Zimbabwe's Opposition Laments a Broken Deal

JOHANNESBURG, April 18 -- For two tantalizing days, Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, believed he was on the verge of becoming president. Results posted publicly after the March 29 vote clearly favored him. The ruling party was visibly split. And a top cabinet official for President Robert Mugabe had come forward, seeking negotiations for a smooth transition.

Then, after an initial round of secret talks just days after the election, an electrifying piece of news filtered back to Tsvangirai through his representatives: A cabinet minister told them that Mugabe had accepted defeat.

Tsvangirai recounted this moment with a hint of despair in an interview with The Washington Post and Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper in a Johannesburg suburb to which he fled soon after the election. He said he was confident that Mugabe, 84, who has ruled Zimbabwe since its founding in 1980, was ready to step aside, that a nation with chronic food shortages, the world's worst inflation and a devastating flight of talent was poised for a turnaround.

The main demand from the ruling party side was amnesty for Mugabe for past misdeeds and modest representation for his party in a transitional government, Tsvangirai said. There was also a request that Mugabe be allowed to maintain a powerless figurehead position within the government, but the opposition refused, said Tsvangirai's spokesman, George Tshibotshiwa.

"The parameters were that we had won the election, that we would incorporate" Mugabe's party in the government, Tsvangirai said of the discussions. "But it would be by our own choice. And that Mugabe can exit honorably, but he has to concede defeat."

But what came next was not a public concession by Mugabe but a suddenly fierce determination to fight back.

The cabinet member, Labor Minister Nicholas Goche, mysteriously failed to appear for a third day of scheduled talks, Tsvangirai said. Soon after, police, soldiers and youth militias deployed; opposition activists were arrested, beaten and tortured by the dozens. A close-knit group of military and security officials, according to many sources, took day-to-day control of much of the government, including preparations for a runoff election that Mugabe's party abruptly said was necessary -- even though initial election results had not been announced.

"We knew that we were talking to moderates within" Mugabe's party, said Jameson Timba, one of Tsvangirai's two lead envoys, speaking from Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. "So when the talks did not proceed, we knew that the hawks, the hard-liners, had taken over."

Speaking in a drab office park here, in a small, glass-walled conference room with little more than a table, some chairs and a water cooler, Tsvangirai said he plans to return to Zimbabwe in several days but expressed concern about what awaits him there.

"Do you want a dead hero?" said Tsvangirai, a former union leader.

As the political crisis approaches the three-week mark, it has settled into a grim stalemate. Mugabe's party, after initially acknowledging that it had lost control of parliament and got fewer votes for president as well, has taken control of the electoral mechanisms. Police have arrested election officials, and the ruling party has challenged results in swing districts and has halted the official release of the presidential results, even though the totals for individual precincts have been posted across the country since the day after the vote.

Goche did not answer numerous telephone calls Friday night.