Tag Archives: Zimbabwe

Jun 25, 2008

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An Open Letter to South African President Thabo Mbeki

The motivation behind this issue originates in our dismay at the growing urgency of the situation in Zimbabwe. Human rights are being violated with increasing frequency. See, for one example, a report recently published by the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR). Please read it; a link to the report appears at the end of this issue. We also have personal friends in Zimbabwe who have confirmed that such violations are indeed taking place, and at the hands of people acting in the name of the state. Such a development is in direct violation of all that the liberation struggles against colonialism in southern Africa stood for. We call for all speed and urgency from every agency acting to influence the government of Zimbabwe to allow for the run-off election to be free and fair. Additionally, we insist upon a halt to the intimidation, murder, and beating of persons deemed opposition supporters.

What has Mugabe’s rhetoric wrought, that the call to protect human rights is cast as a neo-imperialistic impulse? It was from studying the human rights abuses committed against colonized people in Africa, Jews in Nazi Germany, and enslaved Africans in America, that led many of us here in the United States to realize how important human rights are. We became teachers of African history in the interest of, among other things, making Americans aware of the evils of colonial rule as seen in the Smith and Apartheid regimes of the 20th Century. We want to see no more such atrocities committed, such as those suffered by Biko and countless thousands of others, by anyone in power against anyone, anywhere, no matter the race or religion or economic condition of the persons involved at either end of the power scale.

How is it that President Mugabe and his supporters can take the desire for a free Zimbabwe and from that somehow twist it to accuse people like us of neo-imperialism – we who cry out against the beating of grandmothers, children, pregnant and nursing women, beautiful and irreplaceable sons and fathers? The people of Zimbabwe sacrificed their lives and their well-being in the 1970s so that they could be free to express their views, to choose their own leaders, and to chart their own way forward to a prosperity that they could build for themselves. Zimbabwe’s people did NOT make the sacrifices of the liberation war so that Mugabe’s government could send militias out to beat, brutalize, and terrorize them. Haven’t southern Africans had enough of that under the previous regimes that were defeated at such cost and after such long struggle? The world looks to South Africa, the UN, and the SADC, to take courage and convincingly call upon Mugabe and his government to act in protection of its people, immediately, before another precious human life is damaged or lost.

_________

Wendy Urban-Mead, Bard College, wum@bard.edu.

Link to the May 9, 2008 Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) Report, available at kubatana.net: http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/hr/080509zadhr.asp?sector=HR.

See also the statement in support of the ZADHR by the Physicians for Human Rights:
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2008-04-30.html.

Jun 25, 2008

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“Letter from Harare – May 8, 2008”

The following letter was sent out May 8, 2008 from an NGO worker living in Zimbabwe, who offers an eyewitness account from the capital city of Harare as news of political violence began to be heard from individuals, news sources, and rumor. The letter captures well the anger ex-patriates often feel as they hear from their Zimbabwean colleagues of political killings and torture and realize how implicated so many of the “big chefs” are in this violence, how the police and military along with their paramilitary “green bombers” and “war veterans” operate with impunity. Such a realization is jarring and disturbing, scary and depressing. Zimbabweans have no need to be told of this, but those of us outside the country may want to consider the costs such a state and society exact from its people. Zimbabweans have learned to cope with a now-familiar cycle of periods of calm followed by a brutal reaction from a state controlled by forces who know they have everything to lose should they be forced to concede power. — TS.

“Letter from Harare – 8 May 2008”

By Anonymous

Since the elections on 29 March, I have been trying, without success, to find suitable words with which to convey to those outside the country the experience of being here in this dreadful moment.

