In politics the most effective leaders use both carrots and sticks. Carrots serve as enticements, sticks as a sort of tough love, a sign of strength and power. In Zimbabwe today, Robert Mugabe is not so subtle. Carrots and sticks serve as too mild of a metaphor for a man who is more inclined to use piles of gold and ready guns to show largesse or toughness. In the run-up to this month's elections, Mugabe's utter lack of subtlety is on full display. A Zimbabwe man was sentenced to a month in jail after allegedly destroying a Mugabe campaign sign near Harare. But if the Big Man (and his minions) taketh, he (and they) can also giveth. In the sort of grandiose gesture that would be laughable were it not so transparent and likely to succeed, Mugabe is using big-ticket items effectively to buy votes. Cattle, vehicles, agricultural equipment, and more are changing hands with the quid pro quo quite obvious.
And then, of course, is just plain demagoguery. Mugabe has recently signed a law requiring all foreign companies operating in Zimbabwe to give majority control to black Zimbabweans. The question is not whether a Zimbabwean equivalent to South Africa's Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) programs is good or necessary. Of course such programs are necessary. But I see this as being akin to land reform, which was also necessary. And yet the problem always has been that Mugabe has shown little interest in using land reform or economic empowerment as little more than a cudgel with which to threaten his opposition and the whites (who are only one and the same in the minds of Mugabe and those Zanu-PF supporters who see themselves as entitled to the spoils of power). The issues have both always seemed to have crested whenever Mugabe's leadership has been even remotely under fire, and usually before elections.
Meanwhile, despite Zimbabwe's rampant economic crises, it appears that he still enjoys the support, indeed the almost blind loyalty, of the rural masses. And while I have no doubt that this support is real, it also comes as no surprise to me that Mugabe's strongest base of support comes in the parts of the country where the vote tallies are much more easily manipulable, where the population is easier to buy or intimidate or even create out of whole cloth.
Despite all of this, Simba Makoni continues to wage a fierce campaign to oust Mugabe. His task may be a Sisyphean one, but with each prominent defection from Zanu-PF hope grows. Hope is a dangerous thing in the land of the Big Man. But it is also all that many people have left.