Mandebvhu Talks “Zimbabwe”…

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is considering pulling out of the June 27 presidential run-off election, a spokesman for his Movement for Democratic Change said on Friday.

“There is a huge avalanche of calls and pressure from supporters across the country, especially in the rural areas, not to accept to be participants in this charade,” MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told Reuters.

Chamisa did not say when the MDC would decide on participating in the run-off between Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in the March 29 presidential election but failed to win an absolute majority, according to official results.

The opposition, human rights groups and Western nations accuse Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF of orchestrating a brutal campaign to intimidate the opposition and extend Mugabe’s 28-year rule in the country, its economy now in ruins.

At least 70 opposition activists have been killed by ZANU-PF militia and security forces and thousands of others have been beaten and harassed, the MDC says. Mugabe’s officials blame the opposition for the bloodshed.

Tsvangirai has been arrested five times in the past month and his lieutenant, Tendai Biti, is in police custody facing a treason charge that could carry a death sentence. A judge is due to decide on Friday whether to release Biti.

European Union leaders were set to issue a new threat of further sanctions on Zimbabwe on Friday over the election violence, a draft summit statement showed.

The EU text, obtained by Reuters before the final working session of the two-day summit, said a free and fair election was critical to the resolution of a political and economic crisis in the former British colony.

But it stopped short of backing U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s assertion on Thursday that actions by Mugabe’s government meant the run-off will not be free and fair.

EU leaders urged the Southern Africa Development Community and the African Union to deploy a significant number of election monitors and called for a swift and transparent vote count this time after lengthy delays in the first round.

“The European Council reiterates its readiness to take additional measures against those responsible for violence,” it said.

EU sanctions currently include an arms embargo, and visa bans and freezing of assets on more than a hundred officials including Mugabe.

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Zimbabwe’s public broadcaster ZBC has said it will no longer carry campaign adverts from the opposition party ahead of next week’s presidential election. The Movement for Democratic Change said it would appeal against the decision. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa defended the move saying international coverage favoured the MDC and never reported the ruling Zanu PF’s position. Earlier, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern over the political violence in Zimbabwe. Adding his voice to growing international concern, he said the violence in Zimbabwe could undermine the outcome of the 27 June run-off vote. “Violence, intimidation and the arrest of opposition leaders are not conducive to credible elections,” he told the UN General Assembly in New York. The MDC says 66 of its supporters have been killed and 25,000 forced to flee their homes in a state-sponsored campaign of violence.

Correspondents say the ban on adverts will not make a great deal of difference, as news bulletins at the state-run ZBC have always favoured Mr Mugabe, only mentioning the opposition in negative terms. There are no privately controlled radio or TV stations in Zimbabwe and only a few weekly newspapers, which most people cannot afford. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to chair an informal UN Security Council meeting on Zimbabwe later on Thursday, in an attempt to maintain international political pressure. On Wednesday, South African President Thabo Mbeki spent his 66th birthday continuing his efforts to mediate between President Robert Mugabe and the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. He held separate talks with both presidential candidates as pressure mounted on Mr Mugabe to curtail political violence ahead of the poll, but released no statement on the talks.

The MDC has criticised Mr Mbeki’s policy of “quiet diplomacy” for failing to hold Mr Mugabe to account. Official results show Mr Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), gained the most votes in the first round of the presidential election in March but did not pass the 50% threshold for outright victory. A senior UN official, Haile Menkerios, earlier met President Mugabe to discuss the political stand-off and what the UN says is the increased suffering of an already vulnerable population. The UN is prepared to pay to fund election monitors to oversee the run-off vote. South Africa is opposed to the Security Council having too much involvement, the BBC’s Laura Trevelyan reports from the UN. Pretoria argues that it is not for the council to resolve disputed elections.

