from the hip

Some time ago, after the election in Zimbabwe, I wrote that anything could happen there. And a lot has happened. Terror with beatings, arrests, and police raids of the oppositions’ headquarters, and so on. And alongside that, everything is slowed down and postponed. Elected results took ages to make official, then recounts took even more time, and so on.

Robert Mugabe has turned into a despot. He is very bad for the country, as we all know. But he is also very, very smart. He ignores the UN. He knows he can use the forces of government to slowly wear the opposition down. He knows he can terrorize voters and make many of them either vote for him or at least not vote. He knows guns are stronger than pens, and that he controls the guns.

By conducting the coup d’état in slow motion and surrounding parts of what he is doing with clouds of legalese, he also know that he is making it difficult for the rest of the world to react in the only way that matters to him – by military intervention. There have already been boycotts. I don’t think he cares too much, one way or the other, about a new one. Protests? Sure, and so what?

It is hard to see how a military intervention can be justified. And it is hard to see who would want to do it and finance it. But at the same time, seeing the Western world sitting there, watching, doing nothing, taking the role of the voyeur, also feels wrong. Human rights are being ignored, people’s votes are being ignored, freedom of speech is suppressed, ordinary people in Zimbabwe suffer and the sea of poverty widens.

It is an ugly picture for the moment. It may get even worse.

See also:

• Zimbabwe’s opposition leader to leave Dutch protection
• Mugabes dager er talte
• Zimbabwe: More beatings, more abductions
• Zimbabwe: Military intervention could be justified
• FN ber Mugabe avlyse valget
• Mandela: Vil ikke kritisere Mugabe

There is still considerable uncertainty concerning the results from the election in Zimbabwe. To my knowledge, official resultats have still not been released.

However, the Danish newspaper Politiken cites two prominent members of Mugabe’s ruling party (names withheld), who give the following results:

Tsvangirai’s MDC: 48.3%
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF: 43%

According to Politiken, there will be a new election within three weeks. However, New York Times writes that there are negotiations about Mugabe’s retirement under way:

Negotiations May Lead to Mugabe’s Exit in Zimbabwe

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

HARARE, Zimbabwe — The opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is in talks with advisers to President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe, amid signs that some of those close to Mr. Mugabe may encourage him to resign, a Western diplomat and a prominent Zimbabwe political analyst said Tuesday. The negotiations about a possible transfer of power away from Mr. Mugabe began after he apparently concluded that a runoff election would be demeaning, a diplomat said.

The Times, BBC-News, and Dagbladet also bring reports about negotiations. This is what Times writes:

Intensive diplomatic efforts were under way tonight to secure a face-saving exit for Robert Mugabe after 28 years as President of Zimbabwe.

His closest cohorts informed him last night that he had failed to win an outright victory in the country’s weekend presidential poll.

Despite tampering with the results from the countrywide elections, the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission was set to announce that the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had taken 48 per cent of the vote, against 42 per cent for the 84-year-old incumbent.

So, in conclusion, there is considerable uncertainty, but strong indications that Mugabe has lost. Whether he will retire in a peaceful manner or not is still not clear. According to BBC-News a deal is “close”.

Among the few very certain things in this world, is the fact that Mugabe has been a disaster for Zimbabwe. Fraud, corrupsion and poltical terror have been a fact of live for people in Zimbabwe for many years.

A land rich on resources and fairly well off at the time of independence have been reduced to one of the poorest countries in the world. Its GDP per capita have fallen with more than 80% since independence.

Now there may be a light in the tunnel, despite the fact that the desperate Robert Mugabe recruited dead voters (The Times) to rig the election.

According to The Guardian, the opposition claims that they have won the election in the country:

Zimbabwe’s opposition party claimed an overwhelming victory against President Robert Mugabe in yesterday’s presidential election, saying that the flow of results showed its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, had ‘massacred’ the ruling Zanu-PF party.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) defied a government ban on pre-empting the official announcement of the election results and released the count from polling stations that showed Tsvangirai beating the man who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years, even in the president’s home territory of Mashonaland.

‘We’ve won this election,’ said Tendai Biti, the MDC’s secretary-general. ‘The results coming in show that in our traditional strongholds we are massacring them. In Mugabe’s traditional strongholds they are doing very badly. There is no way Mugabe can claim victory unless it is through fraud. He has lost this election.’

The government’s electoral commission has yet to release the counts formally. But the MDC said that declarations posted at polling stations across Zimbabwe last night, and gathered from its agents observing the counts, showed Tsvangirai ahead of Mugabe in every province where results were available. The most dramatic gap was in Mashonaland West, where the MDC candidate had 88 per cent of the vote to the president’s 12 per cent.

However, it is still too early to say. And even if the opposition should win, the likelihood of a peaceful transition of power is probably very, very small. The most likely outcome is that Mugabe will cling to power and a civil war will ensue.

In my opinion, that is.

PS: The election results are not forthcoming. Election observers now fears that this means that Mugabe is yet again doctoring the results. Journalists have not so far been able to ascertain when the results will be made public.
PS2: Read about some of the local election results from The Independent.

Some good readings about the election in Zimbabwe:

The Independent - Mugabe: the writing’s on the wall, Opposition leaders go into hiding as poll result is delayed
New York Times: Zimbabwe Opposition Insists Mugabe Lost
The Guardian: Zimbabwe opposition fears vote-rigging, Secret Mugabe meeting ponders military move or fixed result
Information (Danmark - in Danish): Dødt løb efter valg i Zimbabwe