Some of my inability to construct a lucid account is surely attributable to the ever-changing rush of events that seems to shift the terrain of what is happening – or what I think may be happening, or what is reported to be happening, or what an army of experts believe to be happening, or what is rumoured to be happening – from hour to hour. The election results will be released tomorrow, or next week or not at all. The Chinese arms ship will dock in Durban, in Beira, in Luanda, or return to China and the weapons will be trucked, or flown to Harare or not. Sixty white-owned farms have just been seized, or 160 farms, or no farm invasion shave occurred. Morgan has won two-thirds of the vote, or a bare majority of the vote or a mere plurality of ballots. Bogus ballot boxes stuffed with phony ZANU-PF votes are seen delivered to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to steal the election, the ZEC has been seized by security forces, the police are arresting ZEC personnel. Mugabe and wife have flown to Malaysia or are happily relaxing in their Harare mansion. Mbeki has secretly arranged for Mugabe to step down, or share power or maintain control. There was almost a military coup, or there will be a coup or there has already been a coup and we are under military rule but don’t know it. There will or won’t be a run-off. It will happen in thee weeks, in three months, in a year, not at all. We will be saved by Jacob Zuma, by SADC, by the African Union, by the EU, by no one. On and on and on it goes, baffling, impossible, and we are left dazed, disheartened, flabbergasted.

The Government propaganda machine is in overdrive. “Farmers Attack War Veterans” was Tuesday’s headline. The story told the tale of a white farmer attacking with pepper spray, a band of war vets who happened to “visit” his farm and of three white farmers driving a truck with an improper licence plate. Such lawlessness by whites won’t be tolerated a police official is quoted. The ZBC radio news tells us that MDC thugs are attacking innocent villagers, that MDC leaders are trying forgo the proper legal process and to delay the run-off, that MDC agents have been aiding the return of deposed white farmers to retake the land and restore the old colonial master. I must confess that I find a certain morbid fascination in these ludicrous accounts, brazenly inverting reality, openly reversing victim and perpetrator, mobilizing the rhetoric of sovereignty, rule-of-law, racial-solidarity and patriotism to justify brutal oppression.

Make no mistake: at its core, the story of post-election Zimbabwe is all about violence. Overwhelming, intimidating, sadistic violence unleashed upon the rural black population; anyone – children and the elderly, women and men – perceived to have voted for the MDC, or to be a relative, friend or acquaintance of someone who may have voted for the MDC or to reside in an area that supported MDC. From our Harare island of relative calm and safety, we sit by, helplessly, as their stories trickle and then flood in from the countryside.

Here are some of the accounts that I have heard directly from local sources in the past few days:

• On Sunday evening, one of our local staff described his just-completed visit to his family in the rural Eastern Highlands. When he arrived the village Headman was in hiding, threatened by a roving gang of ZANU-PF youth led by the so-called war veterans. Many young people, he said, had been dragged from their homes, beaten and forced to chant ZANU-PF slogans. They were then told that they were now recruited into the ruling party and were forced to become part of the youth patrol terrorizing the district each night. If they refused they were beaten. The bus on which he traveled back to Harare on Sunday was stopped several times at impromptu ZANU-PF roadblocks. Youth and War Vets clambered on board beating those suspected of supporting the opposition and demanding that everyone chant ZANU-PF slogans and sing “patriotic songs.” Those who resisted were dragged out and beaten, as the police calmly watched from the sidelines.

• On Tuesday a colleague at work came into my office to show me a text message she had just received on her cell-phone. It announced that Monday night the younger brother of her recently diseased fiancé, suspected of being an MDC supporter, had been beaten to death by a group of naked ZANU-PF militants. Naked! Apparently, many others in the village had been beaten and terrorized.

• A friends’ daughter who broke her arm in a playground accident on Monday afternoon was scheduled to have a pin inserted and the bone set on early Tuesday. The parents told us that the operation had to be repeatedly delayed, as the medical staff rushed to attend to numerous seriously-injured victims of ZANU-PF violence who continuously streamed into the private clinic.

• Yesterday an NGO colleague reported seeing thousands of people on the Mazoe road – just north of Harare – carrying what possessions they could and apparently fleeing towards the city. Today VOA reported that eleven people had been murdered and at least twenty more seriously injured in Mazoe North, all victims of ruling-party assault.

