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President Mugabe chooses Sudan and Libya as referees in election

Lloyd — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:11:46 +0000

Britain, continental countries and others critical of Mr Mugabe will be banned from sending monitors to oversee the freedom and fairness of the poll. Sudan and Libya have been chosen “on the basis of objectivity and impartiality in their relationship with Zimbabwe”, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, the Foreign Minister, said.

“Clearly, those who believe that the only free and fair election is where the Opposition wins, have been excluded since the ruling party is poised to score yet another triumph,” he said.

Among the observer nations are Ethiopia, Nigeria, China, Iran, Venezuela and Kenya, where allegations of vote rigging sparked deadly ethnic violence in December.

Mr Mumbengegwi said that there was “one European nation” among the list of invited countries, and named Russia, where there are concerns over the election of Dmitri Medvedev, President Putin’s successor, as president last month.

They made me chant Robert Mugabe is always right, while I was being beaten

Lloyd — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:09:33 +0000

One of Zimbabwe’s leading human rights campaigners has issued the world with a startling reminder of the horrific abuse and torture being suffered under Robert Mugabe’s regime ahead of the country’s elections in three weeks’ time.

Takavafira Zhou, a trade union activist, was seized by government police two weeks ago and, while imprisoned, did not know if he would make it out of the torture chamber alive. Beaten to within an inch of his life, Mr Zhou was told to repeat the slogan “Robert Mugabe is always right”, and now he has come to Britain to preach the reverse.

How the tyrant of Harare also started his career in the classroom

Lloyd — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 06:06:39 +0000

Were it not for an accident of history, Robert Mugabe might now be a retired schoolteacher living out his dotage in peaceful Ghana. In the summer of 1960 when the first African National Congress – the one set up in what was then Rhodesia – was starting to challenge white rule, the young Mugabe was more of an academic than an activist. The holder, already, of three degrees he had only returned to his homeland to introduce his future wife, Sally, to his family.

The staunchly Catholic and ferociously studious 36-year-old still had two years to run on a four-year contract with a teacher training college in Ghana and fully expected to return. The west African nation, the first to gain independence from Britain, was probably the most exciting country on the continent at the time, governed by the charismatic and ambitious Kwame Nkrumah, and the young Mugabe was already a confirmed admirer.