Tsvangirai's campaign that wasn't

Published Jun 23, 2008

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by Fanuel Jongwe

Harare - She shouted to Morgan Tsvangirai as his convoy drove past, but the opposition leader could never stop for long - the authorities prevented him from doing so.

"Please, don't let us down," the woman yelled as she ran alongside other residents in the poor township of Mufakose. "We are suffering."

Before Tsvangirai announced on Sunday he was pulling out of the presidential run-off and later took refuge in the Dutch embassy, he faced severe restrictions on his campaign and was detained five times by police.

He was forced to engage in a kind of speed-rally, where he would exit his car for two or three minutes and shake a few hands, then take off again to avoid breaking laws on holding public meetings without police authorisation.

On a recent day in Mufakose, ecstatic youths yelled and whistled as the opposition leader stopped at a shopping centre, calling him "president" and "dhara redu" - Shona for "our big man."

Tsvangirai quickly shook hands with supporters and jumped back into his car, part of a convoy that included two cars and an 80-seater bus with his picture and the inscription "Morgan is the One."

Police seized the bus at one point, too.

Besides those obstacles, Tsvangirai was vilified in the state media and labeled a stooge of former colonial power Britain. Police banned a series of rallies, and the party's number two is in jail on treason and vote-rigging charges and faces the death penalty.

When announcing his withdrawal at his Harare home on Sunday, Tsvangirai said, "the regime has crippled" his campaign.

Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in the March first round of the election but officially failed to garner enough votes to be declared outright winner.

He had said he would participate in the run-off only under protest since he claimed he crossed the 50 percent threshold in March.

But on Sunday he said he could no longer stay in the presidential election because he could not ask supporters to cast ballots "when that vote would cost them their lives."

After the announcement of the first round results, the opposition says authorities unleashed a campaign of violence, initially in rural areas with suspected ruling party militias attacking opposition supporters.

Tsvangirai says more than 80 members of his party have been killed and 200 000 people have been internally displaced.

Given the restrictions on rallies, he used other platforms such as press conferences, a self-styled state-of-the-nation address at a hotel and even graveside oratories at funerals of party activists to address his supporters.

His party distributed campaign advertisements by email.

When he took to the road to campaign, Tsvangirai and other senior party officials were stopped at several roadblocks.

He faced obstacles right up until the end. On Sunday, before Tsvangirai made his announcement to quit, hordes of ruling party youths armed with sticks gathered at the venue of a rally planned by the MDC on the outskirts of the capital. - Sapa-AFP

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