Campaigning for Zimbabwean presidential election, 2008
Encyclopedia
Campaigning for the first round of the presidential election held in Zimbabwe
on March 29, 2008 took place from February to March. There were three major candidates: President Robert Mugabe
of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front
(ZANU-PF), Morgan Tsvangirai
of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC, Tsvangirai faction), and the independent candidate Simba Makoni
.
on February 23, he likened Makoni to "a frog trying to inflate itself up to the size of an ox" that was sure to burst, while calling Tsvangirai a Western puppet. Predicting an easy victory for ZANU-PF, he vowed that "regime change
" would never occur in Zimbabwe. Mugabe launched his re-election campaign on February 29 in Harare
and presented ZANU-PF's election manifesto. He promised increased agricultural production and the reform and improvement of the mining sector, and he urged the party to acknowledge past failures, such as in the area of infrastructure development. He said that ZANU-PF was united under his leadership: "the struggles within the party that have taken place, and in some cases little wars, have been settled. At the end of the day, we have this congregation with me at the head."
Tsvangirai launched his campaign and presented the MDC's election manifesto on February 23 in Mutare
. Promising to deliver economic recovery, he said that the MDC had "studied this economy comprehensively and we know what is wrong with it", and that he could put "this economy back on its feet with 100 days of forming a democratic government". Mugabe and ZANU-PF, according to Tsvangirai, "belong[ed] to the past", had "run out of ideas", and could not rescue the economy. Tsvangirai also said that he would place a priority on the creation of a new constitution. He argued that the people wanted total change and not merely partial reform, comparing the former to new clothes and the latter to patching up tattered clothes; this was viewed as a critical reference to Makoni's candidacy.
Speaking at a press conference in Bulawayo
on March 1, prior to the launch of Makoni's campaign, former Interior Minister Dumiso Dabengwa
and former Speaker of Parliament Cyril Ndebele announced their support for Makoni.
pointed to "ominous signs" that the election would not be free and fair in an open letter in late February, Zambian Foreign Minister Kabinge Pande said that signs were encouraging and that regional leaders believed the election would be free and fair. Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa
suggested that the West might not be willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the election unless Mugabe was defeated.
The Herald
, Zimbabwe's state-owned daily newspaper, reported on February 29 that Retired Major General Paradzayi Zimondi, the head of the prison service, gave his officers an order to vote for Mugabe. He said that Tsvangirai and Makoni would reverse land reform
if they were elected, and he vowed to resign from his post and return to his farm to protect it if Mugabe were defeated. Makoni has said that he would continue land reform and would not take back any redistributed land unless it was improperly gained. Subsequently, Defence Forces Commander Constantine Chiwenga
said that the army supported Mugabe and would "not support or salute sell-outs and agents of the West before, during and after the presidential elections".
On March 4, The Herald reported that several important foreign corporations, including Citigroup
, South African Breweries-Miller, and Actis Africa, were providing financial assistance to Makoni's campaign; the newspaper called this proof that Makoni's "election bid was part of the Western regime change agenda".
Makoni said in an interview with Agence France-Presse
in early March that he anticipated getting at least 72% of the vote and that he was only interested in the concerns of Zimbabweans, not those of the West. According to Makoni, Mugabe "has a very special place in our history" and would receive "the due respect that our African culture and African standards demand of us" if Makoni won the election, stressing that he was "not about retribution and victimisation". In an interview with the Financial Times published on March 17, he repeated that he would not seek retribution against Mugabe if he won the election, although he said that Mugabe had "a lot to answer for" and would still be subject to the law. According to Makoni, he wanted to form a national unity government that would include both ZANU-PF and the MDC.
On March 5, The Herald reported that Mugabe told a rally in Bazely Bridge that "the British had identified people within Zanu-PF to work with in causing divisions in the party because it realised the ruling party was a united revolutionary liberation movement that had to be destroyed from within". He distributed over 200 computers to Manicaland
schools and said that food and farm equipment would also be sent. On the same day, Mugabe said at a rally in Mahusekwa that some businesses were raising prices with the intent of causing the people to suffer, hoping that they would blame the government for their suffering and vote for the opposition as a result.
