After a tense five year coalition between Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwe is back at the ballot box. On the eve of the polls closing on 31 July, the Frontline Club hosted a debate with four experts to discuss what this election will mean for the future of Zimbabwe.

Simukai Tinhu (left), Dr Sue Onslow (centre), Wilf Mbanga (right). Photo: Dan Tookey

Dr Sue Onslow, currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, began by asking whether the panel believed there to be any ‘vital conditioning before the start of today?’ and commenting:

‘It’s often said that elections are stolen well before anyone actually puts a cross on a piece of paper’

Wilf Mbanga, the founder, publisher and editor of The Zimbabwean newspaper, said:

‘At the last election the African Union condemned him [Mugabe] for the 400 people who were killed. . . . There were people with broken bones, people in hospitals and there was evidence of violence which you couldn’t deny. This time around he has decided he’s not going to do that. People will vote peacefully, there are no dead bodies, no broken bones, but they’re manipulating the figures.’

Mbanga continued by explaining in detail how the electoral role has been doctored. ‘They will do it  and win the election with the figures, not beating up people’’.

Chofamba Innocent Sithole, a Zimbabwean journalist and current assistant editor of NewsAfrica magazine, argued that there was a positive element to the current election in that the violent wings of all the parties have been demobilised:

‘It is true that all the parties engage in violence; Zanu-PF perhaps just has a bigger capacity for violence.’

He continued that although Zanu-PF seem to have retreated from violence, they still have other things in their arsenal:

‘They control the institutions that register voters, that delineate constituencies and that has pretty much been in evidence at this election.’

Simukai Tinhu, an African Affairs Analyst based in London, pointed out that in the first round of the 2008 elections there was very limited violence:

‘It was only in the second round when Mugabe had realised that there was a potential that he might actually lose the presidency. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is surge in violence if there is to be a run-off.’

According to Dr Onslow the electoral rules for the election are baffling, making her ‘quite cross-eyed trying to work out what was going on.’

Mbanga agreed but argued that this confusion had been quite deliberate:

‘They’ve actually criminalised voter education. A number of people have been arrested who were found educating people how to vote; where to put their x. They will be going to court after the elections. People have gone in to this election ignorant of whether their names are even on the electoral rolls.’

Sithole argued that the ‘Mugabe factor’ is not going to have as much sway in this election as it has in previous ones:

‘It is ludicrous for young Zimbabweans looking to the future to be seized with this zeal to go and thrust this old man back in to power. Because of this I think Tsvangirai is going to swing it.’

However, Tinhu disagreed with this analysis arguing that to the contrary Mugabe does appeal to the youth though it not seen to be ‘trendy.’

Mbanga argued that Mugabe has great appeal for those who remember Zimbabwe pre 1980 – and Mugabe is still acting like he is fighting that war.

Sithole made it clear that he thought that Mugabe as an individual was not prepossessing to the Zimbabwean people – but that his ideas still resonated with a lot of people:

 ‘Even among young people there is an admiration for a leader who is seen to be strong. Someone who can stand up to powerful countries, and powerful interests. This is something that not only resonates in Zimbabwe but also across Africa.’

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/will-2013-see-the-end-of

Monday 11 March

On Monday, a two-day referendum on the political status of the Falklands Islands wraps-up, with the results due that evening. The referendum is largely symbolic, since the islanders overwhelmingly favour retaining their status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom. The Argentine government, predictably, has already said it considers the poll a farce and it that it will continue to pursue its claim to sovereignty regardless of the outcome. Expect some chest-beating in Buenos Aires.

Also Monday, the US and South Korea are scheduled to begin an annual joint military exercise called Key Resolve. The exercise, which runs until 21 March and involves about 13,500 troops from the two nations, comes at a particularly tense time in the peninsula following the 12 February nuclear test in North Korea and the subsequent tightening of UN sanctions against the secretive communist state, which were approved on 7 March.

Monday is also a big day at the UN Human Rights Council session taking place in Geneva. Reports on North Korea, Syria, Myanmar (Burma) and Iran are all due to be considered on Monday. There is a press conference with the  Commission of Inquiry on Syria scheduled. It follows the announcement last week that the number of refugees from the conflict has surpassed the million-person mark.

