PRESIDENT MUGABE has begun a diplomatic offensive to persuade neighbouring African states to allow him to bend the rules during parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe next month.
Mr Mugabe is also erecting more obstacles to outside scrutiny of those elections and is clamping down on any sign of internal dissent.
On Saturday he dismissed Jonathan Moyo, his controversial Information Minister, who is the architect of the country’s repressive media laws, after he defected from the ruling Zanu (PF) party to run as an independent.
Mr Mugabe, who celebrates his 81st birthday today, has sent envoys to Namibia and Botswana, key members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), to seek their acquiescence in his failure to follow SADC’s own rules governing elections in the region.
Zimbabwe has refused to allow a legal delegation into the country to inspect electoral reforms, so it would not be possible for the SADC to have election monitors in the country.
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Diplomats said that to avoid a backlash Mr Mugabe has sent two of his most loyal followers — Didymus Mutasa, the Anti-Corruption Minister, and John Nkomo, the Social Affairs Minister — to meet President Nujoma of Namibia and President Mogae of Botswana, old allies from his “freedom struggle” days and sympathetic to his argument that he is a victim of racist detractors.
A diplomat said: “He is calling in old favours again, he wants their approval in advance of the result.” The diplomat added that Mr Mugabe would probably invite monitors from those countries to come in an individual capacity. “That will emasculate any potential SADC threat.”
Zimbabwe has excluded already election observers from the European Union and the United States. Stan Mudenge, the Foreign Minister, said that they had not been invited because they had a “preconceived negative perception” of how Zimbabwe’s elections would be conducted.
Last week, three of the last foreign correspondents in the country — including Jan Raath, of The Times — fled the country after tip-offs that they would be arrested.
Zimbabwean police also arrested leading opposition figures for convening or attending an alleged illegal meeting called to demand a free poll.
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George Charamba, the official government spokesman, said that Mr Moyo, once dubbed the most-hated man in Zimbabwe, had been stripped of party membership, legislative seat and Cabinet post.
Mr Moyo fell out with Mr Mugabe initially after refusing to support his appointment of Joyce Mujuru, a veteran ally from the independence movement, as Vice-President.
Mr Mugabe retaliated by ensuring that he was not reselected by his constituency party. Mr Moyo said yesterday that as an independent election candidate he was no longer “hostage to the whims and caprices of the politics of patronage”. He said that the move had come as no surprise.
He added: “I had come to accept that it was sunset . . . I had also come to understand and appreciate that it is far better to be with the people and to work for them.”