Messages From Zimbabwe

Britain’s Channel 4 News yesterday revealed documents which it said show the true extent to which Thabo Mbeki’s government has given support to Robert Mugabe, and actively sought to undermine the opposition MDC. The documents, dating back to 2004 and which appear to be Zimbabwe government minutes of high-level meetings between Zimbabwean and South African officials, show “the strength of the political, security and intelligence links” between ZANU PF and the South Africa government. The documents were given to Channel 4 by a man claiming to be “a disgruntled former Zimbabwean civil servant who in a past life was privy to confidential documents”. The source’s opinion was that without Mbeki’s support, Mugabe would have gone long ago.

The papers - some of which were dated April 2004, 2 and 4 May 2004, and 14 July 2004 - show the degree to which the Zimbabwean opposition have been under close surveillance by Zimbabwean intelligence agents operating inside South Africa, and a high degree of “intelligence swapping” between the two governments. One document - apparently a record of a meeting between a ZANU PF delegation and Thabo Mbeki - concludes that “It was clear that Mbeki was frustrated at what he sees as lack of progress in launching formal negotiations between ZANU PF and MDC. According to him the political process should be finished, and once this is done, the US and the UK would commit the promised resources, which in turn would lead to an economic recovery and the demise of the MDC.” When contacted by Channel 4 news for comment, the South African government said that they couldn’t possibly verify the authenticity of a Zimbabwean government document.

(Source)

One of the authors of Zimbabwe’s new electoral laws says next week’s scheduled recount of 23 constituencies will be illegal. Welshman Ncube, one of two Movement for Democratic Change negotiators who spent much of last year locked into rewriting some of Zimbabwe’s contentious laws with ZANU PF during SA-mediated “dialogues”, yesterday said ZANU PF complaints were “concoctions after the fact, to be compliant with the law”. President Robert Mugabe is widely believed to have lost the presidential election by at least 7% and has delayed releasing the results for more than two weeks so that the vote can be “massaged”. However, Judge George Chiweshe, head of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), claimed yesterday that ZANU PF candidates in 23 constituencies had lodged complaints within the prescribed 48 hours after the polls closed, and therefore had not broken the Electoral Act. The results of the parliamentary elections were public by April 1, having been posted outside polling stations and collected by civic and opposition workers.

No statement was issued by the electoral commission about the complaints nor were competing candidates informed. This is the first anyone outside of the commission or ZANU PF has heard about the complaints. According to Judge Chiweshe, “we sat as a commission and considered them (the applications). “I can’t tell you when we did this at this moment… we received them, that is why we ordered recounts… we didn’t have to tell the world. Why should we? We are not obliged by law to do that. Are you calling me a liar?” he wanted to know. Ncube labelled Chiweshe a “blatant liar and a fraudster. The ZEC is acting in collusion with ZANU PF and if they think any of us will believe them when they are a gang of fraudsters, then they can go to hell. They are such brazen liars and they have had custody of the ballot boxes for more than two weeks. There is no guarantee that they didn’t go back and tamper with the ballot boxes, so the outcome of the recount is a foregone conclusion.” He said MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai won a clear majority, which was why the results were not released.

MDC secretary for legal affairs David Coltart said: “We have asked for proof the complaints were submitted within the 48-hour period. The delay between the expiry of the 48-hour period and the writing of the letters of complaint by ZEC is inexplicable, unreasonable. The only inference one can draw from the delay is that the commission has connived with ZANU PF and therefore acted illegally. One would have expected the ZEC would immediately have notified all interested parties, but they took nine days to do so. “This is a brazen subversion of the Electoral Act.” Last week a senior policeman with at least 20 years’ experience told The Star that ballot boxes from a Midlands constituency, now due for a recount on Saturday, were brought into police headquarters in Harare on the morning of April 5. He said five or six young recruits took ballots for the presidential election, marked for Tsvangirai, and replaced them with duplicate ballots marked with an X for Mugabe. ZANU PF must win back nine seats to regain parliament.

(Source)

Comment: To answer Judge Chiweshe’s question, “Yes!”

Today is podcast day. For some reason the file I uploaded to Odeo over the weekend was deemed ‘invalid’ - which I know it isn’t.

