain and in America,” he said. “But in Zimbabwe, they will never win.”