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Welcome to USAGOLD's "Gilded Opinion" pages. We invite you to browse our index of outstanding gold-based commentary.

(Back to Holger Jensen Index)

While we find Mr. Jensen's columns particularly informative with respect to foreign affairs, his opinions do not necessarily represent those of Centennial Precious Metals, USAGOLD, its management and clientele.

INSIDE FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Mugabe steals a nation while the world watches
by Holger Jensen, International Editor

A South African Web site has attracted thousands of players with a new game that allows them to fire Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe from a cannon into the International Court of Justice at the Hague.

Called "Extradite Mugabe," the game was devised by university students on the assumption Mugabe would lose the just completed presidential election to Morgan Tsvangirai of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

It depicts a gleeful Tsvangirai behind the cannon pointed at the Hague, partially obscured by a giant picture of accused Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. A player scores top points by hitting Milosevic with Mugabe.

Unfortunately, Mugabe didn't lose the election. He stole it. And he has aimed the cannons of his oppressive state security apparatus at Tsvangirai and the MDC's secretary-general, Welshman Ncube. Both are charged with treason for daring to oppose the despot who has ruled Zimbabwe for all 22 years of its independence from Britain.

American, European and Zimbabwean monitors all pronounced the election deeply flawed because of violent intimidation by state security forces and other irregularities that prevented thousands from voting in Harare, the capital, and other cities regarded as opposition strongholds.

Amnesty International said 1,400 observers were arrested during the balloting, including four U.S. diplomats. The Norwegian Observer Mission said state election officials lacked "convincing integrity."

A coalition of church and civic groups known as the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee said the "election well was poisoned." Another group of nongovernmental organizations called the Zimbabwe Election Support Network charged that "tens of thousands of Zimbabweans were deliberately and systematically disenfranchised."

"We foresaw electoral fraud but not daylight robbery because that is what it was," said Tsvangirai.

Among the laundry list of irregularities:

• In the runup to the election, criticism of the president was made a crime and only government bodies were allowed to conduct voter education.
  
• Mugabe's tame legislature enacted a package of security and electoral laws that effectively handcuffed the opposition. When some of these laws were struck down by the courts, Mugabe reinstated them by presidential decree.
  
• A security law allowed police to break up public gatherings and ban opposition rallies. The MDC said 80 rallies were stopped by police or ZANU-PF militias in the two months before the election.
  
• An election law barred independent vote monitors, reserving that task for government appointees. Of 12,500 Zimbabweans who applied to be monitors before the law went into effect, only 470 were accredited to cover 4,712 polling stations.
  
• Another law required urban voters to produce utility bills as proof of residence, disqualifying tenants of rental property and informal settlements. In Mugabe's rural strongholds, tribal chiefs could vouch for voters and no documents were required.
  
• Observers from six of the 15 European Union nations, including the Swedish delegation leader, were banned, causing the EU to withdraw its entire team. Norway sent its own 25 monitors, the largest European delegation there.
  
• The Electoral Supervisory Commission, headed by a former soldier and staffed by civil servants, never published a voters' roll and refused to reveal how many ballots were printed.
  
• About 70,000 soldiers and police voted early. The Zimbabwe Daily News reported that many had to vote in front of senior officers who made them vote for Mugabe.
  
• Polling stations were limited in urban opposition strongholds and boosted in pro-government rural areas. They opened five hours late when a court order extended voting through Monday and MDC observers were locked out of ballot counting centers in Harare and Bulawayo, the country's second largest city.

No wonder Mugabe "won."

But it will be a hollow victory if foreign aid donors continue to shun Zimbabwe's pariah president until the collapsing economy finally implodes.

And it bodes ill for the rest of Africa, whose leaders are trying to persuade jittery investors to put up $64 billion in a New Partnership for Africa's Development.

March 14, 2002

Send your questions to international editor Holger Jensen, who will answer one each day. E-mail: hjens@aol.com

Copyright © 2002 The E.W. Scripps Co. All Rights Reserved.

Reprinted by USAGOLD with permission of Mr. Jensen. No further reproduction without permission.

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