The Zimbabwean 20 February 2008

BY CHIEF REPORTER
HARARE

With the diaspora unable to vote, next month’s crucial poll in troubled Zimbabwe will be decided largely by the country’s rural population, who make up 75 percent of the total 11,9 million population.

These are the people who have borne the brunt of a violent intimidation campaign by the ruling party.

“The outcome of the vote will be determined in rural areas,” said Ronald Shumba, a Harare-based political analyst. Green bombers and party activists have terrorised the countryside to prevent farm workers and peasants living on community settlements from voting. The farm workers must now take loyalty tests to Zanu (PF) in exchange for a guarantee they will be allowed to continue ploughing, sowing and harvesting.

Prof Welshman Ncube, secretary-general of the MDC (Mutambara) said the main question was not whether the elections would be free and fair, but “whether the estimated 5,6 million registered voters will be brave enough to turn out in large numbers and say ‘No’ to intimidation.”

Respected lawyer, David Coltart, said the government was trying to use old intimidation techniques, but “they simply do not have the same resources as before.”

“They used to have a guerrilla army of 50,000 people country-wide. We think that there are probably no more than 300 to 400 of these people – the rest are untrained youths,” he said.

Presidential candidate Simba Makoni has claimed the huge turnout last week at the registration centres was actuated by his entry into the presidential race.

“Judging by the response we have had since our announcement, we are heading for a landslide win,” Makoni said. “We have reports that voter registration was up 10-fold since the Tuesday we launched our bid. The enthusiasm is palpable.”

Makoni claimed he also had the rural vote and refused to categorise Zimbabweans saying “all of them are Zimbabweans, and all of them yearn for the same thing, which is an immediate renewal of our country.”

But the MDC also claims it is in the lead and has clinched the significant portion of the rural vote.

Washington Times

By David R. Sands
January 26, 2008

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is expected to win a sixth term during early elections in March — despite ruinous policies that have led to the world’s highest inflation rate, estimated at 50,000 percent.

Zimbabwe’s opposition parties will almost certainly take part in elections set for March 29, a leading opposition figure said yesterday, even though President Robert Mugabe has “reneged” on a promise to put off the vote until key constitutional reforms had taken effect.

David Coltart, a senior member of parliament from the anti-Mugabe Movement for Democratic Change, told a Washington audience he doubted the presidential and parliamentary votes would be free or fair, but said it was unlikely the MDC and other opposition forces could agree on a total boycott of the election.

“We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t” take part in the election, said Mr. Coltart, a lawyer and leading human rights activist in the southern African country.

The opposition and many international monitors have condemned past elections in the country, charging they were rigged by the president’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party. MDC rallies have been violently disrupted by the government’s security forces.

“My own view is that we have little choice but to participate unless we can organize a total boycott of the process,” Mr. Coltart said in remarks to the Heritage Foundation think tank.

Over opposition objections, Mr. Mugabe’s aides yesterday confirmed the vote will be held at the end of March. The 83-year-old president has ruled the country since it won independence from Britain in 1980 and will be seeking a sixth term through 2013.

He is expected to win despite Zimbabwe’s international isolation and ruinous economic policies that have led to severe staple shortages, rampant unemployment and the world’s highest inflation rate, which was unofficially estimated at 50,000 percent in 2007.

A land reform program — which often amounted to giving productive white-owned farms to ZANU-PF officials and supporters — is widely blamed for severe food shortages in a country once considered the bread basket of southern Africa.

The government blames the country’s woes on international pressure and economic restrictions, led by Britain and the United States.

The MDC had pushed for a summer election date to give recent constitutional and institutional reforms time to take hold. The changes, reluctantly agreed to by Mr. Mugabe last year, include press reforms, easing restrictions on opposition gatherings and safeguards to ensure free and fair elections.

Accusing the ZANU-PF leadership of acting in an “exceptionally cynical way,” Mr. Coltart said, “At the end of the day, there is absolutely no prospect that the reforms will have any material effect on the electoral environment” on March 29.

MDC officials said Mr. Mugabe’s decision to hold early elections was also an embarrassment for South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has led a regional effort to mediate the bitter political dispute.

“What Mugabe has done is a slap in the face, not only of the MDC, but of Mbeki and the Southern African Development Community,” Nelson Chamisa, an MDC spokesman, told reporters in Harare.

MDC head Morgan Tsvangirai was briefly detained earlier this week before an opposition rally, reviving memories of a brutal beating he suffered in March at the hands of security forces during another anti-government gathering.

Mr. Coltart said the government is pressing for a quick vote because it realizes the economy is on the brink of collapse and because serious divisions have emerged within Mr. Mugabe’s own ZANU-PF ranks. There is a chance, he said, that the March vote could produce an informal alliance of MDC lawmakers and ZANU-PF dissidents, leaving Mugabe loyalists in the minority in parliament.

He added that Zimbabwe’s situation is so dire that even modest reforms could prove fatal to Mr. Mugabe’s rule.

“ZANU-PF’s core of power is so weak now that once they start down the path of reforms, they will not be able to control the process,” Mr. Coltart said.

