Reports of the possible change in the electoral timetable came as opposition sources in the capital, Harare, warned that Mugabe was planning an ultra-populist re-election strategy in which all white farmers would be expelled from the land, mines seized and foreign-owned companies taken over and then he would proclaim himself president for life. Joseph Msika, 84, one of two vice-presidents of both the ruling party and the government made this position very clear last week when he said the practice of limiting presidents to a couple of terms in office is a luxury and Mugabe should continue to rule until he dies.
The election was originally expected to be held in March, but the country’s rapidly deteriorating economic situation has made Mugabe’s henchmen eager to get voting out of the way while they battle to realign the dismantled economic fundamentals.
Mugabe has openly shown contempt for the SADC brokered dialogue and has made no attempts to reciprocate the concessions made to his party by the opposition.
On the economic front, anger at the government’s isolationist policies is mounting over a disastrous price war blitz that has sparked shortages and sent prices soaring at an alarming rate, pushing basics out of the reach of many here.
Sources close to the MDC, the first party to have challenged Mugabe during 27 years of independence, said that the Zimbabwean leader appeared to be losing all sense of rationality. The Zanu (PF) party was splitting, they said, and even trusted elements of the secret police service, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), were threatening to defect to the opposition.
Officers within the CIO claimed to have received instructions to begin fomenting unrest throughout the country, orders which they considered untenable.
Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) youth thugs have recently concentrated their efforts on the Bindura area, a few miles southwest of Harare, once the country’s breadbasket, but now a wasteland of looted farms and unharvested fields.
Just last week, ruling party thugs loyal to Zanu (PF) candidate Elliot Manyika, who is also ruling party political commissar, burnt the house of MDC activist Elima Longwe to a cinder at House No. 23/42 in Chipadze Township in Bindura. In Mutoko on Saturday night, a brand new MDC truck was stoned by a rowdy Zanu (PF) mob and extensively damaged. The CIO has been told to spread the violence throughout the country, but senior officers have baulked at the prospect.
There are hopes within the ruling party that moderates and the more rational-minded leaders with business connections might realise the ultimate folly of Mugabe’s reckless gamble.
Splinter groups are said to be forming around Emmerson Mnangagwa, Rural Housing minister and also ruling party administration secretary; and also alongside Joice Mujuru, the vice president, who has already attracted Mugabe’s ire and been excluded from his inner circle.
Both could be trusted, said the MDC source. But whether they can really take on Mugabe, in this current madness of his, remains to be seen.
Despite growing criticism both at home and abroad, Mugabe is as unrepentant as ever and intends in two weeks time to take his anti-white crusade onto the international stage.
At the EU/Africa conference, which begins in the Portuguese city of Lisbon on December 8, Mugabe is expected to use the forum to launch a tirade against his sworn enemy Britain and America.
Post published in: News