By Our Correspondent, The Zimbabwe Times
HARARE - President Robert Mugabe on Saturday stood on the most sacred ground in Zimbabwe, the National Heroes’ Acre and threatened to take Zimbabwe to war.
Currently in the throes of a bruising presidential election campaign, Mugabe vowed once more that he would not recognise any defeat by his rival, Movement for Democratic Change leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, on June 27. He has said an MDC victory will signal the beginning of war. Mugabe has however, not revealed the identity of the enemy that Zimbabwe will fight if Tsvangirai wins the election.
Issuing the latest in a series of such menacing threats, Mugabe said the MDC, a party that he accuses of being mere puppets of imperialist forces engaged in schemes to oust his government, must sever its alleged links with the British and the Americans.
“We will never accept anything that smells of a delivered parcel that comes through the MDC here,” Mugabe said.
His repeated threats have engendered genuine fear among Zimbabweans as to the likely scenario in the country should Tsvangirai win the election, as is widely predicted. Analysts say Mugabe’s repeated threats are, in fact, an acknowledgment of pending defeat. If he was assured of victory he would be boasting about pending victory, they say.
Mugabe, who now shows signs of age and infirmity, is 84 years old. He has been in office as head of state continuously for the past 28 years. Previously unbeaten in any election, although he has been accused of rigging, and throwing the entire government election machinery into his campaign, Mugabe boasted in March that he would defeat Tsvangirai, dismissing him as a puppet of the west. The MDC leader, however humiliated him, outpolling Mugabe in a presidential election that was unusually peaceful.
Tsvangirai however failed to secure enough votes to form a new government. A presidential election re-run was declared early in May. By that time Zimbabwe was engulfed in a wave of brutal violence after the military was deployed throughout the country.
Armed people wearing military camouflage have been identified in many instances as being the perpetrators of the incidents of brutal violence, which has left 66 dead and hundreds injured and thousands displaced.
The security forces top brass have vowed they will not allow anyone other than Mugabe to become President of Zimbabwe.
Speaking at the National Heroes Acre Saturday during the burial of retired Lt General Amoth Chimombe who died in Harare on Monday, Mugabe repeated his now familiar mantra that the British and the Americans continue to interfere in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs “as if we remain a colony of Britain”.
The late Chimombe was Commander of the SADC Allied Task Force in the DRC at the time when President Laurent Kabila was assassinated by one of his bodyguards in January 2001.
Economic analysts say Zimbabwe’s current economic meltdown, with inflation now reaching 1 700 000 percent, stemmed from Mugabe arbitrary decision to involve the country’s military in the DRC adventure. At its peak, the war to prop up Kabila cost Zimbabwe US$1 million a day.
“We are no one’s subjects and never will be,” Mugabe said, speaking at the graveside. “We are masters of our own destiny and the matter of regime change is a matter for Zimbabweans to decide.”
Over the past few days, Mugabe has repeatedly vowed he will not accept an MDC victory on June 27. He says the MDC intends to return the land to the white commercial farmers who were dispossessed of farms in a violent land redistribution exercise prior to the 2000 general elections.
On Friday Mugabe vowed never to “allow the pen (the ballot) to remain mightier that the sword” and threatened to go to war if he lost the presidential election re-run to Tsvangirai.
“Surely democracy can’t mean the right to pawn our sovereignty. We are prepared to fight for our country if we lose it the way it was lost to Mbuya Nehanda,” Mugabe said. “We will not sanctify the politics of the opposition when they seek to overturn and subvert our sovereignty.
“This country came through bloodshed. And we are expected to allow our country to be governed by nonentities? That will never happen. British rule ended. Let them heed that the war was meant to destroy British rule and kick out settlerism.”
He accused the MDC of seeking to undermine his land reform program. Government’s ill-prepared land redistribution campaign starting in 2000 triggered the collapse of a once highly productive agricultural sector. Zimbabwe has been forced to import food for the past seven years at a time when it is experiencing a severe foreign currency shortage.
