Back to Business As Usual

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A week after Robert Mugabe won another term in a presidential election widely regarded as rigged, it's back to business as usual in Zimbabwe. Opposition leader and presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai was formally charged with treason for allegedly plotting to assassinate Mugabe, another white farmer was killed by marauders, the son of a human-rights activist was beaten, and youth militia went on a rampage against supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Tsvangirai, the third MDC official to be arraigned on the treason charge, was released on bail and had to surrender his passport. "It was expected," he told TIME. "So much for reconciliation." Though international reaction to Mugabe's victory was swift — the Commonwealth suspended Zimbabwe from the organization's councils for a year — the chances of change in the country look increasingly slim.

Terry Ford was the tenth white farmer to be killed since the government-backed occupation of white-owned farms by so-called war veterans began two years ago. The day after Mugabe's inauguration speech, in which he raged against traitorous "snakes" and vowed to accelerate his "land reform" policy, 55-year-old Ford was dragged from his home at Norton, about 40 km west of the capital, Harare, by a gang of about 20 men, tied up against a tree and shot in the head. Later the police recovered a firearm and arrested six men who, they said, would be charged with murder. Ford's farm adjoins a large estate owned by Mugabe himself.

With the election over, the farmers are back in the firing line. Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers' Union has been receiving reports of escalating violence throughout the country. These include the attack on the farm of Iain and Kerry Kay at Marondera, 80 km east of Harare, where a gang of "war veterans" savagely beat her son Jon with pick-axe handles and clubbed the black family security guard, Darlington Vikaveka, to death. Kerry Kay, a prominent human-rights defender who is head of the CFU's AIDS-control program, says that the attack was a repeat of a similar incident two years ago in which workers were chased off the lands, farm dogs killed and the homestead and farm buildings looted. Her son's supposed "crime" was that he had supported the opposition MDC during the election campaign.

The 54-nation Commonwealth's punitive suspension of Zimbabwe is unlikely to force any dramatic changes. Mugabe's Minister of State for Information, Jonathan Moyo, described it as "meaningless." For Mugabe, the Common-wealth move — recommended by South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and Australia's John Howard — conveniently averted the possibility of further sanctions from Commonwealth members such as Britain, Canada and Australia. The European Union and the United States have drawn up "smart" sanctions, which would include a travel ban on Mugabe and senior members of his ZANU-PF party and a freeze on their assets abroad, but there is little likelihood that these could hurt their intended targets or further harm Zimbabwe's already devastated economy.

Although Tsvangirai welcomed the Commonwealth action as a message to Mugabe that his "wayward behavior" was unacceptable, he said he would be happier if the regional Southern African Development Community suspended Zimbabwe as well. But local leaders, in particular South Africa's Mbeki, are concerned that isolating Mugabe would increase regional instability.

Although he was a member of the Commonwealth troika that recommended censuring Mugabe, Mbeki and his ruling African National Congress accepted Zimbabwe's election results as legitimate. Mbeki's ambivalence amounts to a compromise that probably averted a split between African and non-African members of the Commonwealth.

During the period of Zimbabwe's suspension, Mbeki, Obasanjo and other African leaders will keep the pressure on Mugabe to reform. It will not be easy. With the treason charges against Tsvangirai and two other leading MDC officials, a government of national unity is out of the question. Mugabe and Tsvangirai are personally and politically worlds apart. At least 10 people, mostly MDC supporters, have already died in post-election violence and about 50 white farmers have been forced off their lands, their homes ransacked and looted. Among the opposition there is more despair than defiance. Where there might have been a fleeting hope of reconciliation, a climate of retribution now rules.