Earlier, an African poll observer warned that he would not endorse the vote if current levels of violence continued. Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliamentary observers, told the BBC his team had received horrendous reports of attacks and that the political environment was not conducive to a free poll. But with the vote just days away, there is a growing sense of urgency with political violence beginning to spread from the countryside to the towns, says the BBC’s Peter Biles in Johannesburg. Mr Mugabe has been waging a fierce campaign to extend his 28-year rule since Mr Tsvangirai failed to win enough votes to score an outright victory in March’s disputed first round. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has called for an international peacekeeping force to be deployed in Zimbabwe to ensure a free and fair vote. “It is time for the leaders of Africa to say to President Mugabe that the people of Zimbabwe deserve a free and fair election,” he said.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has also criticised Mr Mugabe, asking why he bothers holding an election, if he says he will not respect the outcome, reports the Reuters news agency. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he has spoken to the leader of South Africa’s governing African National Congress, Jacob Zuma, about the possibility of deploying 1,000 election observers from the ANC. Western observers have been banned, as the government accuses them of being biased in favour of the opposition. The government has also said it wants to reduce the number of local election monitors, after 50,000 asked for accreditation.

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The dead body of the wife of MDC Councilor Emmanuel Chiroto, who was elected Harare Mayor on Sunday, is reported to have been found at a nearby farm on Tuesday. 27 year-old Abigail Chiroto had been abducted, along with her 4 year-old son, by a gang of armed ZANU PF thugs that came looking for her husband on Monday. Chiroto was not home so they petrol bombed his property before taking his family. The child was dumped at Marlborough police station later that day, and the husband is now in hiding.

Chiroto was the chief election agent for Trudy Stevenson, who was an MDC parliamentary candidate in 2005. Stevenson said the security guards at the house ran away when 2 twin cabs showed up without license plates. “This is the death squad, and they were armed,” she added. The outspoken MDC official said Chiroto’s wife was still blindfolded when her body was found. She had tried to grab her child and run but was too slow and got caught.

A report in The Telegraph newspaper on Tuesday quotes the Harare Mayor as saying: “I knew when I heard that a woman’s body had been found that it was her.”

Meanwhile, another murder was reported by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN). The group said they are outraged and saddened by the ‘brutal, calculated and cold blooded’ murder of Elliot Machipisa, a ZESN observer in Karuru, Hurungwe. Machipisa and his family were attacked in the morning on Tuesday. According to ZESN, the attack left his wife in critical condition and hospitalised at Karuru Clinic. There had been sustained threats of violence targeting all individuals living in the area who acted as observers for ZESN in the March 29th elections. A military style base was set up on the same day at Karuru Township and is being manned by ZANU PF militia, commanded by war veterans.

Despite the presence of observers and a United Nations envoy in Zimbabwe, the ruling party’s campaign of violence, abductions and intimidation has not ended. We are receiving reports from all around the country about ZANU PF youth militia who are abducting suspected MDC supporters and officials, and bringing them to designated bases where they are beaten severely before being released.

John Ngorima, a 74 year-old farm caretaker and manager in Chiredzi, was reportedly abducted on Tuesday afternoon by a group of about 9 people who drove away with him in a white Mitsubishi pickup. Witnesses alleged that the car was driven by Lieutenant Edson Ndhlovu. Ngorima was driven over 20 kilometres from his home and was severely beaten by the group, who accused him of voting for the MDC. But it turns out that Ngorima had been unable to vote on March 29 because his name had been removed from the voters’ role. He walked home in the dark with severe injuries. Police were informed but no arrests have been made.

We received a report from Bikita, East of Masvingo that on June 9th the youth militia attacked the councilor for ward 10, Wilson Mabhoko, and his legs and ears were cut off. Chiredzi farmer Gerry Whitehead said Mabhoko is being treated at Silveira Hospital. Once again, the police have done nothing about the incident.

Takalani Matibe, the MDC MP for Chegutu West, on Wednesday reported that dynamite was thrown into his house and he was threatened with death.

The strategy of abducting the relatives or close associates of intended targets is now being used by state agents in an attempt to forcibly obtain information about their whereabouts. The wives of at least 2 MDC MPs were burned to death in the last month and many family members have been abducted. More than 60 Zimbabweans have lost their lives in the post-election violence perpetrated by thugs under the direction of the Mugabe regime. It is believed that Mugabe wants to postpone the run-off poll against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, using the violence as the excuse.

