14 May 2006
Book Review: Zimbabwe's problems captured in miniature
House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe by Christina Lamb (HarperPress)
There was something almost British about the way Nigel Hough's tobacco and ostrich farm was seized. First, he was handed a typed letter stating that the property was no longer his. And then, after the crowd had dutifully denounced whites and Tony Blair, they chanted: 'Down with the cup he drinks his tea from.'
But what shocked Hough was not the incongruous pleasantries or even the distinct possibility that, if he resisted too vehemently, he could be shot dead, just as the first white farmer murdered in Zimbabwe had been two years earlier.
Casting his eye over the gang of 'war veterans' in front of him - most of them too young to have fought in the war of independence that ended in 1980 - he saw his own workers among them. Wondezi, a valued farm hand, was there. So too was Norman, who he'd helped secure a job with a neighbour. Most disturbing of all, though, was the presence of Aqui, the Hough family's maid for the past six years.
A model employer, Hough had paid for her medical insurance, her children's school uniforms and a secretarial course for her daughter. Now, she had betrayed him. 'Get out or we will kill you!' she screamed. 'There is no place for whites in our country.' Not only was she demanding the same as the thugs who had been camped at the bottom of the garden for months but she appeared to be their leader.
The relationship between 'Boss Nigel' and his maid forms the central narrative of Christina Lamb's poignant portrait of the virtual destruction of Zimbabwe, the 15th and final British colony to gain independence. At first, their lives progress in parallel. Hough, a proud 'Rhodie', yearns to join the Rhodesian SAS and maintain the supremacy of 200,000 whites over seven million blacks by killing 'floppies' in the bush. Aqui, an intelligent, sensitive child who is born into Mugabe's Zezuru clan, is molested by four white Rhodesian soldiers who call her a monkey as they use their rifle barrels to lift up her skirt.
But Hough, who admits to Lamb that he would have 'pulled the trigger on a black as quickly as anyone', gradually begins to appreciate the culture and aspirations of the majority and even Mugabe himself. Aqui, an activist who recruited fighters for Comrade Mugabe's ZANU guerillas, becomes disillusioned with the new country's leader. 'I would have died for Mugabe but once he was in the Big House he had forgotten all about the people that put him there.' By the time the farms are being taken over, Hough and Aqui are spending hours discussing the differences between whites and blacks.
Lamb's achievement is to use this rich tale of the complex and moving relationship between the two central characters as a route through Zimbabwe's history. The country that was once the great hope of post-colonial Africa is now a bankrupt pariah state where a cowed people face the lowest life expectancy on earth.
Mugabe's brutal tactics against his own population are eerily reminiscent of the worst excesses of Ian Smith, the Rhodesian leader who defied Britain to declare UDI. Like Smith, Mugabe is determined to stamp out a free press.
Having been arrested and jailed for a fortnight for 'practising journalism' before being deported and declared a prohibited person, I can attest to the lengths Mugabe will go to prevent a light being shone on his regime. Lamb has returned again and again to report undercover despite the danger of receiving a two-year sentence in a disease-ridden prison.
House of Stone is testament to the need for journalists to continue to risk their freedom to highlight the tragedy of both white and black suffering in Zimbabwe under a tyranny whose sheer malevolence is masked only by the thinnest veneer of civility.
22 May 05
White farmers reject Mugabe plea to return
Five years after forced evictions began , former landholders react with anger to appeal to go back for the sake of Zimbabwe's stricken economy BY TOBY HARNDEN
WHITE FARMERS evicted by Robert Mugabe's government have reacted with contempt to an offer that they should return to Zimbabwe to take part in "joint ventures" with those who brutalised them and stole their land.
Gideon Gono, the governor of the country's central bank, suggested the idea last Thursday as a possible solution to Zimbabwe's economic crisis.
Greg McMurray, a tobacco farmer who fled Zimbabwe in 2001 and is now a grinder at a factory in Wiltshire, said: "These are empty promises. We have had all the assurances before and then they just turn around and change their minds.
"I had them coming into my garden and threatening my fiance. Men with a bit of beer in their bellies told me, 'We'll come and burn you and your wife and your house'.
"I would love to go back but the economy's in ruins. The place is a shambles. So many professional people have left. It would need a new regime before most of us would think seriously about going back."
