THERE was what some people might call an amazing bounce in President Robert Mugabe's performance at the launch of his re-election campaign in Harare on Sunday. Before his delivery, there had been rather lacklustre performances by Didymus Mutasa, Elliot Manyika and Patrick Chinamasa. All three seemed acutely aware that the party would have an Everest to climb on 27 June, when Mugabe faces off with Morgan Tsvangirai in the run-off for the presidency.
Their lack of animation was anchored in the reality of what happened on 29 March and why it would be foolhardy for Zanu PF to believe that by the wave of some esoteric magic wand, they could transform Mugabe's rout into a victory on 27 June. They know that, even after the murders of a number of Tsvangirai's supporters since 29 March, the tide has turned, inexorably, against Zanu PF and Mugabe.
Tsvangirai returned on Saturday, reportedly at the insistence of his party,
not because the United States ambassador, James McGee had ordered him to, as Mugabe gloated, but because too many MDC supporters had been killed for the party leader to justify his continued absence from what some called the killing fields in Harare 42 at the last count. He visited supporters recovering in hospital and then attended the funeral of the latest victim, when he delivered a speech ringing with defiance. Moreover, most Zanu PF leaders, except Mugabe, now know that Tsvangirai is in this struggle for the long haul. He has been battered, bruised and brutalised to within an inch of his life since 1998, yet has not wavered.
The 11 March battering last year was particularly brutal. It demonstrated,
once again, that his enemies would not hesitate to kill him, if they believed they could get away with it, as they did with the attempt on Patrick Kombayi's life in 1990.
Mugabe may view this tenacity as being rooted in Tsvangirai's confidence in
the capacity of the United Kingdom and the United States to protect him
against Mugabe's excesses. But it is time Mugabe opened his eyes to the naked truth: Morgan can beat him hands down in a straightforward free and fair election. Most of this has absolutely nothing to do with the UK or the US: it has a lot to do with how Mugabe's performance as president has shredded to smithereens his image as the people's choice, which he may have been before 2000.
In sticking to a tired, boring and unconvincing formula to explain the country's descent into economic perdition Western sanctions and nothing
else he has convinced most Zimbabweans that he has a very low opinion of their intelligence. At the launch in Harare on Sunday, it was almost bizarre to listen to him harp endlessly on why the election was about defeating the West. Watching some of the reaction of the audience quite often stony, fidgety silence you had the distinct impression most of them were unmoved by his rhetoric. Some neutral observers calculated that Mugabe's refusal to acknowledge that his defeat on 29 March was no fluke was a dangerous state of mind to be in for a man leading a country in such dire economic straits as the world's highest rate of inflation.
What it suggests is that to Mugabe the people who voted against him were
preached to by the West and swallowed their propaganda whole. He, it would seem, does not believe the voters took the state of the economy into account, or the violence his party routinely unleashes against them during an election campaign, or the staggering corruption in his government. It would seem, then, that he is convinced his performance has earned him the right to be re-elected without any fuss. This suggests, to many political observers that Mugabe has, spiritually, at least, departed the real world of Zimbabwean politics.
He is living in another dimension, a dimension in which he is still the freedom fighter, his mortal enemies still the imperialists and their running dogs. Perhaps that is why some in the audience at the launch seemed a little put off by his lengthy, boring litany of accusations against the West. When he ended his speech with the most boring epitaph of all - Zimbabwe shall never be a colony again - you could almost hear the yawns among some members of the audience. The question now then, is: why would the people who rejected Mugabe on 29 March suddenly rally behind him on 27 June? Is Mugabe placing all his eggs in the murder basket?
In other words, is he satisfied that the number of MDC supporters killed by
people generally believed to be sympathetic to his dubious cause will
convince others in the opposition to either stay away from the polls or vote
for him instead? Such a state of mind would be in conformity with his deep contempt for the voters' intelligence: bash them a little and they will vote for you, never that you have virtually no political platform with which to woo them. Most of what will happen on 27 June must depend on how much hard work the MDC is prepared to go out into the campaign. The murders will have
frightened many. On the other hand, it might have emboldened others.
If Zanu PF is prepared to shed so much opposition blood, then it stands to
reason that they are scared stiff of a thorough walloping. What might spur the opposition voters to the polls must be the outcome of the 29 March election. In spite of the playing field not being as level as they had hoped it would be and in spite of the absence of a level media playing field, the
opposition still managed to shock Mugabe and Zanu PF. The campaign could turn even more violent as we draw nearer the date of the poll. By killing so many opposition supporters in so-called retribution campaigns, Zanu PF must hope it has planted the seeds of fear in the hearts of the opposition voters: vote for the MDC again and you will be next to go six feet under.
The killings so far have not been as widely condemned by the new peaceniks in the Zanu PF hierarchy as they ought to have been. Not incredibly, there are leaders in the party who believe deeply that its reputation for what most see as gratuitous violence has lost the party so much support even as an opposition it might find itself in difficulties attracting new supporters. The prospect of being in opposition is no longer as outlandish as it might have seemed a few months ago. After the 29 March roasting, the reality is now confronting even the most self-confident of the leaders: they will go the way of UNIP and the Malawi Congress Party in Zambia and Malawi, respectively.
Those parties lost power because, like Zanu PF, they decided to sit on their
laurels as the vehicle through which independence was achieved. Once the
economies in both countries began to deteriorate, largely through corruption and monumental misadministration, the voters decided, quite simply, that they could no longer eat tales of the struggle in place of food. Mugabe, in particular, has convinced many voters that he is happiest regaling them with the tales of heroism in the struggle for independence. His enthusiasm for bringing the fruits of independence to the tables of the voters seems to be half-hearted, as if it was only an incidental detail not to be dwealt on at length.
Tsvangirai, the former trade unionist, knows how bread and butter issues can turn the tide of an election. For him, the preoccupation with colonialism, imperialism and the fascination with the cold war which obsesses Mugabe are worth only idle chatter.
This is another reason why Mugabe ought to be very afraid of Tsvangirai: his
political platform is anchored on the desire for full stomachs all around.
