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Coming to a crunch
The Economist
March 19, 2008

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10880693

Fear a rigged election that returns President Robert Mugabe. Fear one that nearly does so even more AS YOU drive through the rolling green countryside of Gutu district, past the occasional outcrop of pink boulders leaning weirdly against each other, a gaggle of youths walking by the roadside give a cheeky two-handed wave, fingers and thumbs all splayed open. The youngsters' black-and-red T-shirts bear the smiling face of Morgan Tsvangirai, the rugged 56-year-old trade-unionist who has led the main opposition to President Robert Mugabe for nine years and who, for his pains, was savagely beaten by policemen a year ago. Several of the youngsters also hold up a red card, an insolent party symbol borrowed from football and meaning the president must be sent off. It is impossible to say whether the youths are just brazen jokers enjoying a tilt against their elders and benefiting from the handout of a free shirt. But in a district that has been ardently loyal to Mr Mugabe ever since the guerrilla war against Ian Smith in the 1970s, it is astonishing that they are wearing these shirts here at all. A year ago they would have been beaten up, perhaps killed, for cocking such a snook.

"The coercive apparatus of ZANU-PF [the ruling party] is finally crumbling," says Nelson Chamisa, a senior lieutenant of Mr Tsvangirai.

Several of Mr Mugabe's main instruments of control, especially in the countryside-patronage, food and force-have started to dwindle. Three years ago, when the president won the last general election, albeit on flagrantly unequal terms, he could count on local party chiefs and worthies and on his own army and police to deliver basic services and to thump those who talked out of turn. Now, even in a place like Gutu, the supply of such things as cooking oil, petrol, maize meal (the country's staple), sugar and salt is lacking. Schools and clinics are in sombre straits. Buses are scarce. The explanation that it is the fault of "the British imperialists" and their sanctions (actually aimed mainly at the assets and travel of 130-odd senior officials) has worn thin. And the rural people know that much of the land for which they fought their war of liberation from white supremacy has gone not to them but to Mr Mugabe's already prosperous colleagues. Moreover, the army, police and much-feared Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) may no longer be united behind the 84-year-old president. His party has fractured, thanks to the intervention six weeks ago, as a challenger from within, of Simba Makoni, a former finance minister whom many of Zimbabwe's black and shrinking white professional middle class see as the decent and competent face of ZANU-PF. So a bitter triangular contest has broken out.

Almost every day the sole national daily, the Zimbabwe Herald, which slavishly defers to Mr Mugabe, carries headlined protestations of loyalty from such people as Solomon Mujuru, a former head of the army who is also one of Zimbabwe's richest men and happens to be married to one of its two vice-presidents. Such articles only alert Zimbabweans to the whispers and mutterings of dissent within ZANU-PF that have become ever louder since Mr Makoni threw his cap in the ring. Mr Mujuru and assorted other party bigwigs are reckoned to be biding their time, waiting to see which way the wind will blow in the next few weeks. In a country where opposition has been reviled and harassed, it is hard to foretell the outcome of the "harmonised elections"-at four different levels of office, from the presidency and parliament down to local councils-on March 29th. But it is pretty clear that the president's popularity, such as it is, has been waning, even among his old guard. Even if he somehow hangs on, and lots of seasoned watchers think he will, the mantra in Harare is that "something big has changed", thanks to Mr Makoni's challenge. Many of the ruling party's vultures clearly sense it is time to eye fresh pickings.

The latest opinion poll by the Mass Public Opinion Institute, run by a professor at the University of Zimbabwe, gives Mr Tsvangirai 28% of the vote, Mr Mugabe 20% and Mr Makoni 9%. Another 24% refuse to reveal a preference, suggesting still wider support for the opposition, and 8% are undecided. Such figures should be treated cautiously, but it seems more than possible that Mr Mugabe will fail to win the 50%-plus needed to clinch victory in the first round, even if he rigs as ruthlessly as he has done before. A run-off would have to be held within three weeks. Mr Makoni, who declared his candidacy only on February 5th, may have joined the fray too late. His rallies have been less well attended than Mr Tsvangirai's, though both men have faced the expected array of bureaucratic obstacles and intimidation put in their way by the police, who are still expected to do the president's bidding, though they seem less zealous-so far-than before.

The able and pleasant Mr Makoni, who earned a chemistry doctorate in Britain, is well financed by businessmen and professionals in Zimbabwe, South Africa and even Britain. But he has suffered from having to start from scratch, whereas Mr Tsvangirai, in nearly a decade of struggle, has woven a sinewy web of intrepid supporters, which now seems to stretch into the rural areas, Mr Mugabe's well-controlled heartlands. Moreover, while Mr Mugabe has portrayed Mr Makoni as a traitor-and, by the by, a prostitute and a frog-the newcomer's rivals in the opposition sneer at him as a johnny-come-lately who served Mr Mugabe as a loyal ZANU-PF apparatchik off and on for 28 years, most recently as finance minister bewteen 2000 and 2002. Until his sacking last month, he remained deputy head of finance in the party's ruling Politburo. Indeed, Mr Makoni, 58 next week, has been careful not to attack ZANU-PF wholesale, hoping to turn the more acceptable face of it to his cause. In particular, he is said to have sympathetic contacts in the army, police and CIO who may tell him how to stymie some of Mr Mugabe's old rigging tricks, because they were the ones who executed them before. It is possible that Mr Makoni, who has no party, will yet build up a head of electoral steam, but so far he has emerged as a spoiler against Mr Mugabe, opening up cracks of disloyalty in an increasing twitchy ruling party, yet without gaining mass support himself. Mr Makoni's refusal so far either to attack his old party outright or to put much flesh on his broadly sensible but vague policy ideas has made him look amiable but wishy-washy. His allies are a mix of old left-wing ideologues, displaced rivals of Mr Mugabe, disenchanted ZANU-PF people who want a younger man at the helm, and businessmen, many of whom would not dismantle the present system of crony capitalism but want to make it more efficient, notably by ending the global isolation wrought by Mr Mugabe.