The prospect of a return for white farmers was dangled by Mr Gono, Mr Mugabe's leading economic policy maker, in a rambling three-hour statement in which he also announced a 31 per cent devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar.
He said: "In order to ensure maximum productivity levels, there is great scope in the country promoting and supporting joint ventures between the new farmers with progressive-minded former operators as well as other new investors, so as to hasten the skills transfer cycle."
During the evictions, some white farmers were murdered and many others were beaten and their families abused. The evictions prompted the collapse of the agriculture sector, the traditional engine of the economy.
Those who took over the farms had no specialist knowledge - and most farmland now lies uncultivated. The machinery has been stolen, buildings have been plundered and the former workers are starving.
Eddie Cross, the economics spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change - which was heavily defeated by the ruling Zanu-PF party in recent parliamentary elections that were widely condemned as being rigged - said that Mr Gono was desperate.
Mr Cross said: "He's got no power and he can't deliver. The reality is a thousand miles away from everything he says. He wants to regain some credibility with multilateral institutions. He has meetings with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank next month. This is about having something to say to those guys. The only salvation will be a change of government and a return to the rule of law.
"Until then, no one's going to invest here or come back. Who on earth is going to do anything in agriculture when there is such dispute over land ownership? They'd be mad."
While Mr Gono's words could be interpreted as an admission that the land seizure policy pursued by Mr Mugabe - which led to him becoming an international pariah - had failed, they offered little comfort to the dispossessed.
One tobacco and cattle farmer, who was forced off his property by armed squatters in 2000, said: "He can't be serious. My house has been burnt down, my fields destroyed and he wants to invite me back?
"There has to be a proper return to respect for property rights. We need facts, not words and a legal framework. No one's going to go back on the basis of this."
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, is among 1,600 evicted landowners who have stayed in Zimbabwe and are attempting to get compensation.
In 2000, there were 4,500 white farmers. Now only 400 remain on parts of their farms, many having made deals with Mugabe's regime. Thousands of others lost everything and have had to seek help to set themselves up in ventures outside Zimbabwe.
Colin Ransome, of the Zimbabwe Farmers Trust Fund, a Scottish-registered charity, said: "A lot of those who settled in Britain have young families and new jobs. Everyone is very wary. Iron-clad assurances would be needed."
16 April 05
Goodbye, Mr Mugabe
Two Sunday Telegraph journalists, accused of flouting Zimbabwe's draconian media laws, were released last week after spending 10 days in a cockroach-infested jail. Toby Harnden, who feared he might be locked up for a year, describes their ordeal
THE IRON GATE swung open and we were prodded, shuffling in our leg-irons, into a darkened concrete yard.
Above us was the sound of more than 2,000 African prisoners crammed into their cells, shouting, singing and beating their feet. As the leg-irons were unlocked and we were pushed up the stairs, the stench of Harare's central remand jail hit me for the first time.
A mixture of sweat, excrement and rotting sadza - a white, doughy stodge made from maize - made me gag, the reflex colliding with the fear that seemed to be rising from my bowels and spreading upwards through my chest.
Our feet were bare, our toes squelching on the cold, damp steps. Dressed in regulation green canvas prison shorts and shirts, filthy and reeking of body odour, we had been assigned to category D - murderers, armed robbers, rapists, kidnappers, sodomites and political "offenders" such as ourselves.
There were more than a dozen prison officers surrounding us, cackling and cracking jokes about the two white men they were about to lock up. We reached the dank corridor outside Cell B1 on the first floor, the cacophony from its occupants almost drowning out the jibes of the officers.
The senior one pulled out a bunch of keys from the belt beneath his paunch and opened the door. "Meet the guys," he announced. Prisoners surged towards us and the door slammed shut.
I felt hands all over me, grabbing my arms, patting my back, even touching my hair. Some cried their names, others demanded cigarettes as we moved involuntarily towards the far end of the cell, some 75ft long and 25ft wide.
"Welcome to Zimbabwe," one prisoner shouted in my ear. "Welcome to hell on earth."
The evening roll-call had just confirmed that there were 105 inmates present in a cell designed to hold 25. Colin, a tautly muscular young man with "China Black" tattooed clumsily on his chest, came forward as we slumped on the concrete floor to tell us he was the prisoner "commanding" the cell. There was not much room, he said, telling us we had two blankets each to sleep in.
