THe Zimbabwean
By Wilf Mbanga
March 31, 2008 6:30 PM | Printable version
I was apprehensive before the poll. I’m apprehensive now. I find it very disturbing that the Zimbabwe electoral commission (ZEC) has chosen to withhold the results of the elections for so long. This is keeping people in suspense and fuelling the rumour mill about the possibility of the vote being manipulated to give Mugabe a win, or to give the army enough time to deploy forces to stage a coup.
Whatever the truth is, it has not been good for the credibility of these elections. Even the African Union observer mission said as much yesterday.
The delay in announcing the results is unprecedented. For all elections since 1980 the results have begun to be announced as they came in – starting a few hours after polling closed and continuing through the night and the next day. The information gap from Saturday night until 7am this morning has given rise to considerable insecurity and wild rumours of rigging, coup plots and uprisings. The state-controlled media resorted to re-screening old soccer matches as its planned schedule was disrupted by the ZEC’s inexplicable silence. The last official footage I saw of the ZEC was SABC coverage on Sunday morning showing the chairman, George Chiweshe, fleeing the Harare hotel where the MDC was announcing the results pinned up at individual polling stations. Journalists were in hot pursuit. He has not been seen since.
I am convinced elaborate rigging has taken place. By 4pm on Monday the ZEC had officially announced results for 38 constituencies – claiming 19 each for the MDC and Zanu-PF and nothing for Makoni or Mutambara so far. The MDC says these results tally with its own in all areas except one, which it will contest.
This careful manipulation – and the waiting for results to fit the neck-and-neck pattern – is painfully obvious.
However, by early this morning the MDC’s polling agents had released results for more than 100 constituencies, using figures posted outside the various polling stations by the returning officers using ZEC stationery.
My own reading of this is that Mugabe and Zanu-PF have been crushed and are reeling from the extent of the MDC landslide in both urban and rural areas. Mugabe really believed his elaborate rigging machine would deliver the votes – as it has done in the past.
The only difference this time is that, as a result of the SADC-initiated negotiations, the poll results for individual areas have been posted outside the polling stations.
I have not been surprised to see, from the results released so far, the breakaway faction of the MDC, led by Arthur Mutambara, has been almost totally wiped out.
Its supporters always claimed strong support in Matabeleland, but haven’t won a single seat in Bulawayo – apart from the popular David Coltart who won his senate seat.
This really means there is now only one MDC again. Many journalists and political observers got this wrong – they believed the split would be a major factor. But the result show that the people of Zimbabwe were never confused by the split. Morgan Tsvangirai has always carried the people with him.
Many also thought Simba Makoni was a spoiler who would split the opposition vote. But all he managed to do was split the Zanu-PF vote – capturing a few seats in rural Matabeleland.
The Mugabe regime did its utmost to control the flow of information throughout the election period. International journalists with the exception of a few organisations like al-Jazeera, were refused accreditation. Observer teams were limited to “friendly” nations and groupings. They are all now looking increasingly embarrassed and starting to murmur.
Hats off to the state broadcasting corporation of South Africa, SABC, they have done a creditable job of covering the elections impartially and thoroughly. Zimbabweans at home as well as throughout the region have been glued to SABC news through the weekend.
In a final show of Zanu-PF deceit and incompetence, news reached me this afternoon that, after having been promised massive salary increases in return for loyalty at the polls, when they checked their bank statements on Monday morning, civil servants found that the promised windfall had not materialised.
I guess this is just one more Zanu-PF disaster for the new administration to sort out!