• Here is a widely-published account from about two weeks ago, confirmed by several sources. While not directly reported to me, I have found particularly disheartening, as I have a professional link to the key perpetrator, David Parirenyatwa, M.D., the national Minister of Health and Child Welfare and a ZANU-PF Member of Parliament. Together with two other ruling-party politicians, the good doctor, brandishing an AK-47, is said to have invaded a peaceful MDC meeting, threatening and intimidating those in attendance and demanding that they attend a ZANU-PF rally instead. “There is no place in this district where MDC supports will be safe”, he reportedly told the crowd. This from the senior most Government official charged with safeguarding the public health and the well-being of Zimbabwe’s children.

Since my arrival in Zimbabwe fourteen months ago, numerous people here have referred to the apocryphal tale of the frog blissfully swimming in a pot of water as the temperature gradually increases to the boiling point, as perhaps a fit analogy descriptive of our own adaptability to an ever-worsening scene, an ever more menacing and manifest evil. We are well and still quite safe, but we can definitely detect the heat of the water.

Jun 25, 2008

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Zimbabwe: Ndira Body Found

Tonderai Ndira’s body was identified in the mortuary at Harare’s Parirenyatwa Hospital by a bangle around what had been his wrist.

He had been dead a long time, or at least a week as it was on May 14, in the early hours of the morning that this extraordinary activist, probably the most persecuted political personality in Zimbabwe, was snatched from his working class home in Mabvuku township, eastern Harare.

They came at night, about 10 of them, and in front of his children, Raphael 9 and Linette 6, and his wife Plaxedes, beat him up and then dragged him screaming into a white double cab.

Tonderai Ndira, 33, was certainly Zimbabwe’s most renowned street activist who had been arrested and beaten up and hospitalised scores of times since he began campaigning for democracy in late 1999.

His decomposing, naked body was found in the bush near the old commercial farming district Goromonzi, about 40 km south east of Harare, close to the torture centre run by the security forces, usually the Zimbabwe National Army, where so many Zimbabweans have been worked over since independence.

Hours after his brothers identified the body – it was so decomposed and mutilated that his own father was not sure whether the long, slender remains on the slab was his oldest son – the police began harrassing the family saying they could not have the body for burial.

His brother Cosmos Ndira said yesterday: “He was in the mortuary where they keep the unknown people, the street kids. He was naked. The bangle was given to him by his wife.

“I think Tonde was arrested 35 times, but maybe more, we lost count. We were all so happy after the elections, thinking that the eight years was now over and we could begin new lives.

“We often talked about dying, and Tonde often used to tell us that he would be killed by Zanu PF because he was arrested and beaten up so often.”

Ndira was head of the Movement for Democratic Change’s provincial security department in Harare.

He was detained for five months last year in the pitiful prison cells, unfit for human occupation, and was suing home affairs minister Kembo Mohadi and police commissioner Augustine Chihuri for wrongful arrest.

Despite all the arrests since the MDC was launched Ndira was never brought to trial. All charges, including a two year period when he was remanded every two months, were dropped for lack of evidence.

The police have failed to convict a single MDC activist among the tens of thousands detained in the last eight years.

Ndira was one of the activists who was, occasionally openly critical of the MDC when he believed it had gone wrong.

He didn’t believe in “my party right or wrong” but was a founding member of the party and destined for high office one day although he always saw himself as a background activist.

“I do this for my children. I want them to have a better life than me,” he told journalists who asked him why he kept on going.

His death came on a day when two more MDC activists were buried at the Warren Park cemetery west of Harare. One of their friends was buried last Sunday.

Those three were beaten to death in a rural area about 65 km north east of Harare where most, but certainly not all of the violence has taken place since the March 29 elections.