We lay down, our arms touching each other and the prisoners either side. This was where we were to rest, the lights on constantly and our every movement keenly watched. I looked up at the wall above me: inch-long cockroaches were scuttling along it. The blanket I clasped was infested with lice - inda in the local Shona language.
The youth who was stretched out to my right spoke out. "I'm in here on six counts of armed robbery. I've been here for 21 months without trial. Can you help me? I want to go to London.''
I turned to Julian and for a minute we looked at each other, neither daring to speak. For four days in a police cell, we had supported each other, sometimes laughing out loud at the situation we had found ourselves in. Already, we had formed a deep bond.
"It could be worse," we had said. We had not been kidnapped in Iraq, where being beheaded on video would be a probability. We were not being buggered or beaten. We would soon be released. Hot baths and cold beers awaited us. Now, however, there seemed nothing positive to say.
"We can survive this," I began uncertainly. "We may be here for a week, a month, or a year, but one day it will be over. We are both strong and one day we shall be free."
Three hours earlier, we had been bundled out of court in the rural town of Norton, some 30 miles outside Zimbabwe's capital, and loaded into a battered green Bedford prison bus.
As we drove north to Harare, a young prison officer - one of the "Green Bomber" recruits from youth militia and indoctrination camps - had recorded our details. I was now Prisoner 3190/05, he informed me.
"What is your tribe?" he asked us. "Who is your headman?" Julian and I conferred. Our tribe was English, we decided, and our headman and tribal chief was The Queen of England. Our details were solemnly noted down.
The reality of what was happening had still not hit us. We had just faced two charges in the Norton court: overstaying our visas and "practising journalism without accreditation" under Zimbabwe's notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).
Although we had been awarded bail by the Norton magistrate, the state prosecutor had promptly invoked Section 122, a clause that meant Mugabe's government could appeal against the decision. We had to be held in jail for seven working days while papers were filed.
The culmination of our processing at the prison was an interview with the officer in charge there. A veteran of the war of independence, his reputation was one of callousness and slavish obedience to the state.
On occasions, it was said, he would refuse even to release the bodies of prisoners who died in his jail for their relatives to bury them. We were ordered to sit on the floor in front of a row of empty chairs. The bull-necked officer was sitting at a computer and kept his back to us, looking over the gold braid on his shoulder to speak.
We were to be allowed soap, a small towel and a toothbrush, he said, and were to address the guards as Mambo - Shona for "king". Any reading material we wanted had first to be examined by the prison censor, and we were forbidden a pen or paper.
"You are in here for committing journalism," he said. "If you have a pen, you might commit journalism again."
We had entered Zimbabwe knowing that we were taking a risk. Mugabe bitterly resents the criticism he has faced from the British press. We were there - officially - as tourists, nothing more.
But we both felt that this tourist status permitted us to take a lively interest in all things
Zimbabwean. And, as tourists, we clearly wanted to keep diaries and take photographs. Like every other awe-struck visitor, we would gaze at Victoria Falls and enjoy the sights of Matobo national park.
But, since our visit coincided with Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections, we would also take a good look at the queues outside the polling stations.
On election day itself, we headed south of Harare to the constituency of Manyame, where Hilda Mafudze, of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, was being challenged by the Zanu-PF's Patrick Zhuawo, Mugabe's nephew.
We found that Zanu-PF was out in force, members of its youth wing positioned outside polling stations beating drums and telling voters that the way they had cast their ballots would be discovered. Our presence was glaring and, to Zanu-PF, unwelcome.
"Go back to Tony Blair," one youth spat at me when I asked what the election meant to him. "What are your kind doing here?" he asked, pointing to the pale skin on my forearm.
At Chiedza Primary School polling station in Norton, things started to go wrong. Max Makowe, a local Zanu-PF apparatchik, seized his chance to strike a blow for Mugabe and raised the alarm.
"You are intimidating voters and interfering with the election," he shouted. He was joined by another Zanu-PF loyalist, and a young female constable was beckoned over.
