Zim power "sharing" government sworn in

The long-awaited national unity government in Zimbabwe was sworn in last week. Morgan Tsvangirai, who should have been inaugurated as president based on last year's vote, was instead sworn in as prime minister by the long-time dictator Robert Mugabe. Several other members of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were also sworn in to the cabinet.

But it remains to be seen whether Tsvangirai and MDC cabinet members will have any real power, as Mugabe and his cronies will surely be loathe to relinquish their perks.

As the UK Independent notes: The first litmus test will be the sacking of Gideon Gono, the man who has bankrolled the Mugabe regime from his post as head of the central bank. "Clearly he's got to go," said the source. "Otherwise there will be no coherence on the economy and the international community won't give us the time of day."

If Prime Minister Tsvangirai is unable to wrest any real power away from the Mugabe cabal, then nothing will happen and the 'national unity' government will collapse.

I am reminded of the power sharing agreement in Guinea that ended the 2007 general strike. Then-head of state Lansana Conté accepted the union's pick for prime minister Lansana Kouyaté and some cabinet positions. But Conté and his cabal obstructed Kouyaté and the technocrat ministers, nothing got done and Kouyaté was eventually sacked by Conté replaced by another crony. Conté deftly diffused the momentum toward contestation without solving any of the underlying problems.

There is a serious risk that the same will happen in Zimbabwe. Ultimately, it's impossible to see Zimbabwe's implosion halting while Mugabe and his thieves are still in power. Just today, it was reported that Mugabe bought a $5.7 million house* in Hong Kong while his people are starving and dying of cholera.

(*-Of course, that's $5.7 million in US dollars. That amount in Zimbabwean dollars wouldn't even buy a quarter of a loaf of bread)

As if to illustrate the criminals' desperation, the MDC deputy agriculture minister-designate was arrested by the regime on trumped up terrorism charges.

Death knell to Zim's Re-Liberation Struggle?

The leader of Zimbabwe’s Re-Liberation Struggle has sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare in fears for his safety.

The move occured only hours after Morgan Tsvangarai, who'd won the first round of presidential voting a few months ago but saw results rigged to deny him the majority he'd earned, pulled out of the upcoming runoff after dozens of opposition supporters were murdered in a well-organized series of pogroms by thugs loyal to megalomaniac Bob Mugabe.

The tyrant, who some speculate is suffering from dementia, invoked Divine Right to rule the nation he considers his personal fiefdom. He claimed that God chose him to rule Zimbabwe and that 'only God' could remove him.

Mugabe's mother lived over a century.

The implication of the withdraw on Zimbabwe's Re-Liberation Struggle is unclear. Tsvangarai surely hopes the withdrawal will cause the international community to pressure the Mugabe mafia

The UN has already called for a poll delay, the Bush administration has condemned Mugabe-inspired violence against the opposition and the effete South African President Thabo Mbeki has made a 41,024th weak-kneed plea to Mugabe to not be quite so ill-tempered... pretty please with sugar on top.

But Mugabe has thumbed his nose at international pressure for years, even used to his own defiant advantage. So it begs belief that anything will change this time.

'Neutral' Chinese prop up Mugabe's terror

It's now more than three weeks that Bob Mugabe and his lemmings have been trying to steal the clear victory of President-elect Morgan Tsvangarai in Zimbabwe's elections.

Apparently, Tsvangarai's victory was so convincing that Mugabe's cronies can't simply rig it with a straight face. For a regime that cares so little about international opinion, this shows how overwhelming the opposition leader's victory really was.

But the assault by Mugabe's ZANU-PF cult is more than just theft. It's an all out war against Zimbabweans.

The one-time 'liberation movement' is setting up torture camps in order to beat, torture, and intimidate opposition activists and ordinary Zimbabweans, according to victims interviewed by Human Rights Watch.

