ZWNEWS
14 March 2002
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SW Radio Africa : Until Friday 22 March, SW Radio Africa will be broadcasting an extra hour of coverage between 1pm and 2pm Zimbabwe time. The lunchtime broadcast will be on a different frequency - 11 670 KHz in the 25 metre band. The evening broadcasts, between 6pm and 9pm Zimbabwe time, will remain at 6145 KHz in the 49m band. As before, outside the broadcast area, you can listen to SW Radio Africa over the internet at www.swradioafrica.com .

In this issue :
* Uneasy capital pulls down the shutters - Guardian
* Chicanery in the countryside - DTel
* 1400 arrests - FinGaz
* Motsuenyane jeered - Star
* SA VP in Harare for talks - News24
* US does not recognise result - Reuters

From The Guardian (UK), 14 March

Uneasy capital pulls down the shutters

Frustrated residents cowed by fear of violent militias

Harare - A cloud of bitterness, dejection and anxiety about the future hung over Harare yesterday, but despite outbreaks of low-level violence there was no sign of any appetite for a mass uprising to unseat the reelected President Robert Mugabe. "We are all disappointed and depressed about the elections," said Gibson M, a laid off carpet layer, who was in Harare's city centre with his wife, a street vendor selling hair scrunchies. "What the MDC preached was something that gave me hope. But now, I don't have hope. People are afraid of more violence. We're not free. We are headed for more hardships and I don't think anyone can tolerate that. If I had wings I wish I could fly out. The Mugabe government always preaches peace but that is not what they practice. They don't want people to demonstrate because they know they cannot meet their demands."

Throughout Harare Zimbabweans of all walks of life responded to Mr Mugabe's victory with sentiments of frustration and loss of hope. "What's going to happen now? Mugabe has won, but what is he going to do now? He has beaten us, he has kept us from voting, he has cheated these elections big time," said factory supervisor Mabel Nyakudya. Ms Nyakudya's factory closed this week in expectation of electoral violence, so she spent the day working in a small maize patch and looking for cooking oil, which is a scarce commodity. "Is Mugabe going to control the Zanu PF militia that has been beating and killing people? Are we going to be safe? Is he going get more food in the shops at prices we can afford? These things scare me."

Armed police could be seen at key corners throughout Harare. Trucks of army troops stood by at strategic spots. In the city centre the supermarkets and department stores kept wire grilles over their display windows and were prepared to shut at any sign of trouble. Car showrooms were empty as they moved their valuable vehicles off to safety. "I am going home early and I am going to close the door and stay inside. I am frightened," said Tabila Mushonga. "In our neighbourhood there are Zanu PF militia and they are beating drums and singing chimurenga [liberation war] songs. They say they are going to go after everyone who supported Tsvangirai. I am going to stay inside because I don't want any trouble."

Roadblocks ringed the city and one couple was stopped and ordered to get out of their car and open the boot. "I was so angry, I started to get mad at the police," said the woman, who did not want to give her name. "But my husband told me to quiet down, or we would get arrested." Mr Mugabe's supporters were not so worried. Bands roamed the city singing and waving their fists in the air. One crowd carried a little coffin marked "Tsvangirai RIP". "Tsvangirai is a problem," said a woman wearing a Mugabe T-shirt. "Tsvangirai wanted to kill Mugabe, our president. We don't want to see Tsvangirai anymore." Herbert Kwayemba, 31, another Zanu-PF supporter, was optimistic that Mr Mugabe's victory would improve his life. "Things are going to get better now," said the unemployed township dweller. "Mugabe is going to give us land so that we won't be so congested. Harare is surrounded by farms and we will be able to move on to them. We will grow maize and wheat and that will boost our economy."

But 87-year-old Milka Nyakujara was worried. "This is a dark hour for Zimbabwe. If Mugabe has already failed us on food, where is he going to get it now?" She was a peasant farmer until last year when she moved into the city to stay with her daughter. She said land reform was good, but "people do not want to be farmers, they want jobs in the city". Mrs Nyakujara voiced worries about Mr Mugabe's leadership. "He has so much hate and he blames everyone else, like Tony Blair and the whites, for our problems. Even when we cut off Rhodesia and we became Zimbabwe there was not so much hate. We cannot eat all this hate. We need food and medicines. We need to get along together."
From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 14 March

Chicanery in the countryside

Bulawayo - It was out in the countryside of Zimbabwe that Robert Mugabe stole the presidential election. Away from prying eyes, Mr Mugabe's loyal party henchmen executed a psephological sleight of hand that was as crude as it was ambitious. Ballot boxes were stuffed, opposition supporters were told to vote for Mr Mugabe on pain of death and turnouts were grossly inflated to favour the 78-year-old leader. In one rural polling station - Mobile 19 in the Bubi Umguza constituency - a ballot box containing 137 officially listed votes went missing. When it turned up again, it was full of more than 1,000 additional voting papers. At another constituency - Tsholotsho ? opposition polling agents carefully and, given the intimidation, bravely, counted 12,000 voters but when Zimbabwe's registrar-general declared the result the turnout had somehow surged to 21,000.