The European Union
expressed concern on March 10 that "the humanitarian, political and economic situation in Zimbabwe and conditions on the ground" might "endanger the holding of free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections". It said that European observers had not been invited. While not inviting any observers from the EU or the United States, Zimbabwe has invited 47 observer teams, including observers from the Southern African Development Community
(SADC), the African Union
, China
, Russia
, and Iran
. On March 11, the arrival of the first 50 observers from SADC was reported, with more expected. SADC Secretary-General Tomaz Salomao
said in a press conference in Harare on March 12 that SADC was confident "that the tradition of peace encapsulated in the unquestionable political maturity and tolerance shall, once again guide Zimbabweans as they go to the polls".
In light of Zimbabwe's dramatic inflation rate
, Mugabe massively raised the salaries of members of the security forces in February, and on March 10 he approved raises for teachers and civil servants. At around the same time, he signed the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill, which requires all businesses to be majority owned (at least 51%) by black Zimbabweans. Mugabe subsequently accused business of raising prices to nullify the benefit of the pay raises, demanding that the price increases be reversed and warning that "profiteering" white-owned businesses would be taken over by the government.
Human Rights Watch
stated that the Electoral Commission was inadequately prepared for the polls and that the opposition was not being treated equally to the governing ZANU-PF by the authorities. The government rejected these accusations; Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga
said that both ZANU-PF and the MDC were represented on the Electoral Commission and that Human Rights Watch's report reflected an agenda. In a report issued on March 19, Human Rights Forum claimed strong media bias in favor of Mugabe and the use of intimidation and threats against opposition supporters; it also alleged that the Electoral Commission is merely a front for the Registrar's Office, which it said is partisan in favor of ZANU-PF.
Mugabe has used the campaign slogan "vote for the fist", reflecting ZANU-PF militancy; the MDC replied to this slogan by saying that "we cannot feed people with clenched fists", while Makoni has said that "the fist has become a hammer smashing the country".
The Electoral Court ruled against an MDC petition asking for electronic copies of the voter rolls to be made available, saying that this was out of the Court's jurisdiction, on March 13. An application requesting electronic copies was subsequently filed at the Harare High Court on March 17. An electronic list would facilitate searching the rolls for discrepancies. The presence in the voter rolls of Desmond Lardner-Burke
, a Rhodesia
n Minister of Law and Order who died decades before, has been pointed to as an example of flaws in the voter rolls. On March 20, Tsvangirai held a news conference at which he claimed that, in 28 rural constituencies, there were 90,000 names on the voter rolls that could not be accounted for. He said that he based this claim on the work of independent analysts. He also protested a plan by the Electoral Commission to have votes in the presidential election counted separately, at the national level, while votes for the parliamentary and local elections would be counted locally at the polling stations. According to Tsvangirai, who demanded that all votes be counted at the polling stations, this was illegal, and he said that he would "not participate in such a process". Furthermore, he said that while only 20,000 postal ballots were necessary, the Electoral Commission had ordered 600,000 of them. MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti
claimed on March 23 that correspondence had been discovered indicating that the Electoral Commission had requested the printing of nine million ballots, far more than the number of registered voters. According to Biti, this demonstrated an intention to rig the election in favor of Mugabe. Biti also said that 600,000 postal ballots had been ordered for police, soldiers, civil servants working away from home, and diplomats and their families who are posted in other countries. According to Biti, this was wildly disproportionate to the actual number of postal ballots needed; he said that the number of police and soldiers combined was 50,000 at most. Electoral Commission Deputy Chairwoman Joyce Kazembe rejected the allegation that extra ballots were being printed to facilitate fraud, saying that only a small number of extra ballots had been printed in order to account for spoilt ballots.
