Zimbabwe's new president has too many enemies

The pomegranate fell at his feet. For a moment, Zimbabwe's new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, disappeared completely into the stiff sand next to the Bulawayo White Stadium stadium, where he had just moved away. Once the dust settled, the scene was surrounded by groans of bodyguards, crawling on the grass. Two bodyguards succumbed to their injuries. Mnangagwa remained unscathed.

Four weeks later, human rights lawyer and opposition member David Coltart is on the same stage. A frantic crowd dances in front of him in the red T-shirts of his opposition party, the MDC Alliance. Only a small crater in the grass reminds of the blood that flowed here. "What I find so crazy, is that we have not heard anything about the attacker since the attack, an attack on the president's life and no arrest?" Coltart asked aloud at his house that morning. "I always thought that the attack was a conspiracy, an excuse to attack the opposition."

The opposition is allowed to campaign

But unlike all previous elections in Zimbabwe in recent years, the opposition During the campaigns, no straw was put across. Since the attack, opposition leader Nelson Chamisa has held nearly seventy meetings across the country. Not just in big cities, where the opposition is more popular than the government party for over twenty years. Also in the Conservative campaign, where opposition has always been denied and voters know nothing more than the party of the father of the nation, Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF.

The Zimbabwean government party is nervous. Not only are the opposition meetings much more numerous than those of President Mnangagwa. Hate against Mnangagwa infiltrates everywhere. At a meeting in Mashonaland East, Mugabe's home province, voters fled Mnangagwa's speech in front of the camera. The soldiers tried to stop them in vain with sticks. The orchestrated fall of Mugabe, 93, last November, has not forgiven Mnangagwa here. "The Mugabe brand has been carefully built in fifty years, you will not destroy it in a few days," says Coltart, and Mugabe and his followers have suggested supporting another candidate than their former colleague from the Mnangagwa party. of support for opposition candidate Chamisa

Old mistrust of Mnangagwa

In the south-west of the country, in Matabeleland, they have much more reason to hate Mnangagwa. "If I see his name in the newspapers, I will burn them immediately, "says Moffat Nyathi, when the name Mnangagwa falls, his eyes harden and he looks at his shoes.On May 19, specialists in forensic medicine dug up the body of his father where he was murdered in 1983 in the rocky mountains south of Bulawayo.

Government soldiers came home that day in search of a gun.The neighbors had told soldiers that the fatherMoffat hid a rifle and would be part of the opposition to Robert Mugabe's government. When the soldiers could not find a weapon, they asked Moffat to burn his father with plastic bags. He was twelve years old. Mnangagwa was then the Minister of State Security, who called "dissidents" in the southwestern "roaches" that had to be wiped out.

"Mnangagwa is now campaigning, but we do not have to," said widow Midah Nyathi. She is standing where her husband's body has been searched. The soil has returned and there is a small dish in which herbs have been burned to honor the dead. "We are still suffering from what he's done to us."

Even more than Mugabe, Mnangagwa became the face of this punitive campaign, called Gukurahundi, which means in the local Shona language: "the first rains that straw" Mugabe was so smart to keep his distance and not go to Places where the atrocities had taken place. "But Mnangagwa made some puzzling statements while he was in the places where the atrocities took place," says David Coltart, who has helped many parents as "aliens." At least 7,000 Zimbabweans speaking Ndebele were killed during the Gukurahundi in Matabeleland. "As the father of the Mugabe nation is forgiven much of what happened then. But events have always been held in Mnangagwa.

The location of the recent attack on June 23 was very revealing. Bulawayo is the capital of the Matabeleland province, in the south-west of the country, where the murders took place in the early 1980s. "We are not vindictive people." It is inconceivable that anybody from Matabeleland wants to kill him, "says activist Mbuso Fizwayo, who would want to see Mnangagwa dead?" It could be that it comes from his own party. Or it is someone who seeks the justification for a new criminal campaign against the opposition. "

The Army Leads

While the elections ended largely without violence, the number of reports of intimidation in the last days before the election runs fast on." They told us threatened to kidnap and murder, "says Mongwenya, who lives in the Midlands Province on land that was redistributed under the poor Zimbabweans after the country was expropriated by a white farmer. that they would drive us out of our country if we did not vote for the Zanu-Pf government party. "According to him, the man behind the threats is Omega Sibanda, Zanu-PF's candidate in Vungu District. "I have no one threatened," says Sibanda, asking for comments. "I am a member of Seventh-day Adventists. Go ask in all the churches. I would never threaten anyone. These people are probably drunk. Or they try to do something important. "

" We see particularly subtle threats, "says lawyer Coltart." The government party wants to prevent elections from being free and fair, they want international recognition. But voters are told that they will have something to expect after the election. "The large-scale fraud investigation before the elections next Monday will accumulate. For example, there are 125,000 names of voters on the voters list who would have been younger five years ago since the last election. And 75,000 other names of people whose last name does not appear anywhere else, voters without cousins, nieces, uncles or aunts. The opposition is also concerned about the ballot, on which the names of the 24 candidates should be listed in alphabetical order. But by making the bill two pages, the name of Mnangagwa is still at the top. The Electoral Commission (ZEC) rejects the complaints of the opposition.

Mnangagwa has been sporadic since the attack of his life. For someone who has been in the shadow of Mugabe for 37 years, he does not seem to worry about his lack of relative familiarity. "I think these elections are not so much Mnangagwa, but for the army that wants to keep its power," says David Colthart. "Mugabe was the sign of their iron fist, and now Mnangagwa is like that." Next Monday's elections must respect the army leaders who have been heading Zimbabwe for close This plan can only fail in one way: with a grand victory of opposition. "Nelson Chamisa has to win with such a great distance that he does not have to go anywhere. There is no reason to cheat, "says Coltart, but at Matabeleland, they know better than anyone how abusive this army-led government can be when it feels uncomfortable.