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04-06-2008, 12:22 PM
|  | Occam's chainsaw | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: goin down in a blaze of glory
Posts: 7,072
| | | The situation in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe opposition offices ransacked - Yahoo! News Quote:
By ANGUS SHAW, Associated Press Writer Thu Apr 3, 7:22 PM ET
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Intruders ransacked offices of the main opposition party and police detained foreign journalists Thursday in an ominous sign that President Robert Mugabe might turn to intimidation and violence in trying to stave off an electoral threat to his 28-year rule.
Earlier, Mugabe apparently launched his campaign for an expected run-off presidential ballot even before the official results of Saturday's election were announced, with state media portraying the opposition as divided and controlled by former colonial ruler Britain.
Five days after the vote, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission still had not released results on the presidential election despite increasing international pressure, including from former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, who recently mediated an end to Kenya's postelection violence.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change already asserted its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the presidency outright, but said it was prepared to compete in any run-off.
The police raids came a day after official results showed Mugabe's party had lost control of parliament's 210-member lower house. The election commission was slow on the 60 elected seats in the Senate, releasing the first returns late Thursday that gave five seats each to the opposition and ruling party.
Tsvangirai tried on Thursday to reassure security chiefs who vowed a week ago not to serve anyone but Mugabe, according to a source close to the opposition leader. But an agreed meeting with seven generals was canceled when the officers said that they had been ordered not to attend and that they would be under surveillance, the source said.
The man, who requested anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, gave The Associated Press a copy of a letter signed by Tsvangirai outlining "MDC guarantees to the uniformed forces of Zimbabwe." It was given to the generals earlier in the day, he said.
The letter promises generous retirement packages for those unwilling to serve an MDC government. It also promises not to take back farms given to officers under Mugabe's land reform program, except in cases in which an officer got several farms or if land was being neglected.
It was not clear who ordered the generals not to attend the meeting, but the fact that some senior officers apparently were willing to meet with Tsvangirai underlined reports of rifts within the highly politicized upper echelons of Zimbabwe's security forces.
Diplomats in Harare and at the United Nations said Mugabe was planning to declare a 90-day delay to a presidential run-off to give security forces time to clamp down. The law requires a run-off be held within 21 days of an election, but Mugabe could change that with a presidential decree, a Western diplomat in Harare said.
A diplomat at the U.N. Security Council, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said if the run-off was put off the council might have to take up the issue.
MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti said hotel rooms used as offices by the opposition at a Harare hotel were ransacked by intruders he believed were either police or agents of the feared Central Intelligence Organization.
"Mugabe has started a crackdown," Biti told The Associated Press. "It is quite clear he has unleashed a war."
Biti said the raid at the Meikles Hotel targeted "certain people ... including myself." He said Tsvangirai was "safe" but had canceled plans for a news conference. Tsvangirai was arrested and severely beaten by police a year ago after a banned opposition rally.
In a further signal of the government's hardening mood, heavily armed riot police surrounded and entered a Harare hotel housing foreign correspondents and took five away, lawyers said.
Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said Times correspondent Barry Bearak, a winner of a 2002 Pulitzer Prize, was among them. The identities of the other reporters hadn't been determined.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists expressed alarm and called for the reporters' immediate release.
Zimbabwe lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said two of the journalists were jailed and told they would be charged Friday with practicing journalism without licenses. She said the other three were released.
Mugabe has ruled since his guerrilla army helped force an end to white minority rule and bring about an independent Zimbabwe in 1980, but his popularity has been battered by an economic freefall that followed the often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms in 2000.
Seemingly laying the groundwork for a Mugabe run-off campaign, the state-run Herald newspaper said the ruling ZANU-PF party was running neck and neck with the opposition in the vote count, and it highlighted divisions among Mugabe's foes.
The Herald also charged that Tsvangirai would give farmland back to whites.
The opposition leader has not said that, but has promised to make an equitable distribution of land to people who know how to farm. Mugabe claimed his land reform was to benefit poor blacks, but gave most seized farms to relatives, friends and cronies, and agricultural production has plunged.
