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Mugabe's election ruse
Mail & Guardian (SA)
February 01, 2008

http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/insight/insight__africa&articleid=331411

Zimbabwean President's Announcement could force Mbeki to change tack

His foes have called it "an act of madness", but Robert Mugabe's move to call elections within two months might prove a masterstroke that will trip up his opponents.

But it could also be a move that prolongs his stand off with the opposition and a regional mediation process with which Mugabe looks increasingly impatient.

By unilaterally setting the date, Mugabe has set Zimbabwe up for an election the outcome of which will be disputed, the one thing Thabo Mbeki's mediation effort set out to prevent in the first place.

Nearly a year into the Mbeki process, Mugabe's move should also force Mbeki, who is to report to African leaders this weekend, into a change of tack.

Last Friday Mugabe called elections for March 29, defying opposition demands - which were given popular expression just two days earlier in streets protests - that the elections be pushed back to allow a set of constitutional and electoral reforms agreed by both sides to take effect.

Mugabe's decision has forced the two feuding factions of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to put a halt to their bickering and open discussion about whether to reunite and face Mugabe, or boycott the elections altogether.

With Mugabe setting the deadline for the registration of candidates, by February 8, the MDC now has little time to decide.

But already bitter rivalries are being set aside, at least for now.

Welshman Ncube, the secretary general of one faction of the MDC and one of the opposition's two negotiators, said early this week the two rival factions would meet over a common reaction to Mugabe.

"We have to meet and come up with a position, collectively. Our question is: how could Mugabe unilaterally announce the election date when the dialogue was still going on? He has effectively repudiated the SADC (Southern African Development Community) dialogue", Ncube said.

But, however the MDC decides, Mugabe will emerge from March 29 still unable to claim the legitimacy he so badly craves.

Should the MDC participate, and lose as expected, it will challenge Mugabe's victory. A boycott by all opposition parties would be even worse for him, as this would leave him unable to gain any real international, or even regional, recognition for his government.

So far none of this is stopping Mugabe from firing up his campaign machinery.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network (ZESN), an independent election observer group, said in a new report that Mugabe's Zanu PF is using food aid, farm equipment and threats of violence and loss of property to prop up his rural support. This week, in his latest attempt to win reluctant urban support, he announced that the government would open "people's stores" that will sell basics at "affordable prices".

But while Mugabe goes full throttle, the MDC campaign has yet to take off, as its leaders had thrown everything into the Mbeki process, believing they could still sway Mugabe on the election date.
The state-run newspaper, the Herald, without a hint of irony, said the MDC should set aside its criticism of playing field and emulate Zanu-PF, which, at the 1980 independence elections, "defied the odds and won a landslide against the (Ian) Smith regime and its lackeys who controlled the machinery of the state."

But, since Mugabe's announcement, there has been stronger lobbying by MDC radicals who argue that going into elections will help Mugabe claim the legality he needs to get Mbeki off his back.

It has been nearly a year since Mbeki started his mediation effort. It must feel like an eternity to Mugabe, who loathes even the slightest foreign scrutiny of his rule. Signs of fatigue over the Mbeki process have been showing for months.

At Mbeki's last visit in January Mugabe looked decidedly irritated as he glumly emerged from a five-hour long meeting at his official residence, angrily refusing to compromise on any of the opposition's demands.

But with a continuation of the crisis after what will obviously be a disputed election result, Mbeki will have to either continue with the process or - and this would be an even worse irritant for Mugabe - he could refer the matter to the SADC organ on defence, politics and security, as now demanded by the opposition.

There will also be renewed calls for a widening of the efforts in Zimbabwe, even after Senegalese leader Abdoulaye Wade failed in a bid last year to have other African leaders included in helping to solve the crisis.

Mbeki himself has previously rejected suggestions to allow broader intervention but, with all previous progress now reversed, even his patience must be wearing thin.

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