Fraters Libertas

It's Not Cricket

The Economist reminds us that despite the recent progress in the Middle East, the march of freedom still has a long ways to go in places like Zimbabwe:

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's cricket-loving president, celebrated his 81st birthday last weekend. He took the opportunity, amid state-funded festivities, to dismiss his opponents as stooges of Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, and to predict that his party, ZANU-PF, would scoop two-thirds of the seats at a parliamentary election on March 31st. Given that half his people depend on food aid, this might seem rashly optimistic. But Mr Mugabe has a knack of winning elections regardless of the wishes of voters.

Those pesky voters always seem to get in the way of a good election. It seems that Mr. Mugabe is going to make sure that they don't spoil his big day.

The ruling party controls all broadcast media, and critical print journalism is all but banned. Three of the last Zimbabwean journalists writing for foreign outlets were hounded out of the country last week. Election observers from countries that harp on about democracy, such as Britain and America, are banned. Few Zimbabweans will be allowed to monitor the polls, either. Responsibility for organising the election rests with a commission whose members Mr Mugabe appoints.

Mugabe is not shy about cracking down on any signs of dissent, even within his own party.

ZANU is far from united: several of Mr Mugabe's lieutenants are jostling to succeed him when he eventually leaves office. But with an election near, they are mostly shrewd enough to pull together to keep out the MDC [the Movement for Democratic Change opposition party], and Mr Mugabe is quick to crush any crony who gets above himself.

At the weekend, for example, he sacked his information minister, Jonathan Moyo, the man responsible for criminalising honest journalism in Zimbabwe. He had also impressed Mr Mugabe with his ability to invent and broadcast conspiracies involving the MDC, the British government and white homosexuals bent on bringing back colonial rule. He was fêted, in ZANU circles, for his hilarious puns linking Tony Blair with a local make of toilet. But then he made the mistake of opposing Mr Mugabe's choice of vice-president, so Mr Mugabe flushed him away.

Hilarious puns involving toilet humor? If Mr. Moyo is looking for work, we may have an opening here at Fraters Libertas.

The most depressing aspect of this story is not that Mugabe is preparing to steal another election (not exactly a surprising event). It's the reaction of other African countries to it.

Zimbabwe's neighbours are preparing to applaud another ZANU "victory". The Southern African Development Community (SADC), the main regional block, has drawn up a list of democratic standards that Zimbabwe must obey or face its neighbours' displeasure. The MDC worries that the election will flunk most of them but that SADC will do no more than tut.

Last week, Tanzania's President Benjamin Mkapa denied that Zimbabwe was ill-governed, blamed the MDC for the "trouble" there and suggested that westerners only criticise Mr Mugabe because he has seized white-owned land and given it to blacks. South Africa's Mr Mbeki, meanwhile, in an interview with the Financial Times, admitted that some of Mr Mugabe's policies were "incorrect". But he repeated the ludicrous canard that Zimbabwe's present conflict is between blacks and whites. In fact, it is between a large black majority who want a fair election, and a small, predatory minority who wish to deny them one.