THE offices of the main opposition party in Zimbabwe were ransacked by police and foreign journalists were detained last night in ominous signs that Robert Mugabe is turning to intimidation and violence to stave off an electoral threat to his 28-year rule.
Earlier, the 84-year-old dictator apparently launched his campaign for an expected run-off presidential ballot even before the official results of Saturday's election were announced.
Huge green banners with a picture of the president have appear
ed in the centre of the capital. They bear his battle cry: "Our land, our sovereignty." Yesterday, Mr Mugabe appeared on state TV for the first time since the polls as he met election observers from the African Union.
Five days after the vote, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission still had not released results on presidential election, despite increasing international pressure, including from former UN chief Kofi Annan.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has already asserted that its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the presidency outright, but said it was prepared for a run-off vote.
The police raids came a day after official results showed Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party had lost control of parliament's 210-member lower house. The election commission was slow on the 60 elected seats in the Senate, releasing the first returns late last night. These gave five seats each to the opposition and ruling party.
Tendai Biti, the MDC's secretary-general, said rooms used as offices by the party at a Harare hotel were ransacked by intruders he believed were either police or agents of the feared Central Intelligence Organisation.
"Mugabe has started a crackdown," he said. "It is quite clear he has unleashed a war."
Mr Biti said the raid at the Meikles Hotel targeted "certain people, including myself".
He added that Mr Tsvangirai was safe, but had cancelled plans for a news conference. The MDC leader was arrested and beaten by police a year ago after a banned opposition rally.
In a further signal of the government's hardening stance, heavily armed riot police surrounded and entered a Harare hotel housing foreign correspondents and took four away. Eight journalists were staying at the York Lodge.
Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said correspondent Barry Bearak, a winner of a 2002 Pulitzer Prize, was one of those taken into custody.
He added: "An American consular official who visited him at the central police station reported he was being held for 'violation of the journalism laws'."
The identities of the other reporters was not immediately clear last night.
Beatrice Mtetwa, a Zimbabwean lawyer, said "quite a few" Americans and Britons had been detained by police, but no charges had been filed against them. Some were being questioned individually, but were not allowed lawyers present.
Mr Mugabe has ruled since his guerrilla army helped to force an end to white minority rule and bring about an independent Zimbabwe in 1980. However, his popularity has been battered by an economic collapse which followed the often violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms in 2000.
Seemingly laying the groundwork for a Mugabe run-off campaign, the state-run Herald newspaper claimed Zanu-PF was running neck and neck with the opposition in the vote count, and it highlighted divisions among Mr Mugabe's foes.
The paper claimed Mr Tsvangirai would give farmland back to whites.
Independent election observers say their projections, based on results from local polling stations, indicate Mr Tsvangirai won the most votes in the presidential poll but not enough to avoid a run-off, which would have to be held by 20 April.
There were reports Mr Mugabe was considering conflicting advice from advisers on whether to cede power quietly, or face a run-off, both humiliating prospects. But Bright Matonga, the deputy information minister, insisted that Mr Mugabe was "going to fight", adding: He is not going anywhere. He has not lost."
EXPLOITED DIGNITY THERE is a proverb in Zimbabwe that partly explains why people aren't running through the streets to get rid of Robert Mugabe.
It states: "When you're ploughing in the field and there's a tree stump, you plough round it."
Substitute the stump for Mr Mugabe and you see why he has held power for so long.
My Shona friends are politely horrified by my British tendency to "take the bull by the horns" if there's a problem.
"We don't like fighting," I've been told. Mostly, Zimbabweans work around their problems.
This isn't about strength, or a lack of it. It's about dignity, a dignity Mr Mugabe can exploit. Dignity does not involve running amok through the streets.
Memories of the brutal war for independence linger. A middle-aged teacher said: "We don't want that again."
It now looks likely Mr Mugabe is digging in for a last battle. Zimbabweans talk of disappointment and suffering No-one's told me yet they want to take up arms.
The full article contains 827 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
