Mugabe victory leaves West in tatters

 



  HARARE: Western countries were left frustrated and impotent 
after Robert Mugabe formally declared that he had overwhelmingly 
won Zimbabwe's presidential election.

  The extent to which Mugabe outmanoeuvred the west was made clear 
when southern African countries issued a surprise statement 
declaring the conduct of the election free and fair. The move is 
almost certain to scupper any hope of the Commonwealth 
suspending Zimbabwe next week.

  At the weekend the European Union, prodded by Britain, is 
planning to extend the range of sanctions against Zimbabwe, 
targeting more members of the leadership. Earlier this year, the 
EU imposed a travel ban on Mugabe and 19 members of his regime 
and froze their overseas assets. But there were no illusions in 
Britain or elsewhere in Europe that the measures will have any 
real leverage in Harare.

  The Zimbabwe registrar-general, Tobaiwa Mudede, declared that 
Mugabe had won a fifth term in office after the results from all 
120 constituencies were returned. He said Mugabe had won 
1,685,212 votes against 1,258,401 for challenger Morgan 
Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

  "We foresaw electoral fraud but not daylight robbery," 
Tsvangirai said. "We find ourselves unable to endorse the 
purported election of President Robert Mugabe as Zimbabwe's 
president in this election. It's the biggest election fraud I've 
witnessed in my life."

  The MDC leader said the onus was on "the people" to lead the 
way, whether passively or not. "We seek no confrontation with 
the state because that's what they want. But the people 
themselves have to decide what action to take," he said.

  In the Harare townships where people stood in line for two days 
to vote in the belief that they were consigning Mugabe to 
history, angry residents looked to Tsvangirai to confront the 
government.

  "We need Tsvangirai to tell Mugabe he cannot steal this 
election," said Noel Gukuta, a youthful MDC voter. "The soldiers 
have guns so we cannot fight him but we can make sure he cannot 
rule us. We must strike, we must march, we must show that we are 
not goats." The country took the news of Mugabe's victory with 
no great celebrations or protests.

  The government, sensing murmurs about revolt, put the army on 
full alert, deployed troops in key townships and the police set 
up roadblocks on the main roads into Harare to stop and search 
vehicles for weapons.

  The UK foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said: "For months the 
government of Zimbabwe has conducted a systematic campaign of 
violence and intimidation, designed to achieve an outcome - 
power at all costs."

  A senior state department official in Washington later said: 
"We're considering further steps, given all the things that 
happened before and during the elections." Apart from the 
result, the main jolt yesterday was that election observers from 
South Africa, Nigeria and Namibia effectively endorsed the 
election.

  "It is our considered view that the election was free and fair 
and reflects the wishes of the people of Zimbabwe," Namibia's 
observer team said in a statement, adding that the poll was 
"watertight, without room for rigging".

  The South African team described the election as "legitimate" 
while the Nigerian observers said they had seen nothing that 
threatened the integrity of the poll.

  The Commonwealth trio to decide on action next week is made up 
of Australia, which will back suspension, the South African 
leader, Thabo Mbeki, and the Nigerian president, Olusegun 
Obasanjo. In Zimbabwe the leadership of the congress of trade 
unions is considering calling a two-day general strike to test 
whether there would be popular support for a longer protest, and 
various civil rights groups are meeting today to discuss mass 
civil disobedience. The MDC's lawyers are also studying the 
possibility of legal action.

  In the final results, Mugabe made a net gain of votes compared 
with the 2000 parliamentary election in every province in the 
country. While there was evidence of vote tampering in some 
areas, most of the ballots dropped into the box with a cross by 
Mugabe's name were not fraudulent. There has been no criticism 
of the count.

  "This is a runaway victory," said the justice minister, Patrick 
Chinamasa. "It was won on the issue of the land."-Dawn/The 
Guardian News Service.



@ The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2002