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Letter from America
June 2, 2008
Mugabe is headed for the electoral guillotine on June 27
The vultures are circling high above him.
The year 2008 will turn out to be the year Robert Mugabe probably hoped and prayed would never come.
In one interview a woman who had been badly tortured by Mugabe’s thugs was asked if, and how, she intended to vote in the run-off election between Mugabe and Tsvangirai on June 27.
The woman looked at her bandaged arms which had been savagely broken by Mugabe’s barbarians, took a deep breath and said, “Yes. I intend to vote. And I will again vote exactly the way I did on March 29. I will vote for Morgan Tsvangirai. If by beating me Mugabe was hoping I would vote for him then he should have killed me. So long as I am still alive and as long as I am able I will never vote for Mugabe in my life.”
The woman’s sheer courage and determination reflected similar sentiments by hundreds other victims of torture by the so called war veterans who are roaming the countryside beating and torturing MDC supporters.
Another victim said if Mugabe hopes to win the election on June 27 he will have to literary kill millions of Zimbabwean voters.
Whatever his motives were for ordering the barbaric and savage assault of MDC supporters ZANUPF leader Robert Mugabe is likely to have generated even more resistance and opposition to his rule and chances of winning the run-off election on June 27.
And what is emerging in Zimbabwe is a new generation of freedom fighters. They number in millions. They are not armed. They have been brutalized by Mugabe’s savages. But they have stood their ground, resolute in their determination to vote Mugabe and ZANUPF out, whatever the consequences.
MDC president, Morgan Tsvangirai, captured this mood and determination when he said, with their hearts bleeding because of endless torture and assaults, Zimbabweans will march to the polling station to vote Mugabe out.
No one would have been more aware than Mugabe himself that Zimbabweans are now resolved to throw him out of office for the second time in three months. They did so on March 29. But Mugabe refused to go. He held on tight to his office despite his bruising at the polls. June 27 will give Zimbabweans another chance to give Mugabe a more decisive push into the dustbin of history.
Mugabe’s survival strategy started immediately after the March 29 elections.
Some of the information coming from disgruntled insiders indicates that, soon after March 29, ZANUPF decided to resort fully to using violence to punish and coerce people into voting for Mugabe in the run-off elections.
The campaign was thorough and systematic. Militia thugs and their so-called war veterans were given a blank check and ordered to inflict whatever injury using whatever means at their disposal. Reports say these thugs went from village to village wreaking havoc. The latest count is over 50 MDC supporters were killed, thousands were injured, lost their homes and fled either to safety in the mountains, or in urban areas.
Mugabe’s plan is to intimidate people into voting for him in the run-off election. Eye witness reports say Mugabe’s thugs have used both physical violence and psychological intimidation to coerce the rural people in particular into voting for Mugabe.
One farmer said he was told that if there just one vote cast for Tsvangirai the farmer would lose his land. Another said the thugs said they were going to monitor very closely who each voter voted for. Yet another said the thugs openly threatened that ZANUPF would resort to the guerrilla war of Mugabe was defeated. Other people said the thugs had said if Mugabe lost they would return and destroy all their villages and property.
Estimates say as many as 200,000 rural people may have fled their homes and sought shelter elsewhere. This would render them ineligible to vote if they stay away from their constituencies.
The most interesting thing was that almost every displaced or injured supporter of the MDC said they would not be intimidated, and that they were waiting to get the opportunity to go back to their constituencies and vote. “My mind is already made as to whom I will vote for. No amount of intimidation will change my decision,” one rural voter stated.
This resilience by the rural people shows that Mugabe’s violent campaign to coerce the supporters of the opposition movement to vote for him has failed. Zimbabweans are a much more mature breed of voters than Mugabe realizes. Mugabe has historically fooled himself into thinking that he can manipulate indefinitely the people of Zimbabwe. He should have listened to one of the speeches by Abraham Lincoln in which he said you can fool some people all the time; you can fool all the people some time, but you can never fool all people all the time. Mugabe has become intoxicated with power to the extent that he now believes in his own myth that he can rule indefinitely.
For a man with ten academic degrees Mugabe has certainly become shortsighted on the history of the resistance movement. Mugabe has become entangled in the warped logic of the late Ian Smith who repeatedly stated there would never be black majority rule in his life and not in a thousands years. Now Mugabe and his exuberant pea brained wife Grace have vowed MDC will never rule Zimbabwe.
But Mugabe is fighting a multifaceted war. The Zimbabwean voters are but one side of that war.
The economy is in shambles. Inflation has now hit over a million percent. The former US ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell had projected this figure by the end of the year. He was ridiculed for exaggerating his projection. Right now inflation is, like a speeding bullet, headed toward two million percent in two months. Neither Mugabe’s army, thugs nor cronies can tame the runaway inflation and the decrepit economy. No regime in history has survived a state of a dilapidated economy as in Zimbabwe today. And June 27 might well be the day Mugabe will go under the electoral guillotine.
If Mugabe is like a cat and has nine lives they will be limited to three. He may survive the June 27 electoral electrocution. He may survive the mangled wreck of the economy. He will still have to contend with his health. He was spotted with a swollen ankle a few days ago. A week early he interrupted his speech with an earth shattering sesmic cough that lasted forever and elevated him to a jerky tribal dancer.
At the age of 84 Mugabe can see the vultures circling above him.
