Mugabe's power game seems set to pay off as a wider exodus looms

Jun 20, 2008, 16:36 GMT

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe addresses a youth convention in Harare, Zimbabwe, 13 June 2008. EPA/STR

Johannesburg/Harare - Just a week before the planned presidential run-off between President Robert Mugabe and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai the election itself is looking increasingly compromised.

After weeks of harassment, Mugabe's challenger is contemplating withdrawing from the election even with the risk of Mugabe being declared the winner.

However, Tsvangirai's advisors who are confident of victory want to go ahead with the election.

It might become an election which, political observers say, only resembles an election if viewed from a great distance - and with the majority of observers agreeing that there is virtually no chance of it being declared free or fair.

The country is being ruled by army generals and the police, claims South African opposition politician Patricia De Lille.

According to her, 'the election is hardly the problem'. 'It is the transition from one government to the next which poses the greatest challenge ... Mugabe will refuse to give up power,' she told a South African newspaper after returning from Zimbabwe.

The government-sanctioned violence against the opposition is threatening to spiral totally out of control, according to the US Ambassador James McGee.

He warned of a new exodus from state terror, hunger and despair.

So far, the MDC claims, 70 people have died. Witnesses testify to attacks in which people have had hands hacked off, been burnt, raped, and beaten.

Tsvangirai's election campaign has descended into farce as a result of the use of intimidation, terror and bans.

His party would be treated like an outlawed organization, and he himself like a criminal, the MDC leader has charged some days ago.

It seems unlikely that a victory arising from brutal intimidation and tricky manoevring by Mugabe, 86, who has ruled for almost 30 years, would have any chance of being recognized internationally.

Even the president of the powerful neighbouring state of South Africa and long-term Zimbabwe mediator, Thabo Mbeki, seems now to concede to that point.

Although at the beginning of May he declared in London in front of the world's press that the situation was 'controllable,' earlier this week he was attempting to negotiate a government of national unity with Mugabe and Tsvangirai according to media reports.

Agreement to form such a government would render the presidential run-off election superfluou. However, according to these reports Mugabe rejected the proposal outright.

On the contrary, he threatened 'war' if he was defeated and said that the MDC would never rule in his lifetime.

His wife Grace echoed these sentiments at the end of May.

'Even if people vote for the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai will never step foot inside State House,' she said.

The MDC won a majority in parliamentary elections on March 29, while Tsvangirai was accorded more votes in the simultaneous presidential election; he failed though to win more than 50 per cent which he needed to avoid fighting a run-off and to be declared outright winner.

But for the first time in 28 years, Mugabe's ZANU-PF party does not hold a parliamentary majority any more. The new parliament has not yet convened although the old one was dissolved before the March election.

According to McGee, the situation in Zimabwe is now one where a government, which claims to be represented by ministers, has not appointed a parliament.