US embassy cable - 05HARARE588

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 000588 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR U/S BURNS, AF A/S NEWMAN/DAS WOODS; OVP FOR 
NULAND; NSC FOR ABRAMS, COURVILLE 
 
DEPARTMENT PASS EU MEMBER STATES COLLECTIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: (04-16-15) 
TAGS: PREL, PGOV, PHUM, ZI, MDC, March 05 Elections 
SUBJECT:  MDC Post-Election Plans Taking Form 
 
Classified by CDA Eric Schultz, reasons 1.5 (b) (d) 
 
Ref: (A) Harare 548 and previous 
 
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Summary 
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1.  In an April 14 meeting with the Ambassador, MDC leader 
Morgan Tsvangirai laid out in more detail his party's plans 
for challenging the GOZ in the wake of a third successive 
stolen election.  Tsvangirai said Mugabe would never leave 
power by democratic means.  The Zimbabwean people would 
have to force him from office through a campaign of civil 
resistance.  The MDC was reaching out to civil society NGOs 
to create an alliance to pursue this approach.  He hoped to 
mobilize this alliance in particular to oppose Mugabe's 
expected constitutional reforms proposals. 
 
2. (C) Tsvangirai said the model for the campaign would be 
the recent events in Gokwe South, where MDC activists had 
stood up to ZANU-PF thugs and the police, forcing them to 
back down.  The MDC would need to train activists down to 
the village level to make this work.  The party also had to 
improve its communications, to spread the word about 
successful acts of resistance.  It also had to do a much 
better job of getting its supporters, especially young 
people, to register and vote.  The Ambassador said this was 
an area with which we could help through NGOs.  Externally, 
Tsvangirai said the MDC needed to broaden its support in 
 
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Africa and that he was also considering a trip to Ukraine 
to highlight the similarities between Zimbabwe today and 
Ukraine a year ago.  End Summary. 
 
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(Re) Building an Alliance 
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2. (C) The Ambassador told Tsvangirai that he was traveling 
back to Washington for consultations on U.S. policy toward 
Zimbabwe following the March 31 parliamentary elections. 
In that regard, he had wanted to hear first hand what 
progress the MDC had made in firming up its post-election 
plans.  Tsvangirai said the party's plan was to confront 
Mugabe at every turn.  Mugabe was not a democrat and he 
would never give up power through an election.  He would 
have to be driven from office.  Critical to the success of 
this approach was to strengthen the MDC alliance with civil 
society, including the labor union, ZCTU.  The party and 
its allies had to be seen to be doing something or apathy 
and cynicism would grow among the populace. 
 
3. (C) The Ambassador noted that many in civil society had 
expressed unhappiness with the MDC for not having reached 
out and listened to them.  Tsvangirai acknowledged the 
problem and said the party would work to be more inclusive. 
The democratic opposition needed to work together in 
harmony, with no dissenting voices, for their common 
objective.  The broad alliance would mobilize in particular 
around the question of constitutional reform, and would 
seek to recreate the National Constitutional Assembly's 
earlier success in stoking public opposition to Mugabe's 
proposed changes.  Tsvangirai added that several of the 
civil society leaders had political ambitions themselves, 
and the MDC would work to give those ambitions space. 
 
4. (C) The Ambassador asked about ZCTU's role.  Tsvangirai 
said it was the urban base of the party and that the MDC 
needed to reach out to them more effectively.  He dismissed 
government attempts to remove the current leadership, 
noting they had tried before without success. 
 
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Planning Civil Resistance 
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5. (C) Tsvangirai said in the next six months the party and 
its allies would focus on building momentum.  The first 
step was that all of the party's candidates would return to 
their home constituencies to hold rallies to thank their 
supporters.  The message of these rallies would be that the 
MDC had won but that Mugabe and ZANU-PF has stolen a third 
election.  The party was also planning actions around the 
April 18 Independence Day celebrations and May Day.  For 
the former, Tsvangirai said MDC activists would infiltrate 
the crowd at the national sports stadium and seek to 
embarrass Mugabe, possibly by walking out en masse while 
flashing their party's open-palmed symbol or by chanting 
"change" in Shona.  The Ambassador observed that 
publicizing such actions was critical to their success. 
Tsvangirai agreed and said the MDC had plans to videotape 
 
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the event. 
 