HRW spokeswoman Georgette Gagnon also slammed the southern African regional grouping SADC and its mediator, South African president Thabo Mbeki. “The SADC and President Mbeki have completely failed Zimbabweans, and are allowing ZANU-PF to commit horrific abuses,” she said. “The African Union should assume responsibility for protecting civilians from rising violence, and ending the political impasse before Zimbabwe sinks deeper into disaster.”

This is the same Mbeki who's not only Mugabe's chief regional apologist, but whose government allowed an arms shipment from China into Zimbabwe to help facilitate Mugabe's war against Zimbabweans.

The ZANU-PF criminals are targetting humanitarian operations in perceived opposition strongholds.

But China's involvement* in Zimbabwe is not limited to arming Mugabe's death squads.

According to reports, Chinese soldiers have been seen on the streets of Zimbabwe.

This would not be the first time that Mugabe turned to the military of an Asian dictatorship to commit politicide.


[*-Note: Yes, this is the same China that regularly brags about its non-interference in African domestic politics.]

Majority rule for Zimbabwe!

It's been over two weeks since opposition leader Morgan Tsvangarai was elected president of Zimbabwe. In that time, the ruling ZANU-PF mafia have been trying to rig results so preserve their rule and that of dictator Bob Mugabe. But what was expected to be a simple rigging process, undertaken many times in Zimbabwe's history, has become complicated by a number of factors.

Among them:

-International pressure on Zimbabwe's regional allies who in turn put pressure on the Mugabe regime;

-The unexpectedly well-organized opposition;

-The announcement by Zimbabwean officials that the opposition had gained control of the parliament.

The last two events are the most surprising. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change had been divided and disorganized following an internal power struggle. But the party seems to have been well-prepared for this election, despite the pre-election violence in the country that made campaigning (for the opposition) nearly impossible.

International pressure on other southern African countries have borne surprising results. South African president Thabo Mbeki remains Mugabe's chief regional apologist. But the leader of Mbeki's party has hit out at Mugabe, calling him to concede defeat. This is all the more surprising since ANC party president Jacob Zuma has been accused in the past of being just like Mugabe.

While Zuma surely didn't mind poking the eye of his bitter rival Mbeki, this is a far more rational position for his country than Mbeki's clearly failed appeasement approach. Zimbabwe's economic and social meltdown has dramatic implications for neighboring South Africa, where thousands of economic and political refugees have already fled.

The Zimbabwean ambassador to the UN deceitfully compared his country's elections with the controversial US elections of 2000. He pointed out that no one attributed malice to the 6-week process between Election Day and the Supreme Court's annointing of George W. Bush. But he conveniently omits a few important facts. The initial results were made public rather quickly. This allowed the process that followed to be transparent, if messy. The fact that the regime refuses to release initial election results, in stark contrast to Florida 2000, combined with the regime's long history of theft (both of public money and elections) is what makes suspicions so strong.

Regional talks on the Zimbabwe crisis bizarrely center around Simba Makoni. The former ZANU-PF finance minister who is believed (and we don't know for sure because of the secrecy) to have gotten only 6 percent or so of the vote is seen by some as a compromise choice to allow the ZANU-PF to save face without having to concede to President-elect Tsvangarai. But I fail to see the logic of installing a man who received 6 percent of the vote ahead of a man who received 54 percent, nor do I see how the Zimbabweans who want majority rule would accept this.

Mugabe and his thieving cronies have spent the last decade destroying Zimbabwe to line their own pockets Whenever they've felt their power threatened, they've picked fights with white people. But ultimately the whites are not the ones who've suffered most from Mugabe's destruction. The primary victims are the blacks who can't afford to flee this dystopia.

So despite the state campaign of terror and intimidation, it's no surprise that most Zimbabweans voted against the ruling mafia. The regime has become yet another African movement to betray its ideals and run its country into the ground just to hold to power for a privileged elite.

Mugabe's ZANU movement spent most of the 1970s fighting on behalf majority rule.

Now they are spending much of 2008 fighting against majority rule.


Update: This article explains why so many of Mugabe's cronies are so desperate to cling to power. And if I'd been murdering opposition supporters, I'd probably be nervous too.