Zimbabweans were holding landmark elections on Thursday that President Robert Mugabe hopes will tighten his ruling party’s 25-year grip on power after weeks of campaigning that were surprisingly free of the bloodshed that marred past polls.
Under an early-morning drizzling rain, thousands of people could be seen queueing at polling stations in Harare’s oldest township of Mbare to vote in the parliamentary elections that will be closely watched to see whether they will be free and fair.
”I wanted to be the first in the queue, to be served early,” said Beauty Chigutiare, who stood in the queue in Mbare along with women with babies strapped to their backs.
”We need change,” she said. ”We want jobs, we want good houses.”
”I want my party, the usual party, to win,” said ruling-party supporter Comfort Size, a firewood vendor. ”We would expect it to win. We would expect it to continue with what they have been doing.”
Africa’s last independence leader, Mugabe is vying for a two-thirds majority for his Zanu-PF party in the elections but civic groups and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) say a shock may be in store for the 81-year-old founding president.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai turned up at a Harare school mid-morning to cast his ballots, and sounded confident of victory even though he asserted that ”this is not going to be a free and fair election”.
”The people will speak today, and I am hoping that the outcome will be an MDC victory, I have no doubts about that,” Tsvangirai said.
The elections for 120 contested seats in Parliament will be closely watched to gauge whether Mugabe will live up to his commitment to hold a free and fair vote following the past two ballots that Western observers said were rigged and marred by violence.
Mugabe predicts victory
On the eve of the vote, Mugabe predicted a big victory for his Zanu-PF and ruled out the formation of a unity government if the opposition makes a strong showing.
”Once we have fought in an election, a party has lost and we have won,” Mugabe said. ”We expect that party to respect the results.”
Mugabe, who led his country to independence from British rule in 1980, has vowed to ”bury” the opposition in the elections, accusing it of colluding with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to recolonise the country.
But the opposition has responded that the elections are not about Blair but rather about providing food and jobs for Zimbabweans, whose living standards have dropped drastically since 2000 when Mugabe launched a land-reform programme that saw thousands of white-owned farms seized and distributed to landless blacks.
Once considered the breadbasket of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe is facing food shortages with the government admitting for the first time last month that it would begin importing corn meal, the national staple, to feed about 1,5-million needy Zimbabweans.
Whatever the outcome of the elections, Zimbabweans have been relieved by the lack of bloodshed in the campaign, which analysts attribute to Mugabe’s desire to regain legitimacy as a statesman after presiding over what the United States now considers one of the world’s six ”outposts of tyranny”.
But two coalitions of civic organisations — the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition — released reports on the eve of the vote saying that a climate of fear and intimidation continues in Zimbabwe and that the elections will not be democratic.
In the last parliamentary vote in 2000, the MDC picked up 57 seats while Zanu-PF got 62, but under Zimbabwe law, the president directly appoints 30 MPs, meaning that the ruling party was able to command a strong majority in Parliament.
To win in this election, the MDC would have to gain 76 seats compared with only 46 for Zanu-PF, which can again rely on presidential appointments to pad its majority in Parliament.
About 5,8-million Zimbabweans are registered to vote. Polls are due to close at 7pm, with the counting of ballots to begin immediately afterwards.
SA worker allegedly assaulted
Meanwhile, a South African church worker has been indecently assaulted and robbed by apparent Zanu-PF supporters in Zimbabwe, the Democratic Alliance claimed on Thursday.
”The church worker, whose identity is known to the DA, was travelling on a bus between Marondera and Harare yesterday [Wednesday],” DA member of the South African parliamentary election observer mission to Zimbabwe Roy Jankielsohn said in a statement.
”The bus was boarded by six young men, apparently Zanu-PF supporters.
”They forced everybody on the bus to chant Zanu-PF slogans. The South African woman was singled out as she does not speak the local language.
”She was assaulted and robbed by the young men. The matter has been reported to the South African high commission in Harare,” Jankielsohn said.
The incident raised two important issues, he said. Would the South African government vigorously demand action from Zimbabwe’s authorities? These were not common criminals, but people who made themselves out to be Zanu-PF members — perhaps the notorious ”green bombers”, products of Zanu-PF’s youth training camps.
”Or will the ANC government decide that quiet diplomacy is more important than protecting our own citizens?”
Secondly, this was yet another indication of the climate of intimidation that exists in Zimbabwe, particularly outside major centres.
Many Zimbabweans have reported similar incidents of harassment. This time, it happened to a South African, which places the ball squarely in the South African government’s court to protect one of its citizens, Jankielsohn said. — Sapa, AFP