The Osterley Times: Zimbabwe nears state of emergency as the anti-Mugabe rebellion grows

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Zimbabwe nears state of emergency as the anti-Mugabe rebellion grows

Mugabe's brutal assaults on opposition leaders appears to have backfired against him on all fronts, increasing pressure on him to resign and forcing him to consider imposing a state of emergency for the first time since the early eighties when he battled to put down an insurgency in southern Zimbabwe which resulted in 20,000 deaths.

Internally, the assaults have united the opposition forces lined up against him whilst externally the condemnation has even included some neighbouring states. This is highly unusual in a continent where Mugabe's worst excesses have so far been tolerated. However, with 80% of his population unemployed and inflation currently running at 1,730 percent, neighbouring states worry about how the economic meltdown of Zimbabwe will affect themselves.

The Tanzanian government announced this week that Tanzania, Namibia and Lesotho, the three governments currently responsible for regional security in the Southern African Development Community, would meet on 26 and 27 March in Dar es Salaam to discuss the crisis. And yesterday, the African Union expressed "great concern" about Zimbabwe's crisis and called for human rights to be respected.

After his release from hospital, where he was treated for the head injuries inflicted by police last Sunday, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main MDC faction, said he believed democratic change was now in sight. He said he had endured an "orgy of beatings" in custody, adding: "They brutalised my flesh. But they will never break my spirit. I will soldier on until Zimbabwe is free."

Reports state that there is an increased police presence on the streets of Zimbabwe. However, there are also reports that opposition groups believe their moment may have arrived:

"Now I believe the revolution has begun," says 33-year-old Emerald Mhlanga (not his real name), an MDC youth organiser.

Whatever happens next, Mugabe is not going to fall without a fight, although it now appears entirely possible that his economic collapse might precede any moves by the opposition to unseat him. However, he's leaving nothing to chance and yesterday arrested three opposition leaders as they attempted to leave Zimbabwe for medical treatment in South Africa.

However, Mugabe must realise that the mood of nations around him are changing:

AU commission chief Alpha Oumar Konare "recalls the need for the scrupulous respect for human rights and democratic principles in Zimbabwe," the pan-African body said in a statement. This followed an earlier acknowledgment in London by the AU chairman, Ghana's President John Kufuor, that Zimbabwe was "embarrassing" Africa.
The AU statement said Konare "urges all concerned parties to commence a sincere and constructive dialogue in order to resolve the problems facing Zimbabwe."

It added that Konare had followed recent developments in Zimbabwe with great concern.