Mugabe has sought to deflect criticism over widespread shortages of food, fuel and other goods by blaming former colonizer Britain and other Western nations. But Western sanctions involve only visa bans and frozen bank accounts for Mugabe and about 100 of his allies.
Independent election observers say their projections based on election results posted at a representative sample of local polling stations indicate Tsvangirai won the most votes in the presidential contest, but not enough to avoid a run-off.
Mugabe, who appeared on state television Thursday for the first time since the elections, was said to be pondering conflicting advice from his advisers on whether to quietly cede power or face a run-off, both humiliating prospects for the 84-year-old president.
Diplomats said Thursday's events indicated he might be considering of a third option: declaring a state of emergency and suppressing the opposition.
Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga said Mugabe was ready for a run-off.
"President Mugabe is going to fight. He is not going anywhere. He has not lost," Matonga said on British Broadcasting Corp. "We are going to go hard and fight and get the majority required."
Reports said leaders of the ruling party scheduled a meeting Friday to discuss the run-off. Nathan Shamuyarira, the party's secretary for information and publicity, said "we have many meetings tomorrow," but declined details.
International concern mounted about the continuing delays in releasing official election results.
"We need to see an official tally, see it soon and have assurances made that this is actually a correct counting of the votes," U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.
Annan, the former U.N. secretary-general, said the delay was dangerous and urged officials "to declare the election results faithfully and accurately."
"We live in an open world today and indeed the eyes of the world are on Zimbabwe, on its electoral commission, on its president," Annan said. "I urge them to do the right thing ... The election results should be released now."
The election commission said it was still receiving ballot boxes from the provinces, raising questions about where the votes had been. The opposition has charged Mugabe planned to rig the results, and Western election observers have accused him of stealing previous elections.
According to official results, a total of 2,405,147 valid votes were cast in Saturday's parliamentary contests, supporting opposition charges that the voter roll of 5.9 million names had been hugely inflated with dead and fictitious people.
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04-06-2008, 01:18 PM
|  | Part-time narcoleptic | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Oxford and London, of the cold old UK
Posts: 2,641
| | | Zimbabwe has be turned into one of Africa's worst disasters whilst its neighbours have stayed largely silent. I can't believe Mbeki has stood by him for so long. Yet another reason to dislike the man. I can't beieve anyone ever thought this election would be fair anyway... |
04-06-2008, 01:45 PM
|  | seb coe must die | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: the business end
Posts: 2,638
| | | thank you for posting this. i have been thinking about this a lot but didn't want to start a thread in here.
it's dreadful and it's obvious that the results are going to get fiddled. I notice the MDC as asked for international help but that would totally discredit the power change. then again, don't do it and you could be left with and illegal government and a worse situation.
__________________
If you ever feel useless and depressed, remember: one day you were the fastest spermatozoon of all. |
04-07-2008, 12:31 AM
|  | afflicted | | Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: chicago
Posts: 306
| | Quote:
Originally Posted by RomanNoseJob 
it's dreadful and it's obvious that the results are going to get fiddled. I notice the MDC as asked for international help but that would totally discredit the power change. then again, don't do it and you could be left with and illegal government and a worse situation.
| no joke. talk about fucking power hungry. mugabi is totally crazy, and he's so fucking old. how much more damage does he want to do to these people?? |
04-07-2008, 03:15 AM
|  | Phil Goff | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Westport, New Zealand
Posts: 18,672
| | Quote:
Originally Posted by Insomnia Zimbabwe has be turned into one of Africa's worst disasters whilst its neighbours have stayed largely silent. I can't believe Mbeki has stood by him for so long. Yet another reason to dislike the man. I can't beieve anyone ever thought this election would be fair anyway... | I don't see why Mbeki just sits around. I mean it can't benefit him or his country in any way to have such a basketcase of a country, and leader, just to the north.
I think it's a fairly damning indictment of what Mugabe has "achieved" that the majority of Zimbabweans were happier, better off financially, and lived longer under the old racist white regime. And they could feed themselves too. I have a Zimbabwean expat in one of my classes, and I think he's quite happy about the change. He thinks I work him too hard, so I hate to think what's happened to the education system over there...
