By Brian Latham and Antony Sguazzin
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe deployed the army, police and intelligence officers to intimidate voters in rural areas to ensure he wins a presidential run-off vote, two top members of his party said.
The officials, who belong to the ruling Zanu-PF party's politburo, said the security forces are working with youth militia loyal to the party and groups who describe themselves as veterans of Zimbabwe's 1966-1979 liberation war against a minority white-led government.
Mugabe, 84, sought to extend his 28-year rule of Zimbabwe in the March 29 presidential election, which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change says it won. While the results are yet to be released, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party officials have said none of the four contenders, including MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, attained the majority needed to avoid a second round. The MDC says it will only compete if international observers are allowed to monitor the election.
``The violence being perpetrated against rural Zimbabweans has reached epidemic proportions,'' George Sibotshiwe, a spokesman for Tsvangirai, said in an interview from Gaborone, Botswana, today. ``People are being beaten and even killed, women are being raped, children abused and houses burned to the ground.''
Zimbabwean police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said the MDC is responsible for violence in rural areas and has western backers.
Regional Allies
Mugabe will also lobby regional allies such as Angola, Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique to forestall international pressure on the government, the politburo members said. He will also seek financial support from China, which backed Mugabe during the 1970s civil war, and Iran, they said.
The officials were among those who had urged a settlement with the opposition, including the departure of Mugabe, at politburo meetings held this month. They declined to be further identified.
Support for Mugabe has withered after a failed land redistribution program from white commercial farmers to black farmers, many of whom only grow food for themselves. The program spawned a decade of recession and the world's highest inflation rate, 164,900 percent.
Earlier this month supporters, some of them veterans of the liberation war, occupied white-owned farms. The invasions are similar to incidents that helped him prevail during an election campaign in 2000.
Land Issue
Land is a sensitive issue for rural Zimbabweans. Ninety years of white rule saw half the country's arable land transferred to British colonizers, with black Zimbabweans mostly confined to remote, crowded and unfertile areas. During the liberation war, Mugabe relied on the support of land-deprived rural black Zimbabweans. The campaign led to peace talks in 1979.
At least 157 people have been injured in organized violence since the poll, the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, based in the capital, Harare, said on April 15.
The South African government has meanwhile drawn criticism from opposition parties in the country, including the Democratic Alliance, after it said yesterday that it couldn't interfere with a shipment of arms destined for Zimbabwe that arrived in the port of Durban. The ship came from China and opposition parties want the shipment to be blocked.
South Africa's Transport and Allied Workers Union is refusing to have its members unload the ship or transport its contents to Zimbabwe by truck, the union's general secretary, Randall Howard, told Bloomberg Television.
UN Court
It would be difficult for South Africa to stop weapons traversing its territory, government spokesman Themba Maseko told reporters yesterday in Pretoria.
Separately, the MDC today called on the United Nations to set up a special court to try Mugabe and his allies for human- rights abuses.
Yesterday, Tsvangirai said South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki should quit his role as mediator in Zimbabwe's political crisis and hand over to Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa because the crisis has gone on too long. Mwanawasa rejected the call today, a government spokesman said.
Last year, Mbeki was mandated by Southern African Development Community, a group of 14 countries, to mediate in the Zimbabwean political crisis. He pursued a low-key policy he dubbed ``quiet diplomacy.''
The South African leader was criticized by South African opposition parties after meeting Mugabe in Harare on April 12. He said then there was no crisis in the country, ahead of a SADC summit on the issue in Zambia later that day. Mbeki said his comments were taken out of context.
The ruling Zaniu-PF lost its parliamentary majority in last month's ballot for the first time since it came to power in 1980. The Electoral Commission says it hasn't announced the outcome of the presidential vote because of logistical problems.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Latham via Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.netAntony Sguazzin in Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: April 18, 2008 07:47 EDT
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