It’s 192 hours after polls closed in Zimbabwe’s Harmonised Elections last week. There’s still no presidential results, but I’ve finally turned off my radio. If The Big announcement happens tonight, maybe I’ll miss it.

I’ve noticed campaign posters starting to come down – including the ones where Brenda showed someone her pink finger. But they might well be going back up again soon. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission hasn’t said anything officially yet, but it’s looking increasingly like a run-off is in the works, between current president Robert Mugabe, and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. I’m nervous at the prospect, concerned about increased levels of intimidation and violence. The war veterans, most infamously known for their campaign of violence after Zanu PF’s proposed Constitution lost in the February 2000 referendum, have begun their threats anew.

Ordinary Zimbabweans I’ve spoken with, and many of those sending in text messages to our SMS service, all say an adamant No to a run-off. The old man lost, they say. He’s no longer wanted. It’s time for him to push off.

My one hope is that the MDC can somehow convert this sentiment – and the popular conviction that Morgan Tsvangirai won the presidential election by more than the stipulated 50% required to avoid a run-off – into a rejection of yet another election and an insistence that Tsvangirai be sworn in as President of Zimