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I despair for the Zimbabwean people today. I watched events unfolding in Zimbabwe yesterday with an increased sense of foreboding.
The MDC were about to hold a High Court sanctioned and authorised rally at Glamis Stadium within the Harare Showgrounds - which never started, as ZANU PF supporters occupied the Stadium, and they began to beat the MDC supporters as they arrived.
Al Jazeera, a “Arab-based news network - breaking news and features plus background material including profiles and global reactions” managed to air some footage of the violence as ZANU PF supporters swooped en masse on Tsvangirai’s supporters - and for their time, the newspaper was thrown out of Zimbabwe and now are re-locating in Johannesburg.
Since the March 29 elections, which gave Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change the parliamentary majority (the first time since 1980 that ZANU PF have been unseated - although the situation remains changeable as there are numerous legal challenges ongoing in the High Court), ZANU PF have been carrying our a systematic reign of terror on the people of Zimbabwe - primarily targeting MDC supporters.
Eighty five people are reported to have perished at the hands of ZANU PF since the elections at the end of March this year.
Mugabe’s party has, of course, denied that the violence was perpetrated by them, but alleges that the violence has been carried out by members of the MDC.
As we rolled ever closer to the second round of the Presidential election - supposed to be carried out this coming Friday - the violence has steadily increased, and the events of yesterday finally forced Tsvangirai’s hand.
Within just a few hours of the first reports of the violence, the MDC held a news conference in which they announced their withdrawal from the election. Morgan Tsvangirai said that there was no way his party could ask the people of Zimbabwe to vote for him, if that vote was going to result in the death of the people that voted for him.
Now, in the broad light of day, one wonders what will become of Zimbabwe. Mugabe will, by default, win the election on Friday. (They have to hold the ‘election’ - to give Mugabe’s ascendancy/return to the top job in the country - a sense of ‘legitimacy’.)
But what now for the millions of Zimbabweans now in dire straits in that country? Not everyone has access to a passport, or even the money required to catch an aircraft out of the doomed country.
With inflation gauged at about 2 million percent (yes, you read correctly - two million percent - the Central Statistical Office has failed to update the official figure for some months, saying that the economic climate makes the formulae used in their calculations incorrect… go figure) and the estimated PDL (Poverty Datum Line - the invisible line between a normal life and living in poverty expressed in monetary terms) for a four member family in Zimbabwe (‘estimated’ because, once again, the authority behind the releasing of such figures has indicated that a lack of goods in the shops makes the calculations incorrect) is 14 billion Zimbabwean dollars a month.
It is also estimated that the Zimbabwean currency, and with it, the inflation rate and the DPL adjust accordingly, loses somewhere in the region of 10% per day.
Using these very basic figures, which are probably more conservative than anything else, it means that the value of the Zimbabwean dollar, almost next to nothing at this time anyway, halves in value every seven to eight days.
And now Mugabe has forced himself back into office and is dealing with the MDC on an almost ‘at will’ basis (whilst I have been typing this, ZANU PF hoodlums, police and war veterans have raided the MDC head office in Harare and have bussed away anyone that they caught in the offices), and I shake my head in concern for the Zimbabwean people.
Whilst I understand the reason for the withdrawal from the election, I do wonder whether it was a tactical retreat, or an enforced capitulation?
Robb WJ Ellis
The Bearded Man
