Elections in Zimbabwe now more or less officially pointless

[Guardsman Bass]

JOHANNESBURG — The Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, sounding ever more pugnacious, said Saturday that he was prepared to go to war if he lost a runoff election to the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on June 27.

Speaking at the burial of a former army general, Mr. Mugabe, who at 84 has held power for 28 years, was quoted by Reuters as saying, “These pathetic puppets taking over our country? Let’s see. That’s not going to happen.”

Mr. Mugabe finished second to Mr. Tsvangirai in balloting on March 29, but the margin was not enough to avoid a runoff. Mr. Mugabe portrays his challenger as a bootlicker to the British, Zimbabwe’s colonial masters.

And he seems determined to deter Mr. Tsvangirai from publicly responding to his invectives and threats.

On Saturday morning, the opposition leader was detained by the national police yet again as he tried to campaign, this time at a roadblock at the central town of Shurugwi. Mr. Tsvangirai, who was released after a few hours, has been repeatedly stopped by authorities in the past week. His party, the Movement for Democratic Change, issued a statement calling the detentions part of a pattern of “harassment and intimidation.”

The opposition party’s secretary general, Tendai Biti, was arrested Thursday at the airport in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, as he returned to the country after a self-imposed absence of two months. His lawyers had not been allowed to see him or been informed of his whereabouts until Saturday, when he was brought handcuffed to court by armed police officers.

The session was closed to the news media, but afterward one of Mr. Biti’s lawyers said his client was being accused of “treason and making malicious statements detrimental to the interests of the state,” charges that could bring the death penalty.

The crackdown before the runoff has hardly been restricted to efforts against the opposition party. Charitable groups are being considered adversaries of the state as well and have been halted from distributing food aid to the poor.

Human rights groups, churches, unions and rural communities that supported Mr. Tsvangirai in the first election have been targets of repeated attacks.

In a news release issued Friday, Georgette Gagnon, Africa director of Human Rights Watch, accused Mr. Mugabe of trying to “hijack” the election and said her group had documented dozens of cases of politically motivated torture and killings. “The pre-runoff climate of repression and fear is disastrous for all Zimbabweans,” the statement said.

It also mentioned a June 9 raid in Harare on the Ecumenical Center, which houses several religious and civic groups. It said the police hauled away computers, files and 10 people, including Prosper Munatsi, the general secretary of the Student Christian Movement of Zimbabwe.

Those taken into custody were never charged and were released four days later.

I said "officially" pointless because they've probably been de facto pointless for the past few weeks; Mugabe has apparently decided that if he gives up now, at 84, the British will obviously swoop back down and reinstall Rhodesia.

[Guardsman Bass]

Ah, fuck - I forgot to put "New York Times" in parenthesis for the quote to work, and it isn't letting me edit. Would a mod be so kind as to fix it, please?

[Broomstick]

Funny, isn't it, how dictators now use the window dressing of democracy to legitimize their despotism? An election where there is only one candidate is no election at all, and neither is one where if you vote for anyone but the current tyrant you can be executed. In such a case, casting a ballot becomes a loyalty oath of sorts, not an election

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe it's because their former colonizers really didn't do a bang-up job of teaching them democracy, and so all they learned was just those window dressings?

Why are all former colonies so messed up? It totally sucks (to live in one too).

[weemadando]

Maybe it's because their former colonizers really didn't do a bang-up job of teaching them democracy, and so all they learned was just those window dressings?

Why are all former colonies so messed up? It totally sucks (to live in one too).

I don't know, Australia seems to be going OK...

But yeah, Zimbabwe has some seriously bad issues. Mostly because Mugabe is the stereotypical despotic scumbag who rises to the top in such a situation.

[Broomstick]

Why are all former colonies so messed up? It totally sucks (to live in one too).

Good point - the US is having some shitty problems, too (although not on quite the same epic scale). However Australia, New Zealand, and Canada do seem to be managing pretty well. The former Carribean colonies aren't doing too bad, either - not paradise (the beaches just look that way) but one can live a reasonable life there.

Clearly, it's not just a matter of being a former colony.

One might ask why all the former colonies in Africa are messed up, but even there the shit is not universal. Corruption, yes, that's everywhere, and mismanagement, but not this sort of deliberate oppression of citizens. Looking at South Africa, for example, one seems a crapload of issues but they do seem to be able to pull off actual elections without plunging into civil war.

[Shroom Man 777]

I think South America also applies for the messed up colonies status

The USA, Australia, New Zealand and Canada aren't messed up and are doing relatively well because, I don't know, they weren't really native people who were being subjugated by foreign folks. The natives got killed or marginalized, and the foreign folks basically lived in the place ever since. This is unlike most places in Africa and South America.

Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA are former colonies in that the colonizing nations left, but the colonizing people never did. They practically compose the population of those countries. It's a whole different thing from Africa or South America.

As for Caribbean... weren't the Caribbean people (enslaved) Africans introduced to the place by the Europeans?

I wonder how India compares to the others in post-colonial crappiness.

[cosmicalstorm]

Why are all former colonies so messed up? It totally sucks (to live in one too).

Good point - the US is having some shitty problems, too (although not on quite the same epic scale). However Australia, New Zealand, and Canada do seem to be managing pretty well. The former Carribean colonies aren't doing too bad, either - not paradise (the beaches just look that way) but one can live a reasonable life there.

Clearly, it's not just a matter of being a former colony.

One might ask why all the former colonies in Africa are messed up, but even there the shit is not universal. Corruption, yes, that's everywhere, and mismanagement, but not this sort of deliberate oppression of citizens. Looking at South Africa, for example, one seems a crapload of issues but they do seem to be able to pull off actual elections without plunging into civil war.

The main problem in Africa and the Middle East isn't really that they are ex-colonies, that certainly didn't help, but I think the fundamental problem is that tribal thinking is so deeply ingrained in their culture, that makes them naturally hostile to democratic and meritocratic systems.

[Vanas]

Good point - the US is having some shitty problems, too (although not on quite the same epic scale). However Australia, New Zealand, and Canada do seem to be managing pretty well. The former Carribean colonies aren't doing too bad, either - not paradise (the beaches just look that way) but one can live a reasonable life there.

Clearly, it's not just a matter of being a former colony.

One might ask why all the former colonies in Africa are messed up, but even there the shit is not universal. Corruption, yes, that's everywhere, and mismanagement, but not this sort of deliberate oppression of citizens. Looking at South Africa, for example, one seems a crapload of issues but they do seem to be able to pull off actual elections without plunging into civil war.

IIRC, In Zimbabwe's case, the country unilaterally declared independence while still under the local equivalent of apartheid, and Mr. Mugabe is the leader of the faction that brought down that previous government, which is why he's well-regarded by other african leaders in that area.

That don't seem to have twigged that the cure is pretty much as bad as the disease in this case.

[Guardsman Bass]

Good point - the US is having some shitty problems, too (although not on quite the same epic scale). However Australia, New Zealand, and Canada do seem to be managing pretty well. The former Carribean colonies aren't doing too bad, either - not paradise (the beaches just look that way) but one can live a reasonable life there.

Clearly, it's not just a matter of being a former colony.

One might ask why all the former colonies in Africa are messed up, but even there the shit is not universal. Corruption, yes, that's everywhere, and mismanagement, but not this sort of deliberate oppression of citizens. Looking at South Africa, for example, one seems a crapload of issues but they do seem to be able to pull off actual elections without plunging into civil war.

IIRC, In Zimbabwe's case, the country unilaterally declared independence while still under the local equivalent of apartheid, and Mr. Mugabe is the leader of the faction that brought down that previous government, which is why he's well-regarded by other african leaders in that area.

That don't seem to have twigged that the cure is pretty much as bad as the disease in this case.

The thing that complicates it, though, is that it is not like he was always a total dictatorial asshole from the beginning (dictatorial, but not an asshole), like he is now. The white Zimbabweans actually welcomed him after a while, calling him "Uncle Bob", because he didn't immediately liquidate their farms and the like. They were actually on fairly decent terms until after 2000, where Mugabe started doing his "land squatting takeover" plan, and started acting like the full-on shithead he is today.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The colonies only look like they're having a unique crisis if you assume everything is peachy in Britannia. It isn't. What we see here is a crisis of democracy, for it is the system that is broken and the way it is implemented.

At least it's clear cut that something is wrong in Zimbabwe, while elsewhere we go along with the charade that we're experiencing a truly functional system.

[K. A. Pital]

Why are all former colonies so messed up?

Often it's a mixture of backwardness, including strong religious holds, tribalism and a rather violent culture which has not been softened by years of colonial domination, of course.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I wouldn't be surprised if this was also rooted with the British penchant of backing one horse over the other, exacerbating the already facticious tribal lines.

[Pelranius]

Zambia seems to have done pretty well for itself. Of course, it's probably the exception (its first President, I believe, was the extremely respected former tribal chief who the South Africans forced out because he married a white woman while studying in London).

[Chris OFarrell]

The fuckhead isn't even PRETENDING anymore.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 152337.ece

Robert Mugabe gave warning yesterday that he would not cede power if he loses next week’s election to the Opposition in his most explicit statement yet of his refusal to respect the result.

