Like anyone didn’t see this coming.

In an attempt to not look like a complete and utter failure Mugabe yet again tried to take down the opposition leader, not even a month after Morgan Tsvangirai was officially sworn in as the prime minister of Zimbabwe.

Here’s the story so far.

• In 1999 Tsvangirai founds the “Movement for Democratic Change” (MDC) party. In 2000 Tsvangirai is charged with treason and threatening the life of Mugabe after telling supporters “if Mr Mugabe did not want to step down before the next elections scheduled for 2002 “we will remove you violently”.

• The MDC lose the 2002 elections amidst widespread claims of corruption, intimidation and rigging.

• Tsvangirai is arrested in 2003 shortly after giving a press conference for allegedly “inciting violence”.

• Tsvangirai acquitted of treason in 2004.

Tsvangirai faces court in 2003 after being bashed by Mugabe's goons

• In March 2007 Tsvangirai is again arrested and savagely beaten. A Zimbabwean police officer’s account states “Using sjamboks, army belts and gun butts, the soldiers attacked Tsvangirai until he passed out. One of the soldiers poured cold water all over Tsvangirai to resuscitate him. Tsvangirai regained consciousness again at around 1:30 a.m…. One vicious woman was left to work on him. She removed an army belt from her waist and used it to assault Tsvangirai until he passed out again.”Edward Chikombo, a freelance cameraman was able to smuggle out photos of Tsvangirai’s injuries, the following weekend he was found dead.

• Shortly after his release and just before Tsvangirai was to address the media to discuss recent political violence in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s goons storm MDC headquarters and arrest him again.

• October 2007, Tsvangirai’s bodyguard dies from complications resulting in beatings sustained during the March 2007 crackdowns on the MDC.

• In March 2008 Zimbabwe holds presidential elections, Tsvangirai is declared the winner of the first round with 47.9% of the votes but does not hold a 50% majority to take power. The MDC assert that they won 50.3% of the vote and claim the results are “scandalous daylight robbery”.

• on 10th May 2008 Tsvangirai announces a presidential face-off between himself and Mugabe on the condition of “unfettered access of all international observers,” the “reconstitution” of the Electoral Commission, and free access for the media, including the international press.”

• On the 13th of May Tsvangirai downgrades the conditions of his participating to “if at least Southern African Development Community election observers would be present”. It is announced shortly afterwards that the second round of presidential elections will be held on the 27th June, 2008.

• Tsvangirai is set to return to Zimbabwe on May 17th, however an assassination plot keeps Tsvangirai out of Zimbabwe until the 24th of May.

• June 4th 2008, whilst campaigning for the upcoming election Tsvangirai is detained by a police roadblock. The police accuse him of “threatening public security by addressing a gathering without prior authorisation”, he was detained for eight hours and eventually released without charge. On June 6th Tsvangirai is again stopped by police and prevented from attending a pre-election rally. Police claimed that “they should have informed the police in advance of Tsvangirai visiting the area.”

• On June 22nd, 2008, Tsvangirai withdraws from the presidential election. He states that it is a “violent sham” and that “his supporters risked being killed if they voted for him”.

• Amidst world record breaking inflation, widespread unemployment, starvation and disease, on July 22nd, 2008 Tsvangirai and Mugabe meet to negotiate a sharing of office between the MDC and Mugabe’s goons the ZANU-PF. After four days of negotiations an agreement is made and signed on. Mugabe is to remain unofficial dictator of Zimbabwe but Tsvangirai will become the prime-minister, the MDC will gain control of the police whilst the ZANU-PF maintain command of the army. Little else is leaked out about the agreement. On the 15th of September the agreement is signed and made official.

• Tvangirai is sworn in as primeminister on the 11th February 2009.

• 6th March, 2009: Mysterious car “accident” claims the life of Tsvangirai’s wife and sends him to hospital with head and neck injuries.

Mugabe: "contest me will you?"

As you can see it reads like a farce. Whilst millions starve, live under the threat of disease and the country’s economy plunges daily to new lows making the world ecnomic crisis look like a dream portfolio, Mugabe continues power games to retain his iron grip on power in Zimbabwe.

All the while the west continues to hunt the ghost of Bin Laden and guard opium crops in Afghanistan and help the Iraqi people fight… well the Iraqi people. The UN aren’t much help either, they’re too busy trying to get blasphemy outlawed.

It’s a shame that such nonsense has gone on for so long and that apart from weak public condemnation which achieves nothing, nobody has actually done anything constructive about it apart from Tsvangirai and his party themselves. With Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party being openly propped up by weapons from China, you can’t help but wonder if the west’s reluctance to get involved is entirely based on the avoidance of another possible Vietnam.

Not everyone thinks it was an out and out assasination attempt though. Nancy Reyes reasons;

“accidents occur due to faulty maintenance, “counterfeit” parts that fail, misjudgement from lack of experience driving, and of course falling asleep (in Zimbabwe, many of the major highways are straight, boring, with few landmarks, leading to sleepiness and slowness in reflexes when something does go wrong).

So my guess is that it was indeed an unfortunate accident.”

I’m still not convinced Nancy, surely the lead up to this overwhelmingly rules out any probability of it just being random chance. I don’t know how often random accidents happen in Zimbabwe but given who was in the car wouldn’t it be more probable that this wasn’t just a case of wrong place at the wrong time? It’s kind of smart if you think about it, in third world countries people might be more willing to discard an accident as random and obviously it will be impossible to trace the driver back to Mugabe.

The Right Perspective quotes Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, stating that;

“At a time when there needs to be confidence-building measures, this incident potentially raises suspicions and undermines the potential for greater cohesion of the government. (There is) huge potential for the agreement to be manipulated by Mugabe.”

Sadly I agree. With Tsvangirai in hospital recovering Mugabe essentially has free reign to do what he wants until Tsvangirai is out. Much cleaner then open assasination or just making him dissapear. This way there will always be doubt about his involvement and that severely weakens his critics when it comes to him governing whilst Tsvangirai is out as he’ll look the innocent.

At 85 Mugabe can’t have that many years left in him so perhaps the world is just waiting for him to fizzle out. Meanwhile I guess we’ll just have to wait for the ‘Mugabe’ movie to come out as that seems to be the only time anyone actually pays any attention to third world crisis these days. Then we can all hang our heads in shame and ask why more wasn’t done, well at least until the next blockbuster comes out anyway.

Update (8th March, 2009): Tsvangirai is out of hospital so it looks like his injuries aren’t that serious, or he’s just made out of steel and is determined to not let Mugabe keep him down. He fronted court after being severely bashed in 2003, so I wouldn’t put it past him. Finance minister, Tendai Biti, has stated that the government and the police are launching their own investigations but the MDC are going to put for their own independant investigation (gee I wonder why).

The truck has been identified as belonging to a US aid agency partner, a contractor working for the US and British governments. I wonder if they will claim the truck was stolen or give some sort of explanation. At the risk of going into tin foil hat territory, I wouldn’t put it past Mugabe’s mob to create a mock up truck with their own driver to divert suspicion away from themselves.

Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery and support for Tsvangirai. All he has now are his kids and the fight for his country. (News.com.au)


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