Scotland on Sunday

ROBERT Mugabe has ruled out ever trying to get back into the “useless” Commonwealth during a blistering attack on Tony Blair and his “gay gangsters”.
In his first interview for more than a year, Mugabe also insisted he had discussed the issue at length during a meeting with Prince Charles, where he expressed his admiration and respect for the Royal Family.

The 81-year-old did, however, say he would open his doors to Foreign Office diplomats in a bid to restore relations between Zimbabwe and Britain.
Mugabe has been ostracised by the international community after a million of his own people were made homeless in a campaign to punish opposition supporters for voting against his ruling party Zanu (PF).

The Zimbabwean president said in Harare: “If Tony Blair wants to open his doors and he wants us to open our doors, fine. His people can come here. My people can go to London and mend our relations.”

But he dismissed speculation that members of the Commonwealth Secretariat would be able to persuade him to try to rejoin the 53-nations ‘club’ that takes in roughly a third of the world’s population.

He described the Commonwealth as “a useless body which has treated Zimbabwe in a dishonourable manner”. Mugabe told the London-based magazine New African that he wants his rejection of the Commonwealth written in the hearts of the people of Zimbabwe.

“We will establish relations with individual members of the Commonwealth; there is nothing wrong with that. And even if we get a Britain which is not run in the same way in regard to our relations as the Britain of Tony Blair – fine.
“We will mend our relations, and this is what I told Prince Charles when we met in Rome recently at the Pope’s funeral.”

It is the first reference Mugabe has made to his handshake with the heir to the British throne on April 8.

A Clarence House official said: “The Prince of Wales was caught by surprise and not in a position to avoid shaking Mr Mugabe’s hand.” But according to Mugabe, the two men had a long chat and recalled the night of April 17, 1980, when the Prince attended Zimbabwe’s independence celebrations.

“We discussed relations and we said we have tremendous respect for the Queen. Every member of the Royal Family has been to Zimbabwe and we have tremendous respect for every member of that family.

“We have souvenirs of their visits here. We respect them and we continue to respect them.” But that “respect” excludes Tony Blair, whom Mugabe says is surrounded by people he refers to as “Blair’s gay gangsters”.

A source close to the ruling Zanu (PF) party, who asked not to be named, said: “It’s a typical Mugabe ploy. He is appealing to the British people over the head of Tony Blair.

“Mugabe is clever. He uses the same tactic with the South Africans and threatens Thabo Mbeki whenever he can. He says to African leaders that Mbeki – who is George Bush’s point man in Africa – wants Mugabe to go slow on land reform because he [Mbeki] is a puppet of the white man.”

Last week Scotland on Sunday revealed that low-level talks between Zimbabwean and British officials had already opened in Harare on the subject of repairing long-damaged relations before the start of the G8 meeting at Gleneagles.

Mbeki and his Tanzanian counterpart, Benjamin Mkapa, are expected to tell Britain and other G8 countries to seek a fast agreement with Zimbabwe in order to stave off hunger and chaos in a key southern African country.

They would like to see Mugabe retire and live comfortably with his young wife Grace and their three children at a £7m palace in the once all-white suburb of Borrowdale in Harare.

The understanding would be that Britain and the Commonwealth Secretariat would then deal with the next Zimbabwean leader Joyce Mujuru, the vice president, who is married to one of Zimbabwe’s richest men, Solomon Mujuru.

He was the commander of Mugabe’s military machine during the war against white-ruled Rhodesia between 1972 and 1979.

Meanwhile, diplomats in Harare were stunned to hear that Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, executive director of the Nairobi-based UN-Habitat and a close friend of Tanzania’s president Ben Mkapa, who supports Mugabe, had told the People’s Daily in China that by demolishing thousands of shantytown homes, Mugabe had declared war “not on poor people but on poverty”.

She was in Harare to study the scope of the recent eviction of “illegal squatters and dwellers” who, say Zimbabwean insiders, supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change at the election in March. Television pictures showed her being handed a starving baby at Porta Farm in Zimbabwe.

“The baby is starving,” she exclaimed, handing it back immediately. “Give it food.” But a voice off screen said – “There is no food.”

The legal affairs spokesman for the MDC, David Coltart, told Scotland on Sunday that he expected Mugabe to start demolishing the homes of anyone who opposes him. “I have no doubt that if the Mugabe regime can think of a pretext that it can sell to Africa, it will do anything to undermine the opposition,” he said.

