Mugabe 'brokering deal to stand down'

Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe is considering standing down after 28 years of rule, it emerged tonight.

His advisers were holding talks with main opposition leader Morgan Tvsangarai, according to a businessman close to the state electoral commission and a lawyer close to the opposition.

And the BBC reported from inside the country that Mugabe was also in talks with military chiefs and opposition politicians, chaired by South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki.

Talks were still continuing, with no deal signed, according to the reports.

If Mugabe does agree to stand down he is expected to make the announcement in a TV address to the nation.

The businessman source said Mugabe, who has gone from independence hero to accused despot over the course of his rule, has been told he is far behind Mr Tsvangirai in preliminary results from Saturday’s presidential elections. Mugabe was told there could be an uprising if he were declared the winner, the businessman said. No official results have yet been issued in the presidential ballot.

Mugabe’s and Mr Tsvangirai’s advisers were discussing a “transitional arrangement,” the lawyer said. Both sources spoke on condition they were not identified.

Several diplomats said they had heard similar reports but could not corroborate the information.

Mr Tsvangirai today repeatedly postponed a promised first public statement since the elections.

Zimbabwe’s security chiefs have told the Electoral Commission to issue results portraying a close race, to prevent celebrations that could ignite violence with rival party militants, the businessman said. The opposition already has claimed victory in the elections that hinged on the destruction of the economy with people suffering to survive inflation soaring beyond 100,000%.

The commission has released results for 142 of the 210 parliamentary seats also up in the election. They give Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change 72 seats, including five for a breakaway faction, to 70 for Mugabe’s ruling party.

Political analyst John Makumbe said he had learned from military sources that they would respect the results of the elections.

That would indicate a change of heart – security chiefs the day before the elections warned they would not serve anybody but Mugabe and would not tolerate an opposition victory.

Martin Rupiya, a military analyst at South Africa’s Institute for Strategic Studies and a former lieutenant-colonel in the Zimbabwe army, said he had heard of the military’s involvement in negotiations for Mugabe to step down.

The election result “has compelled the military, the hawkish wing and the other moderate, to begin to reconsider accommodating the opposition,” he said. “Because of the nature of the wins they have been forced to reassess.”

Mr Tsvangirai has vowed not to enter an alliance with Mugabe but has said previously that he is ready to negotiate an exit package. He also has said that Mugabe should be tried for human rights abuses, possibly in an international court.

It appeared Mugabe was persuaded into talks by the possibility of a run-off in the presidential race, which the businessman said he would find too demeaning.

Yesterday the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network said that according to its random representative sample of polling stations across the country, Tsvangirai won just over 49% of the vote. A presidential candidate needs at least 50% plus one vote to avoid a run-off.

A run-off would have to be held within 21 days, leaving it close to the 28th anniversary of independence on April 18, 1980. Mugabe, who led a guerrilla movement that fought a seven-year war to end white minority rule, regards the anniversary as a potent symbol of his rule.

Mugabe will also have to weigh the concerns of those who have profited from his patronage, a group that includes top military leaders, officials in his ZANU-PF part and business people. They receive mining concessions, construction contracts and preferential licenses to run transport companies and other businesses.

Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliament observer mission, told South African radio Tuesday that leading members of Mugabe’s party were contemplating defeat with trepidation.

“I was talking to some of the bigwigs in the ruling party and they also are concerned about the possibility of a change of guard,” Mr Khumalo said. “ZANU-PF has actually been institutionalised in the lives of Zimbabweans, so it is not easy for anyone within the sphere of the ruling party to accept that ’Maybe we might be defeated or might have been defeated.”’

At independence, Mugabe was hailed for his policies of racial reconciliation and development that brought education and health to millions who had been denied those services under colonial rule. Zimbabwe’s economy thrived on exports of food, minerals and tobacco.

The unravelling began when Mugabe ordered the often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms, ostensibly to return them to the landless black majority. Instead, Mugabe replaced a white elite with a black one, giving the farms to relatives, friends and cronies who allowed cultivated fields to be taken over by weeds.

Today, a third of the population depends on imported food handouts. Another third has fled the country as economic and political refugees and 80% is jobless. Life expectancy has fallen from 60 to 35 years and shortages of food, medicine, water, electricity and fuel are chronic.