Zimbabweans keeping the faith on election results

The wholesale cheating of Obama era elections doesn’t seem to have been lost on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party.

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Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democrat Change (MDC) said the 200,000 people over the age of 103 on the voters’ roll showed how flawed the polls were. Not lost in irony is that their younger brothers and sisters did not lose their lives as so many others did in the 2008 election. It’s too early to decipher the outcome, with final vote results not expected until Monday, but long queues were still visible outside many stations at 5 p.m. during yesterday’s election, two hours before the stations closed. According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC): “Zimbabweans voted in large numbers despite concerns about the credibility of the electoral process, and the vote was relatively peaceful compared to disputed and violent polls in 2008.”

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Expectations were running high that the election would end President Robert Mugabe’s 33-year-long reign over their lives and that the long terror-stricken days of Mugabe’s blatantly young Zanu-PF henchmen posing as “war vets” could be coming to an end. Polling officials and party agents, who brought blankets to polling stations to be able to sleep next to the polling boxes to make sure they were not tampered with, were taking no chances. “MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti claimed the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission had colluded with Zanu-PF to rig the election. "The greatest worry we have is the number of people that are being turned away," Biti told reporters. (.timeslive.co.za)

"Thousands and thousands of people are being disenfranchised by virtue of not finding their names on the voters' roll," Biti said. "We've already made it clear this election is illegal, illegitimate, un-free and unfair," he said, as reports came in that more than 2000 voters had been turned away at the Mount Pleasant polling station in Harare. “The MDC was participating in the elections "with a heavy heart". “The day before the poll, other MDC leaders had said they had still not seen the voters' roll. “In Gwanda, ballot papers ran out at most polling stations, but no shortages were reported in Bulawayo, where the turnout was high. “President Robert Mugabe, however, insisted the elections were free and fair and last night, the African Union's top poll observer, former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo, said: "The conduct of the election has been peaceful, orderly, free and fair". This was echoed by ZEC chair, Judge Rita Makarau. "Indeed my view [is that] the elections were free and fair...[and] the reports that are coming out will validate my view of whether this election was free and fair," she said. “Both his Zanu-PF and Tsangirai's MDC predicted landslide victories, but many pundits believed the elections were too close to call, with some predicting that there would be no outright winner, necessitating a September 11 run-off.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s party has already claimed a landslide victory today. (Reuters)

“While the voting appeared to unfold without incident, there was a flurry of reports that eligible voters were being turned away from polling stations, some because their names did not appear on the voters' roll, others because they had been registered incorrectly in a different ward. “Tsvangirai said: "Finally we resolve this political crisis . [we want to] complete the change we have fought for over the last 14 years or so.”

In a country largely ignored by the outside world which has gone from the bread basket of Africa to one of the poorest nations on earth, the outcome of the election is do-or-die for a waiting population and akin to waiting for a miracle. Zimbabweans, black and white, have lost their jobs, their farms their homes, their farm animals and pets and many in Zimbabwe are reduced to having to forage for food. But through it all, Zimbabweans, who are a courageous people, cling to their dignity. They now wait until Monday in the hopes that their prayers have finally been answered.

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