Africa

Leaked results from Zimbabwe indicate that Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change outpolled President Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF by 47% to 43% in last month’s election. If these results hold the stage will be set for the expected runoff between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. And if they do hold, Tsvangirai will be unable reasonably to boycott the runoff, which he had initially threatened when he felt that he had won the polling outright.

So, far from endgame, Zimbabwe is, in most meaningful ways, right where it was more than a month ago. Everything in the last month has led Zimbabwe to a more tattered version of status quo ante. Except that Mugabe has had more time to cajole and pressure and coerce and brutalize opposition supporters and intimidate those on the fence. The runoff is to happen within three weeks of the official results being announced. In sum, the maelstrom has just begun.   

In this Sunday’s travel section The Washington Post published an “African Safari Special” (follow the links for safaris in individual countries). It is easy to reduce Africa, as so many tourists do, simply to the chance to see animals at game reserves. nonetheless, safaris also represent a significant tourist lure to the continent.

Is there reason for optimism that Robert Mugabe is on his way out in Zimbabwe? J. Stephen Morrison and Mark Bellamy, writing at CSIS Africa Policy Forum, seem to think so. Their argument is apparently predicated on the recent escalations of military violence against civilians representing the last throes of a desperate regime rather than simply the re-consolidation of power by force. I hope that they are correct, though I fear that they are not.

Freedom House has released its annual survey (and accompanying “critical tools”) on press freedom around the globe. For the sixth straight year press freedom has deteriorated worldwide with Africa among the worst regions. In Sub-Saharan Africa the Freedom House tallies indicate that 23 countries rate as “not free, ” with Eritrea as the worst (and Zimbabwe next).  Eighteen qualify as partially free. And  only seven rate as “free,” including  Mauritius (which receives the highest score  in Sub-Saharan Africa), Ghana, Mali, Cape Verde, Sao Tome & Principe, South Africa, and Namibia.

Zimbabwe’s state-run (Mugabe Tested, Mugabe Approved!) newspaper The Herald reports that the recount in 23 contested constituencies is nearly complete and that the four leading candidates (or their seconds) will be invited to witness the announcement and see the data.

Let us assume that The Herald is playing it straight, which is not something we can take for granted. Under ordinary circumstances sunlight is the best disinfectant, and transparency is necessary. But of course the situation, which will inevitably take place in circumstances that the government will dictate, may well just provide another opportunity for Mugabe’s grandstanding and demagoguery. Still, perhaps this represents traction after a month of stasis? 

Zimbabwe is not the only African country in which journalists are under siege. Any place where the politics are constriced by authoritarianism or merely by the encroachments of paranoid leadership the members of the media run the risk of being jailed. Just the latest example comes from Uganda, where three journalists (including the editor) from the magazine The Independent have been arrested (and the magazine’s offices raided) for possessing seditious materials and for writing inflammatory articles. It is a truism that a free society needs a free media, which means the opposite is also true — unfree countries, or countries on the way to unfreedom, crush the free press.

Mauritania is a poor country that produces only 30% of its own food. Meanwhile the global cost of food is skyrocketing. Naturally the result is food scarcity and the impoverished, as they always do, suffer disproportionately. And Mauritania is not alone. Much of Africa is feeling the squeeze of this global crisis of food underproduction coupled with the increasingly tenuous capacity to participate in the overpriced global market.  

By the way, I have no more idea what yesterday’s Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) announcement that ZANU-PF lost parliament, as most assumed, mean any more than anyone else does. Robert Mugabe has experienced setbacks before (think of the hair-breadth 2000 Parliamentary election or the  1999 defeat of Mugabe’s proposed constitutional changes) but never have the vultures swooped so close to the carrion of his own power as they do today. I still imagine that Mugabe will maintain his hold, however tenuous, on power.  

Is Zimbabwe on the brink of a civil war? Has the military engaged in a secret coup? Is Zim a police state? (To this last, at least, we say: “yes.”)

 The sad state of affairs is such that these questions are not only viable, they are necessary. Even with the United States putting the sort of quasi-pressure on Zim that only the US tends to apply when it comes to African affairs with which it could not possibly be less engaged, the reality is that the Zim stalemate continues, and I cannot imagine a scenario whereby that stalemate bodes well for the MDC opposition. Time is on Robert Mugabe’s side. And he knows as much.

The news is not getting any better in Zimbabwe. Police have arrested hundreds of individuals seeking shelter in the headquarters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). many of them were seeking safe haven from ZANU-PF’s ominously-named “Operation Mavhoterapapi,” which translates to “Who did you vote for?”

This does not end well.