Business Daily (Nairobi)
OPINION
22 January 2008

By Ochieng’ Oreyo

A lot has been written about Brand Kenya. I am doing that again. Why? Because I want this country to move from writing to doing something about the idea. My writing is directed at every Kenyan, who I remind this country is our motherland. The respect we accord it should match what we extend to our own mothers at home.

I will start by addressing the Office of the Government Spokesman, whose head today is Dr Alfred Mutua. He has been doing a good job until it hit me that daktari was at most times denying, or “talking tough” to remind others about the existence of the Government. Being in charge of telling the public what’s on, Dr Mutua’s office should help Kenyans and the people we, as a country, deal with to know better about Brand Kenya without necessarily dismissing them – like the development partners.
This is the one office that should thumb through wads of Government documents to arrive at facts and figures that our customers and potential visitors in the tourist circles want to know about Kenya.

This office should put emphasis on interpreting data from the Government, its agencies, and even private entities to better inform our markets and publics. Dr Mutua should work day and night, literally, to put into context the political statements that fly from MPs and ministers who want to add their voices to ongoing debates.

Example: When the country was expecting former UN secretary-general Mr Kofi Annan to help with mediation in the current political crisis, and others before him, it should have been the business of the Government to ensure that it has only one voice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Nobody else.

Most people know about Brand Kenya so far. But we need to graduate from mere awareness and fire on all cylinders to see the constituencies and partners working with Kenya remain loyal all the time – something akin to brand equity.

It is incumbent upon every citizen to visualise the pride of being a Kenyan. A Kenya where tourists will fly pennants reading ‘Destination Kenya’ all the time. But this will only happen when Opposition MPs state publicly that violent protests give the unfortunate picture of a “violent brand”.

A meaningful demonstration should be one that the leaders are able to control. If they find the events spilling through their hands, it behoves them to make a stern statement that they do not identify with criminals or looters.

Kenyan voters, neighbouring countries and the larger international community should see ODM as a political party of today and the future when it takes its war with the Government to Parliament not to block its agenda, but to thoughtfully engage PNU on useful debate resulting in a good life for ‘Wanjiku’ and wooing investors.

We need a Brand Kenya Opposition that will go to court to show a commitment to the rule of law, without being worried about the outcome, but the process. They need to look for the world’s best lawyers to make life miserable for Government counsels – of course they must be willing to pay. ODM has told Kenyans that democracy is expensive. This must not mean that Kenyans will go hungry, be maimed, and killed. No. When people die in droves and indiscriminately, we lose future leaders.

Just like a Zimbabwean opposition MP David Coltart wrote recently in this newspaper, the sessions of election petitions in courts of law should be used to lay foundation for future informed debates, without necessarily saying who lost. The arguments and judgments should be used as cases in future legal battles.

Why the future? A group chief operating officer at a local media house, whom you will permit me to just call Paul, once said: “Put future first. Not once, not twice, but always.”

But having said that, the sitting government has a tough job of showing undiluted commitment to democratic life and culture by allowing demonstrations, but also ensuring that life is made tough for hooligans and goons who take cover in the protest marches to loot and harm innocent “working nationals.” If the media are gagged, politicians are tear-gassed, the brand loses its lustre and passes for any counterfeit.

A scarce product, as economists would say, sells. People queue for such a brand: Investors, tourists, and international students.Fellow Kenyans, I am saying that dismissing other people and talking tough pass as ordinary stuff that we have heard, read about and seen elsewhere before, but which has made such zones pariah states, scarred nations, and areas that “people with money and ideas” have shunned like the plague. They want a Working Nation and a Functioning Country.
Oreyo is a Sub-Editor with the Business Daily.

By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 18, 2008

JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 17 — South African President Thabo Mbeki traveled to neighboring Zimbabwe on Thursday to pressure leaders to complete negotiations that have brought the government and the opposition to the brink of a deal after years of political stalemate, officials from both countries said.

The two sides have deadlocked in recent days over the timing of upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections and when to implement a new constitution, sources familiar with the negotiations said. Mbeki flew to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, with a compromise plan, raising hopes that a deal might be imminent.

Negotiators representing Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and the two wings of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have made substantial progress in recent months, including a deal for a new constitution with a bill of rights guaranteeing expanded political freedoms.

“What I saw of an earlier draft constitutes a substantial improvement over what we’ve got,” said David Coltart, an opposition member of parliament.

Agreements between Mugabe and opposition leaders also have led to the easing of restrictions on journalists and political gatherings, and steps have been taken to make the electoral commission more independent.

But the timing of the elections, tentatively scheduled for March, has emerged as a divisive issue. Mugabe favors keeping the vote on schedule, with a promise to implement the new constitution soon afterward. The opposition is demanding that the constitution, with its new freedoms, be implemented before any national vote.

“Having an election would just be a farce if they happen in March,” said Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the wing of the opposition party led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

The picture is complicated by news that Simba Makoni, a popular former finance minister, may soon launch a third major party in Zimbabwe, splitting Mugabe’s ruling party after 27 years of unbroken power.

