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An election with only one candidate
The Economist
June 26, 2008

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11636482

After weeks of orchestrated state-sponsored violence, Zimbabwe's battered opposition decided not to take part in the presidential run-off scheduled for June 27th. Though the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, insisted until a few days before the poll that they would not pull out, they conceded on June 22nd that elections could not be remotely fair in the circumstances. Mr Tsvangirai said he could no longer ask Zimbabweans to cast their vote "when that vote could cost them their lives". Fearing for his own safety, he took refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare, the capital; some 300 of his supporters later did the same at South Africa's embassy.

So President Robert Mugabe looks sure to win another term. Yet the crisis is far from over. Despite Mr Tsvangirai's withdrawal, government-organised violence against people suspected of supporting him has only intensified. The authorities said they still planned to hold the election. But criticism from Africa and beyond began to mount faster than before. Mr Mugabe is far from home and dry.

The MDC won the first round of an election at the end of March for both the presidency and for Parliament, snatching a majority from the ruling ZANU-PF in the lower house for the first time since independence in 1980. It also claimed to have won the presidential ballot outright, but official results called for a run-off.

Since then, the MDC has been the victim of unbridled retaliation. More than 80 of its supporters are reckoned to have been killed, 10,000 of them injured, twice as many homes destroyed, and more than 200,000 people displaced. Human Rights Watch, a New York-based monitoring group, has documented a campaign of systematic state-sponsored retribution and terror against lawyers, journalists and civic organisations as well as people suspected of supporting the MDC. Though isolated incidents of retaliation by the opposition have been reported, independent observers say that ZANU-PF's militias have abducted, tortured, murdered and raped on a grand scale.

Last week the wife of Harare's new MDC mayor, Emmanuel Chiroto, was abducted with her four-year-old son. He was freed unharmed but she was beaten to death. Terror first meted out in rural areas that were once ruling-party strongholds has spread to the cities, where the MDC has long been popular. Fearful residents are being forced to display ZANU-PF regalia and attend "re-education" meetings, often deep into the night.

Many opposition rallies were banned. A court overturned a police ban and allowed the MDC to hold a rally in Harare on June 22nd. But thousands of government-backed youth militias armed with iron bars and guns blocked the road to the grounds where the rally was to take place, chasing and beating people who tried to gather. Mr Tsvangirai was detained several times on the campaign trail. Tendai Biti, his party's secretary-general, has been thrown behind bars, charged with treason and denied bail. The party says that over 2,000 of its supporters, including hundreds of its polling agents, are being detained.

Despite Mr Tsvangirai's decision to pull out, the regime still seems determined to expunge every whiff of opposition—or at least make sure that, if negotiations ever begin, the MDC will be weaker. In the 1980s, Mr Mugabe's regime first killed many thousands of people in Matabeleland, in the west and south, before co-opting its then main rival party in a government of national unity. Mr Tsvangirai has so far refused to join a government led by ZANU-PF, on the ground that it clearly lost the poll in March, even though the playing field was heavily tilted against the MDC.

Mr Tsvangirai has called for a negotiated settlement and wants regional bodies, backed by the UN, to help manage a transition, which would be harder to arrange if the run-off went ahead. On June 23rd, for the first time, the UN Security Council castigated the regime for its violence against the opposition and said that the run-off on June 27th could not be free or fair (see article). This time, even South Africa, China and Russia, who in the past have blocked any discussion of Zimbabwe's politics in the Security Council, assented. Crucially, the UN body said that the results of the election's first round should be respected; this goes against the notion, promoted in the past by South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, of a negotiated settlement that would leave ZANU-PF and Mr Mugabe in charge.

Mr Mugabe told a crowd of supporters that only God could remove him from power. He has long ignored Western protests and targeted sanctions (consisting of travel bans and asset freezes) against him and some 130 of his closest colleagues, denouncing such pressure as imperialist and neocolonialist. But he is finding it increasingly hard to get away with murder.

