Dialogue: Mugabe throttles voice of reason

By CHRIS LAIDLAW*

The die has been cast and there is now no going back for Robert Mugabe.

Without a murmur of discontent, Zimbabwe's ruling party congress has left the way clear for President Mugabe to slash and burn his way into infamy.

The prospect is an awful one because Mr Mugabe, once the universally recognised saviour of his country, has vowed to complete what he has called the second phase of Zimbabwe's revolution - the return of the land to the indigenous people.

In setting this course, the President has unleashed forces that promise to destroy him but the probability is that they will destroy his country first if he is not stopped.

Billed as the biggest party rethink of strategy since its devastating losses in the June parliamentary elections, the Zanu congress was carefully controlled to block criticism and entrench Mr Mugabe as presidential candidate next year.

Dissidents had been carefully excluded from the event, which Mr Mugabe used as a platform to angrily deny any responsibility for the country's economic collapse.

He attacked the courts, whites, the imperialist British and South Africa's Democratic Alliance for conspiring to sabotage his Government. Mr Mugabe said white business deliberately closed factories and refused to embark on profitable industries to make him unpopular.

The message is ever more chilling. "Our party," he declared, "must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man."

He has finally acknowledged that he no longer has any interest in the rule of law.

"No judicial decision will stand in our way," he told the dwindling party faithful as observers listened, appalled at what this means for the future.

Depressingly, Mr Mugabe's position seems firmer after the constitutional referendum and parliamentary elections.

The mass action promised by Morgan Tsvangirai, the Opposition MDC leader, has not materialised. The Army's suppression of food riots in October was so draconian that the Opposition is now fearful of precipitating a bloodbath if it persists with open protest.

Outside mediation attempts have singularly failed. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo felt the need to remind Mr Mugabe that it was not old colonial laws he was flouting but his own.

"What I think the Zimbabwe Government should do is to strictly follow the law that is already in place," he told the press after he and South African President Thabo Mbeki met Mr Mugabe at State House to try to make him see reason.

Mr Obasanjo was ignored. So, too, was Mr Mbeki, who now faces having to impose economic sanctions on his neighbour.

The impact of this is potentially catastrophic for both South Africa and Zimbabwe.

But Mr Mugabe sails resolutely on, playing the race card - the only one left to him - with ever more sinister effects.

Most black Zimbabweans freely acknowledge that it is not the white man who is the real problem; it is Mr Mugabe's revolutionary intransigence and the corruption of so many of those around him - not just the politicians but the Army, police and civil service leaders as well - which are holding the country to ransom.

Mr Mugabe has systematically eliminated the voices of reason from within the Government and party ranks.

The country is now run by a small group of loyalists in the party politburo, backed by the military.

Jonathan Moyo, Mr Mugabe's hardline spokesman, was added to the politburo along with Simba Makoni, the new Finance Minister, who was thought to be a moderate but by being absorbed into the inner sanctum has now been totally compromised.

Eddison Zvogbo, one of the party's most independent-minded leaders and the only genuine candidate with sufficient support to succeed Mr Mugabe, has been ejected from the politburo and without access to the resources of the party, he is effectively in the wilderness.

The immediate prospects are frightening. Food and fuel supplies are running out; Zimbabwe's credit-worthiness is shattered.

The Opposition is frightened to take to the streets. The rule of law is but a pleasant memory.

Farmers are being killed in ritual executions, while policemen stay at the station, warned by Mr Mugabe's thugs that if they intervene, they will also be killed.

Who can put a stop to all this? Clearly, Mr Mbeki and other regional leaders have come to the end of their conciliatory road but can do no more than turn the economic screw.

The British splutter with indignation and wring their hands, equally incapable of intervention.

The United Nations has been told to mind its own business. The Commonwealth has been similarly rebuffed and the rest of the world stands by waiting and wondering how much worse it can get before there is a showdown.

* Chris Laidlaw, a former New Zealand High Commissioner to Harare, was a member of the observer group who oversaw last June's Zimbabwe elections.