Is Mugabe Losing His Grip?
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| Zimbabwe: 23 Years of Black Rule (Jul. 2003) |
| Zim Over the Edge (May 2002) |
| War on African Whites (May 2001) |
| Thank You, Mr. Mugabe (Jul. 2000) |
| Heart of Darkness (June 2000) |
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It has finally happened. The impossible has been achieved by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
For the first time since independence in 1980, Zanu-PF has lost control of Zimbabwe’s house of parliament.
But this does not answer all the questions that are preying on Zimbabwean minds.
Actually, one main question—who is their president?
The rumours began shortly after 1800 on Tuesday—the president of the republic would address the nation on television.
Would he concede? Would he hold on for a run-off engineered by the counters at the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission?
Those of us without televisions rang the televisually advantaged.
Speculation
But the president did not address the nation, the rumours of his defeat remained just that, rumours, spurred on further by yet another MDC press conference.
“Do you know Mugabe? Do you know him?” said a Zanu-PF insider, “when has anyone ever managed to put him into a corner?”
But the president’s silence has given scope to the kind of speculation on which governments falter.
The military and Zanu-PF insiders are said to be breaking it to him gently that the voters had chosen another path.
There have been no meetings between Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change—that is a pattern of negotiation reserved for fallen armies.
In this case, it is common knowledge that the president despises this “upstart foreign sponsored opposition,” and to any casual observer, that he is still the commander-in-chief of a hardened and so far loyal state security apparatus.
To those of us who have been watching these two sides spar, it is impossible to imagine negotiations of that nature between them.
The path on which they have travelled is strewn with bodies, disfigured and dead, with petrol bombings, arrests, torture, militia beatings and complete and total distrust.
When last they talked, under the arbitration of the South Africans, in preparation for these elections, they had failed to agree on so many issues.
An “exit” package, as was widely reported, was not, after all, on the table.
‘Enfant terrible’
And so the Zimbabweans, who gathered by their televisions last night, gripped and on tenterhooks, were gathering out of disbelief and a healthy amount of cynicism.
In the end, all they got was some more painfully slow announcements of the parliamentary results in the local languages, Ndebele and Shona, and no clear indication about who is leading, who the likely winner is, and absolutely no mention of the presidential poll.
The state-run ZBC news followed, and because of the rumour of a presidential address of some significance, the ratings must have gone through the roof for the first time in decades.
But the news ended and the viewers were numbed by a “drama” of the television variety, real actors and soppy plot.
Where to now? Since Saturday night, Zanu-PF’s enfant terrible, “this ungrateful boy” as the president described him—Simba Makoni—has been largely ignored.
As the figures came in it was obvious he had had too little time to prepare despite his massive international coverage, and that his involvement had only succeeded in splitting the Zanu-PF vote.
The real heavyweight contest was between the incumbent and the once bruised challenger Morgan Tsvangirai.
No more.
Enter the new scenario—a run-off for the presidency.
Energy reserve
In this scenario, the new kid on the block, Mr Makoni, is being sweet-talked by government and the opposition to strengthen their grip.
Is that the case?
I ring up his people, convinced that this is where things are going and speak to an official who tells me repeatedly not to name him.
Things are very sensitive.
Can you confirm that you are talking to either side?
“It’s now public knowledge that they are both courting us. The MDC and Zanu-PF have been in closed door talks with us since Monday night. If there is a run-off, our people will swing it.”
What does he make of the situation? The delay, the uncertainty?
“Part face-saving gesture, part dented pride. I think his pride has been seriously dented. It is not in the president’s DNA to accept defeat.”
Does he feel betrayed by you, the Simba Makoni people?
“The irony is that we probably saved him. That 8%—10% we took in Bulawayo allowed him and Zanu-PF to compete with the MDC in that province. Without us he would have lost outright the whole of Bulawayo.”
My township contacts call to say the police are patrolling the township streets again this morning.
This time soldiers in uniform accompany them.
A run-off would mean another three weeks or so of this.
The tension is only just beginning to build.
What is in the 84-year-old’s energy reserve tank?
Lesson number one: It is unwise to write him off.
(Posted on April 2, 2008)
Mugabe Loses Grip on Zimbabwe Parliament
AAP, April 3, 2008
President Robert Mugabe fought to survive the biggest crisis of his rule on Wednesday after losing control of Zimbabwe’s parliament for the first time since taking power after independence.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said Mugabe had also been defeated in a presidential election last Saturday and should concede defeat to avoid embarrassment.
