Resurgent Mugabe Looks to the Future

Robert Mugabe likes to win elections, but few imagined his appetite for victory would extend to Lupane, a constituency which has a special reason to loathe Zimbabwe's president.

It was here that he waged war against the Ndebele people two decades ago by exterminating entire villages, leaving the teak forests dotted with mass graves and making Mr Mugabe a folk monster for those who survived.

Yet it is here that the president turns today for an electoral endorsement when voters choose a new member of parliament.

No matter that the byelection was occasioned by an assault on David Mpala which is widely blamed for the opposition MP's death, or that Lupane's economy is in even worse shape than the rest of the country: Mr Mugabe expects to win.

"Party set to retain Lupane seat," ran the headline this week in the local paper, the Chronicle. Like all dailies it is pro-government, so it meant the ruling Zanu-PF party. It also meant regain, not retain, but that would be to quibble about a result apparently foretold.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) expects to be clobbered in what should be a stronghold. "We know from canvassing that the vast majority of Lupane still supports us but the rest of the country won't know that," said David Coltart, an MP for nearby Bulawayo.

For the president it is a remarkable turnaround. Twelve months ago his 23-year rule seemed to be coming to an end under the weight of a general strike, fissures within the ruling party and shortages of petrol and banknotes.

Today the opposition is on its knees, shortages have eased and the 80-year-old is orchestrating an exit strategy for eventual retirement on his own terms. His spokesmen say this is the reward for land reform popular with peasants and for standing up to bullying from the former colonial power, Britain, which is popular across Africa.

But Mr Mugabe is not taking his popularity for granted: this month the censorship board banned a play called Super Patriots and Morons, which took a satirical look at an anonymous African country struggling with fuel queues, food shortages and authoritarian rule.

The opposition says Mr Mugabe plans to overturn its large majority in Lupane by sticking to the formula of intimidation and rigging which delivered him the presidential election in 2002.

Victory this weekend would set up the ruling party to sweep next year's parliamentary elections, and meanwhile leave it just one seat shy of the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to unilaterally amend the constitution, smoothing Mr Mugabe's anointment of a successor.

"I am 100% sure that they will rig it and declare victory. They are absolutely evil, these people, they will do anything for power," said Pius Ncube, the Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo and a vocal critic of the government.

Youths from the militia known as the Green Bombers have set up camps in all 26 wards, according to the MDC candidate, Njabuliso Mguni. "They go out and terrorise the villages."

The well-dressed strangers in four-wheel drives are assumed to be agents from the Central Intelligence Organisation. At least 10 opposition polling agents have been arrested.

Intimidation is widespread. Staff at St Luke's missionary hospital visibly trembled when two pick-up trucks disgorged pro-Mugabe militants and Jabulani Sibanda, the leader of the war veterans, stormed into the reception to demand better medical treatment for his followers.

A group of village headmen with tales of harassment would be interviewed only off a dirt track in a moonlit forest, deeming any other time and place too perilous.

Kenneth Ndlovu, 52, said Zanu-PF members had visited each village and kraal head in the past three months and ordered them to supply voter lists, attend rallies and deliver support on polling day. Compliance earned a monthly salary of up to £140; refusal prompted a slew of threats. "They told me to leave my village. But I won't," said Mr Ndlovu, who lamented that many headmen had succumbed.

No one knows how many votes such traditional leaders will swing. In the absence of opinion polls and independent media the political preferences of some 45,000 voters scattered over a sprawling rural constituency may never be known.

Fourteen of the 60 polling stations are mobile and will be difficult to track, according to Reginald Matchada-Hove of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, an umbrella group of independent watchdogs. Some voters had been prevented from registering and opposition rallies had been disrupted, he added.

State broadcasters have trumpeted the ruling party's plan to revitalise Lupane with a new university and an "aggressive marketing strategy" designed to bring foreign investment to impoverished subsistence farmers.

A novelty of the campaign has been the low level of violence. No deaths have been reported and few injuries. The most serious clash left a Zanu-PF woman needing stitches after being axed in the buttocks by MDC supporters, according to hospital staff.

One theory to explain the relative peace is that Mr Mugabe, a Shona, does not want to animate memories of the military crackdown that killed thousands of minority Ndebele in the 1980s.

The other theory is that Zanu-PF is experimenting to see if it can triumph without bloodshed, thereby boosting the legitimacy Mr Mugabe is said to crave. "They have calculated they can lessen the violence and still win. I think they could be right," Mr Coltart said.

The party mustered 2,000 cheering supporters under a roasting sun in Lupane this week to greet their leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who made a rare foray from the capital, Harare. But the opposition is bankrupt and demoralised. Party workers are unpaid, leaders are entangled in court cases and there is no effective medium to counter government propaganda. State security infiltration sows paranoia.

Several white supporters said they were no longer willing to lend vehicles and donate fuel to a party they fear will lose half its 52 seats in general elections that could be brought forward to this year.

"Since Iraq the international community has forgotten us," shrugged one. For the time being, he said, the MDC's main task was simply to continue existing in a backwater despotism.