6. (C) Tsvangirai said the party also recognized the need 
to do more to overcome rural fear and intimidation.  He 
acknowledged that they had not done enough to protect their 
rural adherents during the election.  In many rural 
constituencies, traditional leaders (i.e. tribal chiefs) 
had called their villages together the night before the 
election and had pressured people to vote ZANU-PF.  One of 
the regime's most effective tactics had been threatening to 
deny food assistance to MDC supporters.  The MDC had to 
break the back of this intimidation and would do so at its 
nexus with the population - food distribution centers. 
 
7. (C) Tsvangirai said the model for this approach would be 
what had happened this week in Gokwe South, a constituency 
in the Midlands province that the MDC believed had been 
stolen.  There had been great anger among the local 
population at the theft.  ZANU-PF had reverted to form and 
sought to impose its will by punishing MDC supporters.  The 
night after the election the home of a prominent MDC 
activist had been burned down.  2000 MDC activists gathered 
at the site to prevent further attacks.  Three truckloads 
of riot police arrived to disperse the crowd.  However, the 
activists refused to disperse and faced down the police. 
The next day, 200 of the activists appeared at the food 
distribution center and refused to let the agents of the 
Grain Marketing Board discriminate against MDC supporters. 
They had told the agents either everyone gets food or the 
"birds will get it."  The GMB agents had also backed down. 
 
8. (C) Tsvangirai said the MDC planned to do the same 
throughout the country.  He acknowledged that the GOZ would 
eventually get wise to these tactics and would try to crack 
down hard somewhere.  In that event, the party had to be 
prepared to have activists spring up at other locations 
around the country and force the regime to spread itself 
too thin for effective repression.  They were assisted in 
that regard by the fact that the food shortages were 
countrywide.  One of the keys to the success of this plan 
would be to train activists through out the country and 
build the party structure down to the village level. 
Another was to spread the word of successful civil 
resistance actions through word of mouth, as it was doing 
now with respect to the events in Gokwe South, and to 
encourage that they be emulated elsewhere.  In that regard, 
he acknowledged that the party's communications department 
had failed abysmally after the election and needed dramatic 
improvement. 
 
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Registering Voters 
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9. (C) Tsvangirai acknowledged that the party had a lot of 
work to do to correct weaknesses in advance of future 
elections.  In addition to building party structures down 
to the village level and training cadre, another key was 
voter registration.  The MDC had not done nearly enough to 
register its core supporters, especially young voters. 
More than twenty percent of young voters had not bothered 
to register.  That needed to be addressed before rural 
council elections in 2006 and urban council elections in 
2007.  Tsvangirai noted that women over forty formed one of 
ZANU-PF's most loyal sources of support.  The MDC had to 
try to reach out to them but more importantly it had to 
reach out to women under the age of forty, who should be 
their supporters, and get them to register and vote. 
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Engaging Diplomatically 
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10. (C) Tsvangirai said the MDC was also planning a series 
of external steps to increase the pressure on the regime. 
The party needed to do more to establish its independence 
from the U.S. and the UK.  To that end, the main thrust had 
to be in Africa, where the party needed to build opposition 
to Mugabe and his policies.  However, Tsvangirai said he 
was also thinking of making a trip to Ukraine to meet 
President Yushchenko to stress the point that Zimbabwe was 
in the same place Ukraine had been before the Orange 
Revolution. 
 
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Comment 
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11. (C) Throughout the meeting, Tsvangirai referred to a 
written memo he had brought with him.  The MDC's leadership 
has clearly been thinking a lot about next steps and it is 
heartening that their ideas are taking concrete shape. 
Moreover, we would agree that what happened in Gokwe South 
is the right model to follow.  While it would be nice to 
see them make a splash at the national stadium on Monday, 
it is really in the rural areas that the MDC needs to take 
action and make progress.  In that regard, while we had 
heard bits and pieces about what had occurred in Gokwe 
South, we had no idea the extent of MDC activism, nor we 
suspect did anyone else.  The MDC's inability to get its 
message out remains a debilitating weakness, one that it 
has to overcome almost immediately if its civil resistance 
campaign is to catch fire and spread nationally. 
 
12. (C) The visit to Kiev strikes us a very creative idea 
and one we enthusiastically endorse.  It could be 
particularly useful to have President Yuschenko and 
Georgian President Sakashvili meet with Tsvangirai. 
 
Schultz