Mugabe’s aides angrily dismissed the MDC claim, hinting the opposition could be punished for publishing its own tallies despite warnings this would be regarded as an attempted coup.
But the state-owned newspaper and projections by Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party conceded that he had failed to win a majority for the first time in 28 years.
Official results of the parliamentary election, which have trickled out slowly since last Saturday’s election, showed that Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF could not outvote the combined opposition seats.
Official figures said the mainstream Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had taken 105 seats, a breakaway faction 9 and an independent 1 in the 210-seat parliament.
Mugabe’s ZANU-PF has so far taken 94.
Mugabe, 84, faced an unprecedented challenge in the elections after being widely blamed for the economic collapse of his once prosperous nation.
The mainstream MDC faction said its leader Morgan Tsvangirai had won 50.3 per cent of the presidential vote and Mugabe 43.8 per cent according to its own tallies of results posted outside polling stations.
No official results have emerged in the presidential vote.
But all the signs are that Mugabe, a liberation war hero still respected throughout Africa, is in the worst trouble of his rule.
MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti said Tsvangirai had an absolute majority, enough for outright victory, but he would accept a second round runoff against Mugabe “under protest”.
Analysts said the president was likely to be humiliated in a runoff and the defeat in the parliamentary vote would remove some of his power of patronage—a plank of his long and iron rule.
His government called the MDC claim “mischievous”.
Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga told Sky television: “President Mugabe is going nowhere. We are not going to be pressurised into anything.”
Matonga said in a telephone interview with Sky: “No-one is panicking around President Mugabe. The army is very solidly behind our president, the police force as well.”
Mugabe’s spokesman, George Charamba, said the MDC was in contempt of the law by announcing results. “You are drifting in very dangerous territory and I hope the MDC is prepared for the consequences,” he said.
Mugabe, known for his fierce and defiant rhetoric, has not been seen in public since voting, despite speculation he would make a television address on Tuesday night.
The government appears to have been preparing the population for a runoff by revealing its own projections showing a second round would be required in the statutory three weeks after last Saturday’s vote.
Both Tsvangirai and the government have dismissed widespread speculation that the MDC was negotiating with ZANU-PF for a managed exit for Mugabe, who has ruled uninterrupted since independence from Britain in 1980.
Analysts said Mugabe was unlikely to make a negotiated exit but go down fighting in the second round.
“He is not the type that quietly walks away into the sunset,” a senior Western diplomat said in Harare.
The prospect of a runoff has raised fears both inside and outside Zimbabwe that the hiatus before a new vote would spark serious violence between security forces and militia loyal to Mugabe on one side and MDC supporters on the other.
The state-owned Herald newspaper also said the government had decided to immediately implement tax relief to cushion the effect of runaway inflation, officially over 100,000 percent but estimated to be much higher—the world’s highest rate.
The widening of workers’ tax-free threshold tenfold to 300 million Zimbabwean dollars per month—$US10,000 ($A11,035) at the government’s official rate but about $US7.50 ($A8.28) on the black market—is widely seen as an attempt to curry favour with voters and suggests ZANU-PF is preparing for a runoff.
The opposition and international observers said Mugabe rigged the last presidential election in 2002. But some analysts say the groundswell of discontent over the economy is too great for him to fix the result this time without risking major unrest.
Apart from surreal inflation and a virtually worthless currency, Zimbabweans are suffering food and fuel shortages and an HIV/AIDS epidemic that has contributed to a steep drop in life expectancy.
The opposition, including former Finance Minister Simba Makoni, who stood as a third candidate, is expected to unite behind Tsvangirai if there is a runoff.
Comments
This racist, hateful communist dictator has caused his people a lot of suffering. He should go. He can always find a job in Obama’s church.
Posted by at 5:48 PM on April 2
Unlike Algore, Comrade PresidentForLife Mugabe can simply not accept the results of the election. Who’s going to do anything about it? Jimmy Carter? Andrew Young? Certainly not the long line of enablers in London. Who needs a constitution anyway. USofA has done just fine without one since 1933.
Posted by Old Soldier at 6:11 PM on April 2
Apart from surreal inflation and a virtually worthless currency, Zimbabweans are suffering food and fuel shortages and an HIV/AIDS epidemic that has contributed to a steep drop in life expectancy.
Some of this, the worthless currency and inflation, could be laid at Mugabe’s doorstep, but the HIV/AIDS epidemic is due to the people themselves; Mugabe didn’t make them transmit disease back and forth to each other.