On March 23, Mugabe held a rally in Bulawayo
, the country's second largest city, which is considered a stronghold of the MDC. At the rally, he accused the MDC of seeking the reversal of land reform and urging other countries to intensify sanctions on Zimbabwe, and he said that ZANU-PF had not been split by Makoni's candidacy and Dabengwa's decision to back Makoni. For his part, Tsvangarai rejected the idea that he was hostile to land reform, saying that he made land reform proposals as early as 1995. He did, however, say that he wanted to establish an independent commission to confiscate farms from individuals who owned more than one.
According to the South Africa-based Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum at a media briefing on March 20, Zimbabweans living outside the country would not be able to vote because of a constitutional requirement that a voter have lived within a constituency for at least one year prior to the election.
Marwick Khumalo, the head of the observer group of the AU's Pan-African Parliament
, said in an interview published in The Herald on March 24 that his group was concerned only with the electoral process itself, not with the outcome. He said that his group had "not come to prescribe to Zimbabwe how they should conduct their elections" and that "the purpose of our mission here is to ensure that the elections meet the standards of the African Union Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance and the African Union Declaration on Elections, Democracy and Governance in Africa."
Another survey, conducted by Dr Joseph Kurebwa, a lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Zimbabwe, as an independent consultant was reported by The Herald on March 28 as predicting that Mugabe would win a first round majority with 56% of the vote, followed by Tsvangirai with 26–27%, Makoni with 13–14%, and Towungana with 0.2%. The survey was based on the views of 10,322 participants, and all of the country's wards were represented in the survey. Interestingly, Dr Kurebwa is seen by many as a ZANU PF functionary in the mold of Professor Claude Mararike, who has been making the same predictions since 2000 based on what he terms a simulation of voting patterns in Zimbabwe on a sample selected by him. Opponents claim that the Herald, seen by observers as a government mouthpiece, has misrepresented the university's position.
CNN
was denied permission to cover the election, according to an official at the Ministry of Information and Publicity on March 25, 2008. Many other foreign media outlets, such as South Africa's e.tv
, were also denied accreditation by the government.
A few days before the election, Makoni's spokesman said that his campaign's advertisements were being excluded from the state media. His campaign manager, Nkosana Moyo, said on March 26 that, in addition to a national unity government, Makoni would establish some sort of truth and reconciliation process if he won the election. He also said that Makoni would take a different approach to land reform and would review any unjustified confiscations of land. Furthermore, Moyo made it clear that if Makoni placed third and was excluded from a potential second round, he would back Tsvangirai. At around the same time, the United States State Department urged the government and the Electoral Commission "to take concrete actions to address … significant shortcomings", and Amnesty International
criticized what it alleged was intimidation of the opposition by the police.
The government's "Look East" policy, based on deepening economic relationships with a number of countries in Asia and the Middle East, was touted by Mugabe as the solution to Zimbabwe's economic problems. According to Mugabe, the Zimbabwean economy had not yet recovered because it was linked too closely to the West, but he said during the campaign that continuing the "Look East" policy would soon lead to economic recovery. He also said that Zimbabwe was learning from economic policies in some Asian countries that focused on the development of small and medium enterprises, arguing that these policies, unlike those favored by the West, empowered people locally.
On March 27, Mugabe dissolved his Cabinet ahead of the election. Regarding the composition of a new Cabinet following the election, he said that "the good performers will return, the poor performers will drop".
The MDC said that if Mugabe was declared the winner of the election, the result could be violence of the sort seen in Kenya following that country's December 2007 presidential election
, although Tsvangirai told his supporters to not engage in violence. At a rally in Nyanga District
, Mugabe responded to the suggestion of violence by saying: "Just dare try it. We don't play around while you try to please your British allies. Just try it and you will see. We want to see you do it." He stressed the importance of having a peaceful atmosphere and said that the losing side must be prepared to acknowledge defeat. On March 28, the security forces were placed on full alert. At a press conference on that day, National Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri
warned the opposition to avoid violence, saying that violence "is a monster that can devour its creator, as it is blind and not selective in nature".