EU Foreign Ministers are also due to meet Monday, with Syria a particular focus. Joint UN-Arab League Special Envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi will brief ministers at a lunch before the meeting.

Tuesday 12 March

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, will host the leader of the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia for talks in Moscow. He is also due to meet today with the Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan who is making his first visit abroad since securing re-election last month. This choice of location for the trip is a clear affirmation of the close – and geo-politically significant – ties between Yerevan and Moscow.

Finally Tuesday, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde is scheduled to arrive in Algeria where she will pay a three-day visit.

Wednesday 13 March

On Wednesday, British Foreign and Defence Secretaries William Hague and Philip Hammond will be hosting their Russian counterparts Sergey Lavrov and Sergei Shoigu for talks in London, the first talks in this ‘2+2’ format. Syria is likely to be high on the agenda, although cynics might suggest the UK has little influence over Russia in this, or any, regard. Another topic that may be discussed privately is the ongoing inquest into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko (a procedural hearing in that inquest takes place on Thursday).

Finally, in the United States the Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled to hold what is expected to be a highly emotive hearing on sexual assault in the military, with three of the witnesses giving testimony at the hearing being victims of abuse themselves.

Thursday 14 March

EU leaders will descend upon Brussels again on Thursday for their second meeting of the year, and the first since the Italian elections that failed to produce a clear victor and threaten to derail what was looking like a significantly more positive year for the region. It will also be UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s first opportunity to meet with counterparts since his Chancellor George Osborne failed to extract any significant concessions on the proposed cap on bankers’ bonuses that is scheduled to take effect in 2014.

Finally, Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold talks with the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Moscow. Russia currently holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council and has said it wants to make progress in the Middle East Peace Process a priority of its presidency.

Friday 15 March

The Italian parliament is scheduled to reconvene on Friday following the elections held at the end of February. Discussions on possible coalitions will begin in earnest the following week – likely on 21 March – hosted by outgoing Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. Many fear further elections later in the year are inevitable.

Friday also marks two years since the start of the Syrian uprising which has since descended into a horrific bloodbath which the international community appears powerless to stop.

Weekend

Saturday also marks the deadline for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form a coalition, after he was forced to seek a two-week extension on March 2. Although both Israeli and US officials have issued public declarations suggesting a failure to form a government would not imperil the visit the following week by Barack Obama, others are not so sure.

Finally, as noted earlier, the 12th National People’s Congress closes in Beijing, with votes on draft resolutions and a closing ceremony, marking the culmination of the once –in-a-decade leadership transition in China.

Some images courtesy of Vasily Smirnov / Shutterstock.com

Once a year, the world’s leaders descend on New York for the UN’s blue ribbon event, the cumbersomely-titled UN General Assembly’s General Debate.

This year, the build-up has been dominated by the Palestinian Authority’s planned bid to become the 194th member of the UN, following South Sudan’s incorporation earlier in the year.

Notwithstanding any last minute deals, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will personally submit the application to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday, September 23, after Abbas has delivered his speech to assembled leaders.

Indeed, Friday’s session is set to be a cracker, since it also features Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s speech, in which he must surely address the issue. And yet while the Palestinian membership-issue is grabbing all the headlines, there’s plenty of other highlights.

Ahead of the formal UNGA opening today, there was a high-level meeting on Libya yesterday, the first since the UN formally recognised the Transitional National Council as the official representative of Libya last Friday. 

US President Barack Obama met privately for the first time with TNC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil, and held separate summits with President Hamid Karzai before he returned to Aghanistan to join the mourning of the assassinated leader Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Tuesday also saw French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe host a ministerial-level meeting of the so-called Deauville Partnership, a G20-offshoot dedicated to supporting fledgling Arab democracies.

The Debate kicks off today with an address by the Brazilian President, the first for Dilma Rousseff since she took office in January and no doubt a welcome relief from domestic troubles.

A notable absence, though, is Russian leader Dmitry Mevedev, who has chosen to delegate responsibilities this year to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

In the afternoon South Africa’s Jacob Zuma will be speaking. On Thursday morning, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives his traditionally polemical speech (who can forget last year, when he alluded to the 9/11 attacks being a conspiracy). British Prime Minister David Cameron also speaks that session.

