On the Cusp, or the Brink

In the past few days the political situation in Zimbabwe has become vastly more complicated. In the first place, though election results released by the state electoral commission showed an unprecedented defeat of the ruling ZANU-PF in the country's parliament, Robert Mugabe, the party's leader and the nation's current dictator/president, has declared that at least 16 of the parliamentary election victories will be contested in the electoral court of appeals; Movement for Democratic Change, the main opposition party, holds only 109 of the body's 210 seats, so the outcome of the appeals could easily overturn the election results nationwide. MDC party leaders responded to the news cautiously, saying that it was the constitutional right of ZANU-PF to contest results. They made no statement as to their possible intentions to contest election results in districts where ZANU-PF candidates won the seat.

More importantly, however, is the electoral commission's unwillingness to release the results of the country's presidential election. Though Zimbabweans went to the polls over a week ago, and all the ballots have been collected by the commission in the capital of Harare, the results have not only remained unreleased, but there is not even a plan to release the results by a certain date. Officials only remark that results will be released to the public "when they are ready," leading many on the opposition, the press, and in the international community to speculate that vote tampering is being conducted on a vast scale, or that Mugabe simply plans to disregard the outcome of an election that turns out not to have gone his way.

Further, there have been sporadic reports of harassment by police and other government officials, of both opposition parties and of outside governments and organizations, seen as interlopers. Police are reported to have raided an MDC office in a hotel in Harare and forced the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai into hiding; at least two foreign journalists, one Brit and one American, were also arrested in that city. Though they are to be officially charged with lacking proper credentials, in reality it is virtually impossible to obtain such credentials for foreign journalists, forcing many to enter the country in secrecy or under deep cover. Whether these two incidents are unrelated, an isolated pair, or part of a larger, more sinister trend, remains to be seen.

However, the events most dangerous to democracy in Zimbabwe happened far outside the capital. Groups of violent militias, claiming to be veterans of Zimbabwe's war of independence from Great Britain, have once again begun organized attempts to seize land from the minority white farmers that have historically owned the majority of Zimbabwe's agriculturally productive areas. Such efforts are reminiscent of 2000, when at Mugabe's order such militias took over control of a large number of farms, employing threats of violence and on at least twelve occasions, outright murder.

Approximately four or five hundred such farmers remain in Zimbabwe, but how much longer these stalwarts will remain is anyone's guess. One thing is certain: the poor blacks who do Mugabe's dirty work almost never see the benefits, as the land ends up in the hands of one of the president's cronies or relatives, and the agricultural production of the country has spiraled downward, as inflation skyrocketed to over 100,000% per year, since the policy was first enacted.

The opposition claims that these groups of militia are far from renegades, and that Mugabe's government has supported them in their reign of terror. This is not so far-fetched: once again Mugabe has begun making bombastic speeches, equating the white farmers, the foreign journalists and aid-workers, and the opposition party as conspiring to renew colonial control of Zimbabwe.

Nevertheless, it is also clear that over a week has passed since Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF essentially lost a nationwide election, and truly widespread violence or clashes between paramilitary groups has so far failed to develop. Certainly, it is unlikely that delays would win him much support, and this has led some to suggest that Mugabe may be unable, or at least unwilling, to initiate the kind of blood-bath that would be necessary to secure his grip on power. We can but hope.

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