Robert Mugabe, it is said, contemplated conceding defeat with a degree of grace, but was pressured by his army generals to fight to the end. But even with the slow and determined efforts to bias the counting of results in Mugabe's favour, it steadily became clear that the scale of the rigging required would never win the support of even Zimbabwe's staunchest and most patient allies. Then the generals discussed a coup, meaning that they themselves would ditch Mugabe, or make him their puppet—which, to an extent, he has been for some time. Then word came up, hard and clear from South Africa, that they were not to do that. South African diplomatic pressure has had a huge influence in turning back the course of what would have been a rigged election towards a murky compromise negotiated in back rooms, but one which might still see the retirement of Robert Mugabe.
I am writing this late in the afternoon of 2nd April. The parliamentary seats have been almost fully counted. It is still neck and neck, but even if Mugabe's Zanu-PF party wins a slender majority, Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) should win enough court challenges overturning initial results to secure an eventual majority. The painstakingly slow announcement of results—both to accommodate the attempt to rig and to allow time for compromise diplomacy—gave Zanu-PF huge majorities in those rural areas where opposition party agents and observers were thin on the ground. The constituencies that were won by the MDC were done so with slender majorities. In this way, the government hoped to coax a victory in the presidential race for Mugabe or, at worst, the chance for him to fight a run-off against Tsvangirai in three weeks' time.
But Mugabe must know by now that he cannot win a run-off. The South Africans are telling him that as I write. Make one last gracious speech now, they say.
Meanwhile, Tsvangirai has announced that he has won the Zimbabwean presidency, but by a more slender margin than his party had first claimed—by 50.3 per cent against Mugabe's 43.8 per cent. But that leaves just 6.5 per cent for Mugabe's other challenger, his former finance minister Simba Makoni—a ridiculously low figure. It seems that the MDC either got its own early figures wrong, or that this too is part of the South African effort to achieve an endgame with as much face left for Mugabe as possible. The price of his departure, they might be saying, is that there should be no triumphalism.
Either that, or all parties in this historic but vexed election have been overplaying their hands. I myself have no doubts that Tsvangirai won the presidential election with a vote of well over 50 per cent and that his MDC captured an absolute majority in parliament.
But Mugabe and his people—whether they hold him captive or the other way around—are never ones to be written off. Wily and ruthless, they have lasted a very long distance at the expense of the vast majority of their people. As a result of the country's soaring inflation, I had to carry a small briefcase full of Zim$10m notes to make my way around in the ten days I was in Zimbabwe. To put it in some sort of bleak perspective, I also had to carry a suitcase of notes in the aftermath of Idi Amin in Uganda. But South Africa and other countries in the region need Zimbabwe to be prosperous again for the sake of the economic future of all the countries in southern Africa. Mugabe, the denunciator of western neocolonialism, has been the one to slow the growth rates of the independent countries that are his neighbours. Finally, even though they supported him in public, no president in southern Africa will breathe anything but a sigh of relief when the brilliant but vainglorious Robert Mugabe slouches off into the ignominy of history.
UPDATE 4th April 2008
After a five-and-a-half-hour politburo meeting on 4th April, the governing party in Zimbabwe, Zanu-PF, said that Robert Mugabe would contest a presidential run-off with the opposition MDC challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai.
Just before the politburo met, the South African deputy foreign minister announced that it seemed to him that the MDC had won the elections. It is no secret that the South Africans had been pressuring Zanu-PF to accept defeat and settle accounts with the MDC. The US had secretly agreed to support Tsvangirai's equally secret offer of amnesty and immunities for Mugabe and his henchmen if they bowed out gracefully. This offer has now been spurned and, to a clear extent, Mugabe is now a pawn in the hands of his hard men and women—and they are very hard—who are determined to wheel out all their coercive resources to win, rig or intimidate their way to a victory.
Mugabe had made it clear to his friends and family, and even to his cabinet, that he was exhausted, that he had clearly been defeated, and was prepared to concede. But he has always been a staunch man of the party, and the party has been hijacked by the hardliners. They are the same people who preach anti-colonialism and socialism while living in mansions of great ostentation. Mugabe himself lives in a huge estate surrounded by white and blue walls with a grand Chinese arch at the entrance. Little perhaps does he know how ready his Chinese friends would be prepared to ditch him as the endgame, now begun by his hardliners, wends it way to its conclusion.
Zanu-PF will have to deploy the "Green Bomber" youth militia and the war veterans. But the formal security forces are themselves divided. The South Africans probably thwarted a coup by the two most extreme generals, which was also resisted by the other generals in the high command. In the presidential election, the rank and file of the security forces voted, it is said, 70 per cent against Mugabe. They also have desperate extended families who cannot feed their children.
On the same day as the politburo met, the new Zimbabwean $50m note was introduced. That will buy a single cup of coffee. 20 per cent of the workforce is in employment, with a a semi-skilled worker commanding a monthly salary of around $700m. No one will give up a 14th of their salary for a cup of coffee. They will spend what they have on food, if food is available. The streets are full of people queuing for money or food, or just walking up and down—waiting. Despite the violence to come, they will wait, I am sure, until the runoff comes, and a very brave people will then consign Mugabe and his hardliners to history and, immunities scorned, to The Hague.
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