Mbeki Fails in Zimbabwe Crisis, Opposition Claims

JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 14th. (NY Times) — The leader of Zimbabwe's main opposition party said Wednesday that Sth. Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, had failed as a mediator in setting the groundwork for fair elections in Zimbabwe and urged him to show “a little courage” and stop his “quiet support for the dictatorship” of Robert Mugabe. The remarks by Morgan Tsvangirai, the longtime leader of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, were an unusual broadside. He is ordinarily deferential toward the regionally powerful Mr. Mbeki. But the March 29 elections are fast approaching, and Mr. Tsvangirai, like many civic and religious leaders in Zimbabwe, is fully expecting the vote to be rigged by Mr. Mugabe, the president, who has held power for nearly 30 years. Mr. Tsvangirai (pronounced CHANG-guh-rye), speaking at a news conference here, asked South Africa’s president to use his influence to demand an open campaign and an honest vote count. “President Mbeki,” he said, “if you won’t do it for us, if you won’t do it for Africa, do it for your own country. Do it for your legacy.”

This past year, Mr. Mbeki was designated by the Southern African Development Community, a regional bloc of nations, to mediate the political conflicts between the Movement for Democratic Change and the Mugabe government. Some agreements were reached concerning press freedoms and opposition political activity, and when negotiations hit a seeming impasse, Mr. Mbeki, who had previously left much of the mediating to aides, made a personal trip to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. But no further deals were made, and Mr. Mugabe, amid protests from his political rivals, set the elections for March 29. South Africa’s president seems to have concluded that his mediation was a great success. Last week, he told fellow leaders of the Southern African Development Community that the Zimbabwe dispute was mostly settled, trumpeting the “commendable achievements.” These claims defy reality, Mr. Tsvangirai insisted Wednesday, speaking in Johannesburg rather than Harare, where most press coverage remains banned. “Nothing has changed, he said. “Just this past weekend, an M.D.C. rally, legal in any democracy and now legal in Zimbabwe, was broken up by armed riot police in the town of Kadoma. Changes in the law, negotiated by President Mbeki, have not changed the behavior of the dictatorship.” After the press briefing, Mr. Tsvangirai said he hoped that Mr. Mbeki would ask other African leaders to send election monitors to Zimbabwe. “Unless he requests it, it won’t be done,” he said.

Mr. Mbeki is in the final year of his second term, and if a failed mediation in Zimbabwe besmirches his legacy, it will not be the only stain. In December, he lost control of his party, the African National Congress, to a bitter rival, Jacob Zuma. In January, the nation lapsed into an electricity crisis that saps the economy as well as outrages the citizenry, with the government admitting it failed to act in time to avoid the power failures. Two weeks ago, Jackie Selebi, the national police commissioner and one of Mr. Mbeki’s political allies, was placed on leave amid corruption charges growing out of links with a reputed mobster. Mr. Mbeki’s chief spokesman, Mukoni Ratshitanga, said he did not want to comment on Mr. Tsvangirai’s remarks without reading them in context. He did not reply further after being e-mailed the text. Zimbabwe is one of South Africa’s neighbors to the north. The country was once considered a prodigious regional breadbasket, but its economy has been in free fall since Mr. Mugabe began confiscating the land of white farmers in 2000, often doling it out to loyalists with limited experience in farming or interest in learning how it is done. Store shelves are denuded of basic foodstuffs. Inflation has officially catapulted above 26,000 percent. A single copy of the state-controlled newspaper costs 10 million Zimbabwean dollars.

Mr. Tsvangirai nearly outpolled Mr. Mugabe in the official results of the 2002 presidential contest. He says the election was stolen from him then, much the way as he expects it to be stolen six weeks from now. Last March, he was badly beaten by the police during an antigovernment protest; his bloodied face and cracked skull elevated his international profile. But Mr. Tsvangirai is not Mr. Mugabe’s only rival in the presidential race. Arthur Mutambara, a noted student leader in the 1980s, leads a breakaway faction of the Movement for Democratic Change. And, in an intriguing turn, Simba Makoni, a former finance minister and longtime stalwart in Mr. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, has turned against the president, who was his 83-year-old patron. Mr. Makoni said he represented many yet-to-be-named dissatisfied insiders. He has since been expelled from the party. Mr. Tsvangirai welcomed him to the rough-and-tumble of the nation’s elective politics. “Opposition leaders in Zimbabwe face arrest, beatings, tear gas, treason trials—and the shock of seeing their candidates and supporters murdered,” he said. “Mr. Makoni knows this. He has seen it from the safety of the ZANU Politburo. He may soon experience it firsthand.”
By Barry Bearak
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