“Come June 27, my prediction is that Mugabe is going to lose,” said Tekere. “He will be lucky to get 10% of the vote.”
Political analysts say Mugabe’s reign of terror since March 29 had destroyed any chance of him winning a popular vote every again. Tekere agreed that the violence had made victory unachievable for Mugabe.
Sensing his imminent defeat, Mugabe is now threatening to arrest the entire leadership of the MDC, blaming the escalating violence on them, despite the fact that more than 70 MDC members have been killed and thousands of others beaten, maimed and burned during the reign of terror.
“He has messed himself up so much through violence. There is no way a battered old woman can tell her grandchildren to go and vote for Mugabe
because she has been punished for voting for the opposition. Mugabe should be intelligent enough to realise that people do not behave like that,” said Tekere, who urged Tsvangirai to campaign “vigorously to dethrone Mugabe” on June 27.
“My message to him is ‘Please Morgan Tsvangirai, go on very diligently and courageously with the campaign. You have to soldier on. If Mugabe wants to decimate us, so be it.
“Ko kusiri kufa ndekupiko, nhai Morgan,” Tekere pleaded with Tsvangirai in the vernacular Shona language “Either way people will die.”
Tekere told reporters he had forewarned Tsvangirai that Mugabe was “a dishonest man”. He said Mugabe’s electoral history had shown he detested any
contest for his position.
Meanwhile, Tekere’s fellow members of Simba Makoni’s Mavambo/Kusile Project in Matebeleland, have backed Dumiso Dabengwa’s call to throw their weight behind Tsvangirai. Most of the votes for Tsvangirai on March 29 came from the three Matebeleland provinces. Makoni has hitherto been unwilling to announce his backing for Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
Mugabe has so far maintained his grip on the armed forces with the support of the military junta. But Tekere warned that the forces were unpredictable.
Tekere warned Mugabe against placing too much faith in the perceived support of the army.
“Mugabe is forgetting that we are living in a global village of armies. It is not only the Mugabe army that is in existence. He should remember that he
has sent his own army to other countries to fight delinquent armies,” said Tekere.
He accused Mugabe of treason, saying that a head of state could not call for an election and then declare that he would wage war if his preferred candidate did not win that election.
“Let us not be hypocrites by suggesting that we want democracy while at the same time trying to deny Tsvangirai his well deserved victory. If ever a government of national unity has to be established, the central figure has to be Tsvangirai,” said Tekere. “We will all have to dance around him.”
He urged the media to keep a public record of the recent violence for posterity.
“I plead with you – we want to see the pictures of the wounded and those with broken bones recorded. Let our children read about a history of the Mugabe era which will be full of people crippled through violence.”
The past 16 issues of The Zimbabwean and its Sunday edition have ensured that such a record has been made.
Post published in: News