In a joint statement on March 27, Tsvangirai, Makoni, and Mutambara said that independent analysis of the voter lists demonstrated that there were major discrepancies and alleged the existence of "a very well thought out and sophisticated plan to steal the election from us". They said that, in the period from December 2007 to February 2008, the number of voters on the voter registration list had increased by 11% in rural areas but by only 2% in urban areas. Tsvangirai said that officials and election workers should ignore any instructions to falsify the results, and he called on voters to stay at their polling stations after voting so that they could prevent fraud.
Mugabe concluded his campaign on March 28 with a rally near Harare, vowing to win a victory that would deal "a final blow" to the British, who he described as the puppeteers of Tsvangirai and Makoni.
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
on March 29, 2008 took place from February to March. There were three major candidates: President Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...
of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front
Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front
The Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front has been the ruling party in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, led by Robert Mugabe, first as Prime Minister with the party simply known as ZANU, and then as President from 1988 after taking over ZAPU and retaining the name ZANU-PF...
(ZANU-PF), Morgan Tsvangirai
Morgan Tsvangirai
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai is the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. He is the President of the Movement for Democratic Change - Tsvangirai and a key figure in the opposition to President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe on 11 February 2009...
of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai
The Movement for Democratic Change Zimbabwe is a political party and the largest party in the House of Assembly of Zimbabwe. It is the main formation formed from the split of the original Movement for Democratic Change in 2005.-Foundation:...
(MDC, Tsvangirai faction), and the independent candidate Simba Makoni
Simba Makoni
Simbarashe Herbert Stanley Makoni is a Zimbabwean politician and was a candidate for the March 2008 presidential election against incumbent Robert Mugabe. He was Minister of Finance and Economic Development in President Robert Mugabe's cabinet from 2000 to 2002...
.
Beginning of campaigning
Mugabe declared on February 12 that he was "raring to go and raring to fly". Speaking at a rally in BeitbridgeBeitbridge
Beitbridge or Mzingwane is a border town in the province of Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe. The name also refers to the border post and bridge spanning the Limpopo River, which forms the political border between South Africa and Zimbabwe.-Background:...
on February 23, he likened Makoni to "a frog trying to inflate itself up to the size of an ox" that was sure to burst, while calling Tsvangirai a Western puppet. Predicting an easy victory for ZANU-PF, he vowed that "regime change
Regime change
"Regime change" is the replacement of one regime with another. Use of the term dates to at least 1925.Regime change can occur through conquest by a foreign power, revolution, coup d'état or reconstruction following the failure of a state...
" would never occur in Zimbabwe. Mugabe launched his re-election campaign on February 29 in Harare
Harare
Harare before 1982 known as Salisbury) is the largest city and capital of Zimbabwe. It has an estimated population of 1,600,000, with 2,800,000 in its metropolitan area . Administratively, Harare is an independent city equivalent to a province. It is Zimbabwe's largest city and its...
and presented ZANU-PF's election manifesto. He promised increased agricultural production and the reform and improvement of the mining sector, and he urged the party to acknowledge past failures, such as in the area of infrastructure development. He said that ZANU-PF was united under his leadership: "the struggles within the party that have taken place, and in some cases little wars, have been settled. At the end of the day, we have this congregation with me at the head."
Tsvangirai launched his campaign and presented the MDC's election manifesto on February 23 in Mutare
Mutare
Mutare is the fourth largest city in Zimbabwe, with a population of around 170,000. It is the capital of Manicaland province.-History:...
. Promising to deliver economic recovery, he said that the MDC had "studied this economy comprehensively and we know what is wrong with it", and that he could put "this economy back on its feet with 100 days of forming a democratic government". Mugabe and ZANU-PF, according to Tsvangirai, "belong[ed] to the past", had "run out of ideas", and could not rescue the economy. Tsvangirai also said that he would place a priority on the creation of a new constitution. He argued that the people wanted total change and not merely partial reform, comparing the former to new clothes and the latter to patching up tattered clothes; this was viewed as a critical reference to Makoni's candidacy.
