POLITICS-ZIMBABWE: Mugabe Extends a Hand of Friendship to Opposition

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Sekai Ngara*

HARARE, Apr 6 2005 (IPS) - Supporters of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party look frustrated and helpless following their defeat in the Mar. 31 elections which civil society groups claim were rigged by President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party.

Like the 2000 parliamentary and the 2002 presidential poll, the election had exposed a serious urban-rural fault line. ZANU-PF won 78 of the 120 seats at stake, while the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) got 41. One seat went to Jonathan Moyo, President Robert Mugabe’s disgraced spin doctor, who stood as an independent.

Moyo, the architect of Zimbabwe’s draconian media laws, was omitted from the ruling party candidate list for organising a meeting unsanctioned by the party leadership.

ZANU-PF made its strongest showing in the rural areas where it wrested a number of seats that went to the MDC in 2000. Under Zimbabwe’s constitution, President Mugabe can appoint 30 Members of Parliament (MPs), bringing the total to 150.

The result of the election is, for many ordinary Zimbabweans the third time their hopes have been dashed. In 2000 the MDC, then less than one year old, won 57 of the 120 parliamentary seats. Two years later the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, stood against President Mugabe and gave a good account of himself. Up to this day, the MDC believes it won both polls but was robbed by Mugabe’s party.

John Mrewa, who sells mobile phone air-time top-up cards for a living in the capital Harare, is still shell-shocked. ‘’Another five years of ZANU-PF rule?” he asks, gazing into space. ‘’At least we showed them how we feel in Harare and ZANU-PF should now be known as the rural rather than the ruling party.” He was referring to MDC’s winning all but one of the capital’s seats. ZANU-PF won mostly rural seats.

The buzzword in Harare during the campaign was change. Though the word is linked more to the MDC, supporters of the ZANU-PF also used the word. All Zimbabweans hoped that the elections would bring about a change in the fortunes of their country.

The clamour for change prompted July, as he preferred to be called, to cast his votes in Matshobana, a poor suburb of Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, which is mainly home to former railway workers of Zambian or Malawian descent.

July says what pushed him into heading for the polling station was the high rate of unemployment, which the MDC estimates to be around 70 percent. ‘’Our brothers spend their time on the streets and companies are closing,” he says.

July, 30, says he has been a security guard for 10 years, a job he says pays badly, has no prospects and is meant for people about 50.

First-time voter Qhelisa Hlongwane, a customer service assistant with a major retail chain in Bulawayo, is worried about the legislation in Zimbabwe. ‘’In the previous parliament, there was a lot of debate and some bad laws which were passed on the people. So, I want to be part of the change,” she says.

Among those casting their ballots at City Hall in Bulawayo was the city’s Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube. The outspoken cleric says he would be surprised if the election brings about change ‘’because I know the mentality of these people. Mugabe is a dictator and dictators never want to leave power.”

Archbishop Ncube argues the only way to bring about transformation in Zimbabwe is through peaceful mass action. But he says Zimbabwe does not yet have the requisite leadership.

Unless the stalemate between Zimbabwe’s main political parties is broken, things will certainly get worse.

The MDC claims massive rigging of the ballots in at least 35 constituencies. It says the fraud came to light after the electoral officials could not reconcile the figures of the total number of people who voted and the number of votes cast for each of the candidates.

But a jubilant Mugabe urged the opposition to accept the result and work with ZANU-PF for the good of the nation. The opposition has spurned Mugabe’s overture, describing it as ‘’a public relations exercise”. The MDC is still mulling what action to take after what they say is another ‘’stolen” election.

Mugabe has announced that he will use his two-thirds majority in parliament to change sections of the constitution. He says the constitution will not be overhauled; but that he will introduce 50 more Members of Parliament, re-introduce the senate, which was abolished in 1989, and run presidential elections concurrently with parliamentary polls.

This might mean that instead of 2008 when his current term expires, and he has hinted he might retire, the next presidential elections will only be held in 2010. Whether Mugabe will retire in 2008 and appoint a successor to run the country until 2010 is not yet clear.

Mugabe also says he intends to incorporate sections of a government-sponsored draft constitution that was rejected in a February 2000 referendum. He blames MDC for the rejection of that constitution which, he says, was going to legitimise the appropriation of white-owned farms without compensation.

Although Mugabe is buoyed by the fact that almost all the international groups he invited to observe the poll concluded the result reflected the will of the people, it is the west that holds the key to Zimbabwe’s problems.

South Africa and the 13-nation Southern African Development Community all endorsed the Mar. 31 election but that is about all they can offer Zimbabwe; moral support. For the Zimbabwean government to get the western support it needs to resuscitate its ailing economy, Mugabe needs the MDC to accept his offer of co-operation. And that does not look likely at the moment.

Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler, Britain said the elections were ‘’seriously flawed”, citing harassment and intimidation. The United States said balloting took place ‘’on a playing field that was heavily tilted in favour of the government”.

MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi says if Mugabe’s offer is sincere then his party’s challenge of the election result should not be an issue at all. He says the MDC would never be party to rewarding Mugabe for stealing elections. The opposition party is demanding a re-run of the election under a new constitution.

Brian Raftopoulous of the University of Zimbabwe is equally sceptical of Mugabe’s hand of friendship. ‘’I think this is really playing to the gallery. Mugabe knows that he has seriously damaged, through his manipulation of the political and electoral process, the opposition,” Raftopoulos said. ‘’It’s a kind of false magnanimity, condescending malice that comes from a political process that does not present genuine opportunities for national reconciliation.”

Raftopoulos says Mugabe, who is so intolerant of any kind of opposition, wants to be seen as the one making conciliatory overtures so that his opponents look bad.

He says the way forward for Zimbabwe now is for the MDC and other democratic forces to sit down and map a way forward. The options are, however, limited. Mugabe has already warned against any form of mass action, saying it will be met with force.

Whether the opposition will re-engage regional leaders such as South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, whom it accuses of complicity in what it calls the electoral fraud in Zimbabwe, remains to be seen. Mbeki announced that the Zimbabwean poll would be free and fair before it happened. The MDC took great exception to what it called a prejudging of the election.

(* With additional reporting by Tafi Murinzi in Bulawayo.)

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