Mugabe's fear behind treason charge

Guardian:

The arrest and interrogation of the second most senior opposition official in Zimbabwe has exposed divisions and paranoia within Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF that indicate important elements of the ruling party believe the government may soon collapse.

Lawyers for Tendai Biti, the secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change who was arrested on treason charges 10 days ago, say he has been subjected to extensive interrogation by intelligence officers acting for top Zanu-PF officials. They wanted to know if key cabinet ministers were striking individual deals with the opposition to avoid prosecution for corruption and political violence, leaving other Zanu-PF leaders exposed.

One of the lawyers, Lewis Uriri, said he was told by Biti that he had been interrogated for 19 hours by three teams of eight people. "These were not negotiators - the justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, and the labour minister, Nicholas Goche - told Biti in talks immediately after Mugabe lost the first round of presidential elections three months ago when Zanu-PF put out tentative feelers for a power-sharing government before hardliners opted to pursue a more violent strategy to crush the opposition.

"Biti's sense was that there is so much distrust and suspicion in Zanu-PF that these people wanted to verify what Goche and Chinamasa [said]. There was a sense from the questions that the interrogators thought Goche and Chinamasa were trying to negotiate their own future and not protect everybody else at the top of the party," said Uriri.

"They wanted to know specifically about whether there had been any individual agreements for amnesty from prosecution ... Biti said that he thought from the interrogation that there are people, important powerful people, in Zanu-PF who were not briefed on what was happening and were afraid of being left unprotected."

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The interesting thing about despots is their paranoid fear of the people closest to them. That was behind many of Stalin's purges. They are basically weak and fearful of the people. that is way they can't tolerate free expression or elections. the problem with paranoid people like Mugabe is that they create real enemies. In his case he has made an enemy of most of the world.