A Leader Lost to Despair

Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 27, 2008

HARARE, Zimbabwe, June 26 -- Morgan Tsvangirai once embodied his nation's soaring hopes. Boisterous and bold in his trademark cowboy hat, the longtime opposition leader would predict the defeat of President Robert Mugabe and wave a red card -- like a soccer referee ejecting an unruly player -- to the joyous howls of overflowing crowds.

That was three months ago, ahead of the March 29 presidential election. Now, on the eve of a runoff vote he vowed would finally end Mugabe's 28 years of unbroken power, the crowds are gone, along with the cowboy hat, the red cards and the boasts. Several of Tsvangirai's closest aides are dead, in hiding or in jail, and his party structures are all but destroyed. Meanwhile, he is holed up in the Dutch Embassy, with no plans to appear in public on election day.

"I'll do nothing," Tsvangirai, who is boycotting the election despite outpolling Mugabe in the first round in March, said in a telephone interview from the embassy that has been his home since Sunday. "I'll come out for sunshine, nothing more."

As global support mounts for Tsvangirai, even among African leaders long uncertain about him, he is a beaten man in his own country. The hopes of his supporters -- of a Zimbabwe unshackled from the ruinous misrule of Mugabe and his ruthless gang of lieutenants -- have collapsed as well, crushed by a campaign of calculated political brutality not seen here since the Matabeleland massacres two decades ago.

Gangs of ruling party youths, the lethal enforcers of Mugabe's political comeback, celebrated their presumed victory Thursday night in the dense Mbare neighborhood of Harare, the capital. As they sang, "ZANU-PF is back in charge!" they held aloft a coffin covered with the opposition's open-hand insignia and the words "Morgan Tsvangirai."

So weakened is the opposition that Tsvangirai said relief can come only from some unprecedented initiative from the countries that have complained about Mugabe, but never moved decisively to remove him, for nearly a decade. There is nothing more that Zimbabweans themselves can do, he said.

"They can't confront this regime. The regime is brutal," Tsvangirai said. "The fear is endemic in this country."

The change from March is palpable. Then, a wave of optimism coursed through this once-bountiful nation, powering the opposition's historic gains against Mugabe. Not only did a majority of voters cast ballots for change -- Tsvangirai and an independent candidate shared 57 percent of the vote to Mugabe's 43 percent -- the opposition also captured control of parliament.

It was the first time since Zimbabwe was born from the former Rhodesia in 1980 that a party other than Mugabe's had won any branch of government. Two days after the vote, one of Mugabe's cabinet ministers opened talks with the opposition, and numerous sources close to the president said that, at 84, he was considering stepping aside.

A younger -- and many here say more vicious -- generation of government officials objected, many party officials have said. Negotiations abruptly ended. Arrests began. The army deployed across the countryside, along with the youth militias.

Zimbabweans soon faced a stark choice: attend midnight indoctrination sessions, where ruling party supporters chanted slogans and opposition activists were whipped and clubbed, or face similar treatment themselves.

A poster captured the tenor of the runoff campaign. Beside a smiling Mugabe, sporting his trademark tailored suit and a strip of facial hair stretching from his nose to upper lip, a block of boldface letters carried the slogan: "The Final Battle for Total Control."

In a single section of a single province, the former Mugabe stronghold of Mashonaland Central, at least 24 opposition party activists have been killed, said Shepherd Mushonga, a top opposition official from the area. Ruling party youths shot to death a newly elected local official from the opposition last Friday, then shot the man's brother, sister and mother before forcing them all to drink pesticide, Mushonga said.

Opposition activists -- and their parents, children, spouses, friends, neighbors and supporters -- have received similar treatment throughout much of Zimbabwe. Many of those responsible for helping Tsvangirai outpoll Mugabe in the first round are gone: hiding in frigid mountain hollows, convalescing in hospitals, recuperating in other countries. Others are dead or missing. Thousands of their homes have been burned into ash.

"We have been decimated," said Mushonga, who went into hiding last week and travels outside of a safe house only at night. "We have been crushed to the ground."

As the official death toll has climbed past 80, a country long admired as a beacon of peaceful progress -- blessed with a mild climate and superior public schools -- has become the disgrace of the continent. African leaders such as South Africa's anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade and Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa broke with tradition to criticize Mugabe in terms rarely used against fellow leaders. The normally timid Southern African Development Community called for postponement of the election.

Mugabe fired back Thursday, charging in a rally broadcast on state television that the Africans had fallen under the sway of President Bush or Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, critics of Mugabe.

"We still have voices coming today saying we should cancel our elections," Mugabe said with mock surprise. "What stupidity is that?"

Mugabe also hinted at the possibility of talks with the opposition -- years of which have failed to ease the political crisis here -- after the vote and, presumably, his victory.

Police already have been forced to cast ballots in front of superiors, said a 32-year-old officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He voted for Tsvangirai in March but for Mugabe in a police barracks southeast of Harare on Tuesday, along with hundreds of others. He said he feared losing his job, or worse. "These things can happen to you whether you are a police officer or not," he said.

Word has spread widely through Zimbabwe that those who fail to display pinkies marked with the telltale purple ink of voters will be beaten by Mugabe's ruling party militias. And it is widely believed that the military and youth militias also are able to track individual votes by the serial numbers on the ballots. Anything but a Mugabe vote will result in violent retribution, many here believe.

"People will be led like sheep to the slaughter," Tsvangirai said. "If you don't show your finger that you've voted, you'll be beaten."

Tsvangirai offered little hope that the situation would change soon. Though the party is sending a delegation to an African Union meeting in Egypt next week in hopes of building still more diplomatic pressure on Mugabe, his optimism seemed sapped three months after bringing his nation to the verge of a new era.

"Winning an election," he said, "is not the same as winning power."