“That could easily include raiding homes of opposition figures. I suspect that they will allege that leaders are individually guilty of some serious offence and use that to justify further harassment.”

He added: “Mugabe said that his intention was to bury the opposition, and he and his cronies will undoubtedly do everything possible to destroy the opposition.”

The New York Times
18th March 2005
By Michael Wines and Sharon Lafraniere; Michael Wines reported from Filabusi for this article and Sharon Lafraniere from Johannesburg. An employee of the New York Times in Zimbabwe contributed reporting.

If this is an outpost of tyranny, it was not immediately obvious in this one-road backwater buried in Zimbabwe’s hilly southwest flank.

In a clearing amid donkey carts, rafters-high scrub and at least 3,000 peasants, Zimbabwe’s sole political opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangarai, delivered a throw-the-bums-out harangue aimed at crucial parliamentary elections later this month.

After 25 years of rule by President Robert G. Mugabe’s party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, ”the money you are using presently is as good as old newspapers,” he cried. ”The grain silos are full of cobwebs. There is no harvest this year.”

It was a civics-book image of what Mr. Mugabe, 81, promises for the elections on March 31, possibly his last as president: an honest campaign to rebut accusations that he has devolved into a dictator.

When Mr. Tsvangarai last campaigned three years ago, government-run youth gangs routed supporters with clubs and party members lost homes and even lives to midnight arsonists. On this day, the police briefly detained a few slogan-singing supporters, but otherwise stood idly by.

But there is a vast difference between an obviously peaceful election and a fair one. And with two weeks left to a potentially defining moment for Mr. Mugabe, there is mounting evidence that the raucous campaigning masks an expansive effort by his party to rig the outcome.

Both independent analysts and members of Mr. Tsvangarai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change, or M.D.C., cite growing barriers to a fair ballot. They say that polling places are scarce in opposition strongholds; that two in five enrolled voters are suspect; that Zimbabwe’s vast, mostly anti-Mugabe diaspora is barred from voting; that the 8,500 election observers are limited to those, like Russians and close African allies, who are likely to rubber-stamp a government victory. Most Westerners are excluded from witnessing the vote.

Foreign journalists are effectively banned from Zimbabwe under threat of arrest (though many enter the country as tourists). Government-run media are heavily biased; broadcast interviews with opposition figures mysteriously drown in static. There is a dearth of independent judges to rule on election complaints. Election oversight is split among a bevy of commissions largely staffed with Mr. Mugabe’s cronies.

Most important, perhaps, the government controls the biggest incentive to undecided voters: the distribution of almost all emergency food in a nation where, agricultural experts say, 4 people in 10 are unsure where to find their next meal.

Given such advantages, ”they probably believe they have won the election and that creating freer conditions on the immediate eve of the election will not hurt,” said Reginald Matchaba-Hove, chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a coalition of pro-democracy groups. ”The assumption on Mugabe’s side is that he will get a two-thirds majority in the parliament anyway.”

During a daylong tour of Zimbabwe back-country between Bulawayo and Harare, the capital, candidates for both ZANU-P.F. and the opposition were seen beseeching crowds at groceries and liquor stores. In the mountainous chrome-mining region near Zvishavane, rival candidates were also seen handing out bags, apparently stuffed with corn, from automobiles plastered with their posters.

The police were evident, but none interfered with campaigning.

”Our campaigns are going freely,” said Albert Ndlovu, the M.D.C.’s provincial organizer for Mashonaland West, a rural province of 1.2 million in north-central Zimbabwe. ”There are pockets of violence here and there. But generally, we would say it is a bit quiet.”

Many here see Mr. Mugabe’s loosening of the reins as a calculated gamble by someone supremely confident of victory. Of the 150 seats in Parliament, ZANU-P.F. holds 98, including 30 whose occupants are government-appointed and are not being contested. The M.D.C. has a bare 51 seats, down six from the last election. To gain control, the party would have to win an additional 25 seats — an impossibility, most here say.

The voter rolls are crucial — and contentious. A computerized study in January of 100,000 registered voters by the FreeZim Support Group, a pro-democracy organization, concluded that as many as 2 million of Zimbabwe’s 5.6 million registered voters are suspect. The group estimates that 800,000 voters are dead, 300,000 are listed more than once and more than 900,000 do not live at their recorded addresses.