We protested that we had done nothing wrong and attempted to leave. But Makowe barked an order to the policewoman and, in an instant, a pair of handcuffs clicked shut around Julian's wrists. It was clear this was not something we could talk our way out of. Within an hour we were in Norton police station being interrogated.
Leading the questioning was a man we came to know as Detective Inspector Denford Dhilwayo. Chain-smoking Kingsgate cigarettes, he accused us of being spies.
"It is clear you work for MI6 or the CIA," he said. "I spent time in Russia so I know about these things. I worked with the KGB."
We had alerted the outside world to our plight by texting a message from the school saying we had been arrested, so we expected help to come eventually. In the meantime, we could only protest our innocence and state that we were tourists - a line we stuck to doggedly.
Diwayo, however, was having none of it. "You are on a mission and we need to find out what that mission is," he said. "Do you have revolvers? I was held at immigration at Gatwick once. They made me sleep in a drain for three days. This is what your country is about. Why are you here? There is no poverty and every crime is solved."
Our lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, arrived about two hours into an interrogation-turned-tirade that was all the more frightening because of its madness.
That night, we were marched off to the Norton police cell where we were to remain for four days, sleeping on urine-soaked blankets and unable to wash, read or exercise. The police cell, however, was nothing compared with the horrors of prison.
Our survival depended on items as mundane as cigarettes and toothpaste, vital lifelines brought to us by supporters in Harare. These items were traded for protection, provided by Henry, on remand for armed robbery, and Moses, charged with murdering a white couple he had worked for.
They stood guard as we took cold communal showers and crouched over the latrines.
Other inmates were not so lucky. Each morning they would shine the shoes of prison officers to get an extra cup of porridge. If their buffing was not good enough, they were kicked or beaten with a stick.
Every day, we were manacled and led to the prison bus bound for the Norton court. Others in the jail detained under AIPPA or the equally Orwellian Protection and Security Act were waiting months for a trial date, but at least, because we could afford an excellent lawyer, our case would be heard.
We remained in prison for 10 days before being handed over to the custody of the British consul, David Ashford, a constant support throughout our ordeal. On the eighth day, I was ordered to report to a prison officer by the usual hiss and a click of the fingers.
His boss, he said, wanted to see me. I was handcuffed and led into the outer courtyard, where a senior officer sat nonchalantly on a bench. I was ordered to sit at his feet while he lectured me about Zimbabwe. "There is no violence here," he informed me. " Zimbabwe is a democracy and people live freely here."
On the ninth day we were granted bail once again, but instead of being released we were taken back to the jail and told that "procedures" dictated we remain there. It took more than 20 prison officers to drag us back into our cell. The next day, it was over.
Mr Diza, the magistrate, showed that there are people of integrity in public positions in Zimbabwe. Despite knowing that we were journalists - we never denied our profession - he judged the case according to the law.
A prosecution of stunning ineptitude also helped deliver us, and we thanked God that evil could be so inefficient and Beatrice Mtetwa, our heroic defence lawyer, so incisively brilliant.
As we walked out of prison, I whispered to myself the words I had learnt in Shona, which I knew I would one day be able to utter in triumph. "Ndakasununguka," I said, as Julian and I hugged each other in relief. "I am free."
23 April 2005
Time stands still for the men condemned to Mugabe's prisons
Two Sunday Telegraph journalists were freed last week after 10 days in a filthy Zimbabwean jail. But as Toby Harnden writes, the 103 men who shared his cell could wait years for a trial
THERE ARE no clocks in Harare remand prison. Ask a prisoner the time and he glances through the barred window and hazards a guess from the angle of the sun. The sky turning cobalt blue to herald the approaching dawn is one point of reference. Another is the clunk of the jail gate signalling the change of the prison guard shift at 6am.
Moments later, what sounds like a spiritual starts up from cell B2. "Baba vedu uri kudenga... Zita renyu ngarikudzwe novutswene." It is the Lord's Prayer sung in Shona, Zimbabwe's main language. In B2, about two dozen of the 105 prisoners jump up and start praying. Another day has begun.
For many of the 2,500 prisoners in the remand jail, where I was held with my colleague Julian Simmonds for 10 days earlier this month, time stands still. Zimbabwe's justice system is corrupt and crumbling and inmates can wait for up to five years before a case comes to trial.
