(Source: via email)

Mugabe’s feared security force, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), is waging a highly-organised campaign to terrify the 4,000 MDC members living in the UK.

It involves surveillance, threats against family members in Zimbabwe, menacing late-night phone calls and bogus messages saying that fundraising activities are cancelled or disrupted.

The existence of the campaign was confirmed last night by British security sources, who said the targeting of dissidents and MDC members was stepped up in recent weeks as Mugabe sought to maintain his grip on power. Police are investigating a number of incidents, including an alleged phone call to an MDC member who was told that his parents in Zimbabwe faced eviction unless he stopped criticising Mugabe.

Yesterday, militias loyal to the ruling ZANU PF party roamed Zimbabwean villages and towns to press-gang MDC supporters into voting for Mugabe in the discredited second round of the presidential election. The European Union described the vote as a “sham”.

But while the brutal treatment that Mugabe’s followers have meted out in his own country in recent weeks, with the deaths of at least 80 people, has provoked international condemnation, tactics designed to instil fear and panic have been deployed out of the public gaze against the 20,000 Zimbabweans living in Britain. MDC officials said a key target of the CIO operation appeared to be the money between £5,000 and £10,000 a month, which was being sent from the UK to back Tsvangirai’s campaign until he withdrew from the ballot last week. With inflation in Zimbabwe running at three million per cent, hard cash is vital to buy campaign essentials such as fuel and printing supplies.

Tendai Goneso, treasurer of the MDC’s UK and Ireland branch, said: “It is a highly-organised and co-ordinated campaign to intimidate members and interrupt our ability to send money to support the presidential campaign. Mugabe has exported the methods he has used against Zimbabweans at home to the heart of the former colonial power.

“The money was very important for enabling us to keep Tsvangirai campaigning. We can buy 10,000 litres of fuel each month and send regular consignments of mobile phones, and that is what they are trying to stop. An investigation by The Independent, corroborated by British security sources, found a range of strategies used to disrupt and coerce Mugabe’s opponents, many of them asylum-seekers who feel unable to complain to British authorities.

(Source)

European diplomats acting as observers in Sharm el-Sheikh expressed disappointment at the AU’s conclusions. The final resolution made no criticism of Mugabe or his government, falling well short of the demands of some African states for his government to be barred from the AU. It only recognised “the complexity of the situation in Zimbabwe” and simply “noted” reports by African monitors of widespread intimidation in the run-up to Friday’s single-candidate election. The summit gave no guidance on how negotiations for unity government should proceed: whether Mugabe should be treated as head of state despite the election debacle, or the recognition to be given to the victory of Tsvangirai in the first round of elections in March. Egyptian officials said that the decision had been accepted by all the African leaders at the summit, including Mugabe. “It’s a shame for Africa,” said a diplomat at the summit who had favoured taking tougher action.

Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Senegal and Botswana all questioned Mugabe’s legitimacy in the wake of a government-backed campaign of violence that forced Tsvangirai to withdraw from the election. They argued that the AU should live up to its charter that aspires towards democratic government. They had called for AU mediators to help broker reconciliation talks as the current mediator designated by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, is distrusted by Tsvangirai. The statement also appealed to “states and all parties concerned to refrain from any actions that may negatively impact on the climate of dialogue”, an apparent criticism of UN sanctions being promoted by the US and Britain. The resolution emerged as the lowest common denominator between leaders at the summit who wanted to challenge Mugabe’s legitimacy and others who wanted to acclaim him.

The Zimbabwean crisis has brought to the surface simmering tensions among African leaders over whether legitimacy can only be achieved through the ballot box. Those tensions came to a head yesterday evening with an extraordinary call from Zimbabwe’s neighbour, Botswana, for Mugabe to be thrown out of African institutions. Botswana’s vice-president, Lieutenant General Mompati Merafhe, declared that the outcome of last Friday’s elections, in which Mugabe was the sole candidate, “does not confer legitimacy on the government of President Mugabe. “In our considered view, it therefore follows that the representatives of the current “government” in Zimbabwe should be excluded from attending SADC and African Union meetings. Taking the floor in a closed session, Mugabe spoke at length and delivered a blistering counter-attack on his accusers, according to diplomats at the summit. The tone was summed up by his spokesman, who said his critics could “go and hang. They can go to hang a million times. They have no claim on Zimbabwean politics”. After his address to the summit, Mugabe flew home to a country still in ferment.

