Video: Morgan Tsvangirai makes his return

Robert Mugabe flew to the Far East last week for the kind of medical treatment no longer available in his run-down hospitals in Zimbabwe, leaving loyalists in the ruling party to wonder who was really in charge with just a month to go before a run-off in the country’s presidential election.

Sources close to the government said the 84-year-old president travelled to Singapore on Wednesday to undergo tests for prostate cancer. He was due to return home today.

Yesterday the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, also returned to Harare, the capital, with the aim of defeating Mugabe in the election on June 27. Tsvangirai had planned to arrive last weekend but pulled out after his party announced he was on an army hit list.

For Mugabe — who has been in power for 28 years but faces a fight for his political life after losing the first round to Tsvangirai in March — to leave last week suggested the visit was urgent. He is thought to have had cancer for some time; observers said the trip might indicate a deterioration in his condition.

Sources close to the government said the tests were being conducted by a top Malaysian urologist who was also known to have provided “certain financial services” for Mugabe.

In recent years the Far East has become a favourite destination of the president and his much younger wife, Grace, who are banned from Europe and America. Most of their assets were transferred to the region after western sanctions were imposed. Family members continue to be educated there and Mugabe has a close relationship with Mahathir Mohamad, the former Malaysian prime minister.

The man who has increasingly taken charge of security in Zimbabwe is Emmerson Mnangagwa, head of the Joint Operations Command (JOC), who was widely associated with a massacre of 20,000 Ndebele tribesmen in the 1980s.

Mnangagwa, whose reputed brutality earned him the nickname “the Crocodile”, made his way to power by becoming indispensable to Mugabe. He and his tightknit group of top military and security officials in the JOC are directing the current violent course of events.

They are running Mugabe’s campaign and masterminding the violence being unleashed against Tsvangirai’s supporters.

Tsvangirai’s arrival at Harare airport signalled his determination to contest the run-off despite concerns that it will be rigged. “I feel quite safe,” he said as he left South Africa, where he had spent much of the past weeks lobbying regional leaders.

Police were out in force along the road into the city. The 56-year-old opposition leader has survived three assassination attempts and was taken to hospital last year after a brutal police assault at a prayer rally.

Back in Zimbabwe, he first visited victims of the violence in hospital and then attacked Mugabe, saying the president wanted to destroy opposition structures before the run-off. He rejected any idea of a government of national unity.

The violence has grown worse by the day. Last week there were reports of villagers in opposition areas having their hands crushed in wooden bowls used for pounding maize so that they cannot vote. At least 48 people have been killed and hundreds injured since Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party lost the elections.

Hospitals are inundated with the victims of violence and there are shortages of basic medical materials. “We have come across injured women in hospital who have no idea who is taking care of their babies and children,” a hospital worker said.

Mnangagwa and his prime organisers — General Constantine Chiwenga, the commander of the Zimbabwe defence force, and police commissioner Augustine Chihuri — are leaving little to chance. They are said to be even more afraid than Mugabe of the consequences of the president’s loss of power. They might well face trial, whereas Mugabe could be granted immunity in a retirement deal.

A highly structured organisation involving the army, air force and prison services, as well as officers of the feared Central Intelligence Organisation, has been put in place to campaign against Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), to enforce support for Mugabe and to intimidate the rural electorate who deserted him in the first round.

With nearly 50 known murders of MDC activists, hundreds of beatings and thousands displaced from their homes, some Zanu-PF officials are wondering whether the whole enterprise might not be counterproductive.

Undeterred, Mnangagwa and his henchmen pressed on last week, dismantling a network of local agents from the Zimbabwe electoral commission and recruiting trusted military figures to replace them on polling day.

Bankrolling their entire operation was Gideon Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. At the same time, he cannily let it be known in Harare that he had warned Mugabe at the outset about the cost of a run-off, estimated at US$60m.

He also warned that a run-off could further destroy national unity and that Mugabe would probably lose again.

Even if the “securocrats” manage to beat and rig their way to a Mugabe victory, how long will their politically weakened and sick candidate be able to hang on in office; and who will take charge when he goes?

One man thinks he has the answer: Mnangagwa. One report last week said he had developed a “vice-like grip” on government. It was an apt description for “the Crocodile”.

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