ZNU 116 is my editorial “The Quietest Coup In History (or “Coup By Osmosis”)“. The programme can be heard here, or in the multiplayers in the right hand sidebar of The Bearded Man blog, or even downloaded from here.

All of my previous programmes are available for listening to on my Odeo page.

Thank you for your continued support.

Zimbabwe’s High Court on Sunday ordered the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to refrain from recounting the results of March 29 elections because the presidential results have not yet been announced.

The court was approached on Sunday by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change Sunday for an order forcing ZEC to suspend the recount.

The ruling followed an announcement by ZEC that it would carry out a partial recount of votes cast in the combined presidential, parliamentary and local elections - despite the presidential results not having been released.

“The judge found it not just illegal but grossly unreasonable to order a recount before the result is out. The law is clear about when the recount is done. A candidate requests for a recount within 48 hours after the result has been declared,” MDC lawyer Selby Hwacha told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Another court application

The high court is also considering a separate application by the MDC for a court order forcing ZEC to release the presidential results. A ruling in that case was expected on Monday.

ZEC announced on Sunday it would recount votes cast in 23 out of 210 constituencies - at the instigation of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party - citing “reasonable grounds” to suspect votes were miscounted in a way that could affect the outcome.

The MDC has said it will not accept a vote recount.

“We will not accept any recount because for us that is accepting rigged results. ZEC are in custody of the ballot boxes for two weeks and heavens know what they have done to the ballot papers. They might have stuffed them with their votes,” MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said.

Zanu-PF is accusing the MDC of vote buying and bribing ZEC officials to inflate its vote after losing its majority in the 210-seat House of Assembly to Morgan Tsvangirai’s party - allegations the MDC rejects.

In the presidential vote the MDC has pre-emptively claimed victory for its leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Zanu-PF says neither Mugabe nor Tsvangirai won outright and is gearing up for a runoff.

Zimbabwe’s neighbours in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Sunday called on ZEC to release the remaining results “expeditiously.”

(Source)

In the first sign of a political denouement to the Zimbabwe crisis, southern African leaders were early this morning putting together proposals for a unity government. But it remained unclear whether President Robert Mugabe had been consulted. Fifteen days after the Zimbabwean elections - amid rising tension as the results of the presidential poll remained unpublished - the leaders of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community began talks early this morning with former Zimbabwean finance minister Simba Makoni. The regional leaders are known to favour Makoni, 51, as a successor to 84-year-old Mugabe because he too comes from

Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF party, which has been in power since the end of white rule in 1980.

Moments before the leaders began talks with Makoni - who ran as an independent in the presidential elections and is believed to have finished third - the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai, left the talks abruptly with his delegation. “As far as we are concerned, the talks are finished for us. Everything regarding Morgan has been discussed,” said MDC spokesman Nqobizitha Mlilo as the delegation sped away. The MDC said it would explain its position at a later press conference. In the early hours of this morning, the heads-of-state meeting appeared deadlocked in its attempts to draft a final communiqué. Presidents and their delegations were tight-lipped as they walked between meeting rooms in the Mulungushi conference centre. Only Tsvangirai’s abrupt departure provided a clue that the MDC leader - who claims to have won the presidential poll outright, with 50.3 per cent of the vote - had been sidelined by the regional leaders.

Earlier yesterday, South African president Thabo Mbeki called on Mugabe in Harare after the Zimbabwean president refused to attend the Lusaka talks. It is unclear to what extent he was consulted by Mbeki about the prospect of a unity government, nor whether he was telephoned during yesterday’s talks. Observers said a unity government could take many forms in Zimbabwe and that the positions of Deputy President and Prime Minister could be reinstated as part of such a structure. ‘SADC leaders have always favoured Makoni because he provides a way of salvaging Zanu PF,’ said one Western diplomat. The developments in Lusaka came as Zimbabwean state media announced a recount of presidential ballots. Diplomats in Lusaka said the delay in releasing election results had - from the start - simply been a ploy for buying time to negotiate a transition.

Earlier yesterday, Western diplomats had been shocked by Mbeki’s statement, at the end of his visit to Harare, that ‘there is no crisis in Zimbabwe‘. He was filmed holding hands with Mugabe on the tarmac of Harare airport, where the Zimbabwean leader proclaimed that SADC had been ‘hijacked’ by Britain in its bid to destroy the country. The proposal to put in place a form of unity government to oversee the end of Mugabe’s 28-year reign marks a diplomatic breakthrough for SADC. Seven months ago, at another summit on Zimbabwe in Lusaka, the region’s leaders gave Mugabe a standing ovation. But the regional impact of the economic decline in Zimbabwe has now become untenable for SADC, many of whose governments now come from a grassroots democratic base, rather than being products of former liberation movements.

