Zimbabwe 2000: Fighting for the Rural Vote

Zimbabwe's ruling, but widely unpopular, ZANU PF party appeared resigned to losing urban constituencies to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in parliamentary elections in May 2000. Analysts said then that meant the country's rural constituencies, ZANU's traditional support base in the 20-years since independence,were likely to decide the outcome of the poll. Both sides were leveling and rejecting charges of intimidation in the bitter fight for the rural vote, as I reported on a return trip to Harare in May 2000.

Last month, at an opposition political rally in Bindura, northeast of Harare, a grizzled old farm worker in a tattered T-shirt and shabby trousers told me he was happy to support the new Movement for Democratic Change. Besides, he said, he would not have his farm job unless he had an MDC party card.

The man was quickly hustled away by party activists who said he did not know what he was saying. They insisted no one was being forced to join the opposition. The Commercial Farmers Union, which represents most of Zimbabwe's four-thousand white farm owners, said it did not believe any of its members would require workers to join the opposition. No one else corroborated the man's claim.

Now, Zimbabwe's state-run broadcasting service is reporting that thousands of farm workers are flocking to rallies in rural areas where they are claiming they were all coerced into joining the MDC by the white commercial-farm owners who employ them. One televised report this week showed farm workers, joined by their employers, turning over MDC party membership cards and T-shirts and renouncing their support for the opposition.

The farm owners were quoted as saying their tractors and trucks, previously used to ferry workers to M-D-C rallies, would now be used to take them to rallies held by the ruling ZANU PF party, which organized the event.

But these televised political conversions followed bloody incidents in which white farm owners and their black workers have been killed, beaten, and threatened by ruling party activists or the black war veterans and other squatters involved in the recent occupations of white-owned farms.

MDC officials are challenging the authenticity of these change-of-party-allegiance events, which they claim have been stage-managed by ZANU PF after the farm owners and their workers were intimidated. The Commercial Farmers Union is also questioning the genuineness of the conversions.

Nevertheless, MDC leaders are now openly acknowledging that farm owners and farm workers alike need to put their personal security first. At a May Day rally in a black working-class suburb of Harare, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai told an audience of several-hundred supporters that they should go along with those he described as ZANU intimidators to avoid further trouble. He says what really matters is what they do in the privacy of the polling booth on election day.

But there have been suggestions that Mr. Tsvangirai feels betrayed by some white commercial farmers. They initially gave him and the MDC their enthusiastic support, but now appear to be making separate deals with the ruling party and the war veterans behind the land seizures. Mr. Tsvangirai is on record as criticizing farm owners for negotiating with those he calls outlaws. But he says he feels no sense of betrayal.

“No, no, no. I think that safety comes first. I do not feel any betrayal at all.”

One farmer with land southwest of Harare says he and his workers have faced extraordinary harassment, including what he describes as serious threats to their safety. This farmer, speaking on condition of anonymity, says landowners have been made to feel by the ruling party and the squatters that they can enjoy effective peace as long as they stay out of politics.

Accordingly, he says that for public purposes, he is now distancing himself from involvement in the campaign for the coming parliamentary elections. But he says what he does in the privacy of the polling booth will be another matter - echoing the hopes of MDC leader Tsvangirai.

But less educated Zimbabweans may not feel so confident about the secrecy of their votes. Worried MDC officials say farm workers have been told privately that the ruling party has unspecified ways of seeing just who they vote for. They say they have been told they will be killed if they vote for the opposition.

With an estimated 350-to-400-hundred thousand farm laborers and hundreds-of-thousands more in their families, that fear could cost the opposition votes in rural areas, where ZANU PF's hopes of retaining a parliamentary majority appear to rest.