Highlights from the afternoon session on Thursday include an inaugural address by newly-elected Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, an address from ageing despot Robert Mugabe, and also remarks from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose star is in the ascendancy amid Turkey’s role in the Arab Spring.

On the sidelines that day, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hosting a UN High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Safety and Security, likely to focus significantly on lessons to be learned from the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant back in March. Friday, as we’ve seen, is all about the Palestinian-membership issue.

But in the morning there is also a first-time address from new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda , who is expected to put in appearance also at the nuclear safety meeting. That afternoon South Sudanese President Salva Kiir – who meets one on one with President Obama earlier in the week – will give his country’s address for the first time since it became member number 193 last July

Sadly, one of the traditionally more entertaining speakers – Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez – is not expected to make the journey to New York this time, as he is recovering from a fourth round of chemotherapy for cancer discovered earlier in the year.

By Nicole Hunt

Anders Behring Breivik, the man who admitted to setting off the 22 July bomb in Oslo, killing eight people, before killing 69 people on the island of Utoya, makes his first public appearance at Oslo City Court on Monday. On 12 September, the court rejected a police request for another closed door hearing, meaning media and victims’ families will be able to attend.

In Geneva, the UN Global Fund releases the findings of a four-month independent review into its financial safeguards, following accusations of mismanagement of funds in recipient countries.

Monday is also the six month anniversary of the beginning of military action in Libya. Forces from the US, the UK, France, Canada, UAE and Qatar began enforcing the no-fly zone authorised by UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on 19 March.

The trial of seven Italian scientists charged with manslaughter for failing to predict the April 2009 earthquake that killed over 300 people kicks off in L’Aquila on Tuesday. The scientists, who made up the city’s Great Risks Commission, are accused of failing to warn people of the potential risk of an earthquake and convincing people not to leave town a week before the earthquake struck.

In a Paris court, former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and representatives for News Group Newspapers appear charged with breaching France’s privacy and defamation laws in relation to a 2008 story about former FIA president Max Mosley. Mosley was awarded £60,000 in damages by the UK High Court in 2008, but the European Court of Human Rights rejected an application by Mosley in May that would have required media to inform a person before publishing a story containing their private information.

Amid concerns of potential post-election violence, Zambians go to the polls to elect their president and members of the National Assembly. Levy Mwanawasa won the 2006 election, but died in August 2008 and was replaced by Rupiah Banda, who is seeking his first full term.

The UN General Assembly general debate opens in New York on Wednesday, with all eyes on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, barring last-minute diplomatic developments, is expected to seek a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood.

On Thursday, a verdict is expected in the first case brought in under France’s ‘burka ban’ laws. Two women in the town of Meaux were arrested for wearing the niqab veil in May, with one of them banned from attending the last hearing because her face was still covered.

At the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe are both scheduled to speak. Ahmadinejad’s past speeches have prompted walkouts from some delegations, while Mugabe’s have typically been anti-western. British Prime Minister David Cameron, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ivorian President Alassane Ouatarra are also on the bill.

The week draws to a close with some high-profile court hearings and elections. Closing arguments are set to begin in Amanda Knox’s murder appeal in Perugia on Friday, while Egyptian courts are busy with the testimony of ruling military council member Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi at former President Hosni Mubarak’s trial on Saturday in Cairo, as well as the verdict in the Khaled Said murder trial in Alexandria. Two policemen are on trial for Said’s June 2010 death, which prompted widespread protests in Egypt at a time when police were rarely prosecuted.

In Bahrain, by-elections are held to replace 11 opposition lawmakers who resigned in March over government crackdowns on anti-regime protesters.

French Senate elections take place on Sunday, with half of the 346 seats up for grabs. Party performances will be closely watched ahead of next year’s presidential elections.

In Freiburg, Pope Benedict XVI wraps up a four-day visit to Germany to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his ordination as a priest

If the IMF team leader had asked those of us who live here, rather than talking only to government officials and foreign diplomats, we could have cast some light on his bafflement. At the centre of the web, like a malignant spider, sits the Old Man, the President. He knows his days are numbered, though he still believes that Death will take him down before politics do. He knows there are five or six hundred apparatchiks who keep him in power – generals, cabinet ministers, a few of the more powerful MPs, some businessmen (a handful of whom are white). Many are his relatives, of course, for this is still a tribal culture, beneath the veneer of modernity.