(Source)

Comment: You have got to be kidding! Morgan Tsvangirai has being sidelined - having won the Presidential election? And to have the person that came third in that election take over as Mugabe’s preferred successor?

So the votes of the Zimbabwean people mean nothing?

The Presidential election would effectively have been stolen from Tsvangirai, whilst the recount by the ZEC will ensure that the majority won by the MDC in Parliament is reworked…

In other country’s in the world would be imprisonned for such theft!

‘debvhu

(Or “Coup By Osmosis”)

A coup d’état (also coup) is the sudden, overthrowing of a government by a part of the state establishment - usually the military - to replace the branch of the stricken government, either with another civil government or with a military government.

Politically, the coup d’état is a type of political engineering, generally violent (hence “strike”, “blow”; French “coup“), but not always, yet differing from a revolution (by a larger, armed group to effect violent, radical change to the political system) in that the change is to the government, not the form of government…

…The coup d’état succeeds if its opponents fail to thwart the usurpers, allowing them to consolidate their positions, obtain the surrender of the overthrown government or acquiescence of the populace and the surviving armed forces, and thus claim legitimacy. Coups d’état typically use the power of the existing government for the takeover. As Edward Luttwak remarks in Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook: A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder. In this sense, the use of either military or another organized force is not the defining feature of a coup d’État.

(Source: Wikipedia)

When we learn of coups d’etat in the world, it is normally punctuated with the sound of rifle fire and explosions. And some of the most harrowing violence we might ever see.

The coup d’etat carried out by Mugabe and his party with the support of the armed forces is probably the quietest ever carried out on the face of this earth.

Up until midnight on the 28th of March 2008, Robert Gabriel Mugabe was the President of Zimbabwe. Note that I do not describe him as the ‘duly elected’ President of Zimbabwe, as I do not believe that the 2002 Presidential elections voted him back into power.

(And Zimbabwean courts agree with me, finding that the election was influenced heavily by voter intimidation and political thuggery, but that Morgan Tsvangirai had indeed been defeated by means other than a free and fair ballot. The court, however, stopped short of ordering a re-run, or ordering Mugabe from office, as, they ruled, Mugabe has already taken office!)

So this time around, the country’s proletariat went to the polls thirteen days ago, and four days later we were told that the Movement for Democratic Change had won the majority in Parliament.

Since then we have heard little of the Presidential election results. Although we have heard much about the results. Doesn’t quite make sense, does it?

And the war of words have flown thick and fast ever since. The Deputy Minister of Information, Bright Matonga, has continually played up the buoyant spirit of Mugabe’s party, and has even given time to the much hated and vilified BBC. Just this afternoon, Matonga has stated that he does not understand the fuss about the Presidential election result, as the numbers are in the public domain. Not so far as I am aware - because then we would, in all likelihood, be witnessing the swearing in of a new President in Zimbabwe… namely, one Morgan Richard Tsvangirai of the MDC.

Mugabe maintains his stance as President of Zimbabwe, even though, on his own party’s admission, the election is due to go to a second round run-off - and although the MDC has done the mathematics based on the public figures posted outside the polling stations, and consider Morgan Tsvangirai to be the duly democratically elected President of Zimbabwe.

But there are a number of issues in his way before he will be sworn in as holder of that prestigious office - indeed, he would be the first democratically elected person to that office… And I have no doubt in my mind, that when all is said and done, Morgan Tsvangirai will hold that office.

First of all, the MDC has to get ZANU PF to accede to the releasing of the results. That, in itself, will be a veritable minefield.

The election administration was overseen by an ostensibly autonomous Electoral Commission - appointed by Mugabe himself. That negates the word ‘autonomous’… Thirteen days after the close of polling stations, we wait for something to give - primarily from the Zimbabwean High Court, where a Justice is due to give a ruling on Monday.

