Mugabe Electoral Campaign Desperate, Overstretched and Weakening

By Levi Mhaka

Published on March 8, 2008

Barack Hussein Obama on Wednesday said he was not ready to change his style of campaigning just yet. "Look, they (the Hillary Clinton Campaign Team) have run a pretty negative campaign over the last couple of weeks. I have said consistently that we do things differently. It's worked for us so far and you know I’m not gonna do things that I'm not comfortable doing and I want to make sure that we stay focused on the issues".

Simba Makoni has had a similar approach and so far he has not changed it despite the indecent use of words by President Robert Mugabe.

Three events have been used to drive President Robert Mugabe’s candidature - the dubious ‘Million Men’ March; the ZANU PF extraordinary congress that used a wrong clause of the constitution for endorsement; and launch of a bankrupt manifesto, whose copies cannot even be readily available, because of the different strategic approach between the ruling party’s information and publicity department and that of government.

With so much pressure arising out of Dr. Simba Makoni’s declaration as an independent candidate, Mugabe’s campaign has resorted to insults and uses the usual chief scapegoat, Britain, to protect his position.

One wonders how, to ordinary person, would Britain be responsible for the shortage of basic commodities; endless power and water cuts; escalating of prices; endless strikes by teachers; doctors and nurses; shortage of medical supplies in hospitals; cash shortages; a high level of people choosing to become economic refugees in the neighbouring countries especially South Africa and Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and the shrinking of the industrial and commercial capacity; and low productivity in the farms after what they consider as a successful land reform.

For lack of depth in dealing with all these challenges created by bad and unsound economic policies, Mugabe and ZANU PF candidates and officials have resorted to sloganeering – especially the oft repeated slogan "Zimbabwe will never be a colony again", which was coined by Prof. Jonathan Moyo, the former Minister of Information and Publicity.

The ruling party has no functioning website nor a formalised campaign team except for the use of Elliot Manyika, a politburo member responsible for the Commissariat (akin to the Organising Secretary) and George Charamba, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information and Publicity and the President’s press secretary. Manyika is also a candidate for Bindura North in Mashonaland Central Province and all he could do well is to sing during rallies, arrogantly neglecting the campaigning required for his constituency.

Charamba, a civil servant, is alleged to be working full time for ZANU PF loosely organised campaign team with Caesar Zvayi, the political editor of the Herald newspaper and his subordinate, Mabasa Sasa, while being funded allegedly by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor, Gideon Gono. Zvayi and Sasa have been writing highly partisan articles attacking Simba Makoni or promoting the candidature of Robert Mugabe.

There have been secretive fundraising efforts by the ruling party’s department of finance and its Treasurer-General, David Karimanzira, was reported in the Herald newspaper that the party requires more than ZW$300 billion (US$8,571) for the elections. Given the shrinkage of the economy, local companies are hard pressed to donate anything, and thus one can only guess that its well wisher is the RBZ and China.

Just imagine during the electioneering there was no mentioning of Simba Makoni, Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC opposition party. All hypothesise if the Western countries that have disagreed with Mugabe are not also mentioned. Would there be any need of an election? Would there be anything left for ZANU PF and its candidates to say?

Even if Mugabe was a sole candidate, he stlll needed a popular endorsement in the election. What would he say if he had no opposing candidate?

If there are no insults to make, no donations of computers and sewing machines and promises not backed by funding aspects, to make that come only during election time, Mugabe would be a better candidate to dialogue with on his record.

A local economist was quoted by a weekly newspaper that eight years in a row of negative growth, for the ruling party it will be ‘vote us into power and we will finish you off’. He said no government, having brought down such economic misery on the people, cannot with good conscience, stand in front of the people with a straight face and say: Vote for us. To do what? To inflict more damage on the economy, on the people?

"It’s the economy, stupid".