These are the only people with whom he has contact. They know that when he goes, they go too, so they have a powerful interest in making sure that he only hears two messages: You are wonderful and the people love you. And if you leave us, the country will collapse.

In its dying days ZANU (PF) has adopted an ideology that might best be described as Socialist Kleptocracy. Publicly the hierarchs proclaim a determination to redistribute wealth and promote equality, to protect the workers from rapacious capitalists, to promote solidarity with the oppressed masses at home and abroad, and to resist resurgent colonialism and imperialism. In private, they loot, steal, coerce, bribe, accept bribes, and occasionally murder those who cross them.

In order to keep their snouts in the trough as long as possible, they have adopted asystem used by many failing despots in their last years. First, fix the exchange rate. In Zimbabwe the Reserve Bank quotes an entirely arbitrary rate of 250 Zimbabwe Dollars (ZWD) to the US Dollar. This morning the black market rate is ZWD7,200 to the US, up from 6,400 last week.

General This or Comrade Minister That can call the Reserve Bank and order a thousand US dollars, in cash, for which he will pay ZWD250,000. He will then sell these US dollars (to a desperate manufacturer with a critical import requirement, or a desperate mother with a child who needs chemotherapy in South Africa) on the black market, for ZWD7.2 million. A return visit to the Reserve Bank, and the Honourable Minister has turned a cool profit of USD 27,800. And all you need to make it work is a ZANU PF card and a history in the Liberation struggle. ‘Happy Days’, as old white Rhodesians would say, clinking gin and tonics on the stoep at sunset.

To maintain the façade that government policy is driven only by a desire to protect the workers, prices are also fixed for bread, maize flour, sugar, cooking oil, fuel, and a handful of other essentials. As a consequence most of the time these commodities are not available in the shops, only on the black market. The controlled price of a standard loaf of bread ZWD570. It costs twice that to manufacture. So canny bakers make rolls, and “fancy loaves” (with a couple of poppy seeds on top) which are not subject to price controls.

The system works because Zimbabwe’s most significant export in 2007 is people. This of course suits our leader: one of Mugabe’s most trusted lieutenants said a year or so ago that better we have only six million people living here, all of whom are loyal to the government, than twelve million, half of whom want change.

In Shona culture, it is not acceptable to rebel against your chief. If you do not like the way he runs your village, you leave. And this is what a quarter of the population has done – to Botswana, and South Africa, and Australia, and so many to the UK that London is now know locally as Harare North.

The diaspora’s relatives back home have to eat, however. So those two or three million Zimbabweans working outside each remit around USD50 a month. The annual total – say USD1.2 billion – is close to what we earned from commercial agriculture at peak production in the late 1990s.

The system has worked well for five years, but it is starting to collapse. The Governor of the Reserve Bank this week told parliament that he would not be able to find foreign currency for the police or the army. He didn’t say that this was because his colleagues had stolen it all, but he might as well have done.

There will come a day, in the coming months or years, when President Bob’s acolytes will decide that he is no longer an asset. That he has become a liability. That’s the way it works in Shona culture – when the Chief oversteps the mark, a small group of elders tell him, in confidence, that it is time to go. They may even pave his way with gold – give him a titular job as Head of State for Life, for instance, the political equivalent of promotion to a big office with great views and no telephone.

But for the time being, the looting continues. And those of us who care about this country must curb our impatience and do all we can to encourage our fellow countrymen and women in exile to prepare for the day when they come back to rebuild this land.

(The writer is a Frontline Club member who lives in Zimbabwe. He would rather not spend the next two years in jail for reporting without a permit, so has asked to remain anonymous.)

Everyone in Zimbabwe is terrified of being picked up by President Robert Mugabe’s secret police, the CIO – and with good reason. In March the government brought in the Interception of Communications Bill giving it authority to intercept text messages, phone calls, e-mails and post.

Even so, it seemed somewhat elaborate for a group of volunteers handing out soup packets and toilet rolls to needy OAPs to be quite so cloak and dagger. For those unfamiliar with Zimbabwe, it is easy to be complacent. With its bright sunshine, perfumed jacaranda trees and people lingering in cafes over cappuccino, it does not look like a police state.

But then you hear of the man arrested after being overheard complaining about prices on a bus and find that everyone you visited in a township that morning was later questioned by CIO. Zimbabwean journalists who dare denigrate Mugabe in their stories face up to 20 years in jail. In fact, Zimbabwe is classified by the World Association of Newspapers as one of the most dangerous places for the media in the world.

The notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), under which journalists must register with the state’s Media and Information Commission, has been used over the last three years to arrest more than 100 journalists and close four newspapers, including the Daily News, the largest circulation paper.

But at a recent event in Bulawayo to mark World Press Freedom Day, the Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga, a former BBC journalist, insisted “there is nothing wrong with the law”. For foreign media, the penalty for being caught “practising journalism” is two years in jail. No one wants to end up in one of Mugabe’s crowded prisons rife with TB, AIDS and cockroaches.

Over the last four years, I have made 13 clandestine visits into the country and still don’t sleep easy while I am there. One night I drove out of the electric gates of the place I was staying to see a street full of flashing blue lights. I froze. “That’s it,” I thought. Then I realised that the vehicles were actually fire engines and there was smoke billowing out of the house next door.

As a white journalist it is hard to be low profile. There are not many whites in Zim anymore and certainly not wandering around townships or villages. But while we hopefully can jump on a plane out at the end of the day, Zimbabwean journalists have to stay and face the consequences, as do those we interview. This means weighing up the risk before going to a place and protecting almost everyone’s identity.

One man was so worried that I would write about his organisation’s charitable activities that he even called my head-office in London and denied they existed. The first time I really appreciated how much fear people were living under was a year ago when Mugabe switched his attention to the cities, targeting the urban population who had dared vote against him in successive elections.

I watched in shock as police bulldozers demolished thousands of homes, market stalls and small businesses. Operation Murambatswina or “Drive Out the Filth” turned the country into an apocalyptic landscape wreathed with plumes of smoke and scattered with refugees clutching the scant belongings they had managed to salvage in bundles on their heads or in wheelbarrows.

Nothing in all my 19 years of foreign reporting has affected me so profoundly as wandering through the smoking ruins of Mbare, the southern suburb of Harare that sprawls around Zimbabwe’s oldest and largest market. My Lonely Planet guidebook recommends it as a highlight of Harare and the place to see “colourful crowded scenes typical of Africa”. Instead, it looked as if a tsunami had passed through, reducing the famous market into drift-piles of smashed wood, twisted metal, broken bricks and trampled tomatoes.

Amid a pile of pink concrete and some torn magazine photos of J-Lo and Mariah Carey sat a large woman with elaborately beaded hair and silent tears rolling down her face. She tonelessly explained that this was all that was left of the beauty salon, Glory’s Hair Palace, where she had braided hair and dispensed advice about the male species with equal skill.

None of these people were beggars or criminals. Like Glory, they had all been working years to feed and school their children, only to find their homes and workplaces crushed to rubble in the name of “urban beautification”.Past the National Foods factory, I came to Kambu Zuma suburb where police and militia had just arrived on their trucks and bulldozers. I stared aghast as people sat and did nothing while police took axes to their homes. Impatient with their slow progress, the police lit large fires and started ordering residents to throw on their possessions.

I watched hundreds of Zimbabweans, one of Africa’s most educated populations, obediently smash and burn all they had ever worked for, leaving them with nowhere to live, no means to feed their children or pay their school fees.I had made repeated trips to report on Zimbabwe since 1999 when the first farm invasion took place.

Throughout the subsequent intimidation of the population and three rigged elections, I had never understood why Zimbabweans did not rise up against their leader as people had in Yugoslavia or Ukraine. It irritated me that they kept asking why the outside world did nothing, when it seemed they were unwilling to help themselves. But at that moment in Kambu Zuma, watching people meekly burn their own belongings, I realised for the first time just how much 25 years of Mugabe’s rule had oppressed the population.