Zimbabwe goes to the polls tomorrow in its second presidential election since the fall of long-time ruler Robert Mugabe, and the first since his death in 2019, at the age of 95.
I’ve previously criticised the disproportionate attention that Zimbabwe gets in Australia, relative to the rest of Africa, so I won’t go into too much detail. But it’s interesting, if discouraging, to see how well the hopes that were raised by the departure of Mugabe have been fulfilled.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa succeeded Mugabe in 2017 when the latter was finally eased from power by the military, and the following year he won election in his own right. The election was obviously flawed, but generally regarded as an improvement on the Mugabe era. Mnangagwa won on the first round with 51.4% of the vote against 45.1% for his main opponent, Nelson Chamisa from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Another 21 candidates shared the remaining 3.5%.
This year’s election is a rematch between Mnangagwa and Chamisa, although Chamisa now represents the Citizen’s Coalition for Change, after a court case resolved a dispute over control of the MDC in his opponents’ favor. The new MDC leader, Douglas Mwonzora, was to be a candidate but subsequently withdrew; there are another eight hopefuls, but none are expected to get anywhere near the top two.
Chamisa has more of a chance, but probably not much more. Zimbabwean democracy was a fragile thing to start with, and on all reports its condition has deteriorated over the last couple of years, with increased harassment of the opposition and tighter control of the media. Mnangagwa shows no sign of allowing his power to be seriously challenged: at the age of 80, and having spent four decades as a loyal lieutenant to Mugabe, the habit of authoritarianism is much too well-ingrained.
It seems as if Mugabe’s death has allowed the differences that separated them at the end to be papered over. His funeral four years ago saw Mnangagwa deliberately present himself as taking on the Mugabe mantle: his previous promises that he would be bringing a change in direction were pushed to the background, and since then they have receded further.
Petina Gappah put it clearly at the time:
The choice before [Mnangagwa] is clear: he can be Zimbabwe’s second Mugabe, with the same attitudes and policies, leading his country further down the path to isolation, internal division and economic misery. Or he can be the president who heals Zimbabwe, and puts it back on the path to prosperity and anchors it in real democracy, who guarantees the rights and freedoms of those who disagree with him, and who wins the grudging respect of even his bitterest opponents.
Tomorrow will confirm which option he has chosen.
The World is Not Enough 
In Africa – as in the Arab and Asian Muslim worlds – people identify as their language group (we can’t use “tribe” anymore) or by their religious affiliation rather than by imaginary lines drawn by European colonisers.
I guess the excessive focus on Zimbabwe is because the fight against the UDI Rhodesia was such a cause celebre in the 1970s – only for Ian Smith to turn out to be a friggin’ *saint* compared to Mugabe (or indeed, compared to a Bokassa or a Mobutu or a Selassie).
The sheer bitter disappointment at all those western activist efforts being for nothing, coupled with the natural human unwillingness to admit one was wrong (see also: Arafat, Yasir and his “free presidential elections, once”) has ed to a dedicated obsession to achieve a vindication that can never come.
LikeLike