The Stench Of Vote Rigging Is Everywhere But Mugabe Appears Unperturbed

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PART I

Zimbabwe: Africa’s Political Basket Case

Mugabe’s  Failed State

The Stench Of Vote Rigging Is Everywhere But Mugabe Appears Unperturbed

An Essay By Michael D. Roberts

Maybe Zimbabwe will go the way of Kenya and chalk up a new African nation in crisis and chaos. And if sketchy reports coming from Harare are anything to go by it looks a vintage Robert Mugabe all over again. There are reports of controlled, state-sponsored violence in the countryside and other provocations around the country mainly by Mugabe’s loyal ZANU-PF members who have everything to lose if the 85-year old president should have to demit office.

In fact, this election is by far the most crucial in Mugabe’s political career since any loss of power will undoubtedly provoke a wave of political revenge by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) no matter what it says to the contrary. And Mr. Mugabe’s cronies, close inner circle, and members of his ruling ZANU-PF know that their very class interests are at stake and that the octogenarian president’s retention of political power is in their best interests.

Until recently, Mr. Mugabe had always been able to stifle political opposition. His ZANU-PF party had still dominated what is virtually a one party state occupying 147 out of the country's 150 parliamentary seats. But growing discontent over the country's failing economy with inflation and unemployment soaring to record levels are starting to threaten his authority.

Already the ZANU-PF must be having some anxious moments since the writing was on the proverbial political wall when it lost the parliamentary elections to the MDC. That caused Mr. Mugabe to convene a hasty session of the party’s Politburo who spun the yarn about a pending recount. When that did not work Mr. Mugabe had his henchmen arrest about seven members of Zimbabwe’s Election Commission accusing them of rigging the elections for the MDC.

Meanwhile, the wily Mr. Mugabe fell back on a tried and tested tactic: white farms and black destituteness. To date, some 60 white farmers and at least two black farmers are said to have been evicted from their land in this new round of tensions. Four foreign journalists have also been arrested, including New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak.

The Zimbabwean military has released the names of 200 high-ranking officers who it said were  leading gangs of thugs in the guise of war veterans in attacks on government opponents. Unemployed youths are reportedly being recruited to join government-backed gangs. Correspondingly, armed gangs are said to be hunting down opponents of ZANU-PF, burning houses and beating people.

We have seen these political chess moves and shenanigans before – when President Mugabe wants to cling to power at all costs. While all this is going on the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission is yet to release the vote count for the presidential elections even as ZANU-PF is saying that Mr. Mugabe is ready for a new run off.

Nobody in the world should be surprised by Mr. Mugabe’s antics. After all the rigging of elections in Zimbabwe are now routine and standard operating procedures for ZANU-PF. For example, in 2002 amid great fanfare and lofty talk about transparency and fairness some of the MDC’s supporters were abducted, beaten, intimidated, threatened and murdered. Anybody who dared to even suggest that Mr. Mugabe was literally getting away with murder was arrested.

Then like now electoral roles and registers were padded with phantom names and the ZEC kept changing and making up the rules at it went along to suppress voter turnout in areas where the MDC was perceived as too strong and popular. Local journalists were kidnapped and killed for writing articles critical of the electoral process and of the conduct of the president. Government food aid to drought-stricken areas was used as a means of buying votes.

It is the same playbook that Mr. Mugabe uses today and now like then the situation is tense and thousands of people are fleeing the country for fear of reprisals by the security forces that remain fanatically loyal to the president and ZANU-PF.

Perhaps the only page left in his playbook that’s not been used yet is the internal ethnic cleansing that he used in May 2005. Back then Mr. Mugabe ordered the demolition of  shanty towns in “Operation Murambatsvina,” which means “clear out the trash” in Shona. Poor residents were loaded onto trucks and driven into the countryside where they were dumped without any means of livelihood or even basic sanitation.