Many are unable to find even paltry amounts to meet bail or to pay fines. On the prison bus one day, a youth called Lazarus, who has been convicted of stealing barbed wire, opts to serve three months in prison because he can't pay 40,000 Zimbabwean dollars -- about pounds 3.50. "We are crying," says Moses, who is accused of murder and who, with his friend Henry, has been appointed by the prisoners to look after the two strange white men in their midst. "We have nothing, not even hope. The best we can do is survive."
Like many inmates, Moses is accused of a terrible crime but has been forced to wait years to hear the case against him. Just 21, he has been on remand for almost two years. His mother, who like her son was suspected of axing to death the white couple they worked for, recently died in the neighbouring women's jail; she was 45.
Moses's angelic face is covered with bumps and the whites of his eyes are flecked with brown stains. Sores cluster around his knees and ankles where, he says, he was beaten by police and leg irons broke the skin.
Disease is rife in the prison, which is so overcrowded that prisoners are stacked against each other on the concrete floor as they sleep. At night the cell looks like a deck full of galley slaves shifting with the waves.
Yet a surprising order prevails. A small group of inmates organises life for the rest in a strange, self-imposed discipline. Each morning, the blankets are piled neatly so the cell can be swept. Every inmate is allocated a sleeping space -- new arrivals arranged head to toe in the centre, while those in for longer are given a little more room near the walls.
The day crawls by, tedium interrupted by roll call, queuing for food down the stairways to the courtyard, and reading. Moses solemnly pores over a tattered edition of Essentials, a South African women's magazine. For a few cigarettes we rent two books -- The Best of Betjeman and Anton Chekov's Plays and Stories. Below Betjeman's poem The Exile are scrawled an inmate's questions to his girlfriend. "Do you still love me? Are you ashamed of me? Do you believe I stole the car? Will you wait 10 years?"
Some have newspapers, though the prison censor cuts out articles judged unfit for inmates to read, including any criticism of President Robert Mugabe. Some opt for boxing. "Dance, boxer, dance" screams a man nicknamed Gudu (Shona for "baboon"), who is built like Mike Tyson. "Let's go, boxer. Jab, jab, jab -- killer punch." His partner aims his blows at flip-flops on Gudu's fists.
After lock-down following 6pm roll call, a group from Matabeleland dances to songs in the minority language, Ndebele. Several card schools play with decks made artfully from cigarette packets.
Another favourite is chess. Earlier, in our police cell in Norton, a rural area south of Harare, Julian and I had constructed a crude set, drawing the grid on a sheet of paper, tearing out squares for pieces.
The prison sets are altogether more elaborate. Magnificent pieces have been painstakingly fashioned from sadza -- the maize substance that is Zimbabwe's staple diet -- and lavatory paper.
Embarrassingly, The Sunday Telegraph is humiliated by the Zimbabwean inmates. In my first game, my mentor Henry destroys me in three dozen moves while other inmates nod in approval, their Shona peppered with references to "the Kasparov move".
The next game is even more humiliating. A man accused of rape with "Crazy Sexy" tattoed on his forearm defeats me effortlessly in what is billed "Europe versus Africa". I forfeit a cigarette. At 9pm, the cell becomes quiet. It is story time. A big-time fraudster called Isaac paces up and down relating a tale in Shona. We assume it is a traditional Zimbabwean yarn until we hear phrases such as "black-tinted windows" and "agent of the FBI".
Isaac's tale is a rendition of the thriller, The Bourne Identity. His repertoire also includes Predator and The Matrix: Reloaded.
Our arrival offers business opportunities. Brian, one of the few political prisoners, accused of being an opposition activist, tries to barter a dead pigeon for a cigarette.
Others believe that they can curry favour with the guards by extracting information from us. We are quizzed about our case and whether we were working as journalists, the "crime" of which we are accused.
We are warned by Moses and Henry that Mugabe's feared Central Intelligence Office has spies in the jail. Questions from John, an army sergeant, are a little too pointed. Most suspicious of all is Shepherd, who seems to know we work for The Sunday Telegraph and is always trying to glean more.
Charles, a cheerful Ndebele and another opposition activist, tells us to be careful. A political prisoner died in the adjoining cell, here says, after he was poisoned. Such is the desperation of some prisoners, we could be murdered for a few packets of cigarettes.
