If Only Zimbabwe Had Been An Oil Rich Nation

Just imagine how different things would be.

The following is a video clip of a film obtained by Britain's Guardian Newspaper group which shows the vote-rigging and violence leading up to Zimbabwe's election run-off.

A generation from now, when historians look back at today's events in Zimbabwe, one thing will be very clear. It will be evident that if Zimbabwe was an oil rich nation instead of an agricultural one, it would have been included on George Bush's "Axis of Evil" and the world's super-powers would have intervened in its government years ago.

Instead the world has all but ignored an organized and emerging democratic opposition party and allowed Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe and his military leader Constantine Chiwenga to continue murdering and terrorizing people, thumbing their nose at the world and, utterly ruining the nation which was once known as "Africa's breadbasket" and "the jewel of Africa."1

Historians will note, what even today's casual observer can recognize, that the reign of Robert Mugabe has been as harsh and as cruel as that of Saddam Hussein. In fact, Robert Mugabe's dictatorship made be judged to be the worst of the too. Because, while it is true that Saddam and his son's were ruthles and inhumanly cruel to those who opposed them, Iraq as a whole was still an economically thriving nation. Zimbabwe, on the other hand, is in virtual ruins.

As Craig Timberg reported in his Wasington Post article, "Inside Mugabe's Violent Crackdown", the process of democracy never really stood a chance during Zimbabwe's recent election. Timberg's article also leaves you wondering just who is really running the Mugabe regime.

The following is an excerpt from that article:

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- President Robert Mugabe summoned his top security officials to a government training center near his rural home in central Zimbabwe on the afternoon of March 30. In a voice barely audible at first, he informed the leaders of the state security apparatus that had enforced his rule for 28 years that he had lost the presidential vote held the previous day.

Then Mugabe told the gathering he planned to give up power in a televised speech to the nation the next day, according to the written notes of one participant that were corroborated by two other people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

But Zimbabwe's military chief, Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, responded that the choice was not Mugabe's alone to make. According to two firsthand accounts of the meeting, Chiwenga told Mugabe his military would take control of the country to keep him in office or the president could contest a runoff election, directed in the field by senior army officers supervising a military-style campaign against the opposition.

Mugabe, the only leader this country has known since its break from white rule nearly three decades ago, agreed to remain in the race and rely on the army to ensure his victory. During an April 8 military planning meeting, according to written notes and the accounts of participants, the plan was given a code name: CIBD. The acronym, which proved apt in the fevered campaign that unfolded over the following weeks, stood for: Coercion. Intimidation. Beating. Displacement.

In the three months between the March 29 vote and the June 27 runoff election, ruling-party militias under the guidance of 200 senior army officers battered the Movement for Democratic Change, bringing the opposition party's network of activists to the verge of oblivion. By election day, more than 80 opposition supporters were dead, hundreds were missing, thousands were injured and hundreds of thousands were homeless. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's leader, dropped out of the contest and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy.

This account reveals previously undisclosed details of the strategy behind the campaign as it was conceived and executed by Mugabe and his top advisers, who from that first meeting through the final vote appeared to hold decisive influence over the president.

The Washington Post was given access to the written record by a participant of several private meetings attended by Mugabe in the period between the first round of voting and the runoff election. The notes were corroborated by witnesses to the internal debates. Many of the people interviewed, including members of Mugabe's inner circle, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government retribution. Much of the reporting for this article was conducted by a Zimbabwean reporter for The Post whose name is being withheld for security reasons.

What emerges from these accounts is a ruling inner circle that debated only in passing the consequences of the political violence on the country and on international opinion. Mugabe and his advisers also showed little concern in these meetings for the most basic rules of democracy that have taken hold in some other African nations born from anti-colonial independence movements.

Mugabe's party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, took power in 1980 after a protracted guerrilla war. The notes and interviews make clear that its military supporters, who stood to lose wealth and influence if Mugabe bowed out, were not prepared to relinquish their authority simply because voters checked Tsvangirai's name on the ballots.

References:
1. "How to Kill A Country" by Samantha Power for The Atlantic, 2003


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Zimbabwe's Women Face Brutality

Zimbabwean Farmers Facing State Eviction

The Madness Continues in Zimbabwe