No one is sure how many people have died since Zanu PF and President Robert Mugabe were defeated in parliamentary and presidential elections. So far 42 victims have been identified by relatives, but many people believe the real toll is much higher especially in remote parts of northern Zimbabwe. If there are any Zanu PF victims, police and the party have failed to provide details.

At least 600 terrified people including dozens of nursing mothers and babies are sheltering at the MDC’S Harare headquarters, Harvest House.

They have no blankets nor food, and the ablution facilities are blocked, and the conditions are inhuman as the building is an office block.

So far neither the International Committee of the Red Cross nor the United Nations has even been to inspect or assist the internally displaced, “It is an appalling crisis,” said MDC lawyer Alec Muchadahama yesterday.

“The people are supposed to go to a neutral area so they can get international assistance. Where is a neutral area? Where should they go?” he said.

“This is Zimbabwe’s darkest hour. Will anything or anyone rescue us? Can there be an end to this? We can’t keep up with it,” he said, and admitted he was exhausted.

Scores are in detention including two recently elected MDC MP’s, Iain Kay, Amos Chibaya and Dr Alois Mudzingwa, MDC executive member and close friend of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Kay was one of the first white farmers to be assaulted by Mugabe’s “war veterans” in 2000, and he was later forced off his farm. He won his seat on March 29 with support from people from his old farming area, around Marondera, 70 km south east of Harare.

He and Chibaya are being charged with incitement to public violence, according to Muchadahama and were due to appear in their local magistrate’s court yesterday.

No one has been arrested in connection with any of the MDC murders, nor in connection with tens of thousands who have been assaulted. No one has been arrested for arson of village after village in the last three weeks either.

“We can’t really keep up with all the deaths and arrests. I have to go and attend to someone else from the national executive who has been arrested.” Mchadahama said.

__________
Peta Thornycroft, Harare, May 22, 2008

Jun 25, 2008

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Can Elections End Mugabe’s Dictatorship?

Zimbabweans’ experience of elections, especially since 2000 when the MDC first challenged ZANU PF rule, has made them cynical about elections as a mechanism to transfer power. They have learned that ZANU PF will do whatever it takes to win elections. 2007 was rated the worst year in terms of the number of human rights abuses since 2001, most perpetrated by ZANU PF state and paramilitary forces, and aimed at decimating the top and lower level leadership of the opposition in advance of the anticipated 2008 elections.1 Also, there was growing disillusionment with the opposition. The March 29 2008 presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections initially aroused little interest among dejected voters. The MDC had split into two bickering factions in late 2005, the majority faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) and the minority faction by Arthur Mutambara (MDC-M). The MDC-T was increasingly bedeviled by youth violence, problems of leadership transparency and accountability, and interest in positions for the material rewards they provided. Its political culture had begun to mimic the organization which it sought to remove.

When Simba Makoni, who had been a ZANU PF politburo member, announced that he would run for the presidency, it injected a refreshing uncertainty about his impact on the elections. For opponents of ZANU PF, Makoni’s candidacy signaled the ruling party’s internal unraveling. There was also a palpable shift in the political environment during the campaign, especially in ZANU PF’s rural strongholds. On brief visits to Chibi in Masvingo province and to the area in Manicaland province where powerful ZANU PF government minister, Didymus Mutasa, and Simba Makoni both own farms, I saw MDC supporters fearlessly wearing MDC-t shirts, moving freely, and organizing and attending rallies.

For the first time since 1980, ZANU PF lost control of the house of assembly. The MDC-T won 99 seats, the MDC-M 10 seats, ZANU PF 97 seats, and an independent one seat. [Three assembly constituencies, where candidates died before the March 29th election, will hold by-elections on June 27.] Despite the inroads made by the opposition into ZANU PF rural strongholds, ZANU PF still secured a majority of seats in four out of ten provinces. Should a new post-electoral unity agreement between MDC-M (which supported Simba Makoni in the presidential election) and MDC-T hold, the MDC factions will control the house of assembly. In the senate elections, the two MDC factions won 30 seats (MDC-T won 24 seats and MDC-M 6 seats), as did ZANU PF. The senate also has 33 reserved seats for chiefs, provincial governors, and presidential appointees, thus guaranteeing ZANU PF control. A caveat: these parliamentary results are not final. Fifty-three ZANU PF candidates and fifty-two MDC candidates have lodged petitions with the Electoral Court, mainly affecting House seats. Under the Electoral Act, the Electoral Court has six months in which to rule on the petitions.

Official presidential election results were finally announced on May 2, more than five weeks after the polling date. Tsvangirai won 47.9% of the votes, Mugabe 43.2%, and Makoni 8.3%. A fourth candidate won the remainder of the vote. Approximately 43% of registered voters participated in the presidential election. Legally, local government election results were declared at ward level within a day or two of polling on March 29. Councils are required to meet as soon as practicable after the declaration of the results to elect mayors and chairpersons. This did not happen, though. Councils apparently waited for the electoral commission to publish the results in the press, which it is required to do under law. The commission finally began to slowly publish the council results in the press days after it had announced the presidential election results.

Prior to the March 29 2008 elections in Zimbabwe, historical precedent suggested (at least to me) that President Mugabe would find a way to “win” the presidential election despite the inauspicious context – economic collapse and a three-way race in which the vote would be split among himself, Simba Makoni (who stood as an independent), and his longstanding rival, Morgan Tsvangirai (head of the MDC-Tsvangirai faction). While opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC faction (MDC-T) continue to claim outright victory (as they have since soon after the polls closed) and engage in diplomatic efforts to ensure that they inherit state power, President Mugabe predictably shows no signs of ending his 28-year reign. ZANU PF has handled the crisis arising from Mugabe’s failure to secure a majority of the popular vote with familiar guile and ruthlessness.

Almost immediately after the election, the media were abuzz with how a ZANU PF envoy had approached Morgan Tsvangirai to discuss forming a Tsvangirai-led government of national unity. Reportedly, Mugabe had indicated he would resign, as long as he was offered immunity from prosecution from crimes against humanity. These talks were allegedly derailed by hawks in the party, the military, and police. Fearful of facing future prosecutions, they apparently urged Mugabe not to capitulate. At the time, Secretary-General Tendai Biti (MDC-T) denied the reports, saying the MDC-T would not negotiate with ZANU PF until the results had been declared. That these negotiations took place was later confirmed by Morgan Tsvangirai and still later by veteran South African journalist Allister Sparks.

One must question whether this ZANU PF overture was ever more than a deliberate attempt to give the ruling elite time to consider its options and perhaps ensure that the MDC-T did not call for street protests to demand the announcement of the results. (There is no evidence that the MDC-T had such a plan, and its critics believe it lost another opportunity to back up its electoral performance with organized mass action.) Mugabe’s alleged readiness to quit is out of character. During his campaign, for instance, he vowed that he would never allow Morgan Tsvangirai to rule Zimbabwe. Mugabe’s verbal threats are seldom gratuitous.

Announcements made on April 3 and 4 indicated that ZANU PF had settled on the run-off scenario: Mugabe would challenge Tsvangirai in a second round ostensibly because neither candidate had secured the necessary 50% + one vote for a first-round victory. To ensure a Mugabe victory, the Joint Operations Command (JOC), reportedly led by Emmerson Munangagwa, himself an aspirant presidential successor to Mugabe, launched a strategy of violence and intimidation, chiefly against rural voters who had supported the opposition in former ZANU PF strongholds. The JOC is composed of the commanders of the army, air force, police, prison, and intelligence services. The military, police, war veterans, and youth militia, aided by ZANU PF supporters and senior ZANU PF officials, are leading the terror campaign. ZANU PF has a history of using state-orchestrated violence to punish those who vote against it. For example, it embarked on violent campaigns against ZAPU after the 1985 election and against urban MDC voters after the 2005 election.

