Mugabe's Last Stand

by Stephen Chan

Robert Mugabe appears to be living in a kung fu movie, says Stephen Chan (right), who was part of the Commonwealth Observer Group that oversaw Zimbabwe’s independence. The University of Auckland graduate, now Professor of International Relations at the University of London, has monitored Zimbabwe’s elections over the past 28 years.
My most amazing image from voting day in the Zimbabwean elections was being run off the road by President Robert Mugabe’s motorcade. I was touring the polling stations and, in a day that alternated direst poverty with its exact opposite, had reached the richest suburb, Borrowdale Brook.

Suddenly, crashing out of the tree-lined side-street, Mugabe’s outriders sped into the light. It was all over in a flash, but I noticed the outriders rode Chinese motorbikes. The smoked-glass Mercedes bearing Mugabe had Zim 1 numberplates, and the open-topped Land Rover bearing his backup military support was crammed with soldiers carrying sub-machineguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. I caught my breath. The man goes about with heavy-duty protection.

I drove down his street and came to the huge grounds of his palace – and it is a palace, not a mere mansion. The estate is surrounded by white walls topped by blue ceramic tiles that shone in the sun.

I came to the gates. Guards stood by with ordinary AK47s, but with bayonets fixed. They were Chinese gates, something from a kung fu movie, the blue and white pavilion of dawn. I drove on, not carrying proper papers and not wanting to be questioned.

But the image lingered. Mugabe sees the Chinese as his last friends, but he has always had an affection for things Chinese. Now 84, he has built the ultimate Chinese retirement home – only he is refusing to retire.

I am convinced Mugabe lost the presidential elections, but the numbers game is one that can be rigged, and his hardliners demanded that they be rigged to force a run-off against the opposition challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai. I had Tsvangirai winning by 56%, with a generous margin of error downwards, but certainly above the 50% threshold that would have meant a clear victory, with no need for a run-off.

My figures were extrapolations from very informal surveys. Being a lone operator doesn’t allow much science to intrude. But every monitoring group that ventured a prediction was certain Tsvangirai had taken more than Mugabe, and was at least terrifying close to the 50%. With the votes for fellow challenger Simba Makoni regarded as a vote against Mugabe, the president had received the crushing rebuke of a vote only in the high 30 to early 40 per cents.

But his Politburo, after a marathon session, demanded that he stay to fight on, when and if their people had finally rigged the count to favour a run-off. For days, the phones rang red hot from South Africa, bearing US promises of immunity from international prosecution if Mugabe went graciously.


Every offer was made to induce him to eke out his life, luxuriously, in his Chinese palace. He even has a miniature clone of the palace in Malaysia, should be feel in need of a more authentic oriental atmosphere.

But the intransigence of his party, ZANU-PF, is such and its self-deception so great – an imagination that they are still fighting the revolution while living like Chinese emperors – that the Politburo agreed an all-or-nothing endgame to the elections, spurning immunities and deals and rallying around the old man.

There was a Chinese emperor once. He had a captive nightingale that sang beautifully. One day it flew away. The emperor had a clockwork replacement installed, but it had only one song. Then the clockwork replacement broke down and the emperor, in his fury, declared war on all the nightingales in China. The last stand of Mugabe will not be a peaceful, blood-free affair.