Opposition efforts to challenge the lists have proved futile. David Coltart, an M.D.C. legislator from Bulawayo, dispatched supporters house-to-house last month to verify his region’s rolls. The police arrested them within hours, saying he needed permission for political gatherings. Armed with a court order, he re-deployed the team — and they were arrested again.

”The M.D.C. is just losing direction,” said Margaret, a jobless 28-year-old single mother of two in Bulawayo who once worked for the ZANU-P.F. ”ZANU-P.F. will regain three-quarters of the seats they lost” in the 2000 elections, she said.

One reason, she said, is Zimbabweans’ reverence for Mr. Mugabe, their liberator from white rule, widespread chaos notwithstanding. ”If your father rapes someone, you do not shun him,” she said. ”He’s still your father.” She refused to give her last name.

Yet among many Zimbabweans interviewed, the M.D.C. is seen as surging in popularity. Thousands have swarmed to rallies, even in rural areas long seen as government strongholds, and the government’s decision to allow open campaigning has emboldened ordinary people.
Burdened with sclerotic leaders and restless younger underlings, ZANU-P.F. also is not the well-oiled political machine it once was.

But if this election hinges on anything, many say, it may be food — or the lack of it. One year ago, Mr. Mugabe ordered the World Food Program to stop distributing most food aid, stating that Zimbabwe was self-sufficient.

In fact, outside experts agree, the opposite was true.

But by forcing the World Food Program to reduce food distribution, the government ensured that the hungry would look to the government for aid, often tied to support of government candidates.
The National Constitutional Assembly, a pro-democracy group, reported in February that food was used as a political tool in nearly three out of four districts it surveyed.

But the government has also courted a powerful backlash by failing to fill the vacuum it created by rejecting international food aid. As he stood at in the crowd at the Filabusi rally, Ngwenya, a 52-year-old farmer with seven children who would volunteer only his first name, agreed that this election is first and foremost about food. ”A people’s government must first see if people are eating,” he said.

IWPR
By Chipo Sithole

CONSTRUCTION has been completed of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe’s controversial £5 million mansion in Harare’s leafy northern suburbs.

The 25-bedroom private house, built by a Serbian construction company Energoproject to a Chinese architectural design, has two lakes in its 44 acre landscaped grounds and is protected by a multi-million pounds radar system.
Approach roads to the mansion, topped by a Chinese-style roof clad in midnight blue tiles from Shanghai, are off limits to the general public.

It is understood that some 50 police riot response officers guard the Mugabe palace on a 24- hour basis in cooperation with the much-feared Central Intelligence Organisation, CIO.

Sources in the President’s office told reporters that chemical and biological sensors are strategically positioned on all approaches to the mansion, around 30 kilometres north of the centre of Harare.

“The sensors are supplemented with radiological detection equipment, including radiation pagers on the belts of some of the law enforcement officers,” the presidential source said. “CAAZ (the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe) is policing the area above the house [by helicopter and spotter plane] to ensure that it is a no-fly zone. In addition, the CIO is providing dogs that can sniff out explosives.”

The project, which took three years to complete, is the most visible symbol of how Mugabe and his acolytes have prospered while more than five million of his 11.5 million people are near starvation and will need food aid this year, according to the World Food Programme.

Some 80 per cent of Mugabe’s fellow countrymen are unemployed and those with factory jobs earn an average wage equivalent to about 11 dollars a month.
The size of the house dwarfs by three times the size of State House, the home of the head of state and earlier British governors. Its interior decoration by South African, Arab and Chinese designers is being supervised by 81-year-old Mugabe’s 40-year-old wife, Grace. Its size and expense raises the question of how Mugabe paid for it, since his annual salary until recently was only the equivalent of 44,000 dollars a year.
Opposition MPs have unsuccessfully asked in parliament where Mugabe got the foreign currency to import materials from Europe, the Middle East and China.

Zimbabwe has suffered a foreign exchange crisis as a result of the country’s economic collapse, which has seen gross domestic product drop for each of the past seven successive years.

The president was clearly agitated when, in an interview with Sky News reporter Stuart Ramsey broadcast in Britain last year, he denied that the mansion had been built with Zimbabwean taxpayer’s money.

He said the Serbian company had donated material and labour at cost, supplemented by gifts of fine timber from Malaysian Prime Minister Makathir Mohammad and roof tiles from China. “You say it is lavish because it is attractive,” Mugabe told Ramsey. “It has Chinese roofing material which makes it very beautiful, but it was donated to us – the Chinese are our good friends, you see.”

The source declined to confirm whether Mugabe and his wife have moved into the house, but added that residents in the area of the palace are being subjected to regular security checks.

No extravagance has been spared on the three-storey palace. Marble has been imported from Italy. The finest European crystal, sunken baths with Jacuzzi fittings and oriental rugs are all part of the décor. The soaring ceilings were decorated by Arab craftsmen.

There is a sprawling entertainment area, a master bedroom suite, apartments for each of the three Mugabe children, servants’ quarters, a helicopter pad, extensive garage systems and swimming pools. Mugabe professes to be a Marxist, and on one website which has followed the construction of his new home, a contributor comments, “Marxism is very profitable indeed for those who run it.”

The justice spokesman for the opposition MDC, David Coltart, said, “Until a few years ago it had been assumed that Mugabe himself had not been corrupt. The size of this house suggests otherwise. He must explain to the nation where he got the money from.”

“The palace is an affront to the suffering people of Zimbabwe,” said John Makumbe, a political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe and a member of the anti-corruption group, Transparency International. “It shows that Mugabe will need a further push to convince him that he really must negotiate an end to his reign.”

Zimbabwe Standard

ZIMBABWE has several bodies dealing with elections and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) believes this is a ploy to confuse voters.

David Coltart, the MDC secretary for legal affairs, says the government has successfully hoodwinked the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) into thinking the recently enacted Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Act had levelled the electoral playing field. He said the SADC Guidelines governing democratic elections were clear on the need for non-partisan electoral bodies.

Part of the SADC guidelines stipulates that member states shall: “Establish impartial, all-inclusive, competent and accountable national electoral bodies staffed by qualified personnel, as well as competent legal entities, including effective constitutional courts to arbitrate in the event of disputes arising from the conduct of elections.”

Coltart listed the electoral bodies as the Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC), the Delimitation Commission, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), the Observers’ Accreditation Commission and the Registrar General’s Office, which registers voters.

“The Electoral Supervisory Commission is appointed by Robert Mugabe and therefore cannot be impartial. The Delimitation Commission is appointed by Mugabe and therefore cannot be impartial, the Observers’ Accreditation Commission is headed by the chairperson of the ESC, who is an appointee of the President. The Registrar General is accountable to Cabinet. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission goes some way towards being inclusive in its nature but it does not include civic society, churches and the public. In any case, its chairperson is appointed by Mugabe.”Coltart said

The ESC is a product of constitutional provisions and was formerly headed by Sobusa Gula-Ndebele, now the Attorney General.

A commissioner in the ESC, Joyce Kazembe, told a workshop organised by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) in Bulawayo last week that although soldiers would not supervise elections in March, the ESC would continue to employ them at their secretariat.

“I cannot deny that we still have members of the military that we employ as our staff. The military have a lot of excess staff.”

On concerns about the large number of players in the electoral process, Kazembe said: “Change, no matter how fast we may want it, does not come in one day. We are not supposed to be in the transitional stage of the electoral process but we are.”

Otto Saki, a member of the Lawyers for Human Rights, said a sign of confusion prevailing in the electoral process was that although ZEC was supposed to call for the registration of voters, by the time the commission was put in place, the process had already started.

Seattle Post

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has increasingly turned to hard-line military commanders to cow his factious country and now is relying on them to ensure a ruling party triumph in March 31 parliamentary elections.

He appointed a former colonel to run the new Election Commission last month and passed laws that placed the army in charge of polling stations and allows military officers to serve as election officials.

Analysts said it follows a trend in recent years of militarizing Zimbabwean society. Mugabe clings to power, they said, by placing men who unflinchingly follow orders in charge of strategic industries and ministries, the secret police, justice system, youth militias and food and fuel distribution.

“The strategy is to get people in key positions that share the hard-line attitudes of the government,” Lovemore Madhuku, the chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly, an opposition coalition of churches and unions, said in a telephone interview.

