Mugabe's Grip On Zimbabwe Still Tight

Despite economic chaos, the authoritarian president looks likely to be reelected. A challenger from his party has gained some traction.

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 25, 2008


HARARE, ZIMBABWE -- It takes 55 million Zimbabwean dollars to buy a single American one. Schools have no teachers. Hospitals have become mortuaries. And inflation has topped 100,000%.

As President Robert Mugabe, 84, seeks a sixth term in elections Saturday, Zimbabwe's financial catastrophe takes the words "It's the economy, stupid," to a new level.

Yet even with a crisis so intractable it would finish off any leader in a genuine democracy, Mugabe is expected to maintain his grip on power.

His tools are the same ones that have worked before: gerrymandered electorates; an electoral roll full of ghost voters; tight control of state television and radio; preelection gifts of tractors, plows and cattle to the rural chiefs who will get in the ruling party vote; pay raises for public servants and the military. And, above all, fear.

The major streets of this capital city are lined with posters bearing an old photograph of Mugabe, fist raised, and the slogan "Behind the Fist." To most, it conveys little beyond the fear associated with his rule, from Operation Gukurahundi in the early 1980s, when as many as 20,000 political enemies were slaughtered, to Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, when at least 700,000 people were driven from urban opposition strongholds into the countryside. Many have not recovered.

A party divided

But even when elections are not real elections, they raise hopes. And one thing has changed this time around: A charismatic presidential challenger from within the ruling ZANU-PF has divided the party and thrown Mugabe's campaign off balance. Former Finance Minister Simba Makoni, whose first name means "power" or "strength" in Zimbabwe's Shona language, announced his bid last month and was promptly ejected from the party.

Mugabe, whose grip on power has never weakened since independence from Britain in 1980, needs 51% of the vote to avoid a runoff against Makoni and the other main challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, who was savagely beaten by police last year and whose opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, has split into two main squabbling factions.

There are signs Mugabe is rattled by the challengers. In the weeks before the election, he signed a law forcing foreign- and white-owned companies to sell black Zimbabweans a 51% interest, a move that will send investors fleeing and further undermine the economy, but enable him to dole out plum favors to loyalists.

The Information Ministry warned that white foreign journalists would be barred from covering the election. And in case anyone was in doubt about the regime's determination to cling to power, the police and army chiefs announced that they would never work under the opposition.

At rallies, Mugabe rails bitterly against people such as Makoni, calling them enemies and traitors. Yet Makoni, 58, has much in common with Mugabe. He comes from a similar traditional rural African background, rose through education (both got degrees in Britain) and was politicized in the liberation struggle and in ZANU-PF. Even now, Makoni does not directly attack either Mugabe or the party.

But there is a heady exhilaration about his campaign. Part of it is the sheer novelty of hearing a ZANU-PF stalwart proclaiming what everyone thinks but most are afraid to say: "We got corrupted by power. We started serving ourselves. . . . We've destroyed our own country," he said at his launch rally in Harare early this month.

'Power to the People'

Makoni's slogan, "Simba Kuvanhu," or "Power to the People," is a famous old refrain from the liberation struggle, a Mugabe favorite that the president has not quite gotten out of the habit of using at campaign rallies.

Even some opposition figures see a reform ZANU-PF candidate as the best and only hope of change. Arthur Mutambara, leader of one faction in the opposition MDC, recently declared that no one in the opposition could beat Mugabe.

"Makoni is the only person who can defeat Mugabe. Not Tsvangirai, not Mutambara," he said at a recent rally, campaigning for Makoni instead of running for president himself.

But Makoni waited until late in the game to enter the race, convinced that popular discontent with Mugabe was so deep that it needed only one credible candidate to sweep away both the president and the disappointing opposition.

He claims to have many heavyweight ruling-party backers, but few ZANU-PF bigwigs have defected to his camp, making it difficult for him to muster enough ruling-party support to sweep Mugabe aside.

Makoni, boyish-looking and articulate, is from a large and powerful clan and has dozens of cousins and hundreds of close relatives. In his childhood village, nearly every shop and business was owned by a Makoni.

He faced the first real test of his support on a recent balmy Sunday at the Zimbabwe Grounds in Harare, the sports fields where big political rallies are held.

The crowd of a few thousand consisted mainly of educated men, including bureaucrats and professionals.

Many of those in attendance were former opposition supporters, disillusioned over Tsvangirai's letting his party split and failure to capitalize on popular anger after previous elections.

"People are impatient. They now want Makoni to be president," said university lecturer Simba Matsika, 36.

"People will support anyone and any program that opposes the incumbent party and president. People need change at any cost."

Makoni impressed the sports-facility crowd; the problem was the modest turnout. Even the riot police were halfhearted: One small police van made a desultory sweep and retreated to wait by the gate.

'Getting a crowd'

"If you are going to launch an attack against Mugabe, you really have to find a way of getting a crowd by hook or by crook," said Lovemore Madukhu, director of the National Constitutional Assembly, a nongovernmental organization lobbying for reform.

"You don't go to the Zimbabwe Grounds and get a crowd of three to four thousand. It was a crowd smaller than Mugabe addressed and smaller than Tsvangirai addressed. I think that blunder will eat into perceptions of his capacity to divide Mugabe's support."

Makoni's daily meet-the-people walks in towns across Zimbabwe connect him with hundreds of voters, but not the thousands he needs. Tsvangirai may be discredited, but he still has a broader reach, with a strong urban support base that Makoni lacks.

Building a profile and swinging the electoral tide in a few short weeks is a tall order for Makoni, especially with no access to television and radio.

Many analysts believe Makoni will poll third after Mugabe and Tsvangirai. A recent opinion poll put Mugabe's support well behind Tsvangirai's, but the electoral boundaries have been redrawn to give rural voters (among whom Mugabe's support is highest) a much greater weight than residents of pro-opposition urban areas.

As finance minister from 2000 to 2002, Makoni stood up to Mugabe and called for the devaluation of the ailing Zimbabwean dollar as the economy went into free fall after the president's seizures of white-owned farmland. He was removed as finance minister but stayed in the powerful politburo, and some opposition supporters see Makoni as just an ambitious member of the party that has destroyed the country.

"I was part of the system. I was in the leadership of this country for quite a long time and in public office for quite a long time. But collective responsibility does not mean that everyone agrees with every decision all of the time," Makoni said in an interview in Harare after returning late from a day's campaigning. "I strove for change from within. Throughout the time I was in the leadership, I kept trying to show my colleagues that there were better ways than we were doing."

If Makoni fails, he and his supporters could be isolated and made examples of by the ruling elite, a move that might discourage others in the ruling party from defying Mugabe.

But Makoni argues that his presidential bid is having the opposite effect, saying, "Many Zimbabweans are feeling emboldened and encouraged that you can actually speak your mind and Armageddon will not befall you."