Queen Strips Mugabe of Knighthood

Queen Elizabeth II has stripped Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s strongman president for nearly 30 years, of his honorary knighthood as a “mark of revulsion” at the human rights abuses and “abject disregard” for democracy over which he has presided, the British Foreign Office announced Wednesday.

The rebuke showed the extent of international frustration over Mugabe’s insistence to go ahead with a presidential runoff on Friday, even though his sole opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out of race on Sunday because of the persistent violence and intimidation against him, his party and their supporters.

Mugabe’s government has had a long history of human rights abuses, but he was granted an honorary knighthood during an official visit to England in 1994 when, the foreign office contends, “the conditions in Zimbabwe were very different.”

But with the widespread attacks against the opposition, the foreign office said the honor could no longer be justified. Stripping a dignitary of an honorary knighthood is exceedingly rare. A foreign office spokesman could think of only one other time it had been done — in 1989 to the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu.

Tsvangirai, the beleaguered opposition leader, called on the United Nations on Wednesday to send a peacekeeping force to bring calm to the country and help pave the way for new elections in which he could participate as a “legitimate candidate.”

“Zimbabwe will break if the world does not come to our aid,” he said in an op-ed in The Guardian newspaper in London. After weeks of mounting political violence against the opposition and its supporters, Tsvangirai withdrew from Friday’s runoff and took refuge Sunday in the Dutch Embassy in Harare.

He emerged from the embassy briefly on Wednesday to hold a news conference at his home in which he challenged Mugabe to cancel the runoff and open negotiations.

But, he said, he was not prepared to deal with a government validated by an election in which Mugabe is by default the only candidate. Mugabe has insisted Friday’s voting will go ahead.

“We have said we are prepared to negotiate on this side of the 27th, not the other side of the 27th,” Tsvangirai said, according to Reuters.

He listed four demands: an end to political violence; the resumption of humanitarian aid; the swearing in of legislators elected in the first round of voting on March 29; and the release of political prisoners.

“We have always maintained that the Zimbabwean problem is an African problem that requires an African solution,” he said, referring to continent-wide and regional African bodies including the Southern African Development Community.

“To this end, I am asking the African Union and S.A.D.C. to lead an expanded initiative, supported by the United Nations, to manage the transitional process.

“The transitional period would allow the country to heal,” he said. “Genuine and honest dialogue amongst Zimbabweans is the only way forward.” He said he wanted the African Union to endorse his proposals at a forthcoming summit meeting in Egypt.

Tsvangirai’s demands coincided with a scramble of regional and international diplomacy with many African and Western institutions saying the vote on Friday will be neither free nor fair. A critical group of southern African countries opened a meeting Wednesday in Swaziland to seek a way out of the crisis.

The meeting grouped leaders or ministers from Swaziland, Angola and Tanzania — the so-called troika charged with responsibility for the region’s political, defense and security issues. The group said it had also invited the leaders of Zambia and South Africa to attend, but President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, the regional mediator on the crisis in Zimbabwe, said through a spokesman that he would not attend.

The spokesman, Mukoni Ratshitanga, said in a telephone interview that South Africa was not a member of the troika and had not been invited.

Amid the international outcry over his government’s handling of the crisis, Mugabe, 84, was reported Tuesday as hinting that he might be open to talks with the opposition, but only after Friday’s vote confirmed his power.

He remained defiant about going ahead with the runoff.

“They can shout as loud as they like from Washington or from London or from any other quarter,” Mugabe said in televised broadcasts. “Our people, our people, only our people will decide and nobody else.”

Taken together, his remarks were the most explicit affirmation that he intended to go through with an election widely condemned as illegitimate.

But the hint of readiness to talk was also the first sign that Mugabe might negotiate once he has what he can depict as a position of strength.
The state-run Herald newspaper quoted Mugabe on Wednesday as saying: “We are open, open to discussion but we have our own principles.”

The American ambassador in Harare, James McGee, has concluded that Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party area determined to hold the runoff “at all costs,” according to the State Department.

