Assassination attempt? (Zimbabwe r)
DrBorisQ
298 Posts
I say yes.From:http://iht.com/articles/2009/03/06/africa/zim.phpZimbabwean prime minister's wife dies in crash[/b]By The New York TimesFriday, March 6, 2009HARARE, Zimbabwe: The prime minister of Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, was hurt and his wife, Susan, fatally injured on Friday in a car crash about 45 miles south of the capital, according to officials of Tsvangirai's political party, the Movement for Democratic Change.Tsvangirai was heading to his rural home for a Saturday rally when the crash occurred Friday afternoon. From his hospital bed in Harare on Friday, he told one of his aides that a large truck driving on the other side of the road had come toward his Land Cruiser, the middle vehicle in a three car convoy. The truck driver told the police that he had fallen asleep at the wheel, said the aide, Dennis Murira, director of public affairs in the prime minister's office."What he told me was that the truck went for his car," Murira said. "That's how he put it."The crash, coming less than a month after Tsvangirai was sworn in as prime minister in a tense and long-negotiated power-sharing government with his rival, President Robert Mugabe, stirred deep suspicions in his party, but most officials were careful to say not enough was known about the collision to make any accusations of foul play.Mugabe and his wife paid a condolence call to Tsvangirai at the hospital on Friday evening.Ian Makone, a secretary in the prime minister's office, said he arrived at the crash scene about a half hour after the fact. He said one of the drivers in Tsvangirai's convoy told him that an oncoming truck "had clipped the right rear fender of Morgan's car."Murira said the prime minister told him the driver of Tsvangirai's vehicle swerved to avoid the on-rushing truck, but a trailer attached to the truck hit the Land Cruiser, which rolled over three times. Makone said the vehicle was lying on its roof when he arrived.Eddie Cross, the policy coordinator for the Movement for Democratic Change, said that when he heard about the crash he phoned Hendrick O'Neill, a party member who is from the area where it occurred. O'Neill, in turn, contacted Deon Theron, the vice president of the Commercial Farmers Union, who lives near the scene."I was looking for someone to get to the site because I was very suspicious about the circumstances around the accident," O'Neill said in a phone interview. "Morgan has been a target for some time."Theron rushed to the scene and began to investigate, O'Neill said: "Just as he finished the police arrived and grabbed the video camera from him, started questioning him and took him into custody."O'Neill said he spoke to Mr. Theron by cell phone as he was being arrested. "He told me the left front tire had burst and the vehicle was on its roof," Mr. O'Neill said. "He climbed on the vehicle. Some of the undercarriage was loose or broken. It could have been the result of the accident. That's what he was filming when they seized him."Tsvangirai has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts. He fled the country after he outpolled Mugabe in March presidential elections, fearing for his life.Forces loyal to Mugabe had begun a campaign of violence, attempting to intimidate the opposition prior to a June runoff election.Tsvangirai ended up withdrawing before that second poll because of attacks on thousands of his supporters. When the international community concluded the election was neither free nor fair, protracted negotiations led to a coalition government, with Mugabe as president and Tsvangirai as prime minister.Friday night, officials with Tsvangirai's party alternately expressed their suspicions of foul play but resisted reaching any conclusions. "This will certainly demand an independent investigation," Cross said. "We won't accept a police report."The couple, married for more than three decades, has six children, including twins, aged 14."They were a team; they were very effective and extremely close," Mr. Cross said of the couple."She was very much a pillar of support, spiritually and in every other way. Morgan will feel her loss enormously. I can't think of many couples as close as those two."
Comments
It's easy just to call Robert Mugabe the worst kind of evil despot, and certainly everything would suggest it's true - the beating, torturing and murdering of political opponents, the pursuit of policies that are causing widespread starvation amongst the Zimbabwean people, the flagrant disregard for both the democratic process and the fact that whatever mandate he once had has now completely collapsed. However, I heard something last year which may have been written about elsewhere since, and which suggested that Mugabe has wanted to step down for some time now. But just before the ill-fated first election was called, there was a meeting between him and the heads of the military and the security forces, during which Mugabe was told in no uncertain terms that he would not be allowed to step down, and that not only would they (and by extension Mugabe) refuse to recognise an MDC victory, but they would meet any concession of victory to the MDC with force. Effectively, Mugabe is now little more than a frontman for the security forces, and the choice the Zimbabwean people have been left with is between a bloodbath, and a bigger bloodbath.
I should point out that this theory was posited by a friend of a friend, who'd been working in South Africa for the BBC for a few years, and observed the escalation of state violence against the MDC and its supporters as well as the chaos caused by the runaway inflation during that period, so you may or may not wanna take a pinch of salt with that.
But yeah, that was definitely an assassination attempt. Don't know who was responsible, but somebody paid the truck driver off. Probably took about as much money as you paid for your most expensive dinner last week.
I doubt you can imagine what overland traffic in Africa is like. Trucks are mostly wrecks that have been in serious accidents in Europe and were sold for scrap metal prices. Steering gives up, wheels come off, tires explode, just about everything is possible. The drivers are usually completely beyond reckless. If however the driver was a hired assassin, I doubt it cost as much as an expensive meal. In our old neighborhood of Kip?? in Conakry Guinea, the mayor of our borrough was decaputated one night on his way back from the outhouse by a gang of 5 who as it turned out were paid the total sum of 500.000 FG which at the time was just about $100. Given the much worse economic situation of Zimbabwe, I doubt that a killing would cost you much more than two tickets for the movies, 2 large cokes and a bucket full of popcorn. In any way, I feel real bad for that truck driver...
Driving along a two lane highway with oncoming traffic and the dude behind me decides to pass between my car and the oncoming car. I and the oncoming car, out of self-preservation as much as obligation, shift to the shoulder and a two lane highway becomes three. God forbid this occurs near an intersection, where people are almost always standing on the shoulder, waiting for the bus. This happened regularly.
I never got into an accident myself, but I was with my friend Sara when the entire wheel came off of her Jetta -- someone had swiped the lug nuts. Who checks to make sure no one has stolen their lug nuts??
In the end, it could be just a coincidence that Tsvangirai was in this accident, as accidents like this are common enough. But the situation in Zimbabwe is so freakin' fragile, that the assassination attempt inference is at least as compelling -- and I think more. The price of life is just too low. Way too low.
But still, this all seems a bit too much like the perfect storm to me. A road 'accident' just has Mugabe written all over it.