It was unclear last night how a dialogue would be orchestrated between two sides who yesterday showed few signs of compromise. George Charamba, the Zimbabwean government spokesman, rejected proposals of a Kenyan-style unity government and accused the Kenyan prime minister, Raila Odinga, of having hands “dripping with blood”. Zimbabwe’s opposition party yesterday also played down the prospects of a deal with the Mugabe government. South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, was reported in the Business Day newspaper yesterday as being close to brokering an agreement between Mugabe and Tsvangirai that would lead to a unity government. But a spokesman for Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change, George Sibotshiwe, told the Guardian this morning: “There is no truth in that. There is no deal. Unless the African Union can identify Mugabe as illegitimate there is no deal.”

(Source)

This episode looks at the sham of an election last Friday.

The programme can be listened to using the multiplayers in the sidebar of The Bearded Man blog. Conversely, it can also be heard here or downloaded from here.

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Coalition foreign affairs spokesman Andrew Robb says Robert Mugabe has been exposed as a brutal, illegitimate tyrant.

Mr Robb says all independent analysts believe Mr Tsvangirai won the necessary 50 per cent of the vote in the March election.

He says Mr Rudd should act decisively and recognise Mr Tsvangirai as the rightful president and encourage other nations to do the same.

Mr Robb says Australia is not doing enough.

“In Opposition, Mr Rudd talked about hauling Mugabe before the International Criminal Court, making Zimbabwe one of Australia’s top five policy priorities and he even warned the Chinese Government about propping up the Mugabe regime,” he said.

“So Mr Rudd could be urging all countries, including China, to recognise Mr Tsvangirai and in turn to see some real pressure on the UN to act.”

Meanwhile Mr Mugabe has arrived at an African Union (AU) summit in Egypt where his fellow African leaders are expected to urge him to reach a power-sharing agreement with the opposition.

The summit in the resort of Sharm El-Sheikh is expected to be dominated by the question of how to respond to the discredited run-off election that returned Mr Mugabe to power.

Tanzanian Foreign Minister Bernard Membe says that rather than debating whether Mr Mugabe should be addressed as President, delegates will be focusing on how to help the Zimbabwean people.

“It’s not the matter of the titles of a person who determines security and is the built-in Africa. It’s the way forward,” he said.

“We are in a serious business here. The question is the people of Zimbabwe - what do we do for the suffering people of Zimbabwe?”

(Source)

Read together, the opinions provided by David Unterhalter SC and Wim Trengove SC and Max du Plessis on different aspects of Zimbabwean electoral law argue that Zimbabwe’s Electoral Act provides both a majoritarian principle and a residual principle for determining the outcome of a Presidential election.

The majoritarian principle is predicated upon the requirement that a second election takes place within the 21 day period after the first election, which would have been April 2008. Only two candidates participate in this second election – those with the highest and next highest number of votes from the first round – and the candidate with the greater number of votes shall be declared the duly elected President, as set out in item 3 (1)(a) of the Second Schedule of the Electoral Act.

However item 3 of the Second Schedule also provides for a residual principle: where no second election is held or can be held with the requisite 21 day period, and there were two or more candidates for President, and no candidate received a majority of the total number of valid votes cast, item 3(1)(b) provides that the candidate with the greatest number of votes, and not the majority of the total number of votes, shall be the duly elected President.

This argument is set out in greater detail in an opinion titled: The Procedures Governing the Determination and Declaration of the President in the Event of an Unlawful Runoff. SALC has made the opinion publicly available at www.southernafricalitigationcentre.org

A second opinion commissioned by SALC addresses the issue of whether the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is authorised to extend the runoff period beyond the statutorily mandated 21 day period and consequently whether the current runoff, scheduled for 27 June 2008, is lawful.

It is argued that ZEC was not constitutionally authorised to extend the run-off: that the regulatory powers it invoked in order to extend the run-off constitute an impermissible and unconstitutional delegation on the part of Parliament, that it violates the separation of powers principle and that insufficient guidelines were given to limit such delegation.

It follows that no lawful run-off can take place if not held within the 21 day period: that ZEC’s purported extension was unconstitutional and unlawful. This opinion is also available from SALC at www.southernafricalitigationcentre.org

If there can be no lawful run-off now, then as set out in the first opinion, the residual principle applies and the Chief Elections Officer is required to declare the candidate with the greatest number of votes the duly elected President. Even assuming that the run-off could be extended beyond the 21 day period, but that the run-off could not occur because violence and intimidation made it impossible that a free and fair election could be held, then the residual principle would still apply and the candidate with the greatest number of votes must be declared duly elected President.  

SALC Director, Nicole Fritz said: “These opinions assume critical importance in light of recent developments. They provide clarity in what seems an increasingly uncertain situation. And they give the lie to any claim by Mugabe that he is the lawfully elected President.”

