Mugabe's Ruinous Turn

Just when you thought that things in Zimbabwe couldn't get worse, Robert Mugabe finds a way to do precisely that. Mugabe is now rounding up poll workers and arresting them because they failed to overcount his votes. The fact is that Mugabe didn't have enough votes to force a runoff and the opposition knew this and had the presence of mind to have their people photograph the polling places to prevent shenanigans. He's also busy arresting anyone else in the Electoral Commission who appears honest enough to realize that Mugabe is toast.

Government ministers have said the arrested election officials were paid to falsify the election results.

They say the results posted outside polling stations showed more votes for Mr Mugabe than the forms forwarded to Harare for counting.

"That's absolute rubbish," MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

"That's the desperate act of a dinosaur regime that has lost an election," he said.

Mr Biti said that anyone who worked for the ZEC was carefully vetted by the authorities.

He also urged the international community, and African leaders in particular, to press Mr Mugabe to accept defeat, saying otherwise there could be "bloodshed".

"They want to see dead bodies before they send Kofi Annan," he said, referring to recent violence over disputed elections in Kenya.

On Monday, two foreign nationals accused of working as journalists without accreditation were freed on bail and are due to appear in court again on Thursday.

Biti knows that the UN and world opinion are virtually useless here, and there will be blood shed unless Mugabe steps down on his own accord. Mugabe is setting himself up for that very scenario - between the arrests of poll workers and electoral officials and the crackdown on those few remaining white-owned farms, Mugabe is paving the way for a showdown that will end badly for Zimbabwe. Mugabe's thugs are busy rampaging and threatening those few remaining farms:

Farmers' union spokesman Mike Clark said Tuesday the invasions were happening "all over now." The group says the intruders are being ferried in from other areas on buses and trucks and police are only sporadically taking action.

Uys Van der Westhuizen said he fled his tobacco farm in the Centenary area Monday morning with his wife and four children.

"These guys pitched up at 6 o'clock and basically told us to get out," he said in a phone interview from Harare.

About 150 "thugs, mostly in their early 20s, maybe 25," armed with sticks and machetes beat drums as they moved onto the farm in an effort to intimidate his family. The invaders locked up his workers in one of the farm buildings and beat one of his foremen, he said.

"When I saw him, he had a swollen face," he said.

Van der Westhuizen said he was in touch with some of his farm staff using cell phone text messages.

"They say about 25 people are camping between my house and my workshop," he said.

All his neighbours had been forced out or fled as well, he said.

Zimbabwe's woes were exacerbated when Mugabe forcibly took farms from the white-minority owners and socialized them. Food shortages became common and the prices skyrocketed. Inflation is now well over 150,000% and most of the country is unemployed.

With the Electoral Commission between a rock and a hard place as Mugabe attempts every measure conceivable to rig the election in his favor, the likelihood of violence increases with each passing day.