WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2002-03-14 Posted By: Jan
From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 3/14/2002 1:54:49 AM
Mugabe to Crush the MDC with Treason Charges
Source:Daily Telegraph (UK)
published: Wed 13-Mar-2002
Dozens were arrested and harassed for what Mr Mugabe’s supporters described as “despicable acts of political manipulation”. Many of those arrested had simply worked as party representatives or polling agents
By Tim Butcher in Bulawayo and Peta Thornycroft in Harare
President Robert Mugabe moved to neutralise the opposition Movement for Democratic Change as results in the presidential election came in last night. The opposition party’s secretary-general, Welshman Ncube, was charged with high treason for his part in an alleged assassination plot against Zimbabwe’s 78-year-old president. It is expected that other senior MDC figures, including the leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, could also face arrest on similar charges, reducing their ability to mobilise their supporters.
In another development, Zimbabwe’s police force launched a crackdown on anyone, black or white, in the north of the country who had offered support or assistance to the MDC during the poll. Dozens were arrested and harassed for what Mr Mugabe’s supporters described as “despicable acts of political manipulation”. Many of those arrested had simply worked as party representatives or polling agents.
In Bulawayo, the country’s second city and capital of Matabeleland, an MDC stronghold, army units were deployed into the townships of Phumula, Cowdray Park and Nkulumane. It was believed to be a move to deter public displays of unrest if Mr Mugabe is declared the winner in the election some time today. Mr Mugabe enjoys little popularity in urban areas and, if any popular unrest takes place, it is most likely in crowded townships such as those that surround Bulawayo’s western suburbs.
The first of the country’s 120 constituencies to declare a result came out in support of Mr Tsvangirai. The supposedly independent electoral officials, who were all appointed by the ruling Zanu PF party, announced shortly after 7pm Zimbabwean time that Umzingwane constituency in Matabeland South had given 11,226 votes to Mr Tsvangirai and 5,883 to Mr Mugabe. But any optimism within MDC ranks dissipated moments later when a Midlands constituency, Mberengwa, recorded an astonishingly high vote for Mr Mugabe of 21,182 and only 4,395 for his opponent. It bore little relation to what independent observers had expected.
Official figures on state television news said that Harare, the opposition stronghold, had the lowest turnout of any province in Zimbabwe, at 41.6 per cent. In contrast, Mashonaland Central, where the ruling Zanu PF party holds all 10 parliamentary seats, achieved the highest turnout of 68.9 per cent.
Brian Raftopolous, head of a collection of Church and civic groups known as the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee said the the electoral fraud had been so bad that a Mugabe victory was inevitable. “The election well has been poisoned to such an extent that there is unlikely to be any other result,” he said. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a coalition of non-governmental organisations, produced a list of problems related to the election, including flawed voter rolls, intimidation and attacks on voters by police and ruling party militants, and the deployment of voting stations in a way that clearly favoured Mr Mugabe. Reginald Matchaba-Hove, chairman of the network, said: “The election is total confusion and chaos . . . There is no way these elections can be described as substantially free and fair.”
Kare Vollan, the head of a 25-strong team of Norwegian monitors, said the elections “were conducted in an environment of strong polarisation, political violence and an election administration with severe shortcomings”. The Norwegian report also criticised the administration of the election in Harare as wholly inadequate, and said that thousands of voters had been deprived of their democratic right to vote. This was denied by Zanu PF, with Jonathan Moyo, the information minister, claiming: “This has been an exemplary election in our view.” Patrick Chinamasa, the justice minister, angrily dismissed allegations of election rigging and said Zimbabweans had voted “freely and fairly and in a peaceful manner”.
Meanwhile, the MDC tried to put as positive a gloss as possible on the formal charging of Mr Ncube, claiming it indicated that Zanu-PF was desperate and in a “state of panic”. But there was no denying that it represented a setback for the party and raised the prospect of a blanket crackdown by Mr Mugabe’s security forces and police on the entire leadership. As the police turned the screws on white farmers and MDC election agents and support staff, the state-controlled Herald newspaper said in an editorial yesterday: “Whites’ actions [are] despicable. White people in Zimbabwe went for broke during the presidential election as they pushed for an unlikely MDC victory.”
Counting is expected to continue today amid numerous accusations of fraud against the Zanu PF authorities.