Zimbabweans fear return of violence

Tensions rise as Mugabe's party fights back

Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front supporters sang and danced outside party headquarters in Harare while a politburo meeting was being held with President Robert Mugabe yesterday. (Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters)

HARARE, Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe's party acknowledged yesterday that it lost last weekend's historic election, but vowed to fight back in a second round of voting that many Zimbabweans fear will be much less peaceful than the first.

The announcement came on a day of sharply rising tensions in Harare, the capital, as signs mounted that Mugabe was preparing to use extraordinary measures to regain control amid the biggest challenge to his rule since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980.

Riot police and trucks mounted with water cannons appeared on city streets. The country's feared association of liberation war veterans, who long have served as Mugabe's enforcers, threatened to deploy.

A top ruling party official, Didymus Mutasa, said party officials were planning to "purge" the electoral commission of alleged opposition supporters and would challenge the results of 16 seats in the lower house of Parliament, enough to let them retake control of the chamber they lost in results announced this week.

Diplomats and opposition officials also said Mugabe, 84, was considering whether to invoke emergency powers to delay the presidential runoff election for 90 days in a bid to improve his chances of winning.

Mutasa did not say when the runoff would occur, but said a second round was necessary. "This time we will be more vigilant, and I'm sure we will win by a wide margin," he said.

Mutasa said Mugabe got 43 percent of the vote in last Saturday's election, compared with 47 percent for opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The numbers are close to those reported by independent observers. The opposition party says Tsvangirai narrowly topped 50 percent, which would allow him to avoid the second round of voting automatically required when no candidate wins a clear majority. Official results remain unannounced.

After days of reports that Mugabe's closest associates were split over whether to participate in a runoff or step down, the 49-member ruling body of his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front met for five boisterous hours yesterday. It voted unanimously to fight on in a second round, Mutasa said.

The announcements came after days of rumors and reports that Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe into a devastating economic morass with chronic shortages and 100,000 percent inflation, was considering stepping down at the urging of some family members and friends. Instead, Zimbabweans braced for a return to the violent politics common in earlier elections but largely absent in the run-up to Saturday's vote.

"Mugabe, after a defeat he did not expect, surely cannot want to face another election without a bag of dirty tricks," said Nomore Mutizwa, 32, who runs a cellphone shop in Harare. "I'm sure people will be beaten up and intimidated, especially in the rural areas. When ZANU-PF is desperate, they can be very dangerous."

Others prepared to meet any violence with resistance.

"We need to fight for our country," said Calisto Sibanda, 23, a black-market fuel trader.

Adding to the heightened tensions was the reemergence of an association of veterans from Zimbabwe's liberation war in the 1970s. The veterans long have been enforcers of Mugabe's policies and, in 2000, were the leaders of chaotic and often violent invasions of white-owned commercial farms, which gave many landless black peasants farms but also devastated the nation's vital agricultural sector.

Hundreds of veterans marched silently through Harare's streets yesterday, according to news reports. Afterward, leaders announced they accused Tsvangirai of seeking to help white farmers reclaim their land and said they were prepared to fight back.

"What I know is we will be compelled to repel the invasions," said Jabulani Sibanda, head of the war veterans' association.

Police crackdowns on foreign journalists covering the elections and at least one democracy activist group also fueled anxiety in the capital. Two correspondents, including Barry Bearak of The New York Times, were charged yesterday with violating Zimbabwe's strict journalism laws. He was among a group of four foreigners arrested at a Harare hotel Thursday. Zimbabwe has barred most foreign journalists from legally reporting on the election.

The newspaper said Bearak "is being held in a frigid cell without shoes, warm clothing or blankets."

His lawyer "informs us that the top legal officials in the office of the attorney general agreed that the case . . . should be thrown because the police could produce no witnesses or other evidence against him. But somehow the state's lawyers were overruled," the newspaper's statement said.