State-controlled media reported his comments to supporters at an election rally, the latest in a series of increasingly menacing threats as Zimbabwe counts down to the June 27 presidential run-off poll. Mr Mugabe’s military-backed regime has been carrying out a campaign of violence aimed at wiping out the opposition vote.

“We fought for this country, and a lot of blood was shed,” Mr Mugabe told his supporters. “We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X. How can a ballpoint fight with a gun?”

The warning came a day after he declared: “We are ready to go to war.” Evidence, say observers, of mounting concerns that he may not have done enough to secure the vote.

Mr Mugabe’s threat coincided with a sudden worsening in violence in the townships around Harare, as mobs of hundreds of Zanu (PF) youths marched through the streets at night, chanting war songs, dragging people out of their homes and beating them up with sticks, iron rods and axes. Until then the terror campaign had been confined largely to rural areas where security forces and militia groups have conspired to create “no-go zones”, banning aid organisations and all outsiders to prevent them witnessing the intimidation.

The level of violence has increased dramatically in the past two weeks, moving from beatings and torture to mutilation and killing, with several victims burnt alive and others shot.

The run-off vote was triggered after Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change candidate, beat Mr Mugabe in March’s presidential elections but, according to the widely discredited official results, fell short of the 50 per cent needed for outright victory.

In a surreal twist Mr Mugabe moved yesterday to arrest opposition leaders for provoking the violence being carried out by his own forces. Only a handful of incidents have involved opposition supporters attacking those from Zanu (PF).

“We are warning them that we will not hesitate to arrest them and we will do that in broad daylight,” Mr Mugabe told supporters at a campaign rally in Kadoma, south of Harare.

The regime has already targeted opposition leaders for arrest, detaining Mr Tsvangirai to prevent him from campaigning and locking up his deputy, Tendai Biti, on the capital charge of treason. Mr Biti was due to appear in court on the treason charge yesterday but instead police brought new charges against him for “causing disaffection in the security forces,” and for insulting Mr Mugabe by stating that “he is an evil man who should be arrested and handed over to The Hague”.

Mr Biti’s arrest prompted some frustrated African countries, including Botswana, to break ranks with South Africa and call for the regime to back off or risk tainting the upcoming vote.

Gordon Brown gave warning that international election monitors must be allowed to monitor the poll or risk having Mr Mugabe’s “criminal regime” steal the people’s vote.

“In recent weeks under Robert Mugabe’s increasingly desperate and criminal regime Zimbabwe has seen 53 killings, 2,000 beatings, the displacement of 30,000 people and the arrests of opposition leaders,” Mr Brown told reporters after a meeting with President Bush.

“This is wholly unacceptable. Mugabe must not be allowed to steal the election, which is now less than two weeks away.

“We call for Zimbabwe to accept a United Nations human rights envoy to visit Zimbabwe now and to accept international monitors from all parts of the world who are available to ensure that this is a free and fair election,” Mr Brown said. Mr Bush pledged his support, telling Mr Brown: “You obviously are emotional on the subject and I don’t blame you, because the people of Zimbabwe have suffered under Mugabe’s leadership. We will work with you to ensure these good folks have free and fair elections to the best extent possible, which obviously Mr Mugabe does not want to have.”

Zimbabwe has barred monitors from Western countries, allowing in only those from the African Union and the Southern African Development Community. Neither of those organisations has ever given Zimbabwe a negative verdict on its elections, despite widespread fraud since 2002.

A senior UN envoy, Haile Menkerios, arrived in Zimbabwe yesterday for a five-day visit to assess the political and humanitarian crisis, a concession forced on Mr Mugabe by the UN. Some have speculated that the Government might call off the election at the last minute if it is not confident of winning but that victory by any means remains their goal.

“Mugabe is worried,” said Eldred Masunungure, a political commentator. “He has never been this aggressive before. The threat is real and credible. My assessment is that it is 50-50. Mugabe is not confident of victory but Tsvangirai is also worried that support is shifting and he may not be able to cross the threshold. It is unpredictable.”

President's fighting talk

— “Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any votes we shall have, shall have been the product of the gun. The gun which produces the vote should remain its security officer - its guarantor” (1976)

— “Our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy!” (December 2000)

— “We are no longer going to ask for the land but we are going to take it without negotiating” (2000)

— “We have degrees in violence” (2000)

— “When they criticise the Government ... we take the position that they can go hang” (2007)

— “Let the people's voice thunder across the whole country on 29 March, rejecting and damning once and for all the bootlicking British stooges, the traitors and sellouts, the political witches and political prostitutes, political charlatans and the two-headed political creatures” (2008)