Mugabe cracks down as opposition takes legislative majority

The NY Times reports a raid on the Zimbabwean opposition headquarters. Police claim the 215 they arrested are suspected of “political violence,” but this is clearly the next step in Mugabe’s effort to ensure he wins a presidential runoff election.

Security forces took “computers and documents,” allegedly including evidence that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the original election. They also targeted the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, NDI’s in-country partner.

According to Le Monde, opposition candidates will control parliament. Even if Mugabe’s Zanu-PF wins each of the five remaining seats in the 23-seat partial recount, it cannot retain its majority.

Mugabe’s loss of parliament makes retaining the presidency even more critical. If there is a transition on the horizon, Mugabe will want to bargain from executive office.

Zimbabwean democratic transition?

With Mugabe unable to tap foreign support, hints at a power-sharing deal and the release of election results, a democratic transition could be underway in Zimbabwe.

According to the New York Times, a neighboring democracy won’t let Mugabe bust opposition heads:

South Africa’s High Court on Friday barred transport of the ammunition, rockets and mortar bombs across South Africa from the port of Durban to landlocked Zimbabwe, after an Anglican archbishop argued that the arms were likely to be used to crush the Zimbabwean opposition after last month’s disputed election.

The 77-ton shipment from China was worth $1.245 million. Inflation notwithstanding, Zimbabwe’s dictator has missed out on a lot of guns.

The Times also said Zimbabwe’s state news, “deep in a long editorial,” hinted at a “national unity government.” If I have found the right article, the suggestion is quite near to the top. Here is the first mention:

The [International Crisis Group] report suggests that a negotiated way forward for Zimbabwe need not necessarily exclude President Mugabe, and should that inclusion be part of a genuinely negotiated agreement that aims at reconciliation and renewal, the Euro-Americans “should not hold back”.

On my way over to find the editorial, I noticed on the front page of the site that the ZEC has started releasing election results:

Zanu-PF retains Goromonzi West
ZANU-PF has retained Goromonzi West House of Assembly and Senate seats in the first batch of poll recount results released last night while the Sadc observer team says it is satisfied with the vote recounting process currently underway in 23 constituencies.
FULL STORY

These developments raise several questions.

Is Zimbabwe moving toward a pacted democratic transition or a Kenya-style band-aid solution?¹ Mugabe is an old man, and the rest of the editorial could be read as celebrating his legacy. Will he tap a successor or negotiate his way out?

Is the regime’s repressive capacity dwindling? The coincidence of the “unity government” announcement and failed Chinese arms shipment suggest it might be. If so, what is the opposition’s capacity to get concessions from Mugabe?

In blocking the weapons, is South Africa nudging the country toward democracy, or is this an isolated attempt to maintain social peace?

1. Kenya now has a 40-member cabinet: 20 members from the ruling party, 20 from the opposition.

Crackdown Begins

The Washington Post recently posted a story detailing what appears to be the beginnings of Mugabe’s post-election crackdown. The money quotes from the lede:

President Robert Mugabe’s government raided the offices of the main opposition movement and rounded up foreign journalists Thursday in an ominous indication that he may use intimidation and violence to keep his grip on power.

Police raided a hotel used by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and ransacked some of the rooms. Riot police also surrounded another hotel housing foreign journalists, and took away several of them, according to a man who answered the phone there.

It looks like it is on. Although it seemed that there may have been some small hope about Mugabe walking away given the latest reports, that hope was always fleeting. It isn’t in Mugabe’s character to be strong armed out of a country. To stay and fight, he must be fairly confident that he has enough of the security apparatus behind him to force the result he wants.

At this point, there is little the U.S. or many countries besides those that surround Zimbabwe can do. If there is hope for a transition, moves must come from either South Africa and part of the Zimbabwean security services. If there is not a split in the regime, there is almost no hope for a peaceful end to this. Good luck to everyone inside Zimbabwe – may this struggle soon be over and your country cleansed of Mugabe.

BREAKING: Mugabe to resign?

Following Danielle’s piece yesterday on the early unofficial returns from the Presidential election, I just saw a post on Foreign Policy about Mugabe’s potential resignation. As FP mentions, the NYTimes article seems to be sourced well; however, any potential deal could fall apart in moments.

As an interesting side note, I work for an international NGO that supports civil society groups in Zimbabwe. My coworker who focuses on Africa informed me that she had heard from sources within Zimbabwe that Robert Mugabe had left Zimbabwe for Malaysia as a safety precaution. However, I have not seen this mentioned outside opposition newspapers and news sources (take with a grain of salt).

Zimbabwe’s Heating Up

Tensions are rising in Zimbabwe ahead of Saturday’s presidential elections. For those of us who have not been following (and I wasn’t until Tom Melia gave each member of our class ZWD$10,000,000 – for use before June 30th only), Zimbabweans will go to the polls to choose between three candidates in what will hopefully be the country’s most free and fair elections to date. The favorite, of course, still has to be Robert Mugabe, who has led the governing party, Zanu-PF, since the 1980s. Per Freedom House, 2006 was a bad year for opponents of Mugabe, who faced increasing repression, and Zimbabweans altogether, whose economy has rendered my ZWD$10,000,000 worth little more than 30 cents – and that only temporarily.

But the Zimbabwean political terrain has undergone some interesting changes over the past few weeks. Simba Makoni, a former finance minister and member of the Zanu-PF politburo, recently announced that he will run against Mugabe in the presidential election. Makoni has the support of a sizable faction within Zanu-PF, and it remains to be seen how this very public split in the party will impact not only the elections, but the future capacity of the party to maintain a united facade.

Meanwhile, as Mugabe remains preoccupied with Makoni, Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC have found more room to manuever. Tsvangirai supporters have been wearing campaign t-shirts, illegal in the past, and have been carrying neat little flyers that fold into little red cards that symbolize the ejection of Mugabe from the political pitch. As the BBC profile link above clearly suggests, Tsvangirai is no George Washington. However, the hope is that he’s no Robert Mugabe either and that the balance of competition between MDC and Zanu-PF will compel Zimbabwean politicians to be more accountable for their actions.

Whether or not the elections will be allowed to run their course is another unknown. Events over the past week suggest that Mugabe may be preparing to save his presidency the old-fashioned way. Yesterday, the MDC accused the government of printing 3 million excess ballots and over 600,000 mail-in ballots for just a few thousand soldiers and police officers who work away from home. Today, an MDC candidate and his adviser were arrested while picking up campaign materials.

The likelihood of a candidate gaining a majority in Saturday’s vote appear slim, so we could be headed for a runoff. It’s going to be a long next week in Zimbabwe and it could be a very long election season.