A Zimbabwean demonstrating against President Mugabe.
(AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
Should Zimbabwe’s opposition agree to a run-off?
What happened
South African President Thabo Mbeki arrived in Zimbabwe on Friday for his first talks with longtime President Robert Mugabe since disputed election results were announced a week ago. Mugabe finished behind opposition leader Mogran Tsvangirai, but the count was close enough to require a run-off. (AFP via Google) Tsvangirai fell 2 percentage points shy of the majority needed to win in the first round. His party, which won control of parliament, claims Tsvangirai won outright, and has not said whether it would participate in a run-off. Analysts say Tsvangirai is losing momentum after concentrating on encouraging international pressure on Mugabe to step down after 28 years in power. He has also reportedly alienated Mbeki by calling for him to be stripped of his role as mediator. (AFP in African Business)
What the commentators said
Mugabe has led Zimbabwe to “economic, social, and political ruin,” said The Christian Science Monitor in an editorial, and “now there's a chance to turn him out—if it isn't lost in a mist of despair.” The opposition "can't win" if it doesn't participate in the run-off. It is true that the violence that has followed the March 29 election “taints the outcome, and Mugabe may well muscle a win.” But “the ruling party at least acknowledged defeat in the first round, so Mugabe's legitimacy is shot.”
There’s little point in holding a second-round vote as long as “Mugabe’s campaign of terror against the people of Zimbabwe continues unchecked,” said The Washington Post in an editorial (free registration). At least 32 supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have been killed in the last two weeks; 700 people have been treated for injuries; and 40,000 farmworkers and their families have been chased from their homes. Mbeki has “done nothing to stop the violence,” making him “the principal obstacle” to the international intervention that is needed to get Mugabe to “cease repression” so a second-round vote can even be held.
Mugabe has actually been quite restrained in the face of what is clearly an international effort to “overthrow” him, said Stephen Gowans in the Zimbabwe government’s The Herald. The U.S. and U.K. governments have done everything possible to help the opposition in an attempt to “reverse the land reform” and economic nationalization policies of Mugabe’s government. In the face of such dangerous meddling, Zimbabwe’s government has done what it could to “preserve space for the exercise of political and civil liberties.”
