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No sign of an end to the horror
The Economist
June 19, 2008

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11603612&source=features_box_main

As Zimbabweans prepare to vote in a second round to elect a president on June 27th, the chances of an early end to the country's misery look remote. Since the first round on March 29th, which even President Robert Mugabe and his officials had to admit was won by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the regime has been inflicting a shocking wave of violence against its own citizens. Though Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC candidate, sounds buoyant, it is hard to see how he will be allowed to win.

Pro-government militias, backed by the army, are doing all they can to make sure Mr Mugabe keeps his job. According to the MDC, at least 65 of their people have been killed, and thousands tortured and forced to flee their homes. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, has documented a systematic campaign of violence.

Malcolm (not his real name), a teacher near Chivhu, a small town south of Harare, the capital, considers himself lucky. He was a polling officer in the first round. A few weeks ago, a group of youth militia from the ruling ZANU-PF accused him of telling people to vote for the opposition. He managed to fend them off, but lives in fear and no longer leaves his house without an axe. When pro-government militias visited a nearby school, they burnt houses to the ground. Teachers struggled to rescue their children from the flames and were severely beaten.

Cities have not been spared either. In the poorer suburbs of Harare, which are strongly pro-MDC, militias patrol the streets, harassing anyone who fails to display ruling-party T-shirts or scarves.

It has become increasingly hard for opposition leaders to campaign. Mr Tsvangirai has been repeatedly detained. The MDC's secretary-general, Tendai Biti, is in prison. The police have accused him of treason, a capital offence, though he has yet to be charged. Human-rights lawyers and magistrates have also been targeted.

Areas where the ruling party's grip has slipped have become hard to get to: roadblocks control people's movements and even diplomats have been stopped and threatened. The government ordered international aid agencies, to stop most of their work.

Though African observers have strengthened their presence, the few hundred on the ground will struggle to cover 9,231 polling stations. Western and UN observers have not been allowed in. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, an independent local outfit that deployed some 8,000 observers in the first round, is still waiting to get accredited to monitor the run-off. Its members have been hunted down and beaten.

The repression has steeled some people's resolve. But others are discouraged, having lost faith in the power of elections to bring about change. "What's the point when we all know the result?" asks Kudzai, a young man who has just run away from Mhondoro, 120km (75 miles) from Harare, where the wife of an MDC leader had her hands and feet chopped off before she was burnt alive.

A growing number of prominent Africans are speaking out. Marwick Khumalo, who heads the Pan-African Parliament's observer mission, says it was clear that the poll could not be fair if the violence went on. The leaders of neighbouring Botswana and Zambia are despairing of Mr Mugabe's antics. Tanzania's foreign minister said there was "every sign that the elections will never be free or fair". Kenya's prime minister, Raila Odinga, has castigated Mr Mugabe.

The UN has sent an envoy while South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki has continued his efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement. But in South Africa, too, politicians in the ruling African National Congress, including its new leader, Jacob Zuma, are increasingly reluctant to tolerate Mr Mugabe.

As African opinion turns against him, a frantic round of diplomacy is under way in an effort to head off what some fear may turn into a bloodbath. Some ZANU-PF sources say-but others deny-that a place in a national unity government was offered to the MDC. But the MDC says that the result of the parliamentary contest, which it won by a slim margin, gives it the right to form a government. Moreover, it says, an MDC-led government would include some from the ruling party as well as non-party technocrats.

If the election does go ahead and Mr Mugabe wins, even organisations like the Southern African Development Community, the 14-country regional club that has been loth to criticise Mr Mugabe publicly, may become reluctant to accept his legitimacy. He may also come under stronger pressure from elsewhere in Africa to accept that Mr Tsvangirai and the MDC should play a big role, if a unity government were formed. That sort of compromise, rather than Mr Tsvangirai in outright command, is what most African governments are betting on. If Mr Mugabe resists indefinitely, some African countries may even start to contemplate economic sanctions-cutting off supplies of electricity, for instance-that could jolt him into giving way.

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