There will not be any improvement in the condition of Zimbabweans. With an average IQ of about 65, and a history that shows that about a century ago, the population level was at about one percent of the present level, it’s virtually certain that conditions will continue to deteriorate until the population density drops to the level it was at before the arrival of the white farmers that inflated it a hundred times.
Zimbabwe will go back to the bush; the only question is how rapidly. It would be an act of mercy to stop western food handouts so as not to prolong their present misery.
Posted by at 6:17 PM on April 2
The opposition party won by promising to bring inflation down to a mere 5,000,000%.
Posted by Question Diversity at 6:35 PM on April 2
Does it really matter who rules zimbabwe? Whites were driven out long ago, it will always be a hellhole from here on.
Posted by Diamed at 6:43 PM on April 2
Too late; the damage has already been done, and Zimbabwe will never recover.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 7:18 PM on April 2
This is one reason I do not give to overseas aid….feed those who will in turn…shot you dead in the blink of an eye…no thanks…let them kill each other who cares??? I do not!!
Posted by lydia at 7:20 PM on April 2
Just more of blacks doing what they do best, running a place into the ground.
Posted by at 8:32 PM on April 2
If anyone thinks a new black power structure will change anything, I have some beachfront property in Arizona for sale - cheap.
The newly elected are looking forward to shiny new suits and that all important Benz for cruising the countryside and parking in their gated communities.
Zimbabwean voters just sprayed some perfume on a pig.
Posted by proactive at 8:35 PM on April 2
Don’t kid yourselves folks. Unless Mugabe is smart enough to gather whatever wealth is left and flee Zimbabwe (unlikely), he will soon be dancing at the end of a rope. He’s treated the opposition to beating, murders, imprisonment etc. Now they have the upper hand and he’s run out of bread and circuses. The people despise him. His fate is sealed.
Let’s just hope the US doesn’t do something stupid…..like come to his rescue.
Posted by at 8:58 PM on April 2
I’m happy Ian Smith did not live to see the sordid end of his beloved Rhodesia. But we will, as various factions fight over the remnants of a tribal backwater. The few remaining whites will gradually disappear and the “country” will go out with a whimper. If ever there was a monument to Western liberal folly, Zimbabwe is it.
Posted by Xenophon at 9:08 PM on April 2
Who cares? The damage is done and the agricultural wealth of that nation was ruined with the expulsion of indigenous white farmers.
We’re better off looking towards Namibia where another black African leader is targeting Native Whites.
Posted by worried for namibia at 10:31 PM on April 2
Worried,
What’s going on in Namibia? As a casual observation it looks to me like things are tranquil, and the economy is growing.
Posted by at 12:04 AM on April 3
So who will be the next great black leader? Meet the new boss same as the old boss? This is 99.9% certainty.
Posted by at 8:40 AM on April 3
Maybe this will be a wake-up call to Whites, especially White Americans, that if we have blacks in charge and allow in more non-white immigration, we will face the same fate. Mugabe did to the whites what Hitler did to Jews.
Posted by at 8:51 AM on April 3
Well, according to UK Labour MP Kate Hoey Britain has been negotiating with the Zimbabwe opposition & it looks like Mad Marxist Dictator Mugabe will concede power in a day or two. The Daily Mail also reports that the yearly £350m aid that Zimbabwe receives from the ‘white debils’ [Britain, USA, EU] will be increased to over £1b for a new government. And it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if a deal has been done to let the dictator retire to another African country with his siphoned wealth. Facts are that the Western liberal establishment [plenty of whom still stalk the Westminster corridors] who worked their damnedest to put this tin-pot meglomaniac in power in 1980 should be embarrassed but of course brainwashed liberal/Fabian/Marxists are incapable of such feelings & will will hand over taxpayer’s money without as much as a blush. Will there be a proviso in any deal for any inquiry or reparations for the forgotten minority, the white farmers who were robbed of their farms and sometimes their lives? Don’t hold your breath. Still I suppose we can look on the bright side & imagine that some small economic benefit will derive to a few western suppliers of gold braid, medals & shiny brass buttons when the New Model Establishment in Zimbabwe takes over & starts creating thousands of new generals. Al & Je$$e are you watching?
Posted by political correctness is cultural marxism at 11:00 AM on April 3
There is not a single prosperous nor peaceful place on earth that is governed by blacks.
Posted by Sensitivity Trainer at 12:58 PM on April 3
I disagree mr. Scott. Zimbabwe can recover, if white people move in and take control.