But while the two official voting days saw gross electoral fraud, Mr Mugabe's campaign to steal this election really began two years ago after the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's strong showing in the legislative elections. It was then that Mr Mugabe saw for the first time that Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, was a genuine threat and it was then that that he resorted to any measure to tip the electoral process in his favour. So-called "journalists" in the state-owned media demonised Mr Tsvangirai as a stooge of the white man, a puppet of Tony Blair and a terrorist waiting to destroy Zimbabwe's sovereign status. Thugs loyal to Mr Mugabe's Zanu PF party needed no urging and the MDC suffered unprovoked attacks. Members were abducted and murdered, offices firebombed and meetings disrupted. In parliament a series of bills massaged the electoral law to favour Zanu PF, made it difficult for the MDC to function by outlawing meetings of more than three people and crushed the independent media.

Zimbabwe's police force, once respected for its integrity, did nothing, meekly refusing to investigate charges raised by MDC members while acting harshly against any alleged misdemeanour, no matter how trivial, by MDC supporters. White farmers, a marginal political force with only a few thousand votes, were targeted by Mr Mugabe, who used the seizure of their land as a way to buy off penniless, landless Zimbabweans. But it was the intimidation of the millions of black people who dared to consider supporting the MDC that characterised the two years since the 2000 parliamentary election. Scores of MDC members were murdered and thousands harassed first by Zanu PF loyalists and then by youth militia trained to terrorise and intimidate. As police stood by, these thugs were deployed across Zimbabwe with orders to ensure that the rural hinterland remained clear of the MDC. They did their job, killing more than 30 MDC supporters in the last three months of campaigning. But when the vote came on Friday, the key to success for Mr Mugabe was keeping prying eyes away from these rural areas.

He knew the urban vote was largely lost to the MDC but this could be reduced simply by cutting the number of polling stations, leading to long queues and thousands turned away without voting. But in the countryside he needed privacy and this is what he got first by accrediting less than 400 out of 15,000 independent Zimbabwean monitors and then by targeting MDC polling agents. International observers were too few to cover all the rural areas and so the government machine focused on the MDC representatives who, by law, were meant to be at each of Zimbabwe's 4,000 or so polling stations. Some were abducted, some beaten up or chased away. The MDC is yet to finish compiling a list of abuses suffered by their polling agents but in many ways any list of grievances will be too late. The lack of proper scrutiny at the rural polling stations allowed the freakish results that enabled Mr Mugabe to claim victory.

From ZWNEWS: We have available a list by constituency of the official results of the presidential election. If you would like a copy, please let us know. It will be sent as an Excel spreadsheet attached to an email message - total size 175 Kb, or about 3 1/2 times the size of the average daily ZWNEWS.

From The Financial Gazette, 14 March

1 400 polling agents, observers arrested

Amnesty International, the leading global human rights watchdog, expressed deep concern yesterday over the safety of 1 400 Zimbabweans it said had been detained by police during last weekend?s presidential election. The London-based organisation said most of those detained were polling agents of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai had posed the biggest electoral threat to President Robert Mugabe of Zanu PF in the weekend ballot. It said those arrested included election observers from civil society organisations such as the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), who were refused accreditation to observe the poll. About 130 of the detainees were from Manicaland province and 50 from Mutoko and Harare?s Mabvuku suburb. Amnesty said Zimbabwean human rights sources had accused the police and Central Intelligence Organisation operatives of targeting ZESN observers under instructions from their superiors. "We are deeply concerned for the safety of those arrested in the light of the well-established pattern of "disappearances", cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by Zimbabwean security forces," it said. It said a lawyer from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights who visited detained observers in cells at the Harare central police station had described the congested conditions as hazardous to the detainees? health. Those held had been denied food and could not sleep because of the overcrowding in the cells. "The arrest of these Zimbabweans is politically-motivated," the human rights watchdog noted. "Government must either charge those in detention with a recognisable criminal offence based on solid evidence or release them immediately." Zimbabwe analysts said the arrest of MDC polling agents and violence against them left many polling stations, especially in rural areas, staffed only by ruling Zanu PF supporters, which made a free and fair poll impossible. The commentators said a free and fair election was also made difficult by widespread pre-poll violence, which is largely blamed on Zanu PF activists and has killed more than 100 MDC supporters since 2000.

