Challengers to Zimbabwe regime attract little hope

John Donnelly- The Boston Globe: "Around this empty-feeling capital, where the scarcity of fuel has dramatically reduced traffic, billboards display the images of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. These icons of resistance movements, hoisted to promote a cellular phone company, stand as ironic sentinels in a country ruled by a man most consider a dictator, President Robert Mugabe.

Written beneath the huge photographs is the message, ''There is nothing more powerful than the inspired."

But even as this country's economy falls apart bit by bit -- a crisis rooted in Zimbabwe's takeover of white farms starting in the late 1990s, triggering an exodus of foreign capital -- those looking for opposition leaders to inspire them find scant hope.

Over the past week, the Movement for Democratic Change party, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, continued its pattern of indecision when it delayed a decision to participate later this year in elections for a new Senate, essentially a Mugabe creation. While most party members oppose running for a body that they consider illegitimate, some opposition leaders have said they cannot stomach the idea of a Mugabe loyalist representing their strongholds. The big question facing the opposition, if it does not run, is how to respond.

Also last week, at a rare conference of education, religious, and nongovernmental organization leaders, several speakers lamented the lack of opposition figures to challenge the regime.

''Those who lead the struggle do not deserve to be there," Raymond Majunge, head of the Progressive Teachers Union, told a crowd of 500 in a hotel ballroom as members of Mugabe's feared Central Intelligence Operation watched from the back of the room. Many applauded him.

The Rev. Pius Ncube, the Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo, and one of Mugabe's fiercest critics, spoke up: ''Perhaps we failed to find a leader of such stature that people will sacrifice themselves," he said. ''Could we raise a kind of Mandela?" So far, the answer seems to be no. Diplomats and analysts say the government remains entrenched in power, following a widely discredited election victory earlier this year tainted by charges of massive voting irregularities.

''There's a difference between a collapsing country and a collapsing state," said a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''This is not a collapsing state."

After the March 31 election, opposition leaders had a nationwide plan for street protests and demonstrations. But Tsvangirai, who earlier had been held up by Western diplomats as their best hope to succeed Mugabe, declined to support the effort. He feared that police and military would fire into crowds, creating a bloodbath.

In many ways, the conditions today would seem ripe for public protests against the government. Diesel fuel shipments stopped coming five weeks ago because of a lack of foreign currency. Gasoline, when it is available, costs $4 a gallon, and stations accept only US dollars. The gas shortages became so severe last week that the municipality of Harare ran out of fuel and was forced to buy it on the black market -- so that police, fire, and ambulance services could respond to emergencies. Other basic commodities are in short supply, if available at all. In Bulawayo, shoppers cannot find bread, sugar, or salt on store shelves. And when supermarkets in Harare put out sugar, said one store's buyer, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, black-market sellers scoop up the supply -- and then sell it at inflated prices.

In addition, Zimbabwe's $120 million payment to the International Monetary Fund this month left the country starved for foreign currency reserves. The government, said one senior official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, raided US dollar accounts held by businesses at the Central Bank to pay the overdue debt. The government then reimbursed the businesses in Zimbabwean dollars, which sold at 10,000 to $1 US in March and now at 50,000 to $1.

The net effect, said the official, will be that when businesses need to purchase equipment or supplies outside the country, they will probably not have the hard currency to do so; businesses outside Zimbabwe do not accept Zimbabwean dollars.

''It will be interesting to see what happens in the next two weeks," the official said. ''You could see factories shut down because the companies can't buy spare parts."

But analysts said the government's demolition of what it said were illegal housing settlements in June, which left an estimated 700,000 people homeless, has further raised the level of fear.

''In the short term, the government has invested in creating a lot of fear among ordinary citizens," said Arnold Tsunga, a human-rights leader who organized the civil-society conference, ''Deciding Zimbabwe's Destiny." ''There's a lot of bitterness now. The government has definitely managed to buy a bit more time in terms of civil society being able to mobilize people to protest for their human rights."

Tsunga said he found some hope that authorities did not try to stop the conference. ''They tried to intimidate us, saying that they would take us to court" for allegedly holding an illegal assembly, he said. ''But they backed down when they realized they had no case. So they said they would send 10 of their officers. I told them to send much more. I said, 'They need to hear us.' "

But other observers, including Western diplomats who attended the meeting, came to a different conclusion: The government's decision to allow the meeting shows it has no fear of the opposition.

At last weekend's gathering of activists in Harare, a student leader, Washington Katema, quoted Mandela: ''The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." Even as he exhorted his fellow activists, Katema noted an overriding reality in Zimbabwe today. ''I think we are in an armed struggle," he said. ''But only one side is armed.""