12
DOMBOSHAVA, ZIMBABWE — It's like a collective delusion, a mass, defiant blindness brought on by desperation-fuelled optimism.
Supporters of Zimbabwe's opposition — which, polls indicate, are the vast majority of Zimbabweans — seem convinced they can win today's elections, which will choose everything from the president down to the local councillors.
If ever there was an electorate, anywhere in the world, who had reason to be doubtful, pessimistic or cynical about a poll, it is this one. Four times in the past eight years, the government of President Robert Mugabe has stolen elections.
As international observers have painstakingly noted each time, Mr. Mugabe and his team have used voter intimidation — including brutal beatings and the demolition of the homes of tens of thousands of perceived opposition supporters — and every manner of rigging, from gerrymandering to voters lists full of the dead to people bused from polling station to polling station to vote, to ensure they hold tightly on to power.
Men wears masks showing President Robert Mugabe and leader of Zimbabwe's ruling party ZANU-PF during a campaign rally in Harare Friday. Zimbabwe's security forces were placed on full alert Friday to head off possible violence at this weekend's elections as Mr. Mugabe's opponents feared the outcome had already been fixed. (Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images)
Related Articles
They have done this as Zimbabwe's economic and social crisis has worsened steadily, passing benchmark after benchmark in decline. Inflation is now more than 150,000 per cent, the highest in the world; the life expectancy for men in this once-prospering nation has hit 37 years, the lowest in the world.
Today, Zimbabweans vote again. And in spite of solid evidence to the contrary, and years of their own experience, an astonishing number of them seem convinced that this time, they can unseat Mr. Mugabe, 84, who has ruled this country since it won its independence from Britain in 1980.
"We will vote in such numbers, and we will count the votes right here, and how can they tamper?" asked Hilton Maverengo, a 22-year-old University of Zimbabwe engineering student who joined a crowd of 3,000 people in this rural area a half-hour's journey from the capital at an opposition rally yesterday. "I came here today to see our new president."
And indeed, Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, soon arrived, punchy and upbeat, promising food and jobs and hope.
"I am near to graduating, but there is no industry, there is nothing for me. ZANU [Mr. Mugabe's party] destroyed everything." Mr. Maverengo said. "ZANU is old and they have no future. Now, we will get rid of them."
It is difficult to account for this optimism. It has its roots, in part, in a startling turn of events six weeks ago, when Simba Makoni, who had been a key Mugabe ally since ZANU-PF took power, suddenly split from the party and announced that he would challenge the President.
He was the first senior ZANU-PF official to break ranks since Zimbabwe's crisis began in the late 1990s. He does not have widespread support here. Some see his candidacy as a ZANU-PF ploy, while others begrudge him the long years he spent profiting as an intimate of the regime.
But his candidacy shows that ZANU-PF is not an impregnable monolith, that there is dissent within the party, that Mr. Mugabe is not as strong as the state-controlled media make it seem.
There was an expectation when Mr. Makoni announced his run that other senior ZANU-PF figures would break ranks and follow him. Only one has, which further undermines his chances, but it has been enough to give people hope.
"For the first time, people have seen that there is a real threat to the security system, to ZANU," said Davie Malungisa, director of the Institute for Democratic Alternatives for Zimbabwe.
"That caused real, unbridled optimism."
Second, there is the grim depth of desperation, which has fuelled the opposition's conviction it must win. "People are hungry and they are angry and there is no way they can vote for the status quo in those conditions," said Willias Madzimure, an MDC member of Parliament who spoke distractedly as he supervised get-out-the-vote plans for his re-election today. "People won't accept any other result than [an MDC] victory."
Third, this election campaign has been conducted almost entirely without violence, and with very little of the overt intimidation that has characterized all the elections since Zimbabwe's crisis began in the 1990s, when Mr. Mugabe began a highly politicized land-reform program in an effort to hold on to power. In previous elections, MDC supporters have been beaten and their houses firebombed, an efficient way of terrifying all but the most avid supporters away from political activity.
There has been none of that this time, and Mr. Tsvangirai and Mr. Makoni have been able to conduct their rallies even in the areas known to have the greatest loyalty to Mr. Mugabe.
This is not to say that the government has not gone to considerable lengths, both directly and otherwise, to cripple the opposition: Print companies said they did not have the ink to print their posters; their campaign vehicles could never get fuel. The state-controlled media pour out stories about the government's new health plan here and education plan there, interspersed with inspirational snippets of Mr. Mugabe's speeches at independence, while the opposition battled to buy tiny newspaper ads or fleeting radio spots.
And finally, there is the conviction, on the part of the MDC in particular, that if enough of their supporters vote, they can swamp even the Mugabe rigging machine. "We will have 90 per cent of the vote," said Parerenyatwa Chari, 32, an MDC scrutineer. "So even if they rig, we will have more votes."
Not likely. "Most people don't understand the extent of the rigging. They don't understand how, when you have access to the kind of state machinery this government does, you have control," said a Zimbabwean journalist who has made extensive study of fraud on the voter's roll, the electoral commission and the role of state security forces in the elections over the past five years.
"You can't break this kind of machinery in a single election. They think they can just overwhelm, but they can't. There's no way they can."
And that, of course, raises the question of what happens on Monday, or Tuesday, when the official tally is announced and Mr. Mugabe is given another victory by, say, a modest 53 per cent.
Or perhaps even sooner: The MDC and several Zimbabwean civil-society groups are hoping to try to keep an independent tally and release results of their own, as early as tonight. (To win, a presidential candidate needs 50 per cent of the vote, and a runoff vote is held if no one achieves that on the first round.)
The word "Kenya" is being invoked here, in many quarters.
When Kenya's incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, won that country's presidential election in late December, the opposition, accusing him of fraud, took to the streets and unleashed militias to foment savage, ethnically based violence that left at least a thousand people dead and 350,000 homeless and displaced. The cost was horrific, and Kenya will spend years recovering, but as the Kenyan opposition points out now, they drove the government to a power-sharing deal.
At his rally in a vast, dusty field yesterday, Mr. Tsvangirai indirectly invoked Kenya in his words to the crowd. "Tomorrow's election I know is already won," he said in chiShona. "What is left is to protect our votes."
Certainly, many Zimbabweans feel they have nothing to lose. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine a Kenyan-style scenario here. People were desperate in previous elections, too, but they did not take to the streets.
Zimbabweans are hungry, tired, and often ill; one in five of them has HIV-AIDS. And they lack leadership. Mr. Tsvangirai, who has already once narrowly escaped the death penalty for trumped-up treason charges, is understandably wary of overtly inciting rebellion.
Regardless, many feel he lacks the basic leadership to channel an effective uprising; in recent years the MDC has fumbled and fractured, and Mr. Tsvangirai's political fortunes were only revived, ironically, when the government beat him nearly to death a year ago.
And Mr. Malungisa noted that Kenya's opposition had the advantage of a supremely efficient and affordable mobile-phone network, through which much of its campaign was conducted. In Zimbabwe, by contrast, the network is in tatters and communication is nigh on impossible.
Kenyans had a vibrant, independent press that seized on the election theft as a story; Zimbabwe's media are run by Mr. Mugabe. And while the outbreak of violence caught Kenya's security services off guard, Mr. Mugabe's generals are poised to swoop on the slightest hint of protest here.
All of which suggests that when the votes are announced later next week, and Mr. Mugabe arranges to once again have himself sworn in, it can only — inevitably, excruciatingly — be more of the same for Zimbabwe.