(Source: by email)

“When I got to the gate, a war veteran gave me a pen and a piece of paper. He told me I had to write the serial number of the ballot paper when I am in the polling booth,” Nyasha said. “When you come out, you go to another war veteran waiting at the gate and he writes down your serial number, your name, your address and your ID number in an exercise book. They say that later they can find your ballot paper and check who you voted for. If you voted for the MDC, they will destroy your house and you have to leave Epworth. “I have a red finger,” he said. “I wanted to vote for Tsvangirai, but I voted for Mugabe, because of fear. Everyone is afraid their houses will be destroyed, so they are voting for Mugabe.” In the last two weeks, nearly 200 homes of suspected MDC supporters have been smashed by ZANU PF gangs, up to 15 of them in Nyasha’s ward.

“Now we are waiting for the end of the day,” Nyasha said on his way home. “They said they will come to everyone’s houses after voting is finished and see that everybody voted. They will look at our fingers for the red ink. If you don’t have red ink they will beat you and then destroy your house,” he said. In Epworth, the ZANU PF election campaign for the run-off featured systematic floggings, preceded by “confessions” forced out of people who voted for the MDC in the first round in March. Amazingly, there are still some people who are prepared to defy the regime. Mary, a maid in her late 50s, was going to make sure she got her red finger, but she could not bear to tick the name of the sole remaining candidate. “I am going to draw a big X all over the voting paper, to spoil my vote,” she said. “I don’t want Mugabe.”

(Source)

Mugabe, the country’s ruler since independence in 1980, was expected to use violence and intimidation to get people to vote for him in the hope that a massive turnout could demonstrate he still has support and to make his inevitable victory appear credible. Opposition party treasurer Roy Bennett, in exile in neighbouring South Africa, called on the world to acknowledge that Mugabe’s rule is illegitimate. “The whole election is a farce,” he told Associated Press Television News. “Nobody should endorse that election” and “all pressure that is possible… should be brought to bear” on Mugabe by African leaders. State radio acknowledged that voters were only “trickling” into stations in the countryside, attributing the low turnout to chilly weather that had temperatures below zero overnight.

About 20 paramilitary police in riot gear were stationed in a central Harare park then began patrolling the city in a truck. Militant Mugabe supporters roamed the streets, singing revolutionary songs, heckling people and asking why they were not voting. “I’ve got no option but to go and vote so that I can be safe,” explained a young woman selling tomatoes. The opposition scattered fliers overnight calling for a boycott. “Is it necessary to vote?” said Cephas Sango, a Harare resident reading a flier. He said he had heard warnings that Mugabe party militants plan to check for the ink staining voters’ fingers and those staying away face the threat of violence. The opposition has called on people voting out of fear to spoil their ballots. In the capital’s crowded Mbare suburb, lines built up at polling stations as voters arrived in groups, led by marshals who were carrying books filled with names. In one side street, names were being called and ticked off as a group of about 25 people gathered before heading to a tented polling station.

Up to 300 people waited at one station there. But elsewhere, the voters were outnumbered by an intimidating police presence. Assistant Police Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena told state radio that they had doubled the number of police at poll stations to “guarantee peace and security.” He said there were no reports of violence by midmorning, but that any violence would be met with “the full force of the law.” In an e-mail voting day message, Tsvangirai said he expected voters to be threatened, told to record their ballot paper numbers and to have their votes recorded by cameras. He advised them not to resist. “God knows what is in your heart. Don’t risk your lives,” he said in the message. In the middle-class Greendale suburb, Eunice Maboreke came out of a polling station and told a reporter “my vote is my secret.” Another voter, Livingstone Gwaze, said he voted for Mugabe. “Things will get better. There is darkness before light,” he said. Another man refused to give his name but held up his ink-stained finger to show he had voted.

Riot police and regular uniformed officers manned roadblocks on approaches to the South African Embassy, where at least 200 fugitives of violence in the countryside were camped with blankets and bundles of belongings in the parking lot. On the campaign trail Thursday, Mugabe said he was “open to discussion” with Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, but only after the vote. Mugabe had shown little interest in talks and his government had scoffed at Tsvangirai’s call Wednesday to work together to form a transitional authority. World leaders have dismissed the runoff. Foreign ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized meeting in Japan Friday said they would not recognize the outcome of the election. “We deplore the actions of the Zimbabwean authorities - systematic violence, obstruction and intimidation - which have made a free and fair presidential runoff election impossible,” they said in a joint statement.

Nigeria is the latest African nation to call for its postponement, even though its own presidential election in 2007 was riddled with fraud. Mugabe jumped on the contradictions on the continent, which has suffered a string of bad elections in recent years in Kenya, Ethiopia, Congo and Uganda. International intervention came only in Kenya this year, where a transitional unity government was formed after more than 1,000 people were killed in post-election violence. “There are countries that have had elections in worse conditions in Africa and we have never interfered,” Mugabe told a rally Thursday. He said he would confront some leaders at an African Union summit that opens Monday in Egypt. “I would like some African leaders who are making these statements to point at me and we would see if those fingers would be cleaner than mine,” he said.

Tsvangirai was first in a field of four in the March vote, an embarrassment to Mugabe. But the official tally said he did not gain the votes necessary to avoid a runoff against Mugabe. Tsvangirai’s party and its allies also won control of parliament in March, dislodging Mugabe’s party for the first time since 1980. Mugabe was once hailed as a post-independence leader committed to development and reconciliation, but in recent years has been denounced as a dictator intent only on holding onto power. Efforts to dislodge him at the ballot box have repeatedly been stymied by fraud and intimidation. As during the first round, individual polling stations will have to post tallies, an innovation hammered out in talks between the opposition and Mugabe’s party mediated by South African President Thabo Mbeki. That allowed the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network and the opposition to compile their own results, making fraud difficult.

But this time, the network said it was unable to field monitors because they had not been accredited by the government. The opposition also will not be monitoring results. The African Union, the main regional Southern African Development Community and African parliamentarians were observing the runoff, but do not have enough people to make a difference. Two Zimbabwean freelance journalists were detained by police Friday at a polling station because they could not produce proof that they were accredited with the government. Hundreds of journalists, mainly from Western media organizations, have been banned from covering Zimbabwe’s elections.

(Source)

(Source)

While the ANC came out with an unusually strong condemnation of the Zimbabwean government on Tuesday, saying it was “riding roughshod over the hard-won democratic rights” of its people, the party also insisted that outsiders had no role to play in ending its current anguish. “It has always been and continues to be the view of our movement that the challenges facing Zimbabwe can only be solved by the Zimbabweans themselves,” the statement said. “Nothing that has happened in the recent months has persuaded us to revise that view.” Zimbabwe’s opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, withdrew from a runoff election with the incumbent president, Robert Mugabe, scheduled for Friday, citing the widespread violence and intimidation facing his party. “It’s ridiculous to go into an election of that kind,” he said in a radio interview on Tuesday. “It’s a one-man competition.”

On Wednesday, in an article published in The Guardian newspaper in London, Mr. Tsvangirai called for international intervention. “We do not want armed conflict,” he wrote, “but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force.” Mr. Tsvangirai has been taking refuge at the Dutch Embassy in the capital, Harare, but has said he will leave within 48 hours after moves by Dutch authorities to ensure his safety. Amid the international outcry over his government’s handling of the crisis, Mr. Mugabe was reported Tuesday as hinting that he might be open to talks with the beleaguered opposition, but only after he won. He remained defiant about going ahead with the runoff, refusing to postpone it. “They can shout as loud as they like from Washington or from London or from any other quarter,” Mr. Mugabe said in televised broadcasts. “Our people, our people, only our people will decide and nobody else.”

Taken together, his remarks were the most explicit affirmation that he intended to go through with an election widely condemned as illegitimate. But the hint of readiness to talk was also the first sign that Mr. Mugabe might negotiate - as President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa has been urging him to do - once he has what he can depict as a position of strength. The ANC statement, which was the first official response from South Africa since Mr. Tsvangirai’s withdrawal, was not signed by any individual in the ANC It seemed to represent a marked departure from Mr. Mbeki’s refusal to castigate Mr. Mugabe, and seemed to reflect the increasing frustration with the Zimbabwean president. At the same time, in what seemed a clear rebuke to the efforts of Western nations to take an aggressive stance against the Zimbabwean government, the ANC included a lengthy criticism of the “arbitrary, capricious power” exerted by Africa’s colonial masters and cited the subsequent struggle by African nations to gain freedoms and rights.

“No colonial power in Africa, least of all Britain in its colony of ‘Rhodesia’ ever demonstrated any respect for these principles,” the ANC said, referring to Zimbabwe before its independence. Zimbabwe, once one of Africa’s most prosperous countries, has been reeling from a widening campaign of violence and intimidation since Mr. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president for nearly 30 years, came in second in the initial round of voting on March 29. In a show of support for the opposition, the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions declared on Tuesday that it was “appalled at the levels of violence and intimidation being inflicted on the people of Zimbabwe by the illegitimate Mugabe regime. The June 27 presidential election is not an election, but a declaration of war against the people of Zimbabwe by the ruling party,” the union group said. Urging a blockade of Zimbabwe, it said: “We call on all our unions and those everywhere else in the world to make sure that they never ever serve Mugabe anywhere, including at airports, restaurants, shops, etc. “Further, we call on all workers and citizens of the world never to allow Mugabe to set foot in their countries.”

(Source)