A sad paradox of the effort to bring transparency to elections is that the new legal requirement to post the election results outside the polling stations enabled the ruling party to target those villages or farms or resettlement areas which had voted for the opposition in its Operation Makavhoterapapi (Where did you put your cross?). Victims of violence and arrests also include local election observers and those who administered the elections – the polling officers, MDC electoral agents, and even Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) officials. They are accused of assisting the MDC through fraud, vote-rigging, and other electoral irregularities.

ZANU PF continued to play for more time, not only to prepare for a run-off but also likely to explore other options, such as a government of national unity under President Mugabe. Legally, ZEC did not need to announce the parliamentary election results. Once they had been posted at the polling stations, they were official. Nonetheless, ZEC behaved as if it had the authority to declare the parliamentary results. The ZEC dragged out the announcement of the assembly results, then moved to a similarly drawn out process of announcing senate results. On April 12 the ZEC ordered a recount of the parliamentary, presidential, and local government election votes in 23 constituencies. The recount only began on April 19 and continued for over a week. Whether or not the ZEC intended to reverse ZANU PF’s narrow but historic loss of its majority in the house is unclear; in the end, the recount merely confirmed the parliamentary results announced earlier. Given the weakness of the House, ZANU PF may have decided to accept the loss of control over it rather than further inflame international and regional hostility.

ZANU PF normalized the abnormal. Mugabe’s cabinet, which he dissolved on the eve of the election, continues to serve as if legal. Moreover, at least six cabinet ministers lost their seats in the parliamentary election but remain in office which violates the legal requirement that ministers be elected to parliament. The state media, a mouthpiece of Mugabe and ZANU PF, focused attention away from the undeclared presidential election result, and alleged conspiracies against the nation’s sovereignty involving variously the US, the UK, the MDC, white farmers, critical SADC heads of state, and the UN.

After ZEC had announced the presidential election results on May 2, it initially said the run-off might not be held for up to a year. The commission cited lack of resources (the Reserve Bank governor says the run-off will cost at least US$60 million) and of preparation time. Under the electoral law, the electoral commission must announce the date for the run-off election within twenty-one days of “the election” – the only reasonable interpretation in this case must be that the run-off be held within twenty-one days of the declaration of the election result. However, the Electoral Act empowers the commission to make statutory instruments to extend the twenty-one day period – and indeed to affect virtually any aspect relating to the election – as long as the Minister of Justice approves the statutory instruments. The commission used these powers. On May 16, the commission announced that the run-off would be held on June 27.

On May 10 Morgan Tsvangirai announced that he would participate in the run-off. Over the past few weeks, the MDC and its leader first said that even though Tsvangirai was the president-elect, he would participate in a run-off but only under certain conditions, only to later assert he would not participate in a run-off under any conditions. Tsvangirai’s announcement to contest the run-off, or perhaps the reporting of it, does not entirely remove ambiguity about the MDC’s position. Some accounts say his participation is contingent on certain conditions being met: SADC must send peacekeepers, the election must be held within twenty-one days, international observers must have free access, SADC peacekeepers must be in-country, ZEC must be re-constituted, and the media must be free for local and international journalists. Other reports treat these conditions as an MDC wish-list rather than prerequisites for his participation. One thing is certain: the government, as it quickly responded, will not meet the conditions.

One sympathizes with the opposition’s dilemma, yet again, about whether or not to participate in another election. If Tsvangirai does not contest the election, Mugabe automatically becomes the next president. If he participates in the run-off, his supporters are almost certain to be the victims of ZANU PF’s escalating campaign of terror. Should Tsvangirai, who has been in self-imposed exile for weeks now, return to Zimbabwe as he said he would, he too may face the ruling party’s wrath. Beyond its use of terror tactics, ZANU PF plans to further tilt the playing field in other ways. ZEC and President Mugabe have the power to alter electoral rules that, according to the Minister of Justice, disadvantage ZANU PF vis-à-vis the MDC. And ZANU PF has already made changes to ensure that the state media will be even more pro-Mugabe for the run-off than the first round.