Speaking at a press conference in Bulawayo
Bulawayo
Bulawayo is the second largest city in Zimbabwe after the capital Harare, with an estimated population in 2010 of 2,000,000. It is located in Matabeleland, 439 km southwest of Harare, and is now treated as a separate provincial area from Matabeleland...
on March 1, prior to the launch of Makoni's campaign, former Interior Minister Dumiso Dabengwa
Dumiso Dabengwa
Dumiso Dabengwa is a Zimbabwean politician. He served as the head of ZIPRA intelligence during the Rhodesian Bush War.In 1982 he was charged, with Lookout Masuku and four others, of treason by the Mugabe administration. They were acquitted, for lack of evidence in 1983. On release they were...
and former Speaker of Parliament Cyril Ndebele announced their support for Makoni.
Events during the campaign
While U.S. Ambassador James D. McGeeJames D. McGee
James David McGee is an American diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe. He is the former U.S. ambassador to Swaziland, Madagascar and the Comoros.-Early life:...
pointed to "ominous signs" that the election would not be free and fair in an open letter in late February, Zambian Foreign Minister Kabinge Pande said that signs were encouraging and that regional leaders believed the election would be free and fair. Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa
Levy Mwanawasa
Levy Patrick Mwanawasa was the third President of Zambia. He ruled the country from January 2002 until his death in August 2008. He is credited for having initiated a campaign to rid the country of corruption...
suggested that the West might not be willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the election unless Mugabe was defeated.
The Herald
The Herald (Zimbabwe)
The Herald is a government owned daily newspaper published in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.-Origins:The newspaper's origins date back to the 19th century. Its forerunner was launched on June 27 1891 by W E Fairbridge for the Argus group of South Africa...
, Zimbabwe's state-owned daily newspaper, reported on February 29 that Retired Major General Paradzayi Zimondi, the head of the prison service, gave his officers an order to vote for Mugabe. He said that Tsvangirai and Makoni would reverse land reform
Land reform in Zimbabwe
Land reform in Zimbabwe officially began in 1979 with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement, an effort to more equitably distribute land between the historically disenfranchised blacks and the minority-whites who ruled Zimbabwe from 1890 to 1979...
if they were elected, and he vowed to resign from his post and return to his farm to protect it if Mugabe were defeated. Makoni has said that he would continue land reform and would not take back any redistributed land unless it was improperly gained. Subsequently, Defence Forces Commander Constantine Chiwenga
Constantine Chiwenga
- Personal life :He was born in 1956 in Hwedza district of Mashonaland East Province. General Chiwenga was educated up to Form 4 at St Mary's Mission in Hwedza, together with Air Marshal Perence Shiri and Brigadier General Shungu, Commander Mechanised Brigade....
said that the army supported Mugabe and would "not support or salute sell-outs and agents of the West before, during and after the presidential elections".
On March 4, The Herald reported that several important foreign corporations, including Citigroup
Citigroup
Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Citigroup was formed from one of the world's largest mergers in history by combining the banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate...
, South African Breweries-Miller, and Actis Africa, were providing financial assistance to Makoni's campaign; the newspaper called this proof that Makoni's "election bid was part of the Western regime change agenda".
Makoni said in an interview with Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...
in early March that he anticipated getting at least 72% of the vote and that he was only interested in the concerns of Zimbabweans, not those of the West. According to Makoni, Mugabe "has a very special place in our history" and would receive "the due respect that our African culture and African standards demand of us" if Makoni won the election, stressing that he was "not about retribution and victimisation". In an interview with the Financial Times published on March 17, he repeated that he would not seek retribution against Mugabe if he won the election, although he said that Mugabe had "a lot to answer for" and would still be subject to the law. According to Makoni, he wanted to form a national unity government that would include both ZANU-PF and the MDC.
On March 5, The Herald reported that Mugabe told a rally in Bazely Bridge that "the British had identified people within Zanu-PF to work with in causing divisions in the party because it realised the ruling party was a united revolutionary liberation movement that had to be destroyed from within". He distributed over 200 computers to Manicaland
Manicaland
Manicaland is a province of Zimbabwe. It has an area of and a population of approximately 1.6 million . Mutare is the capital of the province. -Background:...
schools and said that food and farm equipment would also be sent. On the same day, Mugabe said at a rally in Mahusekwa that some businesses were raising prices with the intent of causing the people to suffer, hoping that they would blame the government for their suffering and vote for the opposition as a result.
