Zimbabwe election: Mugabe successor vies for power with young rival who modelled campaign on Trump

President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his main opponent, Nelson Chamisa, are courting links abroad to prove they will be the one to bring in the desperately needed outside investment

Kim Sengupta
Harare
Friday 27 July 2018 20:24 BST
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There is a perception among supporters of Nelson Chamisa (above) that Britain is backing Emmerson Mnangagwa to gain political advantage in the country
There is a perception among supporters of Nelson Chamisa (above) that Britain is backing Emmerson Mnangagwa to gain political advantage in the country

More than 4,500 observers from 42 countries are set to watch Zimbabwe’s historic elections, being held on Monday, in which the outcome will have widespread repercussions not just for this fractured country but across the region.

The international dimension is very much in evidence in the run-up to the first polls, in 38 years, under the rule of Robert Mugabe, when much of the time was spent in isolation with trade sanctions, and an atrophied economy increasingly detached from foreign trade.

Both President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his main opponent, Nelson Chamisa, are courting links abroad to prove they will be the one to bring in the desperately needed outside investment for the shattered commerce and industry, and to build diplomatic bridges.

There are attempts to emulate foreign electoral strategies. Mr Chamisa’s campaign, say his officials, is modelled to a large extent on none other than that of Donald Trump. There are certainly some similarities: an impressive ability to work the crowd; disparagement, often crude, of opponents; and a drive for the populist vote focusing on rural areas and the young and the impoverished.

Mr Chamisa has also displayed a Trumpian attitude to facts, and on occasion has attempted to play the Trump card. The leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) declared that the US president was backing him for the Zimbabwean presidency with a promise to pump $15bn (£11.4bn) into the country’s ailing economy. Washington stated that Mr Trump knew nothing about this and said the claim was simply fake.

The 40-year-old MDC leader then invoked another head of state to prove his leadership credentials. He said he knew the Rwandan leader Paul Kagame and had been instrumental in achieving his country’s success in digital technology.

Mr Kagame tweeted that he did not even know Mr Chamisa.

Nevertheless, Mr Chamisa and the MDC-led alliance is running President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the ruling Zanu-PF close in the opinion polls. And he maintains he has foreign backing from, among others, politicians in the US and Israel. He has paid visits to both countries.

The MDC had pointed to critical statements by members of the US Congress about Mr Mnangagwa, a longtime ally of Robert Mugabe in the ruling Zanu-PF party until a bitter parting that eventually led to his predecessor’s downfall, as signs of support.

They underscore comments by the Republican senator Jeff Flake, who had mentioned Mr Mnangagwa’s dark past.

“President Mnangagwa is not unknown to us. Until his dismissal as first vice president, he had been closely aligned to President Mugabe since his rise to power. He stands accused of orchestrating a string of massacres in the early 1980s to consolidate Mugabe’s power, leaving as many as 20,000 dead in Matabeleland,” Mr Flake said.

Officials representing Mr Flake deny he had taken sides in the Zimbabwean polls. The senator, who is due to arrive in the country as an election observer, introduced a bipartisan legislation, alongside Democrat senator Chris Coons, passed this week by Congress, on lifting sanctions on Zimbabwe.

The bill updates the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001, and sets out the terms under which the punitive economic measures would be lifted, starting with ensuring that the results of the elections on 30 July are not fraudulent.

Mr Flake said: “This measure outlines steps that will go a long way to demonstrate that Zimbabwe’s government is earnest in its desire to bring about long-overdue change for the people of Zimbabwe. I look forward to returning to Zimbabwe ahead of what I hope to be a free and fair election.”

Mr Mnangagwa, who is 35 years older than Mr Chamisa, is presenting himself as the elder statesman who will heal the internal divisions and have the foreign connections necessary to bring Zimbabwe into the international fold.

As the MDC leader was making fiery speeches in rallies held on dusty football fields to a largely young following, Mr Mnangagwa was in South Africa as a guest at a summit of the leaders of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). There, the Zimbabwean president had photo opportunities with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, Cyril Ramaphosa and Michel Temer.

Mr Mnangagwa told the meeting in Johannesburg: “I consider it essential to be present at this forum and have a rare opportunity to exchange views. We want to be a middle-income country with decent jobs, broad-based empowerment free from poverty and corruption by 2030. We carry a sense that better days are coming... Zimbabwe stands ready to enhance collaboration, [and promote] inclusive growth and shared responsibility for all.

Since taking power after the removal of Mr Mugabe in a coup last November, Mr Mnangagwa had been at the annual meeting of the African Union and the World Economic Forum. He claimed that delegations were “lining up” to meet him and his team from Harare at Davos, and he told them that “Zimbabwe was open for business”.

Zimbabwe’s rich agricultural sector was ruined by the way white-owned farms were taken over in “land reform”. Mr Mnangagwa has attended meetings with white farmers and has given orders for the 250 to 300 still remaining in the country to be given 99 year leases on their land.

Much of the best land expropriated was given to officials and ministers of Mr Mnangagwa’s Zanu-PF. But it appears that the white community, as well as the Asian one and the business sector, are all lining up behind him in the election.

Britain was the first country to send a minister, Rory Stewart, then at the Foreign Office, to Zimbabwe after Mr Mugabe’s fall, and there is a perception among Mr Chamisa’s supporters that the former colonial power was backing Mr Mnangagwa.

At a MDC rally, Fortune Tirivangani, a 26-year-old unemployed engineering graduate, said: “The UK is going to forget all the terrible crimes of Mnangagwa if it can get commercial advantage and political influence. It has never accepted being forced to leave our country.”

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