It took the same court four days to acknowledge, after much legal argument, that the application for the release of said results was indeed ‘urgent’… Cast your mind back to 2002, and you will maybe recall that the results were released in just three hours. As at 7pm Zimbabwean time this evening (Friday, 11th April 2008), the results have been withheld for a total of 312 hours. The difference between this time and last equates to something on a par with the current inflation rate!

The Presidential elections are obviously known to ZANU PF, who repeatedly state that a run-off is the next step, but they are not telling…

The function of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has been taken over by ZANU PF - well, they will tell you, “the government”, and have dismantled the election command centre and have whisked away the ballot boxes to an as yet undisclosed location. The “government” are now taking any decisions in the stead of the ZEC.

Constitutionally, which obviously does not apply to ZANU PF or Mugabe, any Parliamentary seat recounts have to be requested within 48 hours of the publishing of those seat results. Given that the last seat results were made public on Wednesday last week, and today we discover that 5 seats are being recounted - with a further 9 under consideration - we must question under what regulation, statue or law are these to be reconsidered?

The authority for these recounts is wrongfully in the hands of the “government” and therefore any decision will be based on ZANU PF wants and needs.

They have been stalwart in their resistance to publishing the Presidential election results - their legal representative stating in court that releasing them would be ‘dangerous’.

I also was taken aback this morning to discover that Mugabe had re-appointed his cabinet to office, seven of which are people who lost their seats in the Parliamentary election! The announcement was made by Patrick Chinamasa, now a civilian in every sense of the word, having lost his seat in the Parliamentary ballot… who now masquerades under his former title of Minister of Justice (now there is an oxymoron!).

Or should that just be ‘moron’?

So we have an illegally parked President, and a resident cabinet that is not the people’s choice.

Add this together with the ongoing farm invasions up and down the country - even though the dubious ‘leader’ of the war veterans states that no invasions are taking place - this would then lend credence to the document that was published on the internet this week that the invasions are being conducted by appointed serving soldiers masquerading as veterans.

This would also suggest that the country is, in reality, being run by the military junta of Constantine Chiwenga (army), Perence Shiri (air force), Augustine Chihuri (police) and Paradzai Zimondi (prisons). According to quite a few articles on the internet, and it is very difficult to chose any one that has definitive proof for their stories - not because of their predilection to printing false stories, but because of the wall of silence from the ZANU PF/military fortress - that Mugabe was prepared to stand down and cede power to Morgan Tsvangirai, but this was stopped by the chiefs who do not want to face the music for their actions over the last three decades.

Articles state that Mugabe’s wife, Grace, had attempted to convince him (and the security force chiefs) that it was not worth his children’s sanity to continue. His sons were being bullied at school over their father’s actions.

Armed soldiers and police patrol the streets of the cities and towns, and the election result release has hit somewhat of a lopsided stalemate.

ZANU PF, no longer the ‘ruling party’, maintains control of what little still exists of the economy, and, perhaps, more importantly, the Reserve Bank, seen as an integral part of Mugabe’s rule. Once Mugabe is displaced, I believe that the full enormity of the financial damage of his rule will be uncovered, leaving the new authority with little option but to pursue criminal proceedings against the former President and his hierarchy.

This is why his military chiefs are adamant that Mugabe make a stand.

Their biggest fear is the inside of a prison cell.

We have to admit, that sheer stubbornness and the hunger for power and absolute control, has resulted in the quietest coup d’etat ever in Africa, and possibly ever known to man.

On Saturday, 29^th March 2008, I sat in front of my machine and fielded email after email and read article after article on the internet about the ongoing election in Zimbabwe. It was a tiring but very exciting day for me as I built up a picture of the events in that country.

I felt good as the day passed with little or no reports of the normal violence that accompanies Zimbabwean events of this nature. Indeed, we do not have to look back very far through the history books to confirm that Mugabe normally gets his own way with intimidation, threats, violence and the rigging of the poll.

But apart from one unsubstantiated report that alleged a member of parliament had been caught with ballot boxes stuffed with ZANU PF votes, it all went very quietly. (I have seen no other reports since to lend credence to this story.)

I was not only impressed, but was extremely proud of my fellow Zimbabweans for not only their tenacity in exercising their democratic right, but keeping tempers and tensions at bay.

But not long after the polling stations closed, the shenanigans started.

The parliamentary election results began to trickle through on the Sunday. The supposedly autonomous Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) - appointed by the then Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe - released the results on an almost ‘one for me, one for you’ basis.

