Zimbabwe before and after the June 2000 elections: an assessment (continued)

The main opposition party, the MDC, was quick to draw a connection between political misrule and economic collapse. Long petrol queues around Harare bore testimony to foreign-exchange shortages and mismanagement in the state oil-procurement company. All this had proved fertile ground for opposition canvassing. Many Zimbabweans were also disillusioned because of high unemployment, soaring inflation and a decaying health service. They compared all this with their president's affluent lifestyle and the vast sums (an estimated US$30mn a month - a tremendous financial drain on the Zimbabwean economy) being spent by Harare on military support to prop up the Kabila regime in the DRC. During the recent devastating floods in the south of Zimbabwe, the armed forces were unable to offer much assistance as most of their helicopters were on service in the DRC. ZANU PF's tight grip on the electronic media, its unabashed use of state resources, and its built-in majority in parliament - Mugabe appoints 30 members of the 150 seat National Assembly - made it an almost foregone conclusion that it would retain a majority in the new parliament, however slim. The voters' roll, described by a UN electoral monitoring team as seriously flawed, was also going to help. But despite such obstacles to an opposition victory, many Zimbabweans were determined to vote for change. Long queues formed outside mobile registration centres after the February 2000 referendum in marked contrast to the apathy shown in the 1995 election - Mugabe's defeat in the constitutional plebiscite had proved he was not invincible.

A national opinion survey released in March 2000 by the Helen Suzman Foundation said that 65% of voters in Zimbabwe thought it was time for change and would like to see Mugabe step down. However, it pointed out that although opposition feelings were strong, they had not coalesced enough: 30% of voters still supported Mugabe, 22% favoured Tsvangirai, and 48% were undecided or opted for a host of other minor candidates. The opposition was in need of more organizational capacity, particularly in the rural areas, to persuade the bulk of the undecided voters, many of whom did not vote in the referendum. But few serious politicians doubted that Zimbabwe was heading for its roughest elections since the end of the liberation war and independence in 1980. The ruling ZANU PF was more unpopular than it had ever been and the economy was in free-fall, facing a massive currency devaluation from Z$38:US$1 to around Z$52:US$1 by December 2000. There was no end in sight to the fuel crisis widely blamed on corruption, mismanagement and the military intervention in the DRC. The MDC smelled victory; not just in the urban centres that had been getting more disaffected with ZANU PF rule over the past decade, but also in the rural areas where about 70% of voters live.

Prior to the June 2000 polls, it seemed that ZANU PF had taken a political stranglehold on the rural areas, with the acquiescence of the CFU which had agreed to a deal with Chenjerai Hunzvi's National Liberation War Veterans' Association, a front for the military-backed ZANU PF farm invasions. The logistical brain behind the invasion of some 1 700 commercial farms is General Perence Shiri, head of the air force and the officer who headed the notorious Fifth Brigade during the massacres in the western Zimbabwean province of Matabeleland between 1983 and 1987. CFU members had to agree, under extreme duress, that squatters could remain on their land in exchange for no further violence and a return to farm activities. In practice, this meant that ZANU PF had established bases on most farms, the obvious target being the opposition MDC - the agricultural union to which many farm workers belong is affiliated to the ZCTU, which is closely aligned to the MDC. Indeed, highly placed ZANU PF sources referred to a two-pronged election campaign strategy centred on the land issue. Mugabe was using the issue of land, first, to ensure that the ruling party won the polls at any cost; and, second, to build a solid platform and sell himself as the only candidate who can win a presidential election for the party in 2002, against mounting local and foreign opposition.