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President Robert Mugabe’s onslaught against his opponents widened to include their families when the wife and child of the mayor of Harare were abducted. Armed men raided the house of Emmanuel Chiroto, a senior member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and recently elected mayor. They burned down the house with petrol bombs and kidnapped his wife, Abigail, 27, and their four-year-old son, Ashley. The boy was released a few hours later, but Mrs Chiroto is still missing. The incident bore all the hallmarks of a state-organised operation designed to break the MDC’s organisation by targeting its key figures. Five of the MDC’s local organisers have been murdered. But Mr Chiroto was not at home when the men arrived. The signs were that the operation was deliberately aimed at his family.

“They came in two un-marked pick-ups,” said Mr Chiroto, 43. “The maid escaped out the back and heard two bangs. I think it was petrol bombs. The house went up in flames and they took my wife and son. My wife was screaming.” Both Mrs Chiroto and Ashley had been staying away from the house, fearing that it would be attacked by Mr Mugabe’s ZANU PF party. They had returned to the home in the township of Hatcliffe shortly before the raid took place. “She had been at our house for an hour so they were watching it,” said Mr Chiroto. But kidnapping a child does not seem to have entered the gang’s plan. Ashley was dropped off by unknown people at a Harare police station a few hours later. Mr Chiroto said: “He told us ‘mummy was blindfolded and they took her to the bush, I don’t know whether she was alive or dead’.”

Harare is an MDC stronghold and the party won 45 of the 46 seats on the city council in the elections held in March. But Ignatius Chombo, the local government minister, refused to allow the councillors formally to take office. They are still banned from entering Harare’s city hall. Mr Chiroto was elected mayor of the city by his fellow MDC councillors during an informal meeting on Sunday. Many MDC officials have been abducted since early May. Most were later murdered. Many others are still unaccounted for. Mr Chiroto fears that his wife may have been killed. At least 60 political murders have been recorded since the presidential election’s first round in March. The wave of violence has driven about 50,000 people from their homes. Mr Mugabe faced rare criticism from a fellow African leader when Raila Odinga, the prime minister of Kenya, described Zimbabwe as “an eyesore on the African continent”. Mr Odinga also said that the presidential election run-off next week involving Mr Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangari, the MDC leader, had been “pre-rigged”.

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As in other places in Zimbabwe, the mood outside the AIDS hospice was swinging between anger, patience and dogged determination. It’s a cold Monday night and a dozen people wait quietly outside a small home in Belgravia, Harare. They have just been asked to leave; the doctors are not coming today and there will be no treatment or drugs this week. Perhaps not even next week. There are grumbles, but still the group waits. “The truth is we have had to stop until the elections. But who knows what will happen after the elections”, Conrad Makonese, who helps run the centre, told the Mail & Guardian. As President Robert Mugabe tightens the noose on the activities of his opponents, even sending field workers out to monitor people on anti-retroviral treatment would get Makonese jailed. A blanket ban on aid work has added to the despair caused by worsening pre-election violence and the sharpest ever price hikes.

The consequences of the ban are dire, says James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson in Zimbabwe: “UNICEF alone was reaching hundreds of thousands of children with health, nutrition and education - and they haven’t received any of that for the past four days and they won’t until the government reinstates all these NGOs.” Two weeks ahead of the polls, sentiment on the streets is a mix of dejection and determination. In the long bank queues tempers boil over easily and there is robust political debate, yet people wait patiently for hours, determined to withdraw salaries, which now come in hundreds of billions. The only clear signals are coming from ZANU PF; Mugabe’s party has made it plain it no longer feels it has anything to lose: “The comrades are at their most dangerous,” one ZANU PF official told the M&G.