__________________
Time is the distance that you can't return by miles.
I escaped somehow. Let's go
actualy [sic] I have quite a blessed life if I'm honest. I have many people to love, hate few and have few money problem's [sic].... What more does a person need? Oh yeah and I have some kind of humbleness unlike you of course ^_^ ~ CarefulCarpenter |
04-07-2008, 02:06 PM
|  | Inventor of the Rapedar | | Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: nTown, UK
Posts: 5,108
| | | The thing is, a lot of people do like Mugabe. It sounds condescending, but people do still see him as a hero, managing to completely blinker themselves to how much damage he's done to the country because of what he represents. That's the shit thing - he probably should've lost the election, but probably not by as much as we want to think.
I won't pretend I get this though. I know a lot of people in this country don't seem to get how economics relates to their day-to-day lives, but you'd hope that most people would get that 100,000+% inflation is really not a good thing. |
04-07-2008, 02:18 PM
|  | for beauty douglas | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: i am the cheese
Posts: 9,901
| | | i like how he keeps blaming britain for everything. the 80% unemployment in zimbabwe, for instance, is a direct result of the british cabinet being full of battymen
__________________
she's a haunted house and her windows are broken |
04-07-2008, 02:19 PM
| | Inventor of the Rapedar | | Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: nTown, UK
Posts: 5,108
| | Quote:
Originally Posted by kesh i like how he keeps blaming britain for everything. the 80% unemployment in zimbabwe, for instance, is a direct result of the british cabinet being full of battymen | Well isn't it? |
04-07-2008, 02:27 PM
| | for beauty douglas | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: i am the cheese
Posts: 9,901
| | | britain was pushing for black majority rule in the 1960s when the white minority there declared independence from britain.
britain led the sanctions against the white minority rule
britain took over again in 1979 and immediately oversaw the free elections that led to the beginning of mugabe's rule.
what more could britain have done to help the guy into power?
__________________
she's a haunted house and her windows are broken |
04-07-2008, 02:44 PM
| | Inventor of the Rapedar | | Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: nTown, UK
Posts: 5,108
| | Quote:
Originally Posted by kesh britain was pushing for black majority rule in the 1960s when the white minority there declared independence from britain.
britain led the sanctions against the white minority rule
britain took over again in 1979 and immediately oversaw the free elections that led to the beginning of mugabe's rule.
what more could britain have done to help the guy into power? | Cut back on the sodomy? |
04-07-2008, 02:47 PM
| | Part-time narcoleptic | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Oxford and London, of the cold old UK
Posts: 2,641
| | Quote:
Originally Posted by Ophiel The thing is, a lot of people do like Mugabe. It sounds condescending, but people do still see him as a hero, managing to completely blinker themselves to how much damage he's done to the country because of what he represents. That's the shit thing - he probably should've lost the election, but probably not by as much as we want to think. | I think a lot of people *did* like him because in the areas that were heavily Zanu-PF/ Mugabe's homeland, he managed to protect them from the worst of the economic fall-out. So things were going fine under him. But the country has been going SO up shit creek in the last 5-10 years that even those areas are suffering now and no one really supports him.
As for Mbeki, you would have thought the approximately 4 million Zimbabwean illegal immigrants in South Africa would have annoyed him sufficient to do something about it... |
04-07-2008, 02:48 PM
| | for beauty douglas | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: i am the cheese
Posts: 9,901
| | Quote:
Originally Posted by Ophiel Cut back on the sodomy? | that's it isn't it. they don't like it that they had help from a bunch of puffs, and have to get all hostile to prove a point
__________________
she's a haunted house and her windows are broken |
04-13-2008, 01:23 PM
| | Occam's chainsaw | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: goin down in a blaze of glory
Posts: 7,072
| | Zimbabwe opposition says no to runoff - Yahoo! News
sorry I don't have anything to add right now. I'm still thinking about all of this. Quote:
By ANGUS SHAW, Associated Press Writer Thu Apr 10, 1:40 PM ET
HARARE, Zimbabwe - The opposition party said Thursday it will not participate in a presidential runoff, while spokesmen for President Robert Mugabe and his chief rival said both will attend an emergency summit of southern African leaders this weekend.
