ZIMBABWE'S presidential run-off election hung in the balance last night as Gordon Brown condemned "those orchestrating the latest horrific escalation of violence".
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change is expected to decide in the next 24 hours whether to pull out of Friday's vote amid a wave of violence and killings by President Robert Mugabe's regime.
Last night the Prime Minister said those behind the brutality "must immediately end the violence, allow local and international monitors complete access and cooperate with the UN to allow a full investigation of the human rights abuses".
Meanwhile, the High Court in Harare overturned a police ban on the opposition party's main pre-election rally scheduled for today at Harare's showground, opposition spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said last week that a "wave of brutality" has swept Zimbabwe since the run-off was called. His message was distributed by e-mail, one of the few ways he has of reaching voters.
Chamisa said: "There is a huge avalanche of calls and pressure from supporters across the country, especially in the rural areas, not to accept to be participants in this charade."
Mugabe has vowed never to hand over power to Tsvangirai, despite signs of growing African discontent over bloodshed that has escalated since Zimbabwe's March 29 general election, which the MDC won, but not by an outright majority.
Angola's veteran leader added his weight to appeals to Zimbabwe's government to stop their tactics.
President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, an old ally of Mugabe, sent a message urging him to "embrace a spirit of tolerance".
Mugabe yesterday accused the Zimbabwe opposition of lying over political violence to justify claims that this week's presidential run-off vote will not be free and fair.
Mugabe said the MDC was compiling names of alleged victims and falsely claiming their supporters were being beaten up.
"They say this so that they can later say the elections were not free and fair, which is a damn lie," the state Herald newspaper quoted him as saying at a campaign rally in the western city of Bulawayo.
Endgame of evil: the five election scenarios that will make or break Zimbabwe
Movement for Democratic Change supporters dance while campaigning
ROBERT Mugabe has launched a campaign of murder, mayhem and persecution ahead of this week's Zimbabwe run-off presidential election. He is trying to remain head of state after 28 years in power, having brought his country to the brink of total destruction.
So how will the Zimbabwe tragedy develop? Here we examine five possible scenarios.
Scenario OneThe people go to the polls and Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) candidate, who won the first round of the presidential election on March 29, achieves a clean, clear win on Friday. This should be possible because many human rights activists in Zimbabwe doubt that Mugabe would win even 20% of the vote in a free and fair election.
There is a swift transition to a completely new government and reconstruction follows. The international community has promised massive aid to help Tsvangirai, his party and society put the country back on its feet. Nearly four million Zimbabweans, including the brightest and the best, have fled Mugabe's oppression into exile. They return and contribute to the reconstruction process. Many people are confident that Zimbabwe, with rich natural resources and whose agriculture once fed Africa, could begin a steady recovery.
This is the most desirable but most unlikely outcome. Two days ago Mugabe harangued a meeting of remaining Zimbabwean businessmen and told them: "Only God, who appointed me, will remove me – not the MDC, not the British. The MDC will never be allowed to rule this country – never ever."
Scenario TwoMugabe, who has already all but declared civil war on his own people with acts of murder and violence, intensifies the intimidation and ballot rigging and emerges victorious after the vote on June 27.
To achieve a "democratic" victory Mugabe will have the unflinching support of his top security force officers in the Joint Operations Command (JOC), the military junta that effectively runs Zimbabwe.
The most powerful figures on the JOC, headed by armed forces chief General Constantine Chiwenga, will protect the businesses and farms they have stolen and looted and resist change because of the many human rights crimes they could be charged with under a new government.
Commander of the prison service General Paradzai Zimondi has ordered his prison employees to vote for Mugabe or face dismissal.
National police chief Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, who has publicly vowed that he will never allow Tsvangirai and the MDC to take power, said last week: "The MDC is the main culprit in the political violence that we are currently witnessing in the country." Despite that comment, not one ZANU-PF supporter has been killed since the first round of elections on March 29. Police officers have been deployed to war veteran and militia units who are in the forefront of the attacks on opposition supporters.
Chihuri has warned the MDC that "all necessary force" will be used against its supporters in the coming week. "We will not allow puppets of the British (Mugabe's way of depicting the MDC] to take charge," he said.
Ian Makone, the national election director for the MDC, and one of Chihuri's top targets, is in hiding and works only at night. To find out where he was, Chihuri's police-led militias abducted his campaign manager Ken Nyeve, security guard Godfrey Kauzani and his wife's driver Better Chokururama and tortured them with knives and screwdrivers. When their bodies were recovered, their eyes were gouged out and their faces burned off.
A victory in such circumstances for Mugabe is a highly likely outcome, although the ballot rigging will have to be on a massive scale.