The broad sentiment within ZANU PF is that its reputation has been soiled so badly in the months since the first round of the presidential election that it has no image left to defend. Reflecting this, the state-owned Herald daily published an opinion piece at the weekend urging an even tougher response to dissent, including from foreign diplomats, whatever the consequences. “We have hit the bottom, we should not fear to fall,” the article said, “what the heck.” ZANU PF is going for broke, shedding all its inhibitions and all the pretences to democracy it showed ahead of the March poll. Its most senior officials now go on television to openly declare war if Mugabe loses. “Voting for Tsvangirai is to vote for a return to war,” Hubert Nyanhongo, a deputy minister, told a rally in a Harare slum. “So to prevent a war that will kill you and me, let’s vote for President Mugabe.”

ZANU PF had hoped violence would numb the opposition. But although MDC leaders deny it publicly, opposition supporters are organising and retaliating. In Manicaland and Masvingo provinces, areas that once staunchly supported ZANU PF but which voted MDC in March, the opposition has been fighting back. While this has encouraged MDC supporters elsewhere, retaliatory attacks raise the spectre of a rapid escalation of violence. Few are safe. After diplomats from the United States and United Kingdom were involved in a high speed car chase and a tense standoff with police last week in Mashonaland Central, diplomats too have seen their immunity to the violence disappear. Mugabe has closed down all the space he had allowed the opposition in the run-up to the March elections. Police have banned MDC rallies, defying court orders declaring the bans illegal. “The run-up to March 29 had represented real progress. All of that has been more than reversed,” an African diplomat said.

In this campaign the MDC has been denied even a fraction of the airtime it had been allowed in the public media in the first campaign. The head of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), the public broadcaster, has been sacked and eight of his most senior journalists suspended. Their crime was to follow legal requirements - and SADC election guidelines - compelling public media to grant access to all parties. Regular programming on television has now been suspended, with the prime-time staple now a diet of lengthy talk-fests featuring pro-government commentators. But Morgan Tsvangirai still believes he can defeat Mugabe. “I’m encouraged by the people’s determination and their desire to ensure that we finish it, that we dismiss hunger, poverty, loss of dignity and suffering on June 27,” Tsvangirai said on Tuesday.

Observers, however, doubt Tsvangirai’s chances. Eldred Masunungure, a professor of politics at the University of Zimbabwe, said a free election is impossible. “The chances are very slim for an MDC victory.” And Simba Makoni, a former ZANU PF official who came third in the presidential election, said “in the current situation, there is no hope that a free and fair election can be undertaken”. He again urged talks between the two sides. But as tensions rise, calls for a negotiated settlement are being drowned out. Tsvangirai said he would not negotiate with Mugabe before the election, while ZANU PF insiders also say they would only negotiate “from a position of power” once they had ensured Mugabe’s re-election.

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Reuters news agency reports that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe threatened Monday to arrest Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader who faces Mugabe in a runoff election for president June 27. The news agency says Mugabe issued the threat at a campaign rally in Kadoma, south of the capital of Harare.

He said the authorities were warning Tsvangirai and others opposition leaders “that we will not hesitate to arrest them (for violence), and we will do that in broad daylight.” Official results of a disputed election March 29 showed Tsvangirai beat Mugabe, but not by enough votes to avoid a run-off.

The Associated Press, reporting on another Mugabe rally on Sunday, quotes him as saying: “We shed a lot of blood for this country. We are not going to give up our country for a mere X” on a ballot. How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun?” The AP said the quote appeared in The Herald, a government mouthpiece.

The Herald carries a story on the rally in its English online version, but paraphrases the key quote. The quote appears to run verbatim in the story, but is in the local Shona language in which it was delivered, the only word in English being “ballpoint.”

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ZNU 125 is released this morning. (Believe it or not, Odeo rejected the file as ‘invalid’ - go figure - and 4shared has just disappeared off the internet - so that leaves just Switchpod, which last week and the week before, gave me hell…)

One out of three is better than nothing, I s’pose…

In this show, I take a brief look at the email I received attacking my internet activities, the penchant of Mugabe’s to remove anything he can from the people - in this case, satellite dishes - whilst I also look at Mugabe’s threat to take his forces back to a war footing if he loses the election, in the light of another group of people stating that THEY will utilise whatever means it can to establish democracy.