Now I haven’t been a freelance political commentator for very long, but I wasn’t born yesterday - or the day before that. For three days I watched the results come through, and it was always ‘neck and neck’ - a choreographed release - probably designed to cause as little political ire as possible, and probably never before seen anywhere else in the world.

Zimbabwe will go down in history for many ‘firsts’ - and this will be amongst them.

It was Tuesday before the final results found air, and the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by the erstwhile Morgan Tsvangirai, had indeed secured a majority in parliament. Whilst jubilation was felt, it failed to trigger any celebrations as all of our attention then switched the three way election for the President of Zimbabwe.

We were largely kept in the dark, and today, eleven days after the election, the two main protagonists had people in the Zimbabwean High Court - just to have the result released!

This case has been daily deferred - causing untold tension and suspicion within Zimbabwe - and across the world. Yesterday, the case was deemed ‘urgent’…

The feeling in Zimbabwe is that Morgan Tsvangirai has beaten Robert Mugabe in a straight fight - but Mugabe is playing with all aspects of life in the country in an attempt to cow the people, steal the election and hang on to power.

A number of events have overtaken the legal battle for the results.

War veterans - or at least people calling themselves war veterans - have invaded over 100 of the few remaining white-owned commercial farms in the rural areas of Zimbabwe. We have seen a list of military hierarchy that are responsible for the co-ordination of the invasions, together with instructions to make the people pay where ZANU PF members of parliament lost their seats.

Mugabe’s party - which I now hesitate to call ‘the ruling party’ - have announced allegations that the MDC bribed members of the ZEC to queer the count in their favour - and have demanded the recounting of 16 constituencies. Seven members of the ZEC have reportedly been arrested and will appear in court in due course. The ZANU PF call for a recount is outside the 48 hour Statute of Limitations - but that won’t stop Mugabe having a go.

Interestingly, in the event that any recount overturns the MDC winning of these 16 seats, then the parliamentary majority would slide back to ZANU PF. Morgan Tsvangirai’s majority on paper is just 2, but we have to factor in the ten seats won by the Arthur Mutambara faction of the MDC.

Three seats have yet be decided as candidates died between registration and poll dates. These will be decided in by-elections at a later date.

Although the Presidential results are ostensibly unknown to anyone except the ZEC, Mugabe’s party has claimed that the numbers do not give a clear winner and that a run-off - Tsvangirai versus Mugabe - is needed.

Now this is the point of my article.

Mugabe continues to masquerade as President of Zimbabwe. This is not only unconstitutional, but is against the will of the people. Not that Mugabe has ever worried what his people think, need or want. He hangs on to power with his very fingernails.

The loss of parliament he may be able to stomach, but the loss of the Presidency would be the end of him - in more ways than one. Unless he has a confirmed exit plan and the resignation to live in exile, Robert Mugabe could conceivably spend the rest of his days in a prison cell.

With the rejection of his rule, Mugabe finds himself no longer the loved African leader he may once have been many, many years ago.

Whilst waiting for the election results to come through, I was listening to some music. And I heard the song “The King Has Lost His Crown” by Abba, and thought to myself, how fitting!

Disaster and disgrace

The King has lost his crown

His world comes tumbling down

Suddenly

His world is upside down

The King has lost his crown

But Mugabe refuses to go quietly.

Today in High Court, the legal representative of the ZEC – remember that this is a Mugabe-appointed body - stated that the release of the figures would be ‘dangerous’.

How does the release of election figures - which should have been done by Friday midnight under the Constitution of Zimbabwe - translate as ‘dangerous’? Is this a veiled threat on the judiciary, seen largely as pro-Mugabe - or is this a hint that the election was lost by Mugabe?

As things stand right now, Mugabe rules the country by proxy - by ignoring the Constitution - and certainly not by public choice. And he is massing the war veterans, the youth brigades and the militia, the police and the army to take on the country. And then take over the country.

Mugabe can conceivably use Presidential powers - which I believe are no longer his to use - to delay any second round of voting for the Presidency from 21 to 90 days, but I also discovered that if his party call for, and are granted, a re-run of the Presidential election, he can continue to rule (I use that word advisedly) for 365 days…

Note that I wrote ‘re-run’ as opposed to ‘run-off’…

When do we start calling Mugabe’s actions in the last five days, a coup…?

