Zimbabwe’s Heating Up

Posted on March 25th, 2008 Andrew G. Mandelbaum 2 comments  Print This Post

Tensions are rising in Zimbabwe ahead of Saturday’s presidential elections. For those of us who have not been following (and I wasn’t until Tom Melia gave each member of our class ZWD$10,000,000 – for use before June 30th only), Zimbabweans will go to the polls to choose between three candidates in what will hopefully be the country’s most free and fair elections to date. The favorite, of course, still has to be Robert Mugabe, who has led the governing party, Zanu-PF, since the 1980s. Per Freedom House, 2006 was a bad year for opponents of Mugabe, who faced increasing repression, and Zimbabweans altogether, whose economy has rendered my ZWD$10,000,000 worth little more than 30 cents – and that only temporarily.

But the Zimbabwean political terrain has undergone some interesting changes over the past few weeks. Simba Makoni, a former finance minister and member of the Zanu-PF politburo, recently announced that he will run against Mugabe in the presidential election. Makoni has the support of a sizable faction within Zanu-PF, and it remains to be seen how this very public split in the party will impact not only the elections, but the future capacity of the party to maintain a united facade.

Meanwhile, as Mugabe remains preoccupied with Makoni, Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC have found more room to manuever. Tsvangirai supporters have been wearing campaign t-shirts, illegal in the past, and have been carrying neat little flyers that fold into little red cards that symbolize the ejection of Mugabe from the political pitch. As the BBC profile link above clearly suggests, Tsvangirai is no George Washington. However, the hope is that he’s no Robert Mugabe either and that the balance of competition between MDC and Zanu-PF will compel Zimbabwean politicians to be more accountable for their actions.

Whether or not the elections will be allowed to run their course is another unknown. Events over the past week suggest that Mugabe may be preparing to save his presidency the old-fashioned way. Yesterday, the MDC accused the government of printing 3 million excess ballots and over 600,000 mail-in ballots for just a few thousand soldiers and police officers who work away from home. Today, an MDC candidate and his adviser were arrested while picking up campaign materials.

The likelihood of a candidate gaining a majority in Saturday’s vote appear slim, so we could be headed for a runoff. It’s going to be a long next week in Zimbabwe and it could be a very long election season.