An estimated 700,000 people, or six percent of the population, were displaced in this operation. In total, 2.4 million people were affected directly or indirectly. It was an attempt to crush opposition among the urban working class. When the white farms were occupied, the rural workers they employed were treated with similar brutality.

But perhaps he’s already setting the stage for a new “operation.”  Last weekend he publicly stated:  “The land is ours, it must not be allowed to slip back into the hands of the whites.” By revisiting and repackaging an old bogeyman Mr. Mugabe is deflecting concerns that the results of the presidential elections have not yet been made public and his countrymen are in a state of political limbo with the underpinning for real violence present and accounted for.

Still, this old political canard will not work this time. That is because Mugabe can no longer posit himself as Zimbabwe’s liberator as he did, say, 10 years ago. He’s caught with his pants down this time since his record speaks volumes about the kind of liberation that he practices. And blaming the west for all of his country’s ills certainly does not hold water anymore. Indeed, his strident attacks and angry rhetoric against Britain and the United States is more for domestic consumption rather than a genuine anti-west position.

First of all Mugabe came to power in 1980 with the express backing and support of both Britain and the United States who saw him as the best choice over Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) that was aligned with the then Soviet Union. Remember also that Mugabe had split with ZAPU and joined ZANU in 1963. Given the choice between ZANU and Robert Mugabe and ZAPU and Joshua Nkoma the former colonial power decided to go with Mugabe even though he publicly stated that he was Maoist and inspired by the Chinese revolution.

Born in 1924, Robert Gabriel Mugabe was educated in missionary schools and received the first of his seven degrees from South Africa's Fort Hare University. Returning to Rhodesia in 1960 he joined Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) but left three years later to form the rival Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU).

Jailed without trial for 10 years he left Rhodesia for neighboring Mozambique in 1974 and led the largest of the guerrilla forces fighting a protracted and bloody war against the Ian Smith government.  After months of negotiations the 1979 Lancaster House agreement set the seal on a Rhodesian peace deal and Mr. Mugabe returned home to a rapturous welcome from Black supporters.

He initially built a coalition government with Mr. Nkomo, whose ZAPU forces had also fought the Smith government, but the discovery of a large arms cache at ZAPU-owned houses led to Mr. Nkomo's dismissal from government. A brutal crackdown on ZAPU supporters followed, leading many commentators to compare Mr. Mugabe's own approach to political opposition with that during the time of white rule. The collapse of the coalition allowed Mr. Mugabe to strengthen his hold on power.

The political conundrum for both the British and American governments was that the then-British colony of Rhodesia had unilaterally declared independence in 1965 under a white racist regime, which refused to grant even the most modest political rights to the majority of the Black population. A violent insurgency developed, leading US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to fear that the impasse in Rhodesia would allow the Soviet Union to gain ground in southern Africa and threaten strategic American interests. He put pressure on Britain to reach an accord. Then end result was the Lancaster House agreement that helped put Mugabe in power.

Authors Website: http://www.CSG2017.com

Authors Bio:

MICHAEL DERK ROBERTS
Small Business Consultant, Editor, and Social Media & Communications Expert, New York

Over the past 20 years I've been a top SMALL BUSINESS CONSULTANT and POLITICAL CAMPAIGN STRATEGIST in Brooklyn, New York, running successful campaigns at the City, State and Federal levels. I'm a published author and award-winning journalist. I've been honored and recognized for my deep, hard-hitting analytical work on socio-economic and political issues confronting the United States in general and New York City in particular. I'm he Senior Consultant, COMMONSENSE STRATEGIES (www.commonsensestrategies.biz ), a Marketing, Social Media & Communications company based in Brooklyn. I also host two weekly podcasts at www.blogtalkradio.com/shangoking .The first, aired on Saturday mornings is called BTS -- Business, Technology and Social Media and the second, The Roberts Report, is aired on Sundays. You can also follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/mdvroberts. (347) 279-6668.