Much to Julian's chagrin, Charles turns out to be a chronic masturbator. I go to sleep each night with Julian's breath on my shoulder. On his other side, Julian has to contend with an elbow nudging him rhythmically in the ribs.
Many inmates ask us to pay for legal advice or arrange UK visas. Barnabus, who revels in having tried to kill his wife, wants to go to Britain. "I shot her in the head joyously in front of the children," he said. "She was pleading with me not to do it but you know how it is when you are on a mission. You are gripped with it and you just keep going. She deserved it. Her name is Faith and I called my company Faith Cosmetics." He is confident of bribing the prosecutor to drop the case against him.
Darling, a young gang member, is facing six counts of armed robbery. His cocaine-fuelled crime bouts netted so many televisions and VCRs that he stole three bull terriers and installed them as guard dogs. One of his mistakes, he said, was to rob the Zimbabwean vice-president's house -- holding his wife at gunpoint.
There are a few celebrity prisoners. One is Christopher Kuruneri, Zimbabwe's finance minister, who has been held without trial for a year on charges of foreign currency fraud.
He has a few extra privileges, such as daily visits to the dispensary and an electric razor. "Hi, I'm Chris," he says, shaking my hand as I wander into his cell one morning to see if I can borrow his shaver. He is wearing a white vest and lying on the floor.
He is managing in jail, he explains, because he has to, just like anyone else. Moses nods. "Here we are all the same," he says. "We have nothing and we are nothing. Pray for us all."
27 March 2005
In the week before Zimbabwe’s ‘fair’ election, the leader of the opposition plays cat and mouse with Mugabe spies
Having survived an assassination attempt, Morgan Tsvangerai remains constantly on the move. On a dusty road 60 miles from Harare, he grants a rare interview to Toby Harnden
EVEN in an election in which overt violence has been at a minimum, emboldening Zimbabwe’s opposition to campaign in Robert Mugabe’s rural strongholds, Morgan Tsvangirai is a very careful man.
The leader of the Movement for Democratic Change believes he is on the brink of ending Mr Mugabe’s 25-year grip on the country and predicts a “constitutional crisis” after Thursday’s parliamentary elections.
Having been branded a “tea boy” of colonialists by the ruling Zanu-PF party, being seen talking to a British journalist may not be politically advisable. Elaborate precautions must be taken.
After surviving at least one assassination attempt and defeating a recent treason charge, Mr Tsvangirai is loath to give Mr Mugabe, 81, and his ruling Zanu-PF any fresh opportunity to strike against him.
So it was on the side of the dusty road from Mubayira, 60 miles south of the capital Harare, that Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader granted “The Sunday Telegraph” a rare interview.
Mr Tsvangerai had earlier addressed a mass rally of MDC supporters, crammed into the shade of a group of msasa trees, before making a swift exit in his silver Pajero four-wheel-drive.
The rally was closely observed by police officers, Mugabe- appointed “election supervisors” and plain-clothed members of the feared Central Intelligence Office that is Zanu-PF’s eyes and ears.
A few miles on, the four-wheel-drive stopped for the MDC leader to relieve himself in the bushes. “It is not safe here,” said William Bango, his spokesman. “We will pull over a little further down the road and do it there.”
Five minutes later, Mr Tsvangirai, 53, stepped out to be interviewed in a lay-by. “We will win,” he said emphatically. “Our belief is we will get 65 per cent to 35 for Zanu-PF. “Even with a five per cent rigging opportunity for Mugabe, we will win.”
The MDC leader said that Mr Mugabe had made a serious miscalculation in assuming that his people were so cowed by years of brutality that many would vote for him out of fear of reprisals.
The ageing despot believed, he said, that voting by “dead” people – voter lists are believed to have been packed with the names of the deceased - bribing tribal chiefs and linking food distribution to Zanu-PF membership would ensure victory.
Zanu-PF’s gamble that they could minimise overt intimidation and thereby gain an international stamp of approval on the result would backfire, he said. “This government is desperate for legitimacy which means it is trying to put a portrayal of some semblance of a normal election.
“There is no visible violence this time and that has encouraged people to come out and express themselves. But that doesn’t mean there is not subtle violence. Old habits die hard.”