The Movement for Democratic Change says its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the March 29 vote outright, and has accused Mugabe of delaying the results to give ruling party militants time to intimidate voters and ensure he wins a second round.
On Thursday, the opposition leadership met and resolved not to participate in any runoff presidential vote.
"We won the presidential election hands down, without the need for a runoff," MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti told reporters at a news conference in neighboring South Africa. Party leaders had previously said they would not accept a second round, but the party had not taken a formal stance.
Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga told CNN he believed opposition politicians would be "cowards" if they did not contest a runoff.
"They should come, they should face the music," he said.
Twelve days after the vote, the results from the presidential race have not been released. The High Court will decide Monday whether to grant an opposition request for release of the election results.
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has called an emergency summit of the Southern African Development Community for Saturday to discuss the crisis.
"Such meetings are usually very healthy so heads of state can brief each other, not only us in Zimbabwe," Zimbabwean Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu told The Associated Press.
But he insisted the meeting wasn't necessary. "There is no crisis in Zimbabwe that warrants a special meeting on Zimbabwe," he said.
Mwanawasa originally planned to send a delegation of former heads of state to Zimbabwe but decided to hold an urgent summit instead, Zambian state radio reported.
Matonga confirmed that Mugabe would attend. "If there is a SADC meeting of heads of state, then obviously he will attend," he told the AP.
Tsvangirai also will attend the summit, MDC spokesman Nqobizitha Mlilo said, calling him a "head of state." Biti said the party would press SADC to urge Mugabe to step down.
Tsvangirai, who was traveling throughout the region to ask Mugabe's peers to push him to end the standoff, was headed Thursday to South Africa to meet with President Thabo Mbeki, Mlilo said.
"If Mr. Tsvangirai is in town and before the president leaves for the next meeting and his program allows it, it is important to hear what Mr. Tsvangirai has to say," said Aziz Pahad, South Africa's deputy foreign affairs minister.
African leaders previously deferred to Mbeki and his strategy of "quiet diplomacy" on dealing with Zimbabwe. Mwanawasa has stood out as the only southern African leader to publicly criticize Mugabe's policies, last year likening the country's economy to "a sinking Titanic."
Mugabe has virtually conceded he did not win the election and appears to be campaigning for a runoff by intimidating his foes and fanning racial tensions.
Desmond Mufunde, a newly elected MDC councilman from the rural Gweru district, said soldiers attacked some people in his district last weekend.
Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers' Union accused ruling party supporters of forcing dozens of white farmers off their land and ransacking their homes. Farmers warned that continued chaos could endanger the wheat crop, vital to a nation that has grown deeply dependent on food aid during the worsening economic crisis.
Meanwhile, a trial continued for an American, New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak, and a Briton accused of allegedly reporting on the election without proper accreditation. The two were released on bail Monday but their passports are being held and they have not been allowed to leave the country.
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04-14-2008, 01:33 AM
| | Phil Goff | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Westport, New Zealand
Posts: 18,672
| | Quote:
Originally Posted by Insomnia I think a lot of people *did* like him because in the areas that were heavily Zanu-PF/ Mugabe's homeland, he managed to protect them from the worst of the economic fall-out. So things were going fine under him. But the country has been going SO up shit creek in the last 5-10 years that even those areas are suffering now and no one really supports him. | Definitely. He needs to threaten people's food supplies to keep their support now, because threatening their jobs will do no good anymore...
I was reasonably fond of Mugabe until about the mid-90s, when I went a bit sour on him... now I really am appalled at what he has become. And yet, not entirely surprised...
At least their cricket team still kind of works, because Mugabe cares.
__________________
Time is the distance that you can't return by miles.
