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In a paper titled “What is a possible future for Zimbabwe after Robert Mugabe?’’ submitted in response to a query from New York University on Monday, John Campbell, a Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa Policy Studies at the think tank, said the prospect of a Zanu-PF loss was unlikely.
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“The dominant party in Zimbabwe is Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF). So long as Mugabe lives, Zanu-PF will likely win a national election. It benefits from the advantage of incumbency: not just because of intimidation, but because it is associated with the dispossession of white farmers.
“Land is by far the most important domestic issue in the country and Mugabe has been on the side of justice from the point of view of black Zimbabweans,’’ Mr Campbell said.
The CFR report comes on the heels of a scathing attack on MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai by a leading American leftwing magazine, Counterpunch, that said Zimbabweans face a simple choice at the polls, continue on the path of revolution and true independence espoused by Zanu-PF or regress to the counter-revolutionary politics of puppetry
In the article titled “Zimbabwe: The Revolution Continues” published in its June edition, Counterpunch magazine’s Eric Draitser said under President Mugabe’s leadership Zimbabwe had managed to maintain its independence despite spirited efforts by Western powers to destabilise the country and slammed Tsvangirai’s policy of Western appeasement.
Western media, among them CNN, the New York Times and The Guardian, have of late been highly critical of the MDC-T leader in the wake of scandals about his personal life and handling of public finances.
CNN’s “Connect the World” anchor Becky Anderson recently put it to Mr Tsvangirai during an interview that reports emanating from Zimbabwe indicated that people were fed up with him.
The CNN’s perspective on Mr Tsvangirai’s political fortunes dovetails with several recent surveys pointing to a Zanu-PF victory in the harmonised elections. MDC-T allies, among them the NCA, PTUZ, Zimbabwe Vigil, Sokwanele as well as the British paper, The Guardian, have also given the edge to Zanu-PF.
In the wake of his wife’s death in a car accident in 2009, Mr Tsvangirai’s bed-hopping hogged the headlines and spilled into the courts culminating in an abortive wedding to his customary wife, Ms Elizabeth Macheka.
Among the women Mr Tsvangirai was linked to were Loreta Nyathi from Bulawayo with whom he sired a son whom he initially refused to take responsibility for including refusing to obtain a birth certificate.
He was also linked to another Bulawayo woman, Aquiline Pamberi.
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