He said that Mr Mugabe’s government, which had promised open and fair” elections, would be paralysed by a hostile parliament. “We’ll have a constitutional crisis which will open the way for transitional negotiations.”
At the Mubayira election rally there had been a palpable sense of hope that the party’s six-year battle to oust Mr Mugabe was about to bear fruit.
More than 400 people were packed together beside a parched football pitch and a shack advertising “Coffin Sales”. Poverty in Mubayira, like most of Zimbabwe, is acute. “We have less than nothing,” said a man who gave his name as Shakespeare. “I have no shoes and no job.”
The beating of drums from a rival Zanu-PF rally just 300 yards away competed with ululating tribal dancers and chants in Shona of “change is coming” at the MDC rally. The open palms at the opposition gathering contrasted with the clenched fist Zanu-PF salutes.
Mr Tsvangirai was undeterred by the well-organised competing rally, set up without notice to disrupt the MDC event. “We have come a long way and now we are near the end of our struggle with Zanu-PF,” he roared. “This is the final push.”
Zimbabwe, which has 80 per cent unemployment, 130 per cent inflation and an average life expectancy of 33, had been bankrupted by Mr Mugabe and his cronies, he said. “Mugabe like a husband who has failed to make his wife pregnant in 25 years of marriage.
“Her parents come to take her away and he says, ‘No, give me just one more night so I can do it better’. He has destroyed our industry and our agriculture. Why should he get one more chance?”
The MDC needs to win a landslide 76 out of 120 seats to secure an outright majority because Mr Mugabe has the power to appoint 30 members of the 150-strong body.
This would be a dramatic improvement on the 2000 elections when it won 57 seats against a background of orchestrated violence and allegations of rigging by Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.
Mr Mugabe, however, has cast would-be successors into the political wilderness, weakening his control apparatus.
Many “war veterans” who fought alongside Mr Mugabe for Zimbabwe’s independence, plundered white farms at his behest and were mobilised in vast numbers for the 2002 presidential vote have deserted him.
“We were supporting him because of his historical background,” a senior member of the War Veterans’ Association told “The Sunday Telegraph”. “After the liberation struggle was successful in 1980, Mugabe was a hero but now there is discontent. Lots of us feel like this.”
The 51-year-old from Harare, who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution, spent three years in Zambia fighting with the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army against Ian Smith’s regime in Rhodesia.
He remains unrepentant about his part in mob attacks on white farms after 2000 in which many were slaughtered and their land seized. “When a revolution happens, there are bound to be these hassles. I could have been injured or killed. That’s the process.”
Now, however, he is disillusioned with Mr Mugabe. “He has changed. We have no pensions or benefits. Our land that we took back from the colonisers has not been given to the people.”
Mr Mugabe has been damaged by the economic crisis in the country and the sidelining of powerful figures like Emerson Mnangagwa and Jonathan Moyo.
“A lot of the brains behind the previous riggings have been kicked out,” said an MDC organiser in Matabeleland. “He’s going to be very stretched to do it over 120 seats this time. He’s old and tired and we are wiser.”
The few international poll observers allowed into Zimbabwe, however, caution that Mr Mugabe is still capable of perpetrating a massive electoral fraud. “There are plenty of ways to monkey the result,” said an American election monitor.
“Stuffing the ballot boxes is the sloppy way of doing it. The state of the art of election rigging is simply to tamper with the figures centrally.” Some MDC leaders caution privately that Thursday could see yet another false dawn.
Mr Mugabe has said he is fighting an “anti-Blair campaign”, branding Mr Tsvangirai a “tea boy” of the British government and vowing to “bury” Mr Blair and MDC on Thursday and write “here lies the latter-day neo-colonialist and the Union Jack never to rise again” on the grave.
Mr Tsvangirai, however, said Mr Mugabe’s bravado was a mask for a fear he might lose the elections. “He faces a real dilemma. How can he have an election that is seen as legitimate and yet also win?
“He cannot have it both ways. He has retreated from the democratic objectives the liberation struggle. He was a liberator and now he is an oppressor.
“Mugabe has privatised the country. He can do whatever he wants. He’s a demon. What can you expect from Africa and Mugabe? What a legacy he has created for himself.” With that, Mr Tsvangirai climbed back into the jeep and was gone.
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