Mugabe allies 'set up' political terror

It's a claim which is so ludicrous that I am sure even Mugabe's staunchest supporters don't actually believe it, but Mugabe has had the nerve to claim that the violence which is sweeping through Zimbabwe has been caused by the MDC. It's as if the MDC have decided that there is some electoral advantage to be gained by killing up to 100 of their own party members and supporters.

The MDC says its members have been beaten, and its supporters evicted from their homes, forcing it to campaign in near secrecy. the party's secretary general, Tendai Biti, is in custody accused of treason.

Mr Mugabe was quoted by the state-run Herald newspaper as saying that the MDC was making such claims "so that they can later say the elections were not free and fair. Which is a damn lie!"

The president told supporters at a campaign rally in the southern city of Bulawayo on Friday that he would "never allow an event like an election to reverse our independence, our sovereignty."

"Only God who appointed me will remove me - not the MDC, not the British," he said.

Sadly for Mugabe he makes this claim at a time when documents have come into the hands of the British newspaper, The Observer, which prove that the violence is being orchestrated by Mugabe's allies.

Secret documents drawn up by Zimbabwe's ruling party and obtained by The Observer reveal that the campaign of violence and voter intimidation which has marred this week's presidential run-off election was meticulously planned by Robert Mugabe's allies.

The papers name one of Mugabe's closest and most powerful allies, Emmerson Mnangagwa, as 'supervising' a 'plan of action' that includes 'harassing MDC activists', 'declaring no-go areas' for the opposition and purging independent election officers, replacing them with party loyalists.

The dossier provides clear evidence that the violence has been orchestrated at the top of Zanu-PF and the security organs it controls. More than 100 people have been killed, 200-plus are missing and thousands have been tortured, raped and mutilated as Zanu-PF seeks to overturn Mugabe's defeat in the first round of elections three months ago. Tens of thousands have fled their homes.

It is no great surprise, as anyone with a pulse knows that Zanu-PF are behind the violence, but the timing only highlights what a ridiculous little man Mugabe is.

One of his most constant claims is that everything which is wrong in Zimbabwe is being somehow orchestrated by the British, and the new papers show how Mugabe has made plans to even blame his country's astonishing 1.6 million% inflation rate part of a British plot.

One covert operation is a plan to write to people who have been resettled on redistributed farms pretending to be the former white owners threatening to take the land back if Mugabe loses.

There are also instructions that Zimbabwe's deepening economic crisis - inflation is running at 1.6 million per cent - should be blamed on British-led sanctions. 'Basic commodities should be sold from either people's shops or pro-Zanu-PF shops,' the document says. 'Emphasis should be in party strongholds.'

We don't even know at this stage if the MDC are going to participate in the elections as the levels of violence now sweeping the country make it impossible to believe that the elections will not give a result skewered in Mugabe's direction.

For example, there are his educational camps set up around Harare:

"A ring of torture camps has been established on the outskirts of Harare, and gangs of youths are marauding in the high-density suburbs [the former townships that surround the city centre]," a resident told The Independent on Sunday. "They are stopping commuter minibuses and threatening the passengers. Many people are unable to go to work. They are being told to report every night to the camps to be taught how to vote."

I've said it before but I am always frankly amazed that Mugabe goes through with the pretence of a democratic process at all. After all, he's already told us that he has no intention of accepting any result which does not declare himself the winner so the only purpose of this is his own little fractured ego. If he wins, he declares the election valid and if he loses he declares it invalid. But he really, really wants to win.

But what the violence has succeeded in doing is in putting the MDC into a dreadful corner where they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Can they keep going with all this violence and justify the deaths of all these people for an election whose result will count for nothing if they win? Can they stand down and effectively hand victory to Mugabe?

I have to admit, there's a certain logic behind the old bastard's brutality.

I hope the MDC go for it, but that's easy for me to say sitting thousands of miles away.

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Tags: Zimbabwe, Mugabe, Zanu-PF, MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai