Tensions mount as Zimbabwe election looms
President Robert Mugabe’s branding of opposition supporters as traitors rang out repeatedly on state radio, raising fears of new political violence as his party and its main rival held rallies two days before parliamentary elections.
Voters will tomorrow choose 120 members of Zimbabwe’s 150-seat parliament. The president appoints the remaining 30 seats, so the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change would need to win 76 seats for a majority.
Yesterday, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai focused on the economy, as has been his party’s strategy throughout the campaign. Arguments that Mugabe’s policies have driven Zimbabwe’s once thriving economy into the ground were likely to resonate with voters in this impoverished country.
“Zimbabwe has been destroyed, farms have been destroyed, industry has been destroyed and education has been destroyed. Even relations with other countries have been destroyed,” Tsvangirai said in his home region of Buhera, 120 miles south of Harare. “How are we going to rebuild Zimbabwe? You and me have to work together.”
Zimbabwe was plunged into political and economic chaos when the government began seizing white-owned farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans in 2000 in an often violent campaign to redress colonial-era imbalances.
At his rally yesterday in Bindura, 50 miles north of Harare, Mugabe told 15,000 ruling party supporters that an MDC win would “not be tolerated”.
A day earlier at a rally in Mutoko, 90 miles northeast of Harare, Mugabe said: “All those who will vote for the MDC are traitors.” State radio broadcast the comments throughout the day yesterday.
Similar comments by the president in the past have encouraged the ruling party and its youth militia to take violent action against opposition supporters and candidates.
Reginald Matshaba-Hove, director of Zimbabwe’s independent Electoral Support Network, said he was concerned about the remarks and had asked foreign observers to stay in the country for at least a week after the polls because of fears of renewed violence.
Mugabe’s comments came in the wake of a call by Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo on Sunday for a ”nonviolent mass popular uprising” if the ruling party wins tomorrow’s election by fraud.
In 1985, tens of thousands of black families were evicted from their homes into midwinter cold until they could produce ruling party cards. That year, Mugabe told victorious supporters: “Now take your sticks and beat out the snakes among you.”
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