The European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
expressed concern on March 10 that "the humanitarian, political and economic situation in Zimbabwe and conditions on the ground" might "endanger the holding of free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections". It said that European observers had not been invited. While not inviting any observers from the EU or the United States, Zimbabwe has invited 47 observer teams, including observers from the Southern African Development Community
Southern African Development Community
The Southern African Development Community is an inter-governmental organization headquartered in Gaborone, Botswana. Its goal is to further socio-economic cooperation and integration as well as political and security cooperation among 15 southern African states...
(SADC), the African Union
African Union
The African Union is a union consisting of 54 African states. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established on 9 July 2002, the AU was formed as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity...
, China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. On March 11, the arrival of the first 50 observers from SADC was reported, with more expected. SADC Secretary-General Tomaz Salomao
Tomaz Salomao
Tomaz Salomão , a Mozambican economist, is the Secretary General of the Southern African Development Community . Salomão was appointed at the 2005 Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Southern African Development Community in Gaborone, Botswana...
said in a press conference in Harare on March 12 that SADC was confident "that the tradition of peace encapsulated in the unquestionable political maturity and tolerance shall, once again guide Zimbabweans as they go to the polls".
In light of Zimbabwe's dramatic inflation rate
Inflation rate
In economics, the inflation rate is a measure of inflation, the rate of increase of a price index . It is the percentage rate of change in price level over time. The rate of decrease in the purchasing power of money is approximately equal.The inflation rate is used to calculate the real interest...
, Mugabe massively raised the salaries of members of the security forces in February, and on March 10 he approved raises for teachers and civil servants. At around the same time, he signed the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill, which requires all businesses to be majority owned (at least 51%) by black Zimbabweans. Mugabe subsequently accused business of raising prices to nullify the benefit of the pay raises, demanding that the price increases be reversed and warning that "profiteering" white-owned businesses would be taken over by the government.
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
stated that the Electoral Commission was inadequately prepared for the polls and that the opposition was not being treated equally to the governing ZANU-PF by the authorities. The government rejected these accusations; Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga
Bright Matonga
Bright Matonga is a Zimbabwean politician. He is formerly the Deputy Information Minister in the cabinet of president Robert Mugabe. In the 2008 parliamentary election, as a member of the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front, he was elected from the Mhondoro-Ngezi constituency....
said that both ZANU-PF and the MDC were represented on the Electoral Commission and that Human Rights Watch's report reflected an agenda. In a report issued on March 19, Human Rights Forum claimed strong media bias in favor of Mugabe and the use of intimidation and threats against opposition supporters; it also alleged that the Electoral Commission is merely a front for the Registrar's Office, which it said is partisan in favor of ZANU-PF.
Mugabe has used the campaign slogan "vote for the fist", reflecting ZANU-PF militancy; the MDC replied to this slogan by saying that "we cannot feed people with clenched fists", while Makoni has said that "the fist has become a hammer smashing the country".
The Electoral Court ruled against an MDC petition asking for electronic copies of the voter rolls to be made available, saying that this was out of the Court's jurisdiction, on March 13. An application requesting electronic copies was subsequently filed at the Harare High Court on March 17. An electronic list would facilitate searching the rolls for discrepancies. The presence in the voter rolls of Desmond Lardner-Burke
Desmond Lardner-Burke
Desmond William Lardner-Burke ID was a politician in Rhodesia.-Early years:Desmond Lardner-Burke was born in Kimberley, South Africa on 17 October 1909, and was educated at St. Andrew's College in Grahamstown. Lardner-Burke became a lawyer...