From The Star (SA), 13 March

Journos jeer SA for endorsing Zim poll

Harare - The South Africa Observer Mission to Zimbabwe has not delivered a pronouncement pleasing to the diplomatic and media contingents in the country. Grey-haired mission head Sam Motsuenyane sat stunned and flustered as journalists jeered and diplomats walked out after his endorsement of Zimbabwe's poll on Tuesday. His verdict contrasted sharply with that of the Southern African Development Community, which singled out "the prevailing climate of fear". Despite international criticism of an election marred by violence, murder, abduction and torture, Motsuenyane said the election was "legitimate". He sat stunned as journalists laughed when he dismissed snaking queues and the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters as "an administrative oversight". Motsuenyane explained that while there had been violence before and during the election, the fact that people had turned up in their millions meant the will of the people had been expressed. To jeers, the mission leader said the opposition MDC had endorsed the election by taking part in it. And he implied that the mission took into account only violent incidents its members had witnessed, while everyone else had prejudged the election. Shortly after the South African whitewash, the SADC team, led by Botswana's Duke Lefhoko, slammed the election and said it did not meet the organisation's norms and standards. Lefhoko slated Zanu PF and the Zimbabwean government for running an election in a climate of fear. There were numerous cases of torture, murder, arson and false imprisonment, he said. "The South Africans are sell-outs," said Joseph Marufu, a shop worker in a Harare supermarket. "They just want to say everything is fine so that Mbeki can do the same thing next time he has an election."

From News24 (SA), 14 March

Zuma off to Zim for talks

Cape Town - Deputy-President Jacob Zuma left for Zimbabwe on Thursday morning for talks with government leaders a day after president Robert Mugabe swept to victory in a disputed poll. Zuma left around 07:00 and was expected in Harare mid-morning. South African high commissioner Jerry Ndou said it was expected that Zuma would meet his Zimbabwean counterpart and would also seek to pay a courtesy call on Mugabe. Speaking in the National Assembly on Tuesday, Zuma said while there had been a "lot of excitement" in the lead-up to Zimbabwe's presidential election, South Africa now had the opportunity to be "innovative" in its approach to engaging its neighbour. Replying to a question in the National Assembly, he said the South African government had always believed that "we must continue talking to our neighbours". President Thabo Mbeki told reporters on Tuesday that South Africa would help Zimbabwe with its economic recovery and address its land problems, regardless of who was elected president. The SA Observer Mission in an interim report said the elections was legitimate. However, at a press conference in Harare on Tuesday, observer head Sam Motseunyane stopped short at calling the election free and fair. Mbeki has declined to pronounce on the freeness and fairness of the election until he received several mission reports including from South Africa, the Commonwealth, the Organisation for African Unity and the Southern African Development Community. He was also consulting world leaders on the way forward and has already held talks with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the United States.

From Reuters, 13 March

US doesn't recognize Zimbabwe election, Bush says

Washington - President Bush said Wednesday the United States does not recognize the result of the presidential election in Zimbabwe, won officially by incumbent President Robert Mugabe. "We do not recognize the outcome of the election because we think it's flawed," he told a White House news conference. "We are dealing with our friends to figure out how to deal with this flawed election," he added. Secretary of State Colin Powell said earlier on Wednesday the election result did not reflect the will of the people. "As a result, Mr. Mugabe may claim victory, but not democratic legitimacy,"Powell said in a statement. Powell accused Mugabe of a systematic subversion of democracy and said Washington was considering new sanctions following weekend elections that returned the veteran African leader to power. A senior State Department official said Washington was expected to freeze any U.S. assets held by Mugabe and his close associates, but said he did not expect it would announce new sanctions as early as Wednesday. Bush last month imposed a ban on travel to the United States by Mugabe and 19 of his top officials to protest the Zimbabwean government's handling of the presidential election campaign.

Powell said there was overwhelming evidence that the election, which ran from Saturday to Monday, was neither free nor fair. "The pre-election period was marked by a sustained government-orchestrated campaign of intimidation and violence, and the numerous and profound irregularities in the electoral process itself resulted in an outcome that does not reflect the will of the people of Zimbabwe," Powell said. "As a result, Mr. Mugabe can claim victory, but not democratic legitimacy," Powell said. "This fundamentally flawed election will only deepen the crisis in Zimbabwe and the suffering of the Zimbabwean people." Powell said that for more than two years Mugabe's administration had "systematically subverted democratic principles and processes" and his actions resulted in thousands of Zimbabweans being disenfranchised. He said Washington would consult with other countries on how to react. "Among the responses we are considering is a possible broadening of sanctions against those responsible for undermining democracy in Zimbabwe," Powell said. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the options included blocking assets of specific individuals or banning export licenses for defense-related items.

Defeated presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai said Mugabe stole the vote through violence and intimidation and by preventing hundreds of thousands of people from casting ballots. Mugabe's government disputed his claims. A senior U.S. official said last week that the United States was ready to freeze the assets of Zimbabwean leaders, as the European Union did on Feb. 18, if it concluded that Mugabe and his party stole the election. Official results gave Mugabe victory over Tsvangirai with a lead of more than 400,000 votes. The U.S. response added to a growing chorus of criticism of the poll by Western governments and independent observers. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner, on a visit to South Africa, said the entire electoral process failed to meet the standards of the Southern African Development Community to which Zimbabwe had committed. "Supreme Court rulings were cast aside ... the independent media was persecuted, civil society was marginalized and the will of the people was the chief casualty." Kansteiner said SADC criteria not met included allowing "unimpeded freedom to campaign throughout the country," and "free and unimpeded access to voters' rolls." Zimbabwe's woes have dented investor confidence in the region and contributed to a sharp depreciation in the value of South Africa's currency, the rand.
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