“We’ve received reports that Zanu-PF will force people to vote on Friday and also take action against those who refuse to vote,” McGee said in a conference call described by the State Department. “So, they’re saying ‘We want an election at all costs. We want to validate Mugabe’s victory here.’” “There’s really nothing that we can do here in the international community to stop these elections,” McGee said.

The BBC quoted Jendayi Frazer, the State Department’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs, as saying Washington would not recognize the outcome of the vote if it went forward.

“People were being beaten and losing their lives just to exercise their right to vote for their leadership so we cannot, under these conditions, recognize the outcome if, in fact, this runoff goes forward,” she was quoted as saying.

South Africa, the region’s most influential player, has rejected outside intervention in the crisis.

In a statement on Tuesday, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress insisted that “any attempts by outside players to impose regime change will merely deepen the crisis.”

While the A.N.C. statement came out with an unusually strong condemnation of the Zimbabwean government, saying it was “riding roughshod over the hard-won democratic rights” of its people, the party also insisted that outsiders had no role to play in ending its current anguish.

“It has always been and continues to be the view of our movement that the challenges facing Zimbabwe can only be solved by the Zimbabweans themselves,” the statement said. “Nothing that has happened in the recent months has persuaded us to revise that view.”

Despite that assessment, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain told Parliament on Wednesday, “We are preparing intensified sanctions, financial and travel sanctions, against named members of the Mugabe regime.” That included a ban on the Zimbabwean cricket team to prevent it from touring England, news agencies reported.

The A.N.C. warned against international intervention a day after the United Nations Security Council took its first action on the electoral crisis in Zimbabwe, issuing a unanimous statement condemning the widespread campaign of violence in the country and calling on the government to free political prisoners and allow the opposition to hold rallies.

Writing in The Guardian, however, Tsvangirai, again took issue with Mbeki’s mediation, saying “it sought to massage a defeated dictator rather than show him the door and prod him towards it.”

“We ask for the U.N. to go further than its recent resolution, condemning the violence in Zimbabwe, to encompass an active isolation of the dictator Mugabe,” Tsvangirai said.

“For this we need a force to protect the people. We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force. Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not troublemakers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns,” he said.

“The next stage should be a new presidential election. This does indeed burden Zimbabwe and create an atmosphere of limbo. Yet there is hardly a scenario that does not carry an element of pain. The reality is that a new election, devoid of violence and intimidation, is the only way to put Zimbabwe right,” Tsvangirai said.

It was not immediately clear how other African nations would respond to Tsvangirai’s call.

The A.N.C. statement, which was the first official response from South Africa since Mr. Tsvangirai’s withdrawal, was not signed by any individual in the A.N.C. It seemed to represent a marked departure from Mbeki’s refusal to castigate Mugabe, and seemed to reflect the increasing frustration with the Zimbabwean president.

At the same time, in what seemed a clear rebuke to the efforts of Western nations to take an aggressive stance against the Zimbabwean government, the A.N.C. included a lengthy criticism of the “arbitrary, capricious power” exerted by Africa’s colonial masters and cited the subsequent struggle by African nations to gain freedoms and rights.

“No colonial power in Africa, least of all Britain in its colony of ‘Rhodesia’ ever demonstrated any respect for these principles,” the A.N.C. said, referring to Zimbabwe before its independence.

Zimbabwe, once one of Africa’s most prosperous countries, has been reeling from a widening campaign of violence and intimidation since Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president for nearly 30 years, came in second in the initial round of voting on March 29.

In a show of support for the opposition, the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions declared on Tuesday that it was “appalled at the levels of violence and intimidation being inflicted on the people of Zimbabwe by the illegitimate Mugabe regime.”

“The June 27 presidential election is not an election, but a declaration of war against the people of Zimbabwe by the ruling party,” the union group said.

Urging a boycott of Zimbabwe, it said: “We call on all our unions and those everywhere else in the world to make sure that they never ever serve Mugabe anywhere, including at airports, restaurants, shops, etc.

“Further, we call on all workers and citizens of the world never to allow Mugabe to set foot in their countries.”