It is easy to see why the MDC would prefer to form a government of national unity rather than participate in a run-off which Mugabe will not allow them to win. Almost immediately after Tsvangirai said on May 10 that he would participate in the run-off, MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti spoke in favor of a government of national unity as a solution to the electoral crisis. The independents – the Makoni faction and Jonathan Moyo, who broke from ZANU PF before the March 2005 house of assembly elections – also prefer the formation of a government of national unity to a run-off. The securocrats and Mugabe might consider a government of national unity, but only on condition that it is headed by Mugabe. Mugabe told President Mbeki on May 9 that he would consider a government of national unity only after the run-off. However, there are reports that Mugabe is interested in holding talks with Tsvangirai about forming a government of national unity rather than holding a run-off. Neither the independents nor the MDC factions will accept a Mugabe-led government of national unity, before or after the run-off. Nor will the MDC accept a government of national unity that its leaders do not dominate. President Mbeki has long promoted a government of national unity under a successor to Mugabe. His preferred candidate for the job was Makoni, whom he expected would win the presidential election. For a government of national unity to be brokered, mediation will be necessary.

Since the disputed presidential elections in 2002, which the MDC believes Tsvangirai won, there has been a cycle of elections followed by attempts to mediate a constitutional settlement between the MDC and ZANU PF so as to pave the way for holding elections that will be considered legitimate. To date, neither elections nor mediation has solved the political crisis. Moreover, after President Mbeki, who has served as SADC’s appointed mediator for the past year, famously declared on April 12 that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe and asked for ZEC to be given more time to declare the presidential results, the MDC-T asked SADC to remove Mbeki. SADC subsequently endorsed Mbeki’s role as mediator but a new mediator will probably have to be found. SADC is apparently exploring appointing a team of mediators, which would include President Mbeki. The pattern of disputed elections and failed mediation looms ahead.

For the overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans, the ruling party’s post-election shenanigans and its escalating campaign of violence will be further proof that ballots cannot change a dictatorship. Expect the percentage of registered voters who participate in the run-off – assuming that it is actually held – to plummet well below 43%.

Norma Kriger
Honorary Research Fellow,
School of Economic History and Development Studies,
University of KwaZulu/Natal, Durban, South Africa

1. Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Political Violence Report: December 2007, 13 February 2008,

Note: This research was partially supported by a grant from Idasa, South Africa. An earlier version of this article appeared on the Royal Africa Society website

Jun 24, 2008

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ACAS Press Release: Zimbabwe Crisis

Press Release: Zimbabwe Crisis
June 24, 2008
4pm EST

The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS), has published a special issue on Zimbabwe in the ACAS Bulletin. It introduces the issues surrounding Zimbabwe’s March 29 elections and the current political violence leading up to the June 27th Presidential run-off.

The aim of this special Zimbabwe issue is to provide details and analysis often left out of mainstream news sources. The reader will find a variety of articles from different perspectives, by Zimbabwe experts from the fields of political science, sociology, history, and theology, as well as from seasoned Zimbabwe journalists and an NGO worker reporting from the field. The special issue concludes with a historically-inflected editorial on Zimbabwe’s politics of violence, an open letter to Thabo Mbeki, and provides a listing of on-line resources for further research and information.

The issue was edited by Tim Scarnecchia and Wendy Urban-Mead, and contains articles by (among others): Norma Kriger, Jimmy G Dube, Augustine Hungwe, Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni, David Moore, Amy Ansell, and Peta Thornycroft.

Contact:
Tim Scarneccia
Kent State University
(330) 672-8904
tscarnec@kent.edu

Wendy Urban-Mead
Bard College
(845) 264-1805
wum@bard.edu

Read the issue here | PDF version: https://concernedafricascholars.org/docs/acasbulletin79.pdf