I also look at the impounding of Tsvangirai’s buses and the arrest of MDC Secretary-General, Tendai Biti, for treason… And a look at the terror gripping the country at the hands of ZANU PF activists, and a brief look at the call to arms by Elliot Manyika - himself a ZANU PF MP, but the call is heeded by the militia - but not reacted to by the ZRP.

This episode can be listened to using the players in the right hand side bar of The Bearded Man blog.

Thanks for your continued support.

Take care.

‘debvhu

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Zimbabwe’s jinxed presidential run-off poll might be scrapped next week in favour of a five-year transitional government.

City Press understands that the move would see President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) working together for the first time, with Mugabe as president and Tsvangirai as executive prime minister.

But progress is being hampered by Mugabe and Tsvangirai jostling for the presidency and wanting to dictate terms related to the functioning of the government of national unity, sources claimed this week.

Zimbabwe abolished the position of prime minister in 1987 when Mugabe, then prime minister, took over as president from Reverend Canaan Banana, who had been ceremonial head of state since independence from Britain in 1980.

Officials in the MDC were tight-lipped on the exact details of the impending political settlement.

But Tsvangirai, who was represented by party secretary-general Tendai Biti at three meetings in Pretoria this week to broker the deal, denied plans to call off the elections.

“I am here campaigning and meeting our supporters in preparation for the election, which we will win despite these senseless arrests and acts of intimidation,” he said shortly before he was arrested yet again this week.

“Yes, we have met for talks, but that was not the direction of the negotiations.” He declined to provide details of the discussions.

Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi chaired the talks, in which Mugabe was represented by his justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, and his right-hand man, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

City Press also understands that Mbeki has been briefed by a team of retired generals he sent to Zimbabwe to assess the conditions ahead of the runoff.

“They told him it is impossible to have a free and fair run-off, that the violence has crippled any chance of a smooth election,” a top Zimbabwean politician said this week.

Mbeki has also briefed Zambian leader and SADC chairperson Levy Mwanawasa on the “worsening” conditions ahead of the polls, which have seen Tsvangirai arrested several times.

Biti, who flew back to Zimbabwe on Thursday after more than two months in exile in Johannesburg, was arrested and is being charged with treason.

Mbeki, mandated by the SADC to mediate in the Zimbabwe crisis, has been given the green light to get the two parties to form a transitional government.

Mwanawasa’s spokesperson, Mike Mulongoti, said he had “no information” on the talks. Mbeki’s spokesperson, Mukoni Ratshitanga, also refused to give details.

“I can neither confirm nor deny the talks. I can confirm the facilitator has had ongoing discussions with the Zimbabwean leadership, but as to what they discussed, I do not know,” he said.

But a reliable source said: “The deal is done and awaits Tsvangirai and Mugabe’s signatures. Both Mbeki and the SADC do not believe the conditions will produce a free and fair election.

“Mbeki has told ZANU PF and the MDC that the best way to solve the impasse is to work together. It is now up to Tsvangirai and Mugabe to put aside their egos and put the country first.”

Another source said: “The sticking point at this stage is that Tsvangirai wants to be the president and to have the powers to decide who in ZANU PF he should be working with. Mugabe, on the other hand, wants Tsvangirai to be prime minister and he wants to decide who in the MDC he should work with in the new government.”

The news of the impending Kenya-style political settlement comes barely 13 days before the June 27 polls and as Zimbabwe’s economy crashed to new lows, with funds sorely lacking to finance the run-off.

“There is not even a cent left in the kitty,” a senior Zimbabwean government official said on Friday. “There isn’t even money to print the ballot papers, let alone pay the polling agents.

“In that scenario, a negotiated political settlement makes sense and ZANU PF is not hostile to that idea. It’s a matter of time,” said the official. “I do not see us going ahead with an election.”

These sentiments were echoed by former Zimbabwean finance minister Simba Makoni in South Africa this week.

