African leaders threaten to isolate Zimbabwe's Mugabe
They say his ruling party's violence against the opposition is betraying liberation principles. A runoff election is going forward even though Mugabe's only challenger has pulled out.
HARARE, Zimbabwe -- President Robert Mugabe faced the threat of isolation in the region today as his government in Zimbabwe drew tough criticism from several African leaders.
Following a vote the day before by the United Nations Security Council condemning violence against opposition supporters, his regime was under mounting international pressure today to abandon its plans to press ahead with Friday's presidential runoff election.
But Mugabe told a rally in western Zimbabwe that the vote would be held even though his only challenger, opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai, had pulled out this week amid a wave of violence and intimidation against his supporters. The 84-year-old president came in second to Tsvangirai in the first round of voting in March.
In a sharp condemnation, Jacob Zuma, the leader of the African National Congress in neighboring South Africa, declared that Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party had veered away from the shared values that came out of their nations' liberation struggles.
"We cannot agree with ZANU-PF. We cannot agree with them on values," Zuma said at a news conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. "We fought for the right of people to vote, we fought for democracy."
He said the situation in Zimbabwe was "out of control" and called for urgent international intervention to ensure a political settlement leading to new elections.
His stance stood in contrast to that of South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has avoided strong criticism of Mugabe.
The ANC also released a statement saying, "We are . . . deeply dismayed by the actions of the government of Zimbabwe, which is riding roughshod over the hard-won democratic rights of the people of that country. The ugly incidents and scenes that have been visited on the people of Zimbabwe persuade us that a runoff presidential election offers no solution to Zimbabwe's crisis."
The rebuke from Zuma, his nation's presidential heir apparent, and the ANC is likely to send reverberations through Mugabe's party, which sees itself as always able to rely on other African liberation movements for support.
One senior official with Zimbabwe's ruling party told The Times in an interview Monday that the Southern African Development Community was split between nations that came to power through liberation struggles, which were supportive of Zimbabwe, and those that "got their independence on a silver platter," which tended to be more critical.
