Can Mugabe Survive Zimbabwe’s New Political Order? | Newsweek International

ZIMBABWE
‘Let’s Kill the Baby’
Rod Nordland 7/3/2008 12:00:00 AM
For five days, I've been looking everywhere for Blessing Mabhena, ever since I read newspaper reports about the child, a cute little one-year-old baby with big eyes and two stumpy little legs in casts, who had suffered the wrath of ruling party thugs who couldn't find the infant's parents. The baby could easily, I thought, be the poster child for this entire vicious election process and the waning years of Comrade Bob.
AFRICA
Iron Bars and Scalding Water
Rod Nordland 6/28/2008 12:00:00 AM
There's an open question whether Zimbabwe's election Friday would be valid even if it hadn't been marred by violence and intimidation, because it's pretty clear that a fairly small percentage of people actually turned out to vote. Some legal experts say that at least 50 percent of the registered voters would have needed to cast their ballots. No results have been released as yet officially (for what that's worth), but a sampling of a dozen polling places in Harare and the nearby town of Chitungwiza is pretty compelling.
AFRICA
Where Are the Voters?
Rod Nordland 6/27/2008 12:00:00 AM
What if they held an election and no one came? Friday's runoff election in Zimbabwe was pretty much like that. Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition candidate and front-runner, sat out the election against President Robert Mugabe, and so did most people, at least in Harare and environs. Downtown Harare was a virtual ghost town, and at polling places around the city, the voting queues were twos and threes long, sometimes as many as 10s; rumor had it that at a few polling places in strongholds of Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party, there were actually hundreds, but I didn't see that in a long day of cruising the streets.
AFRICA
How to Steal an Election
Rod Nordland 6/26/2008 12:00:00 AM
I couldn't help but notice that nearly every minibus in Zimbabwe's capital has a poster of Robert Mugabe, often bordered in red, with the candidate dressed in bright red from head to foot. I asked around and there's a very simple reason for this. These privately owned conveyances, which carry most people to and from work, can rarely find fuel at official prices and so must normally revert to the black market, at some U.S. $8-$10 a gallon. But if they have a Mugabe poster, they're allowed to refuel at government depots at subsidized prices of only 60,000 Zimbabwean dollars per gallon. That's essentially free, since the Zim dollar is trading at 18 billion for each U.S. dollar; it has doubled in a week's time and is going up nearly 20 percent a day, for an inflation rate in excess of 2 million percent a year—some say it may even be 20 million percent by now.
ZIMBABWE
Isolation Nation
Scott Johnson 6/23/2008 12:00:00 AM
These are strangely repulsive days in Zimbabwe--a little like watching an Orwellian horror show unfolding in slow motion. Recently, several polling agents loyal to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change were found dead. Whoever had killed them had cut off all of their arms and legs, butchered them and left the remains unceremoniously lying about. Another MDC activist was beaten so badly, and so thoroughly, that her head had swollen to twice its normal size and she was in critical condition at a hospital. But Monday's Herald, the state-run newspaper and mouthpiece of the dictator Robert Mugabe's regime, led with this cheery bulletin: "Government Rolls out Basic Goods." Bravo, Robert Mugabe. Orwell would have been proud.
LETTERS
Mail Call: Green-Challenged

Our cover story on green initiatives by world leaders didn't assuage fears for the environment. One reader lamented the "fraction of American voters who cite the environment as an issue." Another chided politicians for looking for "a quick fix." A third called for policymakers to "lead by example."