No cheer as Zimbabwe turns 24

No cheer as Zimbabwe turns 24

MUGABE: Ruled Zimbabwe since Independence in 1980

LONDON INDEPENDENCE DEMO
THE government has engaged a team of financial consultants to travel around the world lobbying Zimbabweans who send money home to begin using the legal channels available. But those living abroad say they do not want to support a government that is denying them and their loved ones the RIGHT to vote. Here in London, Zimbabweans concerned with the electoral imbalance at home have organised a demonstration at The High Commission on Independence Day. Called PEOPLE FIRST, they claim “We got independence but no freedom”. Everyone, regardless of political affiliation, is invited to come sign a petition to be presented to Robert Mugabe.
Meet 1pm-5pm April 18th at the Zimbabwe High Commission on the Strand. Nearest tube is Charing Cross.

By Ryan Truscott

AS ZIMBABWE President Robert Mugabe's party prepares for a spectacular bash on Sunday to fete the country's 24th independence anniversary, the opposition and many Zimbabweans have little to cheer about.

Mugabe and his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party, in power since the country's 1980 independence from white minority rule, remains firmly in control despite crippling economic problems.

The once-prosperous nation is in its fifth year of recession partly due to Mugabe's controversial policies including the fast-track seizure of land belonging to white commercial farmers and doled out to veterans of the independence war.

Now 70 percent of Zimbabweans are unemployed, inflation is more than 600 percent and around 80 percent of the country's 11.6 million people live in poverty.

Mugabe, an 80-year old former guerrilla leader who spent 10 years in prison under the white minority regime of Ian Smith saw his hold on power threatened by the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) five years ago.

Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC won nearly half of all contested seats in general polls in 2000, many of them in the cities.

But following Mugabe's controversial re-election in a presidential election two years ago, the MDC has lost ground.

In the last four years Zanu-PF has won back four seats. The party has also enjoyed significant victories in recent urban council elections, despite a crippling economic crisis that critics blame on the party.

Last month Zanu-PF took a crucial parliamentary seat in the town of Chitungwiza in polls marred by the fatal shooting of an opposition supporter.

Spurred by these successes, the party is set to celebrate this independence anniversary with renewed triumph.

"We stand united as we head towards a resounding victory in the 2005 elections against reactionaries and puppets of the western world who have already started scampering for cover," Zanu-PF chairperson John Nkomo wrote in a special Independence editorial column in The Voice, the party's paper.

"Our Independence celebrations this year will be unique," he added.

Along with traditional song-and-dance celebrations, an address by Mugabe at the National Sports Stadium in Harare, the government is organising a gala in the western mining town of Hwange where some of the top musical stars will perform.

Analyst John Makumbe said it was "time for soul-searching" for the main opposition MDC, which had to decide whether to boycott next year's elections or "dance on an uneven floor".

The opposition accuses the ruling party of using violence and intimidation to win elections and has called for reforms ahead of the 2005 general elections.

Makumbe said the MDC was starting to recognise that "dictators are not removable by democratic means".

The ruling party denies being the villain, and instead accuses the opposition of being Western stooges bent on returning Zimbabwe to colonial bondage.

State radio and television have been broadcasting a daily countdown to Independence Day, chronicling the sacrifices made by the country's nationalists, many of whom are members of the ruling party.

MDC secretary general Welshman Ncube accused Zanu-PF of trying "to appropriate independence for itself".

"We don't accept for a moment that people now in the MDC did not bring about our independence," adding that party members were detained by the former white regime and many others were commanders and fighters against minority rule.

Mugabe meanwhile continues to lash out against the West, especially former colonial ruler Britain, which annexed the former Southern Rhodesia from the British South Africa Company in 1923.

In 1963, a constitution was chalked up favouring whites in power. Two years later, the government unilaterally declared independence from Britain.

UN sanctions and a guerrilla uprising then led to free elections in 1979 and independence — and the renaming of the nation as Zimbabwe — a year later - AFP
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