The recent defection of Arthur Mutambara, leader of the lighter wing of Mr Tsvangirai's fractured Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has yet to bring much extra to Mr Makoni's show. Though Mr Mutambara is also able, his own support seems to have fizzled. His close colleague, Welshman Ncube, a member of the minority Ndebele group (who, with the related Kalanga, make up about a fifth of Zimbabweans), may pull in some votes from the utterly disgruntled west. A little help from the ship-jumpers Mr Makoni was chuffed, too, when he was joined by Dumiso Dabengwa, who ran the intelligence service for the guerrilla movement drawn mainly from the Ndebele during the anti-colonial war but who, despite four years' imprisonment by Mr Mugabe, later served for eight years as his minister for home affairs. Mr Mugabe anyway looks set to be trounced in the towns, where the MDC always wins easily, though the contest between Mr Makoni and Mr Tsvangirai could split the opposition vote to the benefit of the old man. Indeed, many Zimbabweans, always prone to conspiracy theories, think Mr Makoni was brought into the game by Mr Mugabe to do just that. EPAMugabe targets the traitor... At best, Mr Makoni may perform respectably in Matabeleland, in the west, where Mr Mugabe is still hated for bloodily suppressing dissent there in the early 1980s; among his own Manyika in the east; and in the smarter suburbs of Harare. But his support looks thin elsewhere. The Karanga, who inhabit the Gutu area among others, may be the swing electoral group among the dominant Shona; more of the Zezuru stick to their own Mr Mugabe. In any event, there is not the slightest chance of the election being fair.

The media are hugely stacked against the opposition, which is rarely given even a cursorily polite airing by the all-state-run radio and television services. The election commission is chaired by a Mugabe man, a former general. The registrar-general, another loyalist, presides over an electoral roll that is notoriously unreliable and incomplete, and contains thousands of dead people whose votes are expected to go to the president. Unless voting is extended beyond one day, many town-dwellers may be unable to cast their ballots, because there are too few urban polling stations.

The diaspora, some 2m-3m mostly disenchanted Zimbabweans, is barred from voting. Another obstacle is the recent gerrymandering of constituencies, which gives rural areas, where Mr Mugabe is strongest, a large disproportion of seats in the 210-member parliament. To make matters worse, the opposition will find it hard to recruit agents to man all the 8,212 polling-stations, where, in past elections, the ruling party has been able to stuff unwatched ballot boxes with impunity when opposition officials have been absent or chased away. By tradition, fiddling the figures can also be carried out at the centre, and this time Mr Mugabe has banned any observers who might cry foul. Then there is the politicisation of food distribution, which goes on apace in a country where a third of the 11m-12m people who have not fled abroad might starve without handouts, according to the UN's World Food Programme. As Mr Mugabe smells the possibility of defeat, he has raised the pay of civil servants and soldiers in the past few weeks, and is endlessly pictured sending consignments of new tractors and buses into the rural areas.

"It all happens before election day," says Noel Kututwa, head of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a lobby accused by Mr Mugabe's friends of being a foreign stooge. "The votes have been counted already," is often heard.

Indeed, the armed forces have already cast their votes, with most soldiers believing their ballots have been seen by their superiors. AFP...while Makoni eyes the prize And yet, despite this stack of advantages, Mr Mugabe is plainly on the defensive. He must fear that Zimbabwe is in a state of such economic and political ruin that he needs more of a head-start than the 20% or so of votes provided by the standard forms of rigging. For Zimbabweans, however, there are two worries. One is that Mr Mugabe steals the election. The other is that he just fails to, especially if that means the president is forced into a run-off. In that case, he may resort to outright violence. "The violence has so far been contained, more or less," says a former ZANU-PF minister who has joined Mr Makoni, "but if the election goes to two rounds it'll go right up."

