A woman whose hut had been burned down my militants linked to the ruling party recovered a pot and surveyed the damage in Centenary, Zimbabwe, on Friday. (Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)
JOHANNESBURG, April 12th. (NY Times) — A day before southern Africa’s leaders hold an emergency session on Zimbabwe's disputed election, the government of the beleaguered nation appeared to tighten its control on Friday, banning political rallies, continuing its crackdown on the opposition and arresting the lawyer of its chief rival, Morgan Tsvangirai. The Movement for Democratic Change, Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, said Friday that more than 1,000 of its supporters had been attacked or arrested since the voting took place on March 29, fueling a growing chorus of international criticism of President Robert Mugabe's handling of the elections. Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, called upon the Mugabe government “to cease using the tactics and violence and intimidation against those citizens who only want to peacefully exercise their political rights.” In an interview, Mr. Tsvangirai, who independent monitors say may have won an outright majority in the election, reiterated his party’s decision to boycott a runoff against Mr. Mugabe. But he left an opening, saying he would reconsider if African leaders guaranteed the fairness of the tally in the first round and the security of his supporters during a runoff. “There could be a runoff if it’s organized credibly,” he said.
But it is not clear he has a negotiating partner. Zimbabwe’s state-run newspaper, The Herald, said Friday that Mr. Mugabe would not attend Saturday’s emergency meeting of heads of state in Lusaka, Zambia. Instead, four officials in his government will go in his place, though his secretary for foreign affairs, Joey Bimha, told The Herald that the meeting was “unnecessary” because the election commission was still tabulating votes. It has been two weeks since Zimbabweans went to the polls, but election officials have yet to announce the outcome of the presidential race, in which Mr. Mugabe, in power for 28 years, is believed to have trailed by a substantial margin. The long delay, the ban on political rallies, the arrests of election officials on vote-tampering charges and the arrest of Mr. Tsvangirai’s lawyer have intensified the opposition’s assertion that neither the government nor the military has any intention of relinquishing power. Mr. Tsvangirai charged again on Friday that “a de facto coup” was unfolding. Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, said a campaign of intimidation “on a massive scale” was under way, particularly in areas where Mr. Mugabe did not do well in the elections. “They’re almost turning those into war zones,” he said
The scale of the attacks could not be independently verified, but Amnesty International reported Thursday that it had “information about widespread incidents of post-election violence, suggesting the existence of coordinated retribution against known and suspected opposition supporters.” The Zimbabwean police told The Herald that political rallies had been banned until the election results were released, because the country was in a “sensitive” period, and that only those trying to “ignite violence countrywide” would organize them. The police said they had banned an opposition rally in particular because the party’s members were “spoiling for a fight.” Beyond that, Mr. Tsvangirai’s lawyer, Innocent Chagonda, was held by the police on Friday after authorities seized a helicopter that was meant to ferry Mr. Tsvangirai around during the elections, said Nqobizitha Mlilo, another opposition spokesman. Mr. Tsvangirai has set off on a round of international diplomacy before Saturday’s gathering of heads of state and met Thursday with President Thabo Mbeki of Sth. Africa.
After maintaining that the world needed to wait patiently for Zimbabwe to learn the election’s outcome, officials in Mr. Mbeki’s government, often criticized for not pushing Mr. Mugabe hard enough to change his autocratic ways, said the results should be released quickly. But Mr. Tsvangirai said those results were now too tainted to be the basis for a runoff. “Last night, I put it to him that it was no longer a reasonable expectation because Mugabe had massaged the result,” he said. Mr. Tsvangirai’s party has said he won 50.3 percent of the vote, based on its tallies of results posted at some 9,000 polling stations. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a coalition of nonprofit groups, surveyed a sample of polling stations and said Mr. Tsvangirai had won between 47 and 51.8 percent of the vote.
Celia W. Dugger reported from Johannesburg
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