Election changes everything
change. His rival, he points out, worked alongside Mugabe for decades. How can Mnangagwa be any different?
The youthful, albeit inexperienced, Chamisa — at 40 years old, he is 35 years younger than Mnangagwa — is also selling hope. His muchridiculed promise to build a bullet train between Bulawayo and Harare encapsulates this vision: it may be a fantasy, it may be totally unworkable but why shouldn’t Zimbabweans dream of a high-technology, highfunctioning future?
All politicians make promises they can’t keep but at least Chamisa’s are genuinely aspirational. And they are resonating with supporters, who are turning out in record numbers to hear him speak — even in areas considered Zanu-PF strongholds, where the opposition has been allowed to campaign freely for the first time.
Too close to call
The latest opinion polls show that Mnangagwa and Chamisa are neckand-neck, with neither likely to deliver a knockout blow in the first round. This would see the two candidates compete against each other in a run-off election.
No one has forgotten that it was the prospect of another run-off election, a decade ago, that precipitated a wave of violence against opposition supporters that left hundreds dead.
Mnangagwa has been accused of helping to orchestrate that violence: if Chamisa looks like he might actually win the thing, will Mnangagwa respond with similar brutality? Will his friends and business partners in the military — the generals that helped him in to power — force his hand?
Similarly, Chamisa’s MDC Alliance has said it will refuse to recognise a Mnangagwa victory, and that any ensuing government would be “illegitimate”. The opposition claims that bias in Zimbabwe’s electoral commission, coupled with serious irregularities in the voters roll, mean that the election cannot possibly be credible — unless, of course, they win.
The new Zimbabwe