He is stirring public indignation at and in his actions, and is hoping that somewhere the tensions will snap, and violence will ensue. If it doesn’t happen spontaneously, then he will plan that spontaneity… (go figure). Using that violence as a premise, he will declare a State of Emergency - and the Constitution flies out the window (not that he has paid much attention to it anyway).

Once the military are in charge, Mugabe can relax, knowing that his rule will be in tact and only military force will change that. And who is going to take on Mugabe’s armed forces? Not many people. Not because they are a formidable fighting force - far from it - but because the free world want nothing that Zimbabwe has…

It has no oil. It has mineral deposits but nothing of any attractiveness. It has an economy bare stripped by government greed and inability, a broken infrastructure through government inconsistency and corruption - and a currency which has the rapid and repetitive use of the words ‘million’ and ‘billion’.

And any military intervention would result in the unacceptable death of Zimbabweans - something which must be avoided at all costs.

So the good Zimbabwean people are to be abandoned to the wiles and excesses of Mugabe and his party, ZANU PF. The free world has no intention of swooping in and saving the day.

Now - Abba’s words ring loudly in my ears. It is indeed a disaster and a disgrace…

Robb WJ Ellis

9^th April 2008

Lawyers for Zimbabwe’s electoral commission urged the high court on Wednesday to dismiss a demand for the release of last month’s election results, saying the verification process was still underway.

“The collation has to be finished, the verification has to be finished,” the commission’s lawyer George Chikumbirike told the hearing in Harare.

“The order they sought is so unreasonable. This application must be dismissed, it ought never to have been made.”

Chikumbirike was speaking on the second day of the hearing into the application by Zimbabwe’s opposition for the court to order the commission to end its 11-day silence over the result of the March 29 presidential election.

The Movement for Democratic Change’s legal team had argued on Tuesday that there could be no justification for delaying the results any longer, saying they were effectively already known the day after the polls when returns were posted outside polling stations.

The delay had led to widespread opposition accusations that it was part of a ploy to buy President Robert Mugabe - who had ruled Zimbabwe non-stop since independence from Britain in 1980 - more time to cook up a victory.

Despite the lack of an official result, Mugabe’s party had already demanded a recount of the whole election, saying it had uncovered a series of anomalies.

The commission announced the results of a simultaneous parliamentary election nearly a week ago in which Mugabe’s ZANU PF party lost its majority to the MDC.

Justice Tendai Uchena was not expected to give his judgement until later in the week.

(Source)

Howzit

I see that Sky News had an article on the photographs being circulated by email that claim to be from within Mugabe’s mansion.

They have picked up on the fact that I say that photos are NOT Mugabe’s mansion as Google Earth plainly shows there is no outside swimming pool, but the photographs show an outside pool.

You, of course, are free to make up your own mind…

Take care.

‘debvhu

So - here we are, nine days after the election - no wiser, no closer to democratic rule in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe is playing all his cards at once, and it is such a fine edge, that his knife has slipped between the ribs of democracy, and we haven’t realised the seriousness of the wound.

I mean - come on! Even Grace Mugabe attempted to put an end to this fiasco. But Mugabe decided to carry on - and at what cost to the good people of Zimbabwe?

At what cost to his own children (reportedly his) who are being bullied at school? Knowing Mugabe, he will send the CIO in to teach a lesson to the children that have been riding his children. You think perhaps not? Mugabe always goes for the jugular - and if that means children, women or the infirm, so be it.

The man has lost all recognisance of law and order. He respects no one but his own skin.

His party have cried foul over sixteen constituencies in the Parliamentary election. The law says a recount can only be called for up to 48 hours after the announcing of the results. So his two-day statute of limitations has expired… but what is the bet that somehow the ZEC weasel out of it?

Meanwhile, the Presidential results have still not been made public, but Mugabe would appear to be privy to them as he is already playing for a second round. And his Presidential powers allow him to declare a 90 day stay to the second round, as opposed to the standard 21 days.

Ninety days is a very long time in Zimbabwean politics.

The damage which he can wreak in that period is truly huge. It sounds difficult that he can make things worse in a country already on its knees. But Mugabe is a determined character, and he will use whatever tools, manipulations and mechanisations at his disposal to achieve his aim - to stay in power.