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International outrage over the crack-down in Zimbabwe grew yesterday as African leaders called for the release of a top opposition leader arrested on the capital charge of treason. The whereabouts of Tendai Biti, the deputy leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), remained unknown the day after police arrested and handcuffed him as he disembarked at Harare airport. The High Court ordered police to produce Mr Biti before the court this morning after the MDC filed a case on his behalf, saying it was deeply worried about his welfare. The party had earlier “dispatched a team of lawyers and human rights defenders to every possible police station in Harare in an effort to secure his whereabouts”, but they were unable to locate him.

In a rare reprimand, Botswana called in the Zimbabwean Ambassador to protest about Mr Biti’s arrest and the repeated detention of the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Forty of Africa’s most prominent figures, including the former leaders of Ghana, Nigeria and Mozambique, also signed an open letter calling for the violence to cease. Mr Biti’s arrest for treason represented a fresh escalation in the war being waged on the Opposition by President Mugabe, the security leadership of the Joint Operations Command (JOC) and the “war veteran” militias deputed to carry out the violence. Diplomats said that Mr Biti was travelling back from secret talks with ruling party officials in South Africa, ostensibly aimed at creating a government of national unity and ruling out the need for the presidential run-off vote scheduled for June 27.

Human rights groups and Western governments have insisted that no fair vote can be held in the current climate. One diplomat said that Mr Biti had left because he believed that “the talks were going nowhere”. His arrest, air-side, at Harare airport as foreign diplomats waited outside in the hope of preventing such an incident, confirmed fears that the talks were little more than a smokescreen to deflect attention from state-sponsored violence. Earlier yesterday Mr Mugabe raised the spectre of civil war, telling his supporters that his war veterans said: “If this country goes back into white hands… we will return to the bush to fight.” Militiamen travelling around the country are telling people to “vote for Mugabe or prepare for war”.

A senior Western diplomat said: “It makes one very dubious that there can be any meaningful negotiations on national unity. What sort of message is the JOC sending to people?” Police, meanwhile, impounded Mr Tsvangirai’s two campaign buses yesterday morning as he was released from a police cell where he had spent the night detained without charge. James McGee, the outspoken US Ambassador to Harare, said that the arrests and campaign of violence had “made a travesty of the upcoming run-off elections”. Observers from the South African Development Community have started to arrive in Zimbabwe for the polls. But there are serious doubts about whether the regional grouping is prepared to deliver an unprecedented negative verdict on the election.

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Zimbabwean police impounded two campaign buses used by Morgan Tsvangirai on Friday, his party said, in the latest action against the opposition leader in the run-up to a June 27 presidential election.

Tsvangirai, who has been detained four times in the past week and has had his own vehicle confiscated, would continue the campaign, Movement for Democratic Change spokesman George Sibotshiwe said.

“The police have impounded the two buses that we were using. They are saying the buses are not properly registered, but that is not true, just harassment,” he said.

“But (MDC) President Tsvangirai is continuing with his campaign here. We are using other cars that we had in our convoy.”

Tsvangirai, human rights groups and Western powers accuse President Robert Mugabe of unleashing a brutal campaign to win the run-off later this month after he lost the first round on March 29.

Tsvangirai says 66 of his followers have been murdered.

Mugabe, who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980, blames the MDC for the violence which has caused widespread international concern.

The third most senior MDC leader, Tendai Biti, was arrested on his return from abroad on Thursday and faces a treason charge which could carry the death sentence.

Earlier on Friday, a regional human rights group said Zimbabwean police had ordered domestic non-governmental aid groups to cease operations.

The South African Litigation Centre (SALC) said police had ordered several NGOs to close, including human rights groups and the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association.

The move followed a ban last week on international humanitarian groups working in Zimbabwe, which faces a chronic food and economic crisis.

US humanitarian affairs chief John Holmes said on Thursday the situation was deteriorating rapidly. He called it “very worrying and very serious… with up to four million people in need of humanitarian assistance.”

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