Hopes for change in Zimbabwe in limbo

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabweans ricocheted from euphoria to fear and finally to anger in the tumultuous week after presidential elections that longtime ruler Robert Mugabe almost certainly lost.
Hopes for change in the devastated southern African nation remained in limbo Saturday. Presidential election results were still not released seven days after the vote, security forces appeared poised to use violence to keep Mugabe in power and the opposition called on the president to end his 28-year rule for the good of the country.
Immediately after the vote _ seen as the best chance t journalists, with armed officers in full riot gear surrounding two hotels popular with visiting media.
Feared veterans of the guerrilla war for black majority rule _ used in the past to beat up opponents and spearhead the violent takeover of white farms _ marched in a silent and intimidating parade through downtown Harare on Friday.
Mugabe has started a crackdown,” warned Tendai Biti, secretary-general of the Movement for Democratic Change.
On hopes Mugabe would retire and his successor would fix the economy, the black market value of the Zimbabwe dollar fell from 44 million to the U.S. dollar to 36 million. The stock exchange in neighboring South Africa perked up _ a sign of how Zimbabwe affects regional stability.
With inflation raging at beyond 100,000 percent, the government introduced Friday a Zimbabwe $50 million note worth about US$1 on the black market. The new note could buy three loaves of bread Friday but only two Saturday, as Zimbabweans formed long queues outside bakeries. The U.S. and Zimbabwe dollars were on a par in 1980, when Mugabe’s guerrilla army helped oust a white minority government and bring independence.
Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliament observer mission, said Wednesday that leading members of Mugabe’s party viewed defeat with trepidation.
I was talking to some of the bigwigs in the ruling party and they also are concerned about the possibility of a change of guard,” Khumalo said. It is not easy for anyone within the sphere of the ruling party to accept that ’Maybe we might be defeated.”’
Officials in both camps reported secret talks to negotiate a graceful exit for the 84-year-old Mugabe, though aides to Mugabe and Tsvangirai denied it.
A businessman close to the state electoral commission said Mugabe had been told he had lost the presidential elections and an uprising was likely if he were declared the winner. Mugabe found the prospect of a runoff too humiliating, the businessman said.
Mugabe’s personal advisers and family were counseling him to accept defeat, news reports said, while party hard-liners and security chiefs who benefit from his patronage were urging a fight.
Tensions rose as the Electoral Commission, packed with current and former military officers, slowly released Senate results _ but no presidential ones _ delaying to give Mugabe and his party time to contemplate their options.
By Thursday, a decision appeared to have been made. Armani Countess, who observed the elections for the Washington-based TransAfrica Forum, said a senior ZANU-PF official made it very, very clear that if there was a run-off, that ZANU would use all the state organs at its disposal to ensure victory.”
Countess called the conversation frightening and very, very worrisome” given the violent tactics used in previous elections. Scores of opposition supporters and candidates were killed in 2002 and 2005 elections, which international observers said were marked by fraud, violence and intimidation.
On Friday, ZANU-PF held its first politburo meeting since the elections and endorsed Mugabe to contest a runoff. Having the first word of a runoff come from the party, not the electoral commission, indicated that ZANU-PF still considers itself the ruling authority in the country.
The Herald newspaper, a government and party mouthpiece, on Saturday hailed the massive show of unity and camaraderie” at the meeting, saying it put paid to claims the party was in disarray and that some top leaders had cold feet over the runoff.
We stumbled, we did not fall,” it quoted Didymus Mutasa, a powerful minister and party leader, as saying.
In response, Tsvangirai ratcheted up the rhetoric, charging that ZANU-PF is preparing a war against the people,” and appealing to Mugabe to step down without a runoff.
He cannot hold the country to ransom. He is the problem not the solution,” Tsvangirai told reporters Saturday. He appealed to southern African leaders, the African Union and the United Nations to move in to prevent chaos.”
Mugabe appears set to contest a runoff and use the emotional land issue as a rallying point.
Asked what outcome he sees, political scientist Eldred Masunungure of the University of Zimbabwe warned, We should distinguish wishful thinking from the reality on the ground. Mugabe still has many tricks up his sleeve.”
In 2000, Mugabe promised to rectify the injustice of 4,000 white farmers owning 80 percent of the best farmland in the country of about 13 million people. Instead, he gave fertile farms to relatives, friends and cronies who allowed fields to be taken over by weeds.
Mugabe and his party take every opportunity to accuse Tsvangirai’s party of planning to return the farms to whites. The opposition leader in fact has promised an equitable distribution of land to people who know how to farm.
The election results have reissued the land question and reissued it with venom and vengeance,” said an op-ed column in Saturday’s Herald, written under a pen name known to be used by chief presidential spokesman George Charamba.
Today even the most pragmatic member of ZANU-PF is agitated by the sheer awesomeness of what the current results could have done to the gains of the revolution,” the column said. This dynamic will be key in the runoff.”
War veterans’ leader Jabulani Sithole told reporters Friday that It now looks like these elections were a way to open Zimbabwe for re-invasion (by whites).”
Many Zimbabweans said they voted for ZANU-PF because traditional chiefs and other Mugabe loyalists threatened to take away the land of anyone voting for the opposition.
Zimbabwean civic, church and human rights groups say they fear a crackdown, with attackers targeting election districts where Mugabe lost.
It’s not clear how Zimbabwe’s security forces will react.
Tsvangirai tried to reassure generals who, before the elections, threatened not to serve anyone but Mugabe. But the generals called off a planned meeting, saying they had been ordered not to attend, according to a businessman close to Tsvangirai.
On Saturday, police prevented an opposition lawyer and others from entering the High Court to fight a petition to compel the electoral commission to publish presidential results.
But other officers abandoned patrol duties to sit and drink beer, in full uniform and armed, at the mainly white City Bowling Club. It was an unheard of and seemed to symbolize a refusal to participate in any crackdown, said a white veteran who fought for the minority white government in the war.
It seems they would rather drink with us now than shoot us,” he said.