Death fears for Mugabe's opponent

Zimbabwe's opposition leader is widely predicted to be heading for a massive victory over Robert Mugabe in polls less than a fortnight away - as long as he is not assassinated first.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, knows opinion polls are talking of him securing 60 per cent of the vote, but he also knows the lengths Mugabe would go to to get him out of the race.

Yesterday Tsvangirai was charged with treason after being questioned by police over allegations that he plotted to assassinate President Mugabe. High treason is an offence punishable by death, and after being told charges would be pressed, Tsvangirai was released and told he would be summoned at a later date.

The arrest was widely seen as a move to frustrate the election process - for, after 22 years of uncontested rule over Zimbabwe, Mugabe is facing the clear and present danger that he could actually lose, despite the bullying and beatings by his army-trained "Youth Brigade", designed to intimidate the voters against the opposition candidate.

Mugabe's intelligence officers, according to diplomatic sources, have warned him that he could be so comprehensively thrashed that the results will be actually beyond their capacity for rigging. He is now said to be secretly plotting to flee the country, sounding out African neighbours for a possible safe haven.

The predicted size of victory for Tsvangirai, a former trade unionist with a Blairite approach to the economy, is said to be so large that all he has to do is stay alive to take the laurels. Against a background of economic collapse, widespread hunger and predictions of famine, it has become clear that Mugabe can't win a fair fight.

It was no surprise to Tsvangirai when he was arrested. Three days before, his car came under fire and his party officials were tear-gassed. His convoy was forced off the road by police officers, who shot into two cars with their automatic weapons, just outside Masvingo, soon after he had addressed a rally of supporters.

He remained remarkably calm when I spoke to him about the attack and his arrest. "That was just a few over-zealous policemen. But it shows the extent of the problem when policemen, acting out of selfinterest, think they can earn advancement by shooting at me," he said.

Interviewing Mr Tsvangirai is not permitted. There is a blanket ban on British newspaper reporters, accused by Mugabe of being "spies" on behalf of Tony Blair. Tsvangirai said: "We know he wants to get me out of the race. It is quite obvious.

"He could keep me under arrest. But under the election laws there is only one basis on which they could remove my name from the ballot, and that is if I am dead. I could still run from jail. There isn't any law that says that a presidential candidate cannot be facing criminal charges."

Does he fear that he could be the target of an assassination himself? "There is that risk. We have taken many precautions against it. But in the end, there is nothing much we can do," said Tsvangirai.

A European diplomat involved in intelligence gathering said that "it is clear that elements within the Zimbabwean government are indeed trying to remove the opposition leader from the picture, permanently". Tsvangirai is used to Mugabe's tactics. Former guerrilla leaders Ndabaningi Sithole and Joshua Nkomo, both ministers, and potential presidents, were also accused of plotting to kill Mugabe and forced into exile.

The excuse Mugabe needed to detain his opponent was provided by Ari Ben Menashe, an Israeli-born political lobbyist working for Mugabe in Washington. He recently released a tape of a conversation with Tsvangirai in which, he alleges, the opposition leader is plotting to assassinate Mugabe. Menashe's business partner is wanted for fraud in America. The tape has been ridiculed as a crude collage of a conversation with Tsvangirai re-edited to look like an assassination plot.

Tsvangirai told the Standard: "I'm not worried about this. They cannot concoct a conspiracy and then pin it on me - it's absurd. The people understand that this is nonsense. But there is nothing in the electoral law that says a candidate cannot run from jail, even if he is facing criminal charges, so I will carry on whatever the authorities throw at me."

Opinion polls show he would get about 60 per cent of votes. But huge numbers of Zimbabweans will not reveal their choice of candidate to anybody. Given the state of the nation, it is safe to assume they're not Mugabe supporters.

Zimbabwean intelligence agents have told foreign diplomats that it would be impossible to rig the elections if Mr Mugabe lost by 20 per cent or more. "The more people who vote, the more votes we will get. A high turnout will be a disaster for Mugabe and he knows it," said Mr Tsvangirai.

The reason for the remarkable collapse in the popularity of "Comrade Bob" is simple. Zimbabwe is on its knees. Inflation is running at 117 per cent. The Zimbabwe dollar, which at independence in 1980 stood at parity with the American dollar is now only slightly more valuable than loo paper. Twothirds of the population is unemployed.

Zimbabwe's long-overdue land reforms, to redistribute the best agricultural areas from 4,500 white farmers who owned 70 per cent of them to the landless blacks, have been a bloody fiasco. Eight white farmers and many more of their workers have been killed. Hundreds of thousands of acres of abandoned fields are lying fallow.

Still more are being farmed by new black settlers who will never have title to their land. They have no seeds, tools, irrigation, or skills. Because they do not own the patches of land taken from the whites, they will never be able to get loans to develop it.

As Zimbabwe goes to the polls, its president is presiding over food shortages in what the UN predicts will be a famine.

This is good for Tsvangirai. As one of his supporters poignantly joked: "He could win this dead."

Other dictators forced to flee