, a Rhodesia
Rhodesia
Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...
n Minister of Law and Order who died decades before, has been pointed to as an example of flaws in the voter rolls. On March 20, Tsvangirai held a news conference at which he claimed that, in 28 rural constituencies, there were 90,000 names on the voter rolls that could not be accounted for. He said that he based this claim on the work of independent analysts. He also protested a plan by the Electoral Commission to have votes in the presidential election counted separately, at the national level, while votes for the parliamentary and local elections would be counted locally at the polling stations. According to Tsvangirai, who demanded that all votes be counted at the polling stations, this was illegal, and he said that he would "not participate in such a process". Furthermore, he said that while only 20,000 postal ballots were necessary, the Electoral Commission had ordered 600,000 of them. MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti
Tendai Biti
Tendai Laxton Biti is a Zimbabwean politician. He is the Secretary-General of the Movement for Democratic Change political party and a member of Parliament for Harare East; currently he is the Minister of Finance of Zimbabwe.-Early life:Biti was born in Dzivarasekwa, Harare...
claimed on March 23 that correspondence had been discovered indicating that the Electoral Commission had requested the printing of nine million ballots, far more than the number of registered voters. According to Biti, this demonstrated an intention to rig the election in favor of Mugabe. Biti also said that 600,000 postal ballots had been ordered for police, soldiers, civil servants working away from home, and diplomats and their families who are posted in other countries. According to Biti, this was wildly disproportionate to the actual number of postal ballots needed; he said that the number of police and soldiers combined was 50,000 at most. Electoral Commission Deputy Chairwoman Joyce Kazembe rejected the allegation that extra ballots were being printed to facilitate fraud, saying that only a small number of extra ballots had been printed in order to account for spoilt ballots.
On March 23, Mugabe held a rally in Bulawayo
Bulawayo
Bulawayo is the second largest city in Zimbabwe after the capital Harare, with an estimated population in 2010 of 2,000,000. It is located in Matabeleland, 439 km southwest of Harare, and is now treated as a separate provincial area from Matabeleland...
, the country's second largest city, which is considered a stronghold of the MDC. At the rally, he accused the MDC of seeking the reversal of land reform and urging other countries to intensify sanctions on Zimbabwe, and he said that ZANU-PF had not been split by Makoni's candidacy and Dabengwa's decision to back Makoni. For his part, Tsvangarai rejected the idea that he was hostile to land reform, saying that he made land reform proposals as early as 1995. He did, however, say that he wanted to establish an independent commission to confiscate farms from individuals who owned more than one.
According to the South Africa-based Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum at a media briefing on March 20, Zimbabweans living outside the country would not be able to vote because of a constitutional requirement that a voter have lived within a constituency for at least one year prior to the election.
Opinion polls and conclusion of campaign
According to a March 2008 poll by the Mass Public Opinion Institute, Mugabe stands at 20% support, with 28% for Tsvangirai and 9% for Makoni. The remaining, undecided voters were deemed more likely to vote for the opposition than for Mugabe. Tsvangirai claimed Mugabe could not win the election due to the state of the economy, a record of alleged repression, and his age, but would try to steal it. He said that the MDC hoped to pre-empt the Electoral Commission by conducting its own count and releasing results first. On March 23, he claimed that most members of the police and the Central Intelligence Organisation were "behind the people" and "committed to defend the new Zimbabwe", despite the statements from leading figures in the security forces expressing support for Mugabe. He said that members of the security forces had "nothing to fear" if he won the election, as long as they "protect[ed] the national voices of Zimbabweans" and were "committed to the constitutional order in this country".Marwick Khumalo, the head of the observer group of the AU's Pan-African Parliament
Pan-African Parliament
The Pan-African Parliament , also known as the African Parliament, is the legislative body of the African Union and held its inaugural session in March 2004. The PAP exercises oversight, and has advisory and consultative powers, lasting for the first five years...
, said in an interview published in The Herald on March 24 that his group was concerned only with the electoral process itself, not with the outcome. He said that his group had "not come to prescribe to Zimbabwe how they should conduct their elections" and that "the purpose of our mission here is to ensure that the elections meet the standards of the African Union Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance and the African Union Declaration on Elections, Democracy and Governance in Africa."
