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Bob's path to a sixth term
Mail & Guardian (SA)
November 26, 2007

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=325971&area=/insight/insight__africa/

With inflation reported at close to 15 000%, a quarter of the population in need of food aid and a currency so worthless even the government charges for services in foreign currency, no sitting leader should win an election.

Unless, of course, he is Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

Hard as it may be for many of his critics to figure out, especially those outside Zimbabwe, Mugabe has an open road to a sixth successive term as leader.

Mugabe has already made light work of what was supposed to be the hard part -- taking out what internal Zanu-PF opposition there was in his path to a nomination for yet another term. Those previously reported to be plotting against his candidacy have now been smoked out and paraded on national television to deny they had any ambition to succeed Mugabe.

Now comes the easy part, winning an election under the sort of conditions that will shrivel any other incumbent.

A range of factors combine to carry Mugabe past next March's election.

First, the opposition is in disarray and is unlikely to bother him too much.

Street clashes on Sunday between youths loyal to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai and supporters of Lucia Matibenga, sacked by Tsvangirai as leader of the women's wing, ended all remaining doubt about what is preoccupying the opposition.

Since it split into two bitterly opposed factions in October 2005, the MDC's threat to Mugabe has diminished sharply. The MDC took nearly half of all contested seats at its first election in 2000 and Tsvangirai lost only marginally to Mugabe in the presidential polls in 2002. Both polls were considered by foreign observers to be deeply flawed.

But the MDC was already losing momentum by the time the next elections came in 2005, hobbled by personality clashes and sharp differences over how to confront Mugabe.

Earlier this year, attempts were made at least to forge a coalition -- so bitter were divisions that talk of outright unity was taboo -- against Mugabe. But, the negotiations fell through because, incredibly, the two factions bickered about which side would get the choicest government posts should Mugabe be defeated.

As late as this week Tsvangirai and his party were still to commit fully on whether or not they would go into the election. It all depended on the outcome of the Thabo Mbeki process, Tsvangirai said.

The hesitation and constant fighting have disillusioned voters. People who would be likely to vote for the MDC might stay away from the polls. According to Thabani Moyo of Crisis in Zimbabwe, a coalition of opposition groups, young voters and traditionally opposition supporters, have grown weary of politics.

"They [the youth] are preoccupied with issues of unemployment and see the political process as a dirty way of expressing themselves," said Moyo.

The MDC relied largely on anti-Mugabe sentiment in previous elections; people voting to get rid of Mugabe rather than because they believed in what the MDC had to offer. These days though, there has been deeper scrutiny of the opposition.

In contrast, Mugabe can rely on a faithful core support, where voting for him is a tradition for some, whatever the circumstances. Even in areas where he has lost to the opposition, votes for Mugabe have remained fairly constant, whereas MDC numbers have fluctuated.

Mugabe's biggest wish is to thump the MDC in its urban strongholds, where he is still reviled. His attempt to win urban voters over, a price slash in June, has backfired so badly that a meeting of his own MPs in August called for an end to the crackdown to keep Zanu-PF's urban hopes alive.

Mugabe's deputy, Joseph Msika -- while declaring that Mugabe should be president for life -- this week acknowledged the difficulty of winning urban votes, citing the collapse of service delivery, with power and water cuts lasting weeks.

Even though Mugabe could well give up trying to get urban voters to vote for him, he will try and make sure that his party bolsters its two-thirds Parliamentary majority -- which must be protected at all costs to allow for more constitutional amendments.

So, his party may put to use an experiment that worked very well in the last general election, in 2005. The only seat Zanu-PF won in Harare, the Harare South constituency, had been cunningly demarcated so that a large chunk of neighbouring farmland was grafted into the constituency, diluting the urban vote and handing the Zanu-PF candidate a narrow victory.

Constitutional amendments passed in September increase the number of constituencies in 2008 from the current 150 to 210. To maintain his party's two-thirds majority in the lower house, Mugabe is certain to push for more constituencies in his rural strongholds. the MDC remains largely vulnerable in the countryside, where its message of change has not appealed to the immediate needs of impoverished rural voters.

Mugabe, on the other hand, is able to promise rural voters plots of land, and has, since September, handed out more than 1 200 tractors and about 500 000 basic farm tools -- from ploughs to animal drawn carts -- for free. He has also been dishing out free seed, fertiliser, and grain.

His opponents call it vote buying. Mugabe insists it is all part of his agriculture revival programme.

So confident is Mugabe that, this week, he published a Bill giving his opponents a bit more of what they wanted. The draft Electoral Laws Amendment Bill would bar the military, police and prison officers from any involvement in elections beyond providing security, a key demand of the MDC at ongoing talks mediated by President Thabo Mbeki.

The new laws would also now allow aggrieved candidates to demand recounts and require the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to check with all parties before demarkating constituency and ward boundaries.

The country's sole broadcaster would be compelled to "report impartially and give equal airtime to all candidates". The Bill is expected to be tabled in Parliament within the next 30 days.

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