News Analysis: Strong-Willed Mugabe to Wrestle With Challenges

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, March 18, 2002

News Analysis: Strong-Willed Mugabe to Wrestle With Challenges

Zimbabwe's incumbent President Robert Mugabe on Sunday was sworn into his third six-year term, probably the final one for the 78-year-old former anti-colonial guerrilla leader to wage an all-round war to win his southern African nation an economic independence.

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National and Party Unity

Mugabe won by 56 percent of the March 9-11 presidential polls, but his Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) met in its 22-year rule since independence in 1980 from Britain the toughest challenge by the newborn main opposition party -- the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The 50-year-old Morgan Tsvangirai led his MDC, which was established in 1999 but grabbed 57 seats of the parliament against ZANU-PF's 63-seat slight majority in 2000, has collected 42 percent of the presidential votes.

Backed by the Britain-led West, Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader who advocates a democratic change and free economy, has enjoyed an ever-increasing popularity among the Zimbabweans especially in the urban areas.

As Mugabe appealed in his inauguration speech for a non- partisan, national unity in building the nation's economy, an ideal hard to be unanimously accepted by the conflicting followers of both parties, the trade unions were warning a national stayaway.

Among the ZANU-PF which has been long suffering a factional strife, Mugabe is also challenged to find a compromised solution to choose his successor in a bid to consolidate the party's ruling position at a time characterized by democratic change worldwide.

Economic Recovery and Land Reform

Mugabe's new term begins with an unprecedented economic catastrophe, a result of a series of faulty government policies, collective sanctions by the Western countries and suspension of aids by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and others over the past few years.

The economy, also straitened by the early 2000 large-scale invasion of the minority whites-owned farms by the war veterans and unexpected droughts, has witnessed an inflation rate of 116 percent, a combined debt of 9.6 billion U.S. dollars, a drastic devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar and an unemployment rate of 64 percent.

The majority of his people, especially the peasants in ZANU-PF' s rural strongholds, are hard to feed themselves due to shortfall of agricultural produce and foodstuff hoarding by profiteers, although the government set limits on food prices while ordering emergency maize imports from abroad.

Since July 15, 2000, when Mugabe adopted a "Fast Track" policy to boost the land reform exercise to have allocated some 5 million hectares of land acquired from 3,041 white-owned farms, the targeted 500,000 beneficiaries of mainly landless peasants and war veterans have been puzzled with an inadequate infrastructure support including irrigation and transport system.

Mugabe told the guests in his garden-like State House that a comprehensive economic recovery program was already there, but experts said that his government is unable to revive, in the near future, the confidence of economic sectors and a guarantee of funds and technology support to the poor landowners to make into highly productive their small tracts of land, most of which are barren and unutilized for years.

Africa's Support vs West's Pressures

Mugabe, whose colorful inauguration ceremony was unanimously boycotted by the Western ambassadors, has to spare no efforts to take up the ever-uncompromising challenges mounted by the Britain- led former Western colonial powers.

What Mugabe and his rural supporters demonstrate in their land reform exercises is to empower the indigenous blacks with the land which were depossessed of by white colonists since they settled down their feet on Zimbabwe in 1890.

Sending shockwaves to his neighbors which witness the same or similar situation, Mugabe's Third Chimurenga (revolution) is expected to trigger a far-reaching land reform revolution targeting the fundamental interests of the Western powers in Africa.

To strangle the looming threat in the cradle, the European powers, supported by the Unites States and other allies in a united front, are determined to tame Mugabe from taking further actions following their failure to suspend Zimbabwe's membership of the Commonwealth and to throw off Mugabe from office by supporting the MDC in the presidential election.

Mugabe is in a crying need of the sympathy and support from his African fellows and friends across the rest of the world to survive the Western pressures.

"We will continue to need your support in the future as imperialist maneuvers against Zimbabwe persist," Mugabe told a group of his African counterparts sitting behind him. "We humbly call upon you, our friends and allies, to remain steadfast behind us. Let's unite!"

The history, which has approved the truth of land to the tiller, will certainly record a new chapter of struggle by the Zimbabweans led by Mugabe in gaining their thorough independence, sovereignty and respect worldwide.

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