On the night after the presidential elections 12 days ago, a British diplomat, Philip Barclay, witnessed the count at the little outpost of Bikisa deep in rural Masvingo. This part of Zimbabwe is Zanu PF heartland. In all five presidential elections since independence in 1981 the people of Bikisa had voted solidly for Robert Mugabe — and there was little expectation of anything different this time.
Barclay reports feeling faint with sheer amazement when it became clear that the largest pile of votes was for Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Just 44 people in Bikisa voted for President Mugabe, against an overwhelming 167 for Tsvangirai.
Reports from other areas soon made it clear that Bikisa was not exceptional, and that Mugabe had been voted out of power in a political earthquake. By late in the afternoon on 30 March — the day after the election — the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, an independent body charged with overseeing the poll, was in a position to make a cautious estimate of the result. It judged that Morgan Tsvangirai had secured almost 60 per cent of the vote, more than double that of Robert Mugabe with 27 per cent.
Sources say that when this news was brought to the President his first reaction was genuine incredulity. He is now so out of touch, and so used to winning elections, that he had felt confident of a comfortable majority.
Incredulity swiftly turned to anger, and Mugabe grimly ordered the Electoral Commission to declare him the victor. This command was resisted by very brave election officials. They received unexpected support, however, from senior personnel within the Zimbabwe state security apparatus, fearful of the public order consequences that would certainly flow from such blatant fixing of the result.
At this stage South Africa’s President Mbeki tried to solve the problem. Reportedly Mbeki also wished the result to be rigged, though not as blatantly as Mugabe. He seems to have proposed that the ZEC should sharply downgrade Tsvangirai’s share of the vote, sharply upgrade Mugabe to a more respectable 40 per cent and dramatically increase the share of the vote enjoyed by the renegade Zanu PF presidential candidate Simba Makoni.
Simba Makoni is Mbeki’s personal choice as the next president of Zimbabwe. There is some evidence that he is also supported by the US state department. A highly intelligent and well-educated man, Makoni was a member of the Mugabe inner circle for many years, while maintaining warm links to foreign observers and exercising care to evade personal responsibility for the worst of the regime’s atrocities. He only stood for the presidency after being given the green light by Mbeki earlier this year. Unlike Morgan Tsvangirai, a former miner of incredible courage but with little formal education, Makoni is the kind of politician who appeals profoundly to the bureaucratic mind.
Mbeki, quietly backed by the United States, hoped to induce Mugabe to step down and get Makoni to stand in his stead. This plan had definite logic. Makoni, though he will never be forgiven by Mugabe for what the President sees as an act of unspeak- able betrayal, retains the strongest links with Zanu PF. This means that he would probably be acceptable to the senior generals and policemen who hold the key to Zimbabwe’s immediate future, and to whom Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change is utterly repugnant.
By the start of this week it was beginning to be clear that the Makoni wheeze was not going to fly. The trouble is that — like many politicians beloved of the official class — Mbeki’s protégé lacks mass support. The failure of the South African intervention means there was stalemate in Zimbabwe as The Spectator went to press. Basically, President Mugabe has only three options, and time is running out very fast indeed.
The first of these is to mount a coup d’état, the solution which is preferred by Mugabe’s inner circle. Significantly, it seems to be favoured by General Constantine Chiwenga, commander in chief of the armed forces, and by Air Force Marshall Perence Shiri, Mugabe’s blood relation and close ally.
It must be borne in mind that senior figures such as these do not merely stand to lose power if Mugabe wins. They also face the prospect of being brought to justice for the crimes of the Mugabe regime. It was Perence Shiri, for instance, who led the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigades in the Matabeleland genocide of the early 1980s.
The problem with the idea of a coup d’état is not really the international condemnation that would inevitably result. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) might not like it, but under the prostrate guidance of Thabo Mbeki it would never lift a finger.
The true problem is different: there are real reasons to doubt whether commanders like Shiri (whose Chinese Mig fighters were buzzing low over Bulawayo in an act of naked intimidation when I was there two weeks ago) have the support of their troops. There is overwhelming anecdotal evidence that ordinary soldiers and policemen, even some members of the feared Central Intelligence Organisation, have turned against Mugabe. The director of intelligence, Happyton Bonyongwe, is said to be quietly supporting Tsvangirai.
Mugabe’s second option is to declare the recent elections null and order a re-run. There is strong evidence that the President is preparing the way for this. He is already taking revenge, for example, on the hapless Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, several of whose members have been arrested over the last few days. In a marvellous irony, they are being accused of rigging the result against Zanu PF.
If the President calls a second election, it will be marked by all the intimidation and horror which was to a certain extent lacking on 29 March. Mugabe’s green bombers, his licensed torturers and murderers who bear close comparison to Hitler’s Brownshirts, are already off the leash.
Finally, Mugabe could stand down. Here one key ingredient would be a guarantee that he — and the scores of murderers and torturers who are linked to him — can live the rest of their lives in the peace and tranquillity they have denied so many others. Granting Mugabe immunity from prosecution is hard to engineer and would be unpalatable for some. Others may judge it well worthwhile.
Meanwhile, everyone waits for the old man’s next move. I am told by a friend who runs one of Zimbabwe’s very few remaining factories that the mood among the workforce has changed very sharply over the last 48 hours. Hope has turned to bemusement and then — on Tuesday morning — to a silent, pervasive sense of terror, as if something horrible might be just about to happen.