Moreover, the heads of the army, the prison service and the police have all stated flatly that they will not let Mr Tsvangirai win. That is one reason why many people, especially among the professional middle class, have switched their opposition allegiance to Mr Makoni. So Mr Makoni has called for a government of national unity, bringing together both wings of the MDC and the supposedly acceptable bits of ZANU-PF, along with his own team. Mr Mugabe would be allowed to go into a dignified retirement, and not be sent to The Hague for crimes against humanity. Mr Tsvangirai, more of a bruiser and showman, sounds less accommodating. He would form a "national government", drawing people but not necessarily parties into a coalition. He has refused to discuss deals before the election. Yet he would probably have to do so, if Mr Mugabe and his army and police let him get beyond the first round. This is all uncertain territory. Almost no one disputes Mr Tsvangirai's courage and resilience, but many doubt whether he is astute enough to lead the country and heal its wounds. "How can you expect to unify the country when you can't unify your party?" was a telling question at one of his meetings. For his MDC has been riven with factional feuding. He is an erratic tactician with authoritarian tendencies.

In his negotiations with Mr Mugabe's representatives under the aegis of the Southern African Development Community, he has been serially outwitted. In his early days he made the big mistake of letting himself look as if he were being bankrolled and even manipulated by Zimbabwe's aggrieved white farmers. Even so, Mr Tsvangirai might win most first-round votes in a free election. But the election will not be free; a Mugabe victory should not be ruled out. Conceivably, he might then agree to step down sooner rather than later, perhaps handing over to his heir-apparent, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who, among other things, ran the security services for nine years. Alternatively, he might bring the Makoni faction back into his government. Such a course may be advocated by South Africa. But it would be unlikely to extricate the country from its current mess. For Zimbabwe is a wreck. Inflation is running at more than 100,000% a year. Virtually no one changes money at the official rate of Z$30,000 to $1. On the black market, you pay around Z$250,000 (at least, you did last week), making virtually everyone, especially the middle class, technically crooks. At independence in 1980, a Zimbabwe dollar was slightly more valuable than its American namesake.

Tsvangirai shouts the odds. Some economists think that, if prices double every month, a government can still collect revenue. But if prices double every week, you hit a point where people start to flee the currency altogether. Zimbabwe is heading in the abandon-ship direction, perhaps only a few months away. The country's white population, once the economy's motor, has shrunk from around 200,000 at independence in 1980 to fewer than 50,000 today. Some estimates go as low as 20,000. Of the 6,800 commercial farms in the hands of some 4,500 white farmers at independence, about 300 are still owned and actively farmed by them, with a few hundred more still in white hands but left unproductive while their ownership is under threat. Particularly wretched is the plight of black workers on the former white-run farms. Including seasonal workers and their dependants, they account for at least 1m people, perhaps 2m. According to a government-linked institute, only 10-12% became landowners themselves when land was redistributed. Academic studies say the real figure is less than 2%. Many of the rest have been thrown into destitution. For mile after mile, expropriated farmland seems empty of cattle or infested with weeds. Zimbabwe's production of tobacco, once the second-biggest in the world, has slumped from 237m kilograms in 2000 to 70m last year.

Official gold output, probably the country's biggest foreign-currency earner, has dived from 27m tonnes in 1999 to seven last year. An "indigenisation and economic empowerment" act was signed by Mr Mugabe earlier this month, with potentially grave consequences for white entrepreneurs. It entitles a minister to transfer the majority share of any company-a garage, shop, factory and, more significantly, a mine or a bank-owned by non-indigenous Zimbabweans to "any person who before 1980 was disadvantaged by unfair discrimination on the grounds of his or her race, and any descendant of such person." That means no whites. This bluntly racist bill may cause even more whites to flee, as their assets are liable to be grabbed as rewards for ZANU-PF loyalists.

The health service, once resilient, is falling apart. Especially in the rural areas, people are dying fast. HIV or AIDS has hit nearly a fifth of the population. Life expectancy has dived from the highest in sub-Saharan Africa to 36 years, one of the lowest. Surgical operations in the biggest hospital have had to be stopped because basic equipment is defunct and drugs have run out. Three-quarters of the doctors have emigrated, along with more than half of nurses, physiotherapists and social workers. Patients seeking operations and treatment must buy medicine themselves.

Virtually anything essential is scarce-unless you have foreign currency, but not even that always does the trick. Bread is often hard to find. The electricity in Harare is frequently off: the main transformers are bust. Water in some of the poorer townships has not flowed for two years. Petrol can be bought only with coupons; petrol stations are often empty. The only things that seem to multiply, apart from the noughts on the bank-notes, are pot-holes in what used to be Africa's smoothest roads north of the Limpopo river. It is a puzzle how people manage to survive at all; many do so through barter, begging, chicanery or, most especially, remittances from the diaspora.

Some 80% of Zimbabweans have no formal job. Many have reverted to the subsistence economy. Send for a saviour On the surface, people in Harare still go about their daily lives in an air of normality. The streets bustle. Zimbabweans remain remarkably friendly. Many are fatalistic but some manage to stay hopeful that their country will recover. Yet they know that what was once one of Africa's most thriving economies is virtually ruined. A mere reshuffling of the ZANU-PF pack, even with Mr Mugabe graciously retiring, seems unlikely to put the country on the road to recovery. Its economic, political and moral muckage has gone too far for that. Zimbabweans find it hard to see a way out. Messrs Tsvangirai and Makoni have managed to show that the spirit of courage and decency is still alive. But whether that is enough to turn round a country heading for dereliction any time soon-or whether they will be allowed to try doing so-is still doubtful.

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