As a freedom fighter a generation ago, Mugabe battled both the white rulers of colonial Rhodesia and African rivals for political power in what became independent Zimbabwe. He won the presidency in 1980 and has clung to power ever since, through economic decline, corruption and ugly violence against both white farmers and African political opponents. This weekend, Mugabe faces a presidential election he probably cannot win if he fights fairly. With his support in opinion polls at 30 percent or less, he has long since reverted to strong-arm tactics.
The main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), charges that at least 107 of its supporters have been killed by Mugabe’s thugs over the past year. The regime also has cracked down hard on independent journalists. And last week the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, said he was detained briefly by police, who questioned him on potential treason charges. “The actions of Robert Mugabe are completely undemocratic and wrong and dictatorial,” said Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, the country’s former colonial power. On his way to a Commonwealth conference in Australia, where action was expected against Zimbabwe, Blair told reporters Tsvangirai could still win the election. At a rally in northern Zimbabwe, Mugabe fired back at the British. “Go to hell,” he said, asking, “Why should they poke their pink noses in our business?”
Another old tactic revived by Mugabe is a promise he made three decades ago: to give the country’s rich farmland–most of which was owned by about 6,000 white farmers–back to its native people. Over the past two years, groups of pro-Mugabe “war veterans” have invaded about 1,500 white-owned farms, forcing the owners out and sometimes killing them. The violent disruptions combined with severe drought have sent agricultural output into sharp decline; food has become scarce and living standards have fallen. Zimbabwe’s war of independence ended with a negotiated agreement that protected white property rights, but now Mugabe wishes he had not compromised. “We were fools,” he told NEWSWEEK. “I would have rather we finished it through the barrel of a gun.” Even today, he said, land is “the grievance of all grievances.” He thinks he can finish the redistribution “in two years’ time.”
Decades ago, Mugabe was a pillar of the black liberation struggle; for 11 years, Rhodesia’s white rulers kept him in prison, where he earned advanced degrees in law and economics. South Africa’s black leaders remember him as an intellectual beacon, a man supremely confident in his own powers and unbending in his purpose. His policy of reconciliation inspired a continent that was still shocked by the bloody excesses of Uganda’s Idi Amin. From then on, most of black Africa refused to listen to any criticism of Mugabe–even as his forces were starving or executing some 8,000 civilians loyal to his former ally, Joshua Nkomo. “We have degrees in violence,” Mugabe once observed.
The habit persisted. Now, outside the cities, pro-Mugabe youths at unofficial roadblocks terrorize people at night. “There’s no way I’m going to vote,” says a poor craftsman in Mutare. “We’re all afraid of getting hurt.” Last month a Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front mob smashed down the home of an opposition leader and cut off his head. “Many of us think there will be a civil war, whatever the election outcome,” says a house painter in Ruwa, near the capital, Harare. (Mugabe says his opponents started the campaign violence.) “Neither Mugabe nor the MDC will accept the other’s victory, and then what?” Chronic political violence could turn out to be a gifted leader’s legacy to a country that deserves better.
