Mugabe predicts 'mountainous victory'

A defiant President Robert Mugabe predicted a “a huge, mountainous victory” for his party on the eve of a general election that critics have portrayed as a referendum on his increasingly isolated and repressive regime.

“We have never been losers, because we have always been a party of the people,” Mugabe today told more than 10,000 supporters, cheering wildly as music blared in a field in a densely populated neighbourhood of Harare.

Opposition leaders are urging their supporters to go out in numbers tomorrow to show their discontent with years of declining incomes, soaring unemployment and rampant inflation.

The economy has shrunk 50% over the past five years. Unemployment is at least 70%. Agriculture, the economic base of Zimbabwe, has collapsed and at least 70% of the population live in poverty.

Opposition leaders blame the country’s economic woes on the government’s often violent seizure of thousands of white owned commercial farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans.

Mugabe defends the programme as a way of righting severe racial imbalances in land ownership inherited from British colonial rule. He blames food shortages in a country that was once a regional breadbasket on years of crippling drought.

At stake are 120 elected parliamentary seats. Mugabe appoints another 30 seats, virtually guaranteeing his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party a majority.

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change won 57 seats in the last parliamentary election in 2000, despite what Western observers called widespread violence, intimidation and vote rigging. But it has lost six seats in subsequent by-elections.

In 2002, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai narrowly lost an equally-flawed presidential poll.

While there has been much less violence during this campaign, a coalition of local aid and rights groups said the poll would not be free, fair or legitimate.

“Covert intimidation is still rife, as is the culture of fear,” said Brian Kogoro, chairman of Crisis in Zimbabwe.

A series of repressive laws introduced since 2000 have drastically curtailed the opposition’s ability to meet, express its views and access the media, the coalition said.

While restrictions were eased in recent weeks to allow campaigning by all sides, security forces and the ruling party’s youth militia have maintained a menacing presence at opposition rallies.

Rights groups say residents in drought stricken rural areas have been told they could forfeit desperately needed food aid if they vote for the opposition - allegations the government denies.

They have also raised concerns about the voters’ roll, which Kogoro said today was “in shambles”.

Based on an audit of 10% of the list, the FreeZim rights group concluded it contains up to one million dead people, over 300,000 duplicate names and one million people who no longer reside at their registered address.

On the eve of the election, there was still confusion over how many polling stations there would be and where they would belocated.

Some 5.8 million of Zimbabwe’s nearly 12 million people are registered to vote Thursday. But up to 3.4 million Zimbabweans who live overseas – many of whom are believed to be opposition supporters – have been barred from casting ballots.

Mugabe chose the eve of the general election to increase the minimum wage for domestic servants tenfold.

A union official said the sudden increase would lead to mass unemployment and illicit child labour.

The main opposition party called it an attempt to drive a wedge between urban employers, thought to support the opposition, and their employees.

Official spokesmen have not commented on the reasons or timing behind the announcement.

Mlamleli Sibanda, spokesman for the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions, described the announcement as “two steps forward, one step backward” for the country’s estimated 250,000 domestic workers, now mostly employed by black households.

He predicted that with many middle class employers already struggling to survive financially, it would lead to mass redundancies and increased illicit employment of children from rural areas.

Meanwhile the government is refusing to sell food to suspected opposition supporters in parts of southern Zimbabwe, Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube said today.

Ncube, who was branded a half-wit by President Robert Mugabe on Tuesday after the cleric called for a non-violent uprising against the ruling party, said in an election-eve statement that villagers had been told they could not buy food if they were on a list of people thought to support the opposition.

“That people are actually having food withheld or are being threatened with this outcome of any party other than ZANU-PF should win the election at the local levels is a serious crime,” Ncube said.

“The legitimacy of this election must be once more called into question,” said Ncube, adding that “to cynically use hunger as a weapon is to stab at the very heart of democracy”.