Zimbabwean parties kick off election campaigns with attacks on each other

Ravi Nessman

Sunday, May 21, 2000 | 3:03 a.m.

GLEN VIEW, Zimbabwe - On the first official weekend of the campaign for parliamentary elections, the ruling party and the opposition held rallies across Zimbabwe, attacking each other to loud cheers from their supporters.

Nearly 1,000 people gathered Sunday in the Harare suburb of Glen View as Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said the ruling ZANU-PF party was out of touch with ordinary Zimbabweans and was responsible for the economic crisis the country is suffering.

"ZANU-PF cannot walk around and say look at our record, because it is a record of failure," he said in a speech that switched between English and the Shona language.

Tsvangirai accused President Robert Mugabe of creating a climate of instability that was destroying any chance of attracting outside investment. When Tsvangirai asked those without jobs to raise their hands, the majority of the crowd responded.

"He is creating economic chaos in the country," Tsvangirai said.

At an earlier rally on a farm in Mashumba, 30 miles east of Harare, ZANU-PF officials said the election was about the unequal distribution of land in a country where 4,000 white farmers own one-third of all the productive farmland.

"The question here is not about the election. The question is about the land problem," said Sabina Mugabe, Mugabe's sister.

About 20 white farmers were among the 400 people at the ruling party rally. White farmers, who as a group have been considered MDC supporters, have in the past two weeks begun attending ruling party rallies.

After the MDC and other government opponents helped defeat a constitutional referendum in February that would have entrenched Mugabe's power, armed gangs of ruling party militants have occupied about 1,200 white farms. They have demanded the farms be seized and redistributed to landless blacks.

A wave of political violence across the country that accompanied the invasions has left 23 people dead, mostly MDC supporters. In recent weeks, the militants have been forcing farm workers and others in rural areas to attend their rallies.

Last week, Mugabe set the parliamentary elections for June 24 and 25. They will likely be his strongest electoral challenge since he led the country to independence from Britain in 1980.

Sabina Mugabe, the local member of Parliament, told the farmers at her rally that they were not the enemies of Zimbabwe, but they must pledge their support for the president.

"You have a right to be Zimbabweans, but you must take off the shells of being a white supremacist, the shells of being a colonial master, the shells of being a superior group and come back to being Zimbabweans," she said. As she spoke, the crowd chanted: "Forward with Mugabe, down with Tsvangirai."

Opposition officials have accused President Mugabe of using the land issue to distract voters from the dismal economy and of inciting attacks on the opposition to intimidate his opponents.

The MDC accused ruling party thugs of beating some opposition supporters in Harare's Mabvuku suburb.

About 20 local MDC organizers were arrested overnight in advance of the Glen View rally, party spokesman Nomore Sibanda said.

"They seem to have been picked up just for organizing the rally," said Nomore Sibanda.

Late Sunday they were still being held at an undisclosed location and charges against them had not been revealed by police.

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