“You appoint the military because they follow orders. They will do what is required,” Madhuku said.

Senior military officers are closely aligned politically to Mugabe, a strongman who has led this country since independence in 1980s, and many have lucrative business ties to ruling party stalwarts.

“Mugabe has never been comfortable with people not in the military. As his popularity has progressively declined, he has run back to the military for his own protection,” said University of Zimbabwe political scientist John Makumbe. This proclivity became more pronounced this winter as the ruling party fractured in December from political infighting.

“He is a frightened man,” said Makumbe, speaking by telephone from the United States, where he is a guest lecturer at Michigan State University. “The infighting shook him greatly. His party is weaker than ever before, more vulnerable. It has enemies without and now seemingly enemies within.”

To shore up military support, troops recently received raises of up to 1,400 percent, said Makumbe.

He said Mugabe has also given large commercial farms confiscated by the government from white farmers to top officers. The army and police services also purged and punished thousands in junior ranks suspected of supporting Mugabe’s opponents.

The upcoming elections “will take place under the most repressive laws in our history. Not a single electoral body is impartial,” said David Coltart, a spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change, the main opposition party.

In a troubling sign for the opposition, members of the Green Bombers, the government youth militia, are being incorporated into security forces and will run polling stations, said Makumbe. The State Department has accused the group of beating and torturing opposition supporters into submission under direction of state officials.

Also, prosecutors around the country, directed by former colonel and new Attorney General Sobuza Gula-Ndebele, are seeking to reinstate charges dropped against opposition activists for lack of evidence.

Nearly all the charges stem from alleged violations of the draconian Public Order and Security Act, a law prohibiting political meetings or discussions without prior police approval that is rarely granted to the opposition.

Meanwhile, George Chiweshe, a former colonel and veteran of the independence war, was picked to run the new Electoral Commission.

Opposition party spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi said the party has serious reservations about Chiweshe’s impartiality and independence.
That’s not surprising.

During the last presidential election in 2002, Mugabe was declared the narrow winner in voting independent observers called deeply flawed by intimidation, violence and massive vote rigging.

Just before that vote, another military man, Gen. Vitalis Zvinavashe, said in a statement widely condemned both in Africa and abroad that the country’s military and secret police would not accept an opposition victory. Some junior officers later acknowledged to human rights investigators that they had been forced to stuff ballot boxes for the ruling party and the president.

The Daily Telegraph
24th January 2005
By Peta Thornycroft in Harare

Mr Mugabe has given the security forces a legal role in elections

President Robert Mugabe was accused yesterday of “militarising” Zimbabwe’s forthcoming election after a new law placed the army in charge of polling stations and installed the regime’s allies in every key position.

Devoid of any independent supervision, the March parliamentary polls are expected to see a sweeping victory for the ruling Zanu-PF party.

The Electoral Act, signed into law by Mr Mugabe last week, gives the security forces a legal role in national elections for the first time in Zimbabwe’s history.

Section 17 allows the heads of the “service commissions” to second personnel to serve as “constituency election officers, deputy constituency elections officers, assistant constituency elections officers and polling officers”. The commissions are defined as the army, air force, police and prison service.

David Coltart, the justice spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, called it the “militarisation of the election process itself”. He added: “These elections will take place under the most repressive laws in our history. Not a single electoral body is impartial.

“In the presidential election, Mugabe used the army covertly, now he can do it legally.”

Mr Mugabe has gained the loyalty of the security forces. Before the presidential election of 2002, all senior military commanders declared they would serve under no president except him.

Moreover, members of the regime’s youth militia, held responsible for a violent campaign against the MDC, are being incorporated into the security forces and will run polling stations.

Mr Mugabe has ensured that his allies will oversee the contest. A High Court judge, Mr Justice George Chiweshe, has been made chairman of the Election Commission.

He also runs the body charged with drawing up new constituency boundaries, a role in which he has already eliminated three opposition seats and created three others in Zanu-PF strongholds.

Paul Themba Nyathi, the MDC spokesman, said the opposition had “serious reservations” about Mr Justice Chiweshe’s impartiality and independence.

Shortly after being appointed to the bench, the judge denied bail to an MP from the MDC who was critically ill after spending six weeks in custody.

The MDC is deeply divided over whether to boycott the polls, in which it is likely to lose half of its 51 seats if it runs any candidates.