Another survey, conducted by Dr Joseph Kurebwa, a lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Zimbabwe, as an independent consultant was reported by The Herald on March 28 as predicting that Mugabe would win a first round majority with 56% of the vote, followed by Tsvangirai with 26–27%, Makoni with 13–14%, and Towungana with 0.2%. The survey was based on the views of 10,322 participants, and all of the country's wards were represented in the survey. Interestingly, Dr Kurebwa is seen by many as a ZANU PF functionary in the mold of Professor Claude Mararike, who has been making the same predictions since 2000 based on what he terms a simulation of voting patterns in Zimbabwe on a sample selected by him. Opponents claim that the Herald, seen by observers as a government mouthpiece, has misrepresented the university's position.
CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
was denied permission to cover the election, according to an official at the Ministry of Information and Publicity on March 25, 2008. Many other foreign media outlets, such as South Africa's e.tv
E.tv
e.tv is the fifth terrestrial television channel in South Africa, following three channels operated by the state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation and the privately owned subscription-funded M-Net, operated by Multichoice...
, were also denied accreditation by the government.
A few days before the election, Makoni's spokesman said that his campaign's advertisements were being excluded from the state media. His campaign manager, Nkosana Moyo, said on March 26 that, in addition to a national unity government, Makoni would establish some sort of truth and reconciliation process if he won the election. He also said that Makoni would take a different approach to land reform and would review any unjustified confiscations of land. Furthermore, Moyo made it clear that if Makoni placed third and was excluded from a potential second round, he would back Tsvangirai. At around the same time, the United States State Department urged the government and the Electoral Commission "to take concrete actions to address … significant shortcomings", and Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
criticized what it alleged was intimidation of the opposition by the police.
The government's "Look East" policy, based on deepening economic relationships with a number of countries in Asia and the Middle East, was touted by Mugabe as the solution to Zimbabwe's economic problems. According to Mugabe, the Zimbabwean economy had not yet recovered because it was linked too closely to the West, but he said during the campaign that continuing the "Look East" policy would soon lead to economic recovery. He also said that Zimbabwe was learning from economic policies in some Asian countries that focused on the development of small and medium enterprises, arguing that these policies, unlike those favored by the West, empowered people locally.
On March 27, Mugabe dissolved his Cabinet ahead of the election. Regarding the composition of a new Cabinet following the election, he said that "the good performers will return, the poor performers will drop".
The MDC said that if Mugabe was declared the winner of the election, the result could be violence of the sort seen in Kenya following that country's December 2007 presidential election
Kenyan presidential election, 2007
A presidential election was held as part of the Kenyan general election on December 27, 2007; parliamentary elections were held on the same date. Incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner and sworn in on December 30, despite opposition leader Raila Odinga's claims of victory...
, although Tsvangirai told his supporters to not engage in violence. At a rally in Nyanga District
Nyanga District
Nyanga District is located in Manicaland Province of Zimbabwe.The center is Nyanga village....
, Mugabe responded to the suggestion of violence by saying: "Just dare try it. We don't play around while you try to please your British allies. Just try it and you will see. We want to see you do it." He stressed the importance of having a peaceful atmosphere and said that the losing side must be prepared to acknowledge defeat. On March 28, the security forces were placed on full alert. At a press conference on that day, National Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri
Augustine Chihuri
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warned the opposition to avoid violence, saying that violence "is a monster that can devour its creator, as it is blind and not selective in nature".
In a joint statement on March 27, Tsvangirai, Makoni, and Mutambara said that independent analysis of the voter lists demonstrated that there were major discrepancies and alleged the existence of "a very well thought out and sophisticated plan to steal the election from us". They said that, in the period from December 2007 to February 2008, the number of voters on the voter registration list had increased by 11% in rural areas but by only 2% in urban areas. Tsvangirai said that officials and election workers should ignore any instructions to falsify the results, and he called on voters to stay at their polling stations after voting so that they could prevent fraud.
Mugabe concluded his campaign on March 28 with a rally near Harare, vowing to win a victory that would deal "a final blow" to the British, who he described as the puppeteers of Tsvangirai and Makoni.