Mugabe's Endgame

The number of deaths belies the scale of violence in another way. Most victims are just given a severe beating; the numbers of those are estimated by human rights activists and Western diplomats in Zimbabwe at 10,000. Or they have their homes burned down; those are estimated at 20,000. Some, like the domestic servants in Harare, are released unharmed, but with a stern warning that the wrong vote could mean death.

Later I find out what happened to my contact's friend. He and another worker from MDC had gone to the home of Tonderai's widow, Plaxidess Ndira, to help her move to a safer place. They had her car loaded with all of her belongings—there wasn't much—when two trucks with 11 men arrived, all in plainclothes, seven of them carrying CZ automatic pistols, family members told my contact. They were taken away at gunpoint and then shot and dumped beside the road. One of them was still alive when a passerby found him, and my contact was summoned to go out late at night to a lonely place 23 miles north of town. There, he found the victim, Tendai Chidziva, and took him to the hospital in Harare. He's now in the ICU, which is full to capacity, mostly with beating victims. "They don't even have any plaster left for setting bones," my contact said. The other victim, Josh Bakacheza, is still missing, but Tendai told his colleagues he believes Bakacheza was shot and killed. They weren't able to find him in the dark and were planning to go back the next morning. At least Tendai will, after all, probably survive. His head and chest gunshot wounds proved non-fatal.

Despite all this, somehow the opposition keeps carrying on. Tsvangirai emerged Wednesday from his refuge in the Dutch embassy to go home, get a change of clothes and give a press conference. He denied published accounts that he was calling on military intervention to unseat Mugabe and struck a conciliatory note. "We are making proposals Mugabe has to accept," he said. "I am asking the A.U. [African Union] and SADC [Southern African Development Community] to lead an expanded initiative supported by the U.N. to manage what I will call a transitional process." The day before, the U.N. Security Council issued a statement (signed even by South Africa, which previously had supported Mugabe) condemning the runoff election and saying it should be canceled. Then on Wednesday, SADC met in Swaziland to discuss Zimbabwe, but South Africa pointedly didn't send a delegation. Without the region's most powerful country and the intervention of its president, Thabo Mbeki, there's little hope an international effort will be effective.

Nonetheless, MDC activists clung to that hope even amid the violence. Late Wednesday afternoon, a hundred of them, looking bedraggled and tired, held a protest in front of the South African embassy, with signs reading MBEKI WE NEED YOU and HELP US SOUTH AFRICA. They said they had fled political violence in rural areas, suffering beatings and house-burnings, and their appearance was testament to their claims. I arrived shortly before police, who searched me and my car and quickly found cameras that had been tucked out of sight. They demanded to see the pictures, and though the cameras had been cleansed, a testy officer barked, "I'm not satisfied," and ordered me into the back of a pickup truck they had begun loading with demonstrators. South African diplomats came outside and tried to intervene, and in the confusion, one of them whispered to me, "Just get in your car and get out of here." One of the officers gave chase on foot, but I was already in the car and around the corner. It was a clean getaway for me. Who knows what will happen to their truckload of prisoners?

Knowing what Mugabe is capable of, Eppel says, it's altogether possible that he'll just keep killing his way into retention of power or, in the present case, until he's destroyed the MDC as a political force. "Mugabe expects he will die in office," she says. "That's his endgame. He's terrified of the International Criminal Court, and he's seen what happened to the likes of Charles Taylor in Liberia. There's a real fear of justice." As one party activist told me, "I think he'll just keep killing until he's the only one left in the country." At least then he'll win elections without any dispute. Now, the night jasmine has a fragrance tainted with menace. None of this will end well.

© 2008