Lindsey Brooks, Washington File, September 19, 2002

Washington -- The legendary figure of Count Dracula, known for sucking the blood of his victims, has a modern-day counterpart in Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who continues to drain the political and economic life from his country, according to former White House official John Prendergast.

Prendergast, who recently returned from a trip to Zimbabwe, discussed what he saw there September 17 at the National Press Club in Washington.

Comparing Zimbabwe to a horror film, Prendergast, who was director of African affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, said, "In Zimbabwe we have Dracula, as Count Mugabe and the ZANU-PF vampires suck the lifeblood out of Zimbabwe's economy and state institutions while its people starve."

Prendergast is currently the co-director of the Africa Program at the International Crisis Group (ICG), a nongovernmental organization focused on anticipating, understanding, and preventing conflict. "The ruling ZANU-PF party in Zimbabwe has succeeded in consolidating its nearly absolute political and economic power in the aftermath of the stolen presidential election," Prendergast said. "A system of total control was the objective of the ruling party, and this has largely been accomplished."

Prendergast was referring to the March 2002 presidential election in which Mugabe emerged victorious, although the election was stained by electoral irregularities and government intimidation, including the disenfranchisement of urban voters, violent intimidation of opposition supporters, and intimidation of the independent press and the judiciary.

Referring to Zimbabwe's political situation at a conference on August 20, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner said: "As President Bush and Colin Powell have both said on a number of occasions, we do not see President Mugabe as the democratically legitimate leader of the country. The election was fraudulent and it was not free and it was not fair."

Calling Zimbabwe a "mafia-based and predatory state," Prendergast warned that if trends are not reversed, Mugabe's failed political and economic policies threaten to bankrupt the state and cause it to collapse, affecting the whole southern African region.

For example, he explained, Mugabe's "dismantling of the commercial farming sector, the backbone of that economy," has now resulted in famine conditions. "The escalating economic crisis will further destabilize the region," he added, "and continue to make the people in Zimbabwe miserable, driving tens of thousands out of Zimbabwe and into the surrounding region.

"Six million Zimbabweans are facing food shortages, and what ZANU-PF has done is put in place a strategy of selective starvation -- the use of food as a political weapon that is designed to punish the opposition and reward ruling party officials and their commercial allies," he said. "This policy is actually beginning to achieve its objectives … people are beginning to die."

Prendergast called the food crisis in Zimbabwe a "political plus for the ruling party," which no longer "relies solely on individual torture and rape" to cow its opponents, but instead on "the government's new tool of selective starvation," which can affect a much broader population of opposition supporters.

According to Prendergast, "Famine threatens Zimbabwe not just because of the drought, which certainly is a factor, but because of a bad or even predatory government." Policies that the ZANU-PF uses to implement selective starvation include monopolizing all food imports and distribution, directing food to and away from areas based on political calculations, and controlling the eligibility criteria for purchasing food, he said.

Prendergast said Mugabe's policy affects three vulnerable groups. First, Zimbabweans afflicted with HIV/AIDS, who require an adequate diet to defend against the onset of illness, have an accelerated mortality rate as a result of malnutrition. "Zimbabwe has the second-highest rate of infection in the world, and thus exposure to malnutrition will condemn thousands of people to death," Prendergast said.

Second, black farm workers who have been made homeless by the ruling party's land invasion strategy are vulnerable. Also at risk are the elderly, sick, and orphan populations that "are simply falling through the cracks as no provisions are being made to ensure their survival."

"When people die of starvation and disease related to malnutrition, as they increasingly will in Zimbabwe, it is a result of political control and corruption," not natural conditions, Prendergast said.

The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.