I escaped somehow. Let's go
actualy [sic] I have quite a blessed life if I'm honest. I have many people to love, hate few and have few money problem's [sic].... What more does a person need? Oh yeah and I have some kind of humbleness unlike you of course ^_^ ~ CarefulCarpenter |
04-14-2008, 07:34 PM
| | afflicted | | Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: chicago
Posts: 306
| | | But Mugabe didn't attend that summit thing, did he? I thought I heard the other day that it was decided he couldn't make it. He must have been busy countin those votes. Them's sure a lot of ballots! |
04-14-2008, 10:22 PM
| | Occam's chainsaw | | Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: goin down in a blaze of glory
Posts: 7,072
| | Quote:
Originally Posted by sick of you But Mugabe didn't attend that summit thing, did he? I thought I heard the other day that it was decided he couldn't make it. He must have been busy countin those votes. Them's sure a lot of ballots! | ha, yes, I'm sure that's what was keeping him. no, he didn't go.
the latest: Mugabe deploys troops as Zimbabwe general strike looms - Yahoo! News Quote:
by Godfrey Marawanyika 2 hours, 21 minutes ago
HARARE (AFP) - President Robert Mugabe's security forces fanned out across Zimbabwe Monday on the eve of a general strike called by the opposition after a judge threw out its bid to force the election results.
Morgan Tsvangirai's opposition urged Zimbabweans to show their disgust at the continuing hold-up by launching a general strike from Tuesday until the results of the March 29 presidential poll are released.
Police accused Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of trying to cause mayhem and issued a statement threatening that "those who breach the peace will be dealt with severely and firmly."
"The call by the MDC Tsvangirai faction is aimed at disturbing peace and will be resisted firmly by the law enforcement agents whose responsibility is to maintain law and order in any part of the country," it said.
National police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said officers and soldiers were being deployed throughout the country and a diplomatic source told AFP the military was already camped out on the main arteries into the capital Harare.
In a further sign of mounting unrest, the opposition claimed that one of its election agents had been stabbed to death by Mugabe supporters over the weekend in what it claimed was the first politically motivated killing since the polls.
Police confirmed the agent, Tapiwa Mubwanda, had been killed but said the motive had yet to be established.
The trading of vote-rigging allegations and malpractice was also heating up as the MDC launched an electoral court bid claiming violence and intimidation in 60 constituencies won by the ZANU-PF in the 210-seat parliament.
The court bid came after the MDC lost a high court battle to force the electoral commission to declare the poll result, which Justice Tendai Uchena dismissed with costs, ruling the commission was acting within the provisions of the law.
The party is separately challenging the commission's decision to recount 23 constituencies which could overthrow the opposition's newly won parliamentary majority.
The loss of the court battle came as a double blow to the opposition after a summit of southern African leaders in Zambia at the weekend merely called for the results to be announced "expeditiously".
Amid all the legal wrangling the opposition has called for the public to make a stand against the delay by staging a mass stay-in until the results are released.
"What we want is for ZEC (electoral commission) to announce the results. We hope every Zimbabwean takes it upon themselves to speak out and be heard. Voting alone was not enough. We want our results, the time has come," the party's vice president Thokhozani Khupe told reporters.
Flyers handed out since the MDC first threatened Friday to stage the general strike have called on everyone from bus drivers to street vendors to join in.
But the impact of any general strike is likely to be muted as unemployment is already running at more than 80 percent.
Previous stay-aways called by the opposition and its allies in the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions have flopped with few of the people still in work wanting to risk a day's pay.
However the opposition is aware that Mugabe still exerts an iron grip over the security forces and is wary of sending its supporters to the streets to protest the current impasse. Police have banned all political rallies.
In March last year Tsvangirai himself sustained serious head injuries, as the government cracked down on opposition attempts to stage an anti-government rally.
At Saturday's emergency summit in Lusaka, regional leaders discussed the post-election impasse long into the night, but they stopped short of criticising the Zimbabwean government or Mugabe.
Regional leaders have been chided for their traditional reluctance to speak out against 84-year-old Mugabe, seen by many as an elder statesman who still deserves respect for his role in winning Zimbabwe's independence.
Some three million Zimbabweans have fled to neighbouring countries in the wake of the | | |