The brutal beating by authorities of Tsvangirai and about 50 other opposition activists in March caused an international uproar and brought new pressure on Mugabe from southern African leaders, who appointed Mbeki to oversee negotiations to end eight years of political stalemate.

That process has brought the country closer to a deal than at any time since the Movement for Democrat Change formed in 1999.

“All that runs the risk of being torpedoed,” said Trevor Ncube, publisher of two of Zimbabwe’s few independent newspapers. “That’s why Mbeki has gone there, and there’s a real possibility he’s going to come back empty-handed.”

The Telegraph

By Sebastien Berger and Byron Dziva in Harare
Last Updated: 2:28am GMT 16/01/2008

Robert Mugabe is to face a challenge from within his own Zanu-PF party at a presidential election in March. It is the greatest threat to his rule since he came to power almost 30 years ago.

Mr Mugabe was unanimously endorsed as the ruling party’s presidential candidate at a stage-managed congress last month. But the public show of unity behind the octogenarian leader failed to repair deep divisions in the organisation between modernisers, who believe its mismanagement has gone too far, and radicalisers, who think that the solution to Zimbabwe’s impoverishment is more of the same.

Senior sources within Zanu-PF told The Daily Telegraph last night that dissident party members will nominate Simba Makoni to stand against Mr Mugabe.

Well-regarded and considered atypical of the country’s political elite, Mr Makoni, 57, studied chemistry at Leeds University in the 1970s before going on to do a doctorate at Leicester Polytechnic.

He was the youngest minister in the first post-independence government when he was appointed deputy minister of agriculture.
A party insider said Mr Mugabe would hit back with “the ferocity of a tsunami” and those behind the “putsch” had “better hold their own before the worst comes”.

Rather than forming a breakaway party of their own, the rebels intend to bring in as much as they can of the Zanu-PF machine – which would severely restrict Mr Mugabe’s ability to rig the election.

The move has been born out of “frustration” with Mr Mugabe, the source said, and he predicted a “landslide” victory at the polls. “It’s the end of him,” he said.

“We are offering the party membership and the nation at large a new hope. We will put an end to the rubbish that is going on, with better management and a start to national healing.”

Mr Makoni has long had the backing of Solomon Mujuru, a former army commander who has substantial business interests, and observers point out that he would be able to mobilise his loyalists in the military and intelligence apparatus.

The key question may be whether an electoral pact can be reached with the divided MDC. Tendai Biti, its secretary-general, said that it was open to talks with a new organisation once it was formed. But he said it was “out of the question” for its head, Morgan Tsvangirai, to stand aside to give Mr Makoni a clear run.

David Coltart, a senior figure in the other MDC grouping, said: “At the presidential level nobody wants to split the vote. The question is will Makoni be brave enough to take this step? There’s no doubt in my mind it will unleash a terrible backlash.

“If Makoni entered into an electoral pact with the broad opposition and managed to split Zanu-PF down the middle, that would be the most significant event probably since independence and they could win.”

VOA

By Peta Thornycroft
14 January 2008

As of last Friday, Zimbabwean citizens who are also journalists no longer need accreditation or a license to work in their profession. Peta Thornycroft reports for VOA that a number of amendments to existing security, media and electoral regulations have become law.

The laws that published last Friday were a result of eight months of South African facilitated negotiations between the ruling Zanu PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

Under the revised regulations, Zimbabwean journalists no longer have to be accredited. If they want a license they can apply, and if granted they could cover events inside the legislature and at State House. But if they choose not to seek accreditation they can no longer be prosecuted as criminals for working in their profession.

Foreign journalists will have to apply to a media commission in some cases, but that commission has not yet been set up.
The previous media laws saw scores of journalists arrested and newspapers closed down in the last five years.

Analysts say the amendments put the clock back to early 2000, before President Mugabe realized that the then new opposition party, the MDC could use the issues to score points against his ruling Zandu PF in elections.

MDC founding legal secretary David Coltart said Sunday that the amendments just published were an “improvement” to the law, but he called the changes “insufficient. In any event, he said, there was not enough time between now and the upcoming elections for them to have much affect on the polls.

President Mugabe, who is vacationing in Thailand, said he wants the elections in March and will be the candidate for Zanu PF.
Negotiators from the MDC and Zanu PF were returning to Harare after two days of negotiations mediated by President Thabo Mbeki, who had been trying to break a deadlock. The talks stalled in December on two issues: the most important that a new constitution, already agreed to, would be in operation before the next elections, and the second is the timing of the elections.

The MDC says the elections need to be delayed beyond March to allow the reforms and the new constitution to take root among the electorate.

The MDC maintains it only agreed to support a constitutional amendment in September because of assurances that President Mugabe had agreed that a new constitution would be in place before the elections. The president has made it clear that this will not be the case.

An African diplomat monitoring the Zimbabwe crisis, but who asked not to be identified, says President Mbeki has been trying very hard to unblock the deadlock and remained reasonably confident he could do so.