And he has started already. On Saturday a number of farmers in the Masvingo area were over-run by war veterans. Well, ‘war veterans’ in name alone - some of them weren’t even born at Zimbabwean independence in 1980.

More farms were over-run in the Centenary area.

A policeman lies in jail for questioning the counting procedure. His crime? “Engaging in political activities.”

What has the illustrious Commissioner of Police been doing for all these years? Engaging in political activities!

If they imprison a lowly constable for questioning the counting process, what are we to do with Chihuri? But the powers that be are silent in this regard.

There was a deadline for the results of the Presidential elections to be published. The deadline came and went - the ZEC (an assumedly autonomous body - appointed for the purpose by none other than Mugabe himself) makes the excuse that they have ‘logistical’ problems. Does that mean that they are struggling with reworking the ballot figures to suit Mugabe?

How come he seems to know the result, but no one else does?

The MDC, the party with a majority in Parliament, made application to the High Court for the results to be published. On Saturday, the case was deferred to Sunday. On Sunday it was again deferred to Monday. Today it was deferred until tomorrow.

Every day that the result remains unknown and unpublished is another day with Mugabe at the top of the tree.

But surely it is a simple case of ordering ZEC to publish? Not that easy - you see the judiciary is filled from top to bottom with pro-Mugabe decision makers. Like this, by way of example: “High court judge Tendai Uchena sits on the Electoral Court an extension of ZEC which is made up of Harare justices Antonia Guvava and in Bulawayo, Nicholas Ndou.” It is Uchena that is hearing the case!

A definite conflict of interest.

I preferred it when we were under the impression that Mugabe had skipped the country.

First Lady, Amazing (Dis)Grace would have preferred that Mugabe do not fight the second round, but people like Constantine Chiwenga, Perence Shiri and Augustine Chihuri (army, air force and police chiefs respectively) have argued that they don’t want be left out in the cold if he admits defeat.

Let’s face it - these men (!) are responsible for much of the destruction of Zimbabwe and have no want or desire to face criminal charges for their actions. And they will defend themselves with the excuse that they were just carrying out Mugabe’s orders.

But in the eyes of the law, that will not wash. If an officer orders a junior rank to kill somebody, and he does - both the junior rank and the officer are guilty of murder. Not one or the other. And murder has not statute of limitations. It is a ‘continuing’ crime, so time cannot save them.

These men - and many more besides - are as guilty today as the day that each atrocity took place. They have the blood of Zimbabweans on their hands. And no amount of water will wash it off. Unless Mugabe is able to rule until his death and they die before him (unlikely), they will see themselves in court.

But even if he manages to stay in power, these people will spend every day of their lives looking over their shoulders.

And I don’t just mean for the Gukurahundi, I mean for the death during the ongoing land grab - farmers, workers, activists - and then there are those that perished in Murambatsvina…

What about those who perished because the health delivery service has collapsed?

Mugabe would prefer to buy fighter aircraft to use on his people before he buys much needed medication and medical equipment. He prefers to buy tear gas and pepper spray before he sorts out the educational system which has largely ceased to exist.

He would prefer that his own henchmen grab land - by any means - rather than accounting for the money that his government was handed for the peaceful purchase of land on a ‘willing buyer - willing seller’ basis…

I see nothing ‘willing’ about the besieging of farms in Masvingo these last few days - nothing ‘willing’ when Martin Olds was shot dead by attacking veterans, or when Martin’s mother, Gloria, was brutally murdered…

There was a time in Zimbabwe when we could hear music around us all the time and the happy chatter of children – of all colours – as they amused themselves at play. I see no enjoyment of the children, reduced to eating just one meal a day (if they are luck).

Mugabe has taken the happiness - the very fabric of society - away from the people. And they are the very people that he would steal the votes from to stay in power.

And Mugabe believes that if he puts himself up for a second round against Morgan Tsvangirai - with the assistance of his veterans, his youth militia, the army and the police - he can bully the electorate one more time to return him to power.

No!

Gushongo (Mugabe’s totem) - it is time to leave the political arena. You cannot force the will of the people. Not now - not ever again.

Not only are you bankrupt in the true sense of the word, you are morally bankrupt and without mistake, you are a reprehensible individual. Your legacy is one of destruction, bigotry and suffering.

Mhosva anopera. It is over.

Admit it and go.