Posted by flyingtiger at 2:10 PM on April 3
Ian Smith did in fact live to see the end of Rhodesia, which ended the day he turned power over to Bishop Muzewawa. Zimbabwe is certainly finished, but Rhodesia can always come back, it will just take a lot of work.
Posted by at 3:22 PM on April 3
To understand exactly what the African political mentality is like, you have to see these pictures:
http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200703/r131614_437147.jpg
http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/DA_fall05/zim/mugabe2.ap.jpg
What do these pictures make me think of? Some hypothetical dystopian American future (ala “Idiocracy”) where we’ve elected some aging rap star to the presidency. Note in the second picture the military commander in the background with his hat cocked in a distinctly unmilitary fashion.
This is one reason I do not give to overseas aid….feed those who will in turn…shot you dead in the blink of an eye…no thanks…let them kill each other who cares??? I do not!! - Lydia
My thoughts exactly, Lydia, but who cares what you or I think? Even as the American economy tanks and federal and consumer debt soar through the roof what is Congress doing? They’re busy giving away your money in an effort to make themselves look compassionate. Congress has decided to spend $10 billion on foreign aid, almost entirely to Africa, tripling the current figure. George W Idiot, of course, supports it entirely.
Posted by at 3:38 PM on April 3
No, Mugabe appears not to be losing his grip. Opposition leaders and foreign jouralists have now been arrested. They had already abandoned any rule of law by international standards, but even Mugabe once used to pretend to champion his fellow blacks - while inflicting untold miseries on them.
It is a complete shame that megalomaniacal leaders are able to drag entire nations down, but they have all through history. Rhodesia might not have been great, but compared to what? Uganda or the Central African Empire where Idi Amin and Emperor Bokhassa actually *ate* people? I like living in a white country, and my ideology is usually viewed as somewhat disturbing in its neolithic conservatism, but I would not have cared to live in Hitler’s Germany.
Hitler and Stalin were still the worst of the worst, with a slight edge to Stalin. A government that organizes the rape, imprisonment, exile and murders of its most productive citizens does not deserve to exist, and a people who would allow their government to do that to their neighbors do not deserve to live.
I will offer one example, that of Guenther von Paschen. He was 36 at the battle of Jutland - Skaggerak if you prefer - and was chief gunnery officer of battlecruiser Luetzow. His shooting was the best on either side, and he sank HMS Black Prince, Invincible, and probably also Queen Mary and Defense. Luetzow took 24 heavy shells that ultimately caused her to be abandoned once the waterline foreward was at the gun muzzles of “B” turret and the screws in the air aft. If she could have been run aground, even backwards, Luetzow could have been saved. An American crew probably could have saved her. Seydlitz was saved, and had been nearly as completely wrecked.
Paschen was murdered by the Gestapo on November 8, 1943 for saying in private converstaion to two Danish nazis that he thought Germany would lose the war.
Where tyranny reigns, decent men are not long wanted, whatever their military skills.
I will bet that nobody remains in Zimbabwe capable of fixing the place.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 4:44 PM on April 3
Mugabe still controls the police and the military. Who’s to say that the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai won’t be assasinated by Mugabe’s goons, leading to widespread political unrest and anarchy? Mugabe will then declare a state of emergency, suspend all “civil liberties” (I LOL at the use of such a term for Zimbabwe), and prevent the new congress from being sworn in.
Bush will waste diesel fuel by sending Rice lady on a jet to urge Mugabe to resign. The UN and EU will follow suit.
Such a scenario has been played out time and again, in sub-Sahara Africa, and is not without precedent elsewhere. A similar thing took place in Pakistan in 1970. The Awami League, based in East Pakistan, won a majority of the legislative seats in December 1970 elections. Yayah Khan suspended the results of the election, arrested Awami League leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and sent troops into East Pakistan on March 25, 1971. The result was war with India (from 12-6-71 to 12-21-71) and the independence of Bangladesh. Before it was over, some 1-3 million people were killed in Bangladesh, and 10 million refugees fled to India.
Let a hundred flowers bloom on Zimbabwe’s grave. Let a hundred jackals contest over her remains.
Posted by Soprano Fan at 2:28 AM on April 4
Mugabe’s wife, who thinks her job as first lady is to shop, was once asked how she could justify spending so much money on designer shoes, when people are starving in Zimbabwe. Her response, “my feet are narrow, not all shoes will fit me.”
Posted by Kellie at 9:11 AM on April 4