Africa, which for so long has looked the other way as Mr Mugabe stole elections and has refused to criticise him, is turning against him. The Southern African Development Community (SADC), an influential club of 14 countries (including Zimbabwe), has in the past been paralysed by divisions over how to deal with the situation—and has sat back while Mr Mbeki led a mediation approach under the rubric of "quiet diplomacy". But those in the SADC who have wanted to tackle Mr Mugabe more robustly are gaining ground.

After Mr Tsvangirai's withdrawal, Zambia's president, Levy Mwanawasa, who currently chairs the regional group, said it was scandalous for the SADC to stay silent and that elections held in the present environment would "not only be undemocratic but [would] also bring embarrassment to the SADC region and the entire continent of Africa". He called for the poll to be postponed until it could be held in a free and fair fashion.
Old friends are fed up

The leaders of Botswana and Tanzania, which currently chairs the African Union, are getting impatient too. Even Angola, a long-time ally, has called on Mr Mugabe to stop the violence. Of Zimbabwe's close neighbours, only Mozambique and Namibia have so far stayed silent. A host of other prominent Africans have denounced the election and condemned the violence. At an emergency meeting on June 25th a committee of the SADC that deals with security and includes Tanzania, Angola and Swaziland publicly doubted the legitimacy of the election's outcome.

South Africa remains by far the most influential country in the region and in the continent. Though Mr Mbeki refuses to condemn Mr Mugabe outright, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) says it is "deeply dismayed by the actions of the government of Zimbabwe, which is riding roughshod over the hard-won democratic rights of the people of that country". It has called for the run-off, whose legitimacy it sees as already "severely compromised", to be suspended in favour of negotiations. Jacob Zuma, the ANC leader likely to succeed Mr Mbeki as the country's president next year, is far more hostile to Mr Mugabe. Mr Mbeki, whom the SADC mandated last year to mediate between Zimbabwe's opposition and ruling party, flew to Harare before Mr Tsvangirai's decision in a last-ditch effort to get both sides to talk and to avoid a run-off—and still hopes for a negotiated deal; his team remained in Harare.

But civil organizations in South Africa are being more forthright than the government. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which is allied to the ANC and is a long-time critic of Mr Mugabe, is organizing demonstrations that may include a temporary blockade of South Africa's border with Zimbabwe, where much of the country's imports are transported. It also called on trade unions and "progressive citizens" around the world to isolate Mr Mugabe and his government by not letting him set foot in their countries and refusing to serve him in airports, restaurants or shops. COSATU has asked governments in the region to refuse to have dealings with him, except to work towards a fair election.

Cricket South Africa, the country's official body, which has previously defended Zimbabwe from sporting isolation, announced on June 23rd that it had suspended its ties with Zimbabwe's cricket union. That will hurt more than Britain's removal of Mr Mugabe's knighthood. More than 90 journalists from a large South African media group, Naspers, petitioned the company's board after it transpired that a subsidiary of the group had printed material used by ZANU-PF.

Words into action, then?

The big question now is what the region's leaders will do if Mr Mugabe simply ignores them. If he goes ahead with the run-off and declares himself the winner, will neighboring states recognize him as president and ZANU-PF as the government?

Botswana has hinted that it may not, especially if the SADC's election observers, who have previously turned a blind eye to rigging, declare the poll unfair. The rest of the region will have to be equally robust if Mr Mugabe is to be coaxed into negotiating with the MDC and its leader.

No less important is the African Union, which includes all 53 of Africa's countries and is due to meet for its annual summit, this time in Egypt, on June 30th. The leader of Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, has joined the condemnation of Mr Mugabe. A score of Africa's past presidents and prime ministers, this week including Nelson Mandela, have also spoken out.

So far, Mr Mugabe and his circle have not seemed to care what the world thinks. He says he will never allow the opposition to take over, threatens war if it did, and has so far refused to meet Mr Tsvangirai. The growing outrage in Africa has hitherto been confined to words. But if his neighbors begin truly to isolate Mr Mugabe, he will find it harder to survive whatever the result of a one-man election contest.

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