Scenario ThreeThe next scenario predicts that after assessing the government's sweeping violence, the MDC decides not to contest Friday's election. An MDC spokesman, Nelson Chamisa, said late last week: "There is a huge avalanche of calls and pressure from supporters across the country, especially in the rural areas, not to accept to be participants in this charade."
Heavy pressure is also coming from a wide variety of people with vested interests for Tsvangirai to pull out of the election and enter a government of national unity with Mugabe.
Prime among these is the heavily discredited South African president, Thabo Mbeki, whose eight years of "quiet diplomacy" on Zimbabwe have so far failed to produce a positive outcome.
Last week, the MDC's deputy leader Tendai Biti returned home from South Africa to Zimbabwe with Mbeki telling him he had assurances from Mugabe that he would not be detained. On arrival, Chihuri's police arrested Biti, charged him with treason, which carries the death penalty, by subverting the ZANU-PF government and "projecting the president (Mugabe] as an evil man". Biti was refused bail and will remain in prison until he is brought to trial.
However, Tsvangirai has told supporters: "Withdrawing will not solve anything." The message he is sending ahead of an MDC meeting to decide what to do is that they must be brave in the face of the government's violence and intimidation and vote to sweep away Mugabe and his generals.
Neither will Tsvangirai succumb to pressure from Mbeki and others to enter a government of national unity, with Mugabe continuing as president and the MDC leader becoming prime minister.
Mbeki, southern African heads of state and the international community have already ignored and silenced the democratic voice of the Zimbabwean people by their tardy reaction to the rigged election of March 29, said leading MDC politician Grace Kwinjeh last week. Kwinjeh, who has been detained and tortured many times by Chihuri's police thugs, added: "As a consequence, the MDC's hard-won legitimate authority has been erased and the way has been opened for ZANU-PF to recover by the bullet what it lost at the ballot box.
"War is not something to be prevented by a government of national unity. It is here already.
"The MDC and its supporters are wary of legitimising the political role of those holding the gun to their heads and the torch to their homes. A government of national unity would merely enable Mugabe and his party to climb out of the hole of electoral defeat."
Scenario FourA remarkable change on the African political scene has occurred in the past few days. Several African heads of state, alarmed by the damage to their own country's reputations and economies by Mugabe's oppressive policies, have begun speaking out strongly against the continuation of ZANU-PF rule.
Leading the Africans is Seretse Ian Khama, the newly elected president of Botswana, Zimbabwe's neighbour to the west, who last week became the first African leader to make an official government protest against Mugabe's reign of terror.
Khama summoned Zimbabwe's high commissioner in Gaborone, the Botswana capital, and told him Mugabe was violating protocols of the 14-member Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) on the holding of free and fair elections. In a statement, 54-year-old Khama, said: "The repeated arrests and detentions are unacceptable and deserve condemnation, as they violate the principles and objectives of the SADC treaty." Khama said he was "deeply disturbed" by Mugabe's politically-motivated arrests which were "alarming and unacceptable".
This was strong language from a member of the African leaders' club who, when under pressure in connection with human rights abuses, have historically supported each other.
Khama's outspokenness emboldened others – Zambian president and SADC chairman Levy Mwanawasa, Tanzanian president and African Union chairman Jikaya Kikwete and Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga – to describe the crisis in Zimbabwe as everything from an "eyesore" to a "disgrace".
Odinga called on the international community to demand that Mugabe steps down, calling the run-off vote a "sham". Nigerian president Umaru Yar'Adua also condemned Mugabe for disregarding the rule of the law and blasted him for his brutal treatment of the opposition and critics.
Rwandan president Paul Kagame joined these former allies of Zimbabwe's head of state and heaped scorn on Mugabe for vowing not to surrender power if beaten. In a news conference in Kigali, Kagame blamed Zimbabwe's woes on the failure by African leaders to address the country's problems, and added: "The whole thing is a joke. I am saying this because of what is obviously a serious problem in Zimbabwe."
The new anger of Africa's leaders has enabled the West, with the United States as outspoken point man and supported by the European Union, Britain, Australia and a coalition of other countries, to formulate a strategy, encompassing African allies, to oust Mugabe.
This strategy, including strong international sanctions, will become ever clearer in the next few days and will be aimed at neutralising Mbeki, whose South Africa provides Zimbabwe with electricity, oil and other essential supplies. This scenario is almost certainly the one that will eventually be Mugabe's downfall, but long after June 27.
Scenario FiveThe final scenario takes note of the many people praying, like the former Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, that "the Lord will soon take Mugabe away. He's a fascist, a fraudster, a liar and a godless murderer. Everyone is fed up with him. We're all hoping against hope that something will happen. He's a very, very evil man. The sooner he dies the better."
Mugabe may now be claiming that God appointed him as president, not the Zimbabwe people, but as the Greek dramatist Euripides observed 2,500 years ago: "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."
The full article contains 1933 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
