Zimbabwe Opposition Vows to Fight

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Zimbabwe's opposition leader vowed Friday to put up a fight in upcoming presidential elections, regardless of recent government efforts to suppress dissent.

Officials from around the world, meanwhile, criticized legislation Zimbabwe's ruling party pushed through Parliament a day earlier that put restrictions on independent election monitors and opposition candidates.

But Morgan Tsvangirai, who is running against President Robert Mugabe, said he was undeterred.

``We have absolutely no intention of abandoning the people when we have come to the closing hours of what has been a long and difficult journey toward democratic change,'' said Tsvangirai, who heads the Movement for Democratic Change.

The presidential election has been called for March, amid serious concerns about fairness.

After 21 years in office, Mugabe is fighting for political survival, and the opposition has accused his government of ramming the repressive legislative measures through Parliament and sanctioning violence in a bid to paralyze his opponents.

On Thursday, the ruling party-dominated Parliament passed legislation that would require that polling monitors be approved by state election officials, restrict campaigning and require specific proof of residency.

The last requirement is an apparent shot at the opposition, which is strong in urban areas where many people rent and don't necessarily have the sort of residency proof that homeowners have.

Lawmakers from Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union party also are expected to push through a bill next week aimed at muzzling the media. The bill would prohibit foreign correspondents from working in Zimbabwe and require local journalists to apply for licenses.

Thursday's legislation, which also grants police broader search-and-arrest powers, comes on top of an often-violent campaign by ruling party militants to seize white-owned land, a program backed by Mugabe and his government.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher condemned what he called the ``intensifying government-directed intimidation and violence against the opposition supporters, against the media and against civil society in Zimbabwe.''

He said the United States believes at least five opposition supporters have been killed in the past two weeks.

In Brussels, Mugabe's foreign minister was grilled Friday by the European Union (news - web sites), which is considering withholding development aid to Zimbabwe because of human rights concerns.

The European Union urged the Zimbabwean delegation to end political violence, organize free elections and ensure freedom of the press, according to an EU official who attended the talks.

But Foreign Minister Stanislaus Mudenge delivered a 25-page speech accusing Britain, Zimbabwe's former colonial power, of making promises of aid and then mobilizing an unfair anti-Zimbabwe campaign so it wouldn't have to actually pay.

Mudenge also stressed the need for land reform in the southern African nation, the issue that first sparked political violence in March 2000. Most of Zimbabwe's commercial farmland is owned by whites who make up less than half a percent of the population.

He also reiterated official promises to allow independent foreign election monitors - something the European Union has pressed hard for. However, he would not say which countries Zimbabwe would accept and what sort of freedom of movement the monitors would have. It seemed unlikely the European Union would be satisfied.

New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff said Zimbabwe should be suspended from the Commonwealth - the association of Britain and its former colonies - for its increasingly dictatorial and abusive regime.

South Africa spoke out against a declaration by Zimbabwe's military chiefs that they would only back a leader who served in the country's bush war for independence, which accelerated the end of British colonial rule in 1980.

Mugabe was a political leader during the revolution. Tsvangirai was a young civilian labor leader.

``The South African government cannot support the army pre-empting the election outcome,'' said South African President Thabo Mbeki's spokesman Bheki Khumalo.

In Washington, Boucher said: ``We call upon the government to disavow the statements made by the military to ensure that elections are free and fair.''

On the slippery slope to dictatorship - Zimbabwe's President has met the threat to his rule with draconian laws and thuggery. Analysis by Nicole Itano.

[Full Text] The thin veneer of democracy coating President Robert Mugabe's regime cracked this week when Zimbabwe's military and security leaders appointed themselves protectors of the country's revolution.

Despite their sugary words about preserving Zimbabwean ideals, the generals' message was clear: Mr Mugabe's rule would be upheld, by force if necessary.

With less than two months remaining before Zimbabwe's long-awaited presidential elections, the desperation of Mr Mugabe and his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) is beginning to show.

The presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai, a former union activist who is head of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), represents the first real threat to Mr Mugabe's power since his rise to the presidency with Zimbabwe's independence in 1980.

On Thursday the country's parliament illegally pushed through a set of draconian censorship and election laws that the country's independent press and opposition say are intended to stifle debate and prevent opposition supporters from voting in the election on March 9 and 10.

And in recent weeks, newly formed ZANU-PF youth brigades have begun to impose the kind of terror in urban areas that the country's so-called "war veterans" have used to cow rural Zimbabweans over the past two years.

Intimidation of voters seems to be the name of the game. And if that fails, the military's announcement on Wednesday reminds that there is always the brute force of a coup d'etat.

"I think we could probably have the election results tomorrow for all the value the voting will have," said Richard Cornwell, a political analyst at the South African-based Institute for Security Studies. "What we're seeing is a well-organised campaign of political thuggery."

Once lauded for its fertile farms and peaceful ways, Zimbabwe has been racked by political violence since the run-up to the June 2000 elections, which gave a third of parliamentary seats to the MDC.

In the year-and-a-half since, the Government has cracked down on media and opposition groups, worked to purge the courts of those who would not toe the party line, and seized much of the white-owned farmland for redistribution.

Although few thought the situation could get worse, in the past week, Mr Mugabe and his party have shown increased determination to strengthen their tenuous hold on power.

Human rights groups and the MDC claim the two bills passed by parliament on Thursday - an elections bill and a public security bill - were illegal attempts to bend the law in favour of ZANU-PF.

The new elections law, for example, bans international election monitors. Even more disturbing to opposition groups, however, are the provisions of the security bill, which observers say is even more restrictive than the old colonial rules it replaced. The new law authorises the death penalty for "insurgency, banditry, sabotage and terrorism" and jail and fines for anyone who "undermines the authority of the president" or "engenders hostility" towards him.

"It changes the way that we will campaign," said a MDC spokesman, Learnmore Jongwe. "The law will be used to deny us the right to hold rallies and connect with our people. We cannot attack government policies without risking arrest.

"But we have no intention of turning down. We believe we have to fight this election under these difficult conditions."

A third law still before parliament would forbid non-Zimbabweans from working as journalists in the country and require local journalists to acquire yearly accreditation from the Government.

Mounting international outcry has done little to sway Mr Mugabe from his repressive course. The United States has already imposed limited sanctions against the country's leaders and the European Union, which met late last week with Zimbabwean representatives, is on the verge of taking action of its own.

The Government, however, twists every criticism by a foreign power into evidence of the growing white, colonialist conspiracy against Zimbabwe.

Most recently, an announcement this week by the British Government that moves would be made to oust Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth if the political violence continued was met with scorn.

Even Zimbabwe's neighbours, who have long been loath to criticise Mr Mugabe, have begun to express concern. Desmond Tutu, the Nobel peace laureate and South African anti-apartheid hero, said Zimbabwe was on "the slippery slope towards a dictatorship with the trimmings of a multi-party democracy". [End]

A similar situation is developing in Kenya.

In Nairobi, Tax Tiff Takes Racial Turn Kenya: Mayor of capital tells whites to pay fees or poor may take over their land. But residents say the city is corrupt and have put the funds in escrow. -- By DAVAN MAHARAJ, TIMES STAFF WRITER

[Excerpt] NAIROBI, Kenya -- The Zimbabwe-style seizures of white-owned farms and homes haven't begun here--at least not yet.

But Nairobi Mayor Dick Waweru recently warned white residents of the city's richest neighborhoods that their homes could be invaded by slum dwellers unless they pay outstanding land taxes.

"It's either do or die," he told a news conference. Using the Swahili word for whites, he added, "We must get our money by all means [or] wazungus will have to pack up and go." So far, there has been no denouncement of Waweru's remarks by the government of Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, but the mayor's attack has rattled the nerves of white residents, who say Waweru is trying to stir up a race war so he can fatten city coffers.

Waweru's remarks last Saturday marked the latest volley in a running battle involving taxation and government accountability in this capital city.

Angered by the poor condition of roads, the lack of garbage collection and the absence of basic municipal services, residents of the Karen neighborhood--named after Baroness Karen Blixen, the Danish author of "Out of Africa"--began withholding their property taxes a few years ago to force politicians to account for the tens of millions of dollars that pass through City Hall each year. [End Excerpt]

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