“My passport is ready. If MDC doesn’t win, I will do whatever it takes to have even a little bit of freedom,” says Knowledge Nyaruwa as he surveys a sea of red where almost a hundred thousand supporters of Zimbabwe’s official opposition party the Movement for Democratic Change gathered in the final rally on Monday June 29th before polls opened. Nyaruwa is one of some 6.4 million Zimbabweans registered to vote since the power-sharing government was formed after the violence that erupted following the 2008 elections.
At 25, Nyaruwa was born after the country’s independence, yet Robert Mugabe is the only leader he has ever known. Dubbed the harmonious election, many of the restrictions of the 2008 election have been lifted and Nyaruwa is one of the lucky few who will vote as more than two million young people are believed to have been excluded from the voters’ roll by the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission. As someone under the age of thirty likely to vote for the opposition party formed fourteen years ago, Nyaruwa now had the rare privilege to express his political choice in this open field in downtown Harare, with the Zanu-PF headquarters just a block away.
Nyaruwa jokes that Mugabe is watching the rally from his office high in the imposing towers of his party headquarters. Dwarfing any official government building, the block of brown concrete with the symbol of a rooster on a single reed as if ready to pounce rises high above any commercial building in the city centre. Police had threatened anyone caught dancing, but MDC-T supporters gathered in defiance singing songs of praise to Tsvangirai.
Like its headquarters, Zanu-PF is an inescapable presence in Harare. The derelict buildings of a depressed business area are covered with campaign posters depicting a much younger Mugabe without his tell-tale signature moustache shaved in the austere fashion worn by Adolf Hitler. Away from the row of green posters, the red T-shirts and caps of the party known as the MDC-T welcome Morgan Tsvangirai as their would-be leader.
For Special Bote, Morgan Tsvangirai’s personal scandal and a split in the party do not tarnish him as their only hope. He is more concerned with the possibility of a rigged vote. “We need security of the vote. After voting the correct figures should be relayed to the national command centre as it is, we don’t need more tampering of the vote,” says Bote. An ardent supporter of Morgan Tsvangirai, 48-year-old Bote was a property developer but can only find a job as a security guard.
The MDC-T has complained throughout this campaign of unfairness. The Zimbabwean Election Committee only submitted a hard copy of the voters roll to the party less than twenty four hours before polls opened. Struggling to check the hundreds of pages of hard copy given to them, civil society organisations say there may be more than 1.7 million people on the roll who have left the country or died. The location of the polls was only made known on July 29th.
Election day had not yet ended when the MDC-T lodged a number of grievances with observers from the Southern African Development Community, the key regional body who ensured elections took place at all. Unconfirmed reports of intimidation have also been cited on social networks. The MDC-T believes what was supposed to be an independent Zimbabwean Electoral Commission was infiltrated by government securocrats. “If ZEC cannot do the job, then they must tell us,” said Tsvangirai. “If they [the commissioners] were men and women of integrity, they would step down.
The MDC-T said it had evidence that hundreds of ballot papers showing support for the party had been trashed in the special election for civil servants which was held a fortnight before. Little came of the MDC-T’s calls, with state police retaliating by arresting their campaign leader, Morgan Komichi when he handed over the envelope of evidence to the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission. The Commission has remained tight-lipped and refused to comment despite numerous attempts to reach out to the commissioners.
Despite this, African Union Chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma visited the country a week before polls. In a press briefing, Dlamini-Zuma said she had met with all parties involved in the election and that the polls were on track. Just hours later, Tsvangirai called his own press conference. Livid and leaning over the podium as he pointed at the lenses of the foreign media’s cameras, the former trade unionist called the AU chair a liar adding that Dlamini-Zuma had never met privately with the MDC-T leader and that her observer team had simply ignored the cries of irregularities from his party officials.
President Robert Mugabe, however, was much more genial in his responses to the foreign press. In a press conference called after electioneering had officially ended, Mugabe dismissed questions by journalists that chiefs have been initimidating rural voters, joking that “A chief would not come from his throne to intimidate a villager, unless he mistook it for a cheetah.”
Mugabe called an impromptu press briefing at his state home just a day before elections. Inviting the foreign press to answer any question they wanted, Mugabe said he would step down if he lost adding that he would probably spend his retirement teaching and telling stories. But the 89-year-old’s health has seen more speculation, with rumours that he was suffering from a serious heart condition and possibly even prostate cancer whirring around Harare. “The foreign press is always reporting that I have died. I have died, and died and died, but they never report my resurrection," Mugabe said.
“There is no party like Zanu-PF,” Zimbabwe’s only president since independence said, giving journalists a history lesson on the party’s role in the liberation struggle. These struggle credentials are the guiding light Mugabe believes will map the country’s journey out of economic struggle and guide it’s path of prosperity long after the President has passed.
Mugabe’s supporters are just as confident. James, a Zanu-PF supporter who was open about just where he placed the cross on his ballot said Mugabe’s party was his only future. The results of the harmonised election are expected no later than August 5th.
For Nyaruwa, though, the liberation movement offers little freedom. “My friends say there’s freedom of speech in Zimbabwe, but there’s no freedom after you speak,” says Nyaruwa. His BlackBerry smartphone has very limited access to the internet, despite Zimbabwe’s high speed internet facilities. His BlackBerry messenger service does not function at all. He believes the government has disabled the service because they cannot control it.
The 25-year old student left the country a year ago to work in South Africa. He has returned, with some savings and is now a first year financial accounting student at the local trust college. His weekends are spent in a packed mini-bus taxi as he ferries with commuters from Harare’s formerly segregated townships on the outskirts to the bustling but dilapidated city centre.
Nyaruwa and Bote are clear that they are voting for the MDC and would do so within the twelve hours set aside for election at one of the more than 9,700 polling stations across the country. Zimbabwe’s urban areas are expected to lean toward Tsvangirai’s MDC-T. The breakaway faction, the MDC-N, lead by the former Minister of Trade and Commerce Welshman Ncube, may make some headway in provinces dominated by the Ndebele people.
Zimbabwe’s rural areas though, seem to remain loyal to President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe cast his ballot at Mofhu Primary School in an impoverished Highfields township, on the outskirts of the city. It’s where he was registered as a voter, while he lives in Harare’s leafy suburbs close to the business hub. Speaking to journalists, Mugabe said he was confident the elections would be without incident. In the meantime the African Union has declared the election free and fair.
If the result takes longer than five days, Bote says he cannot go to the streets for fear of retribution, instead he implored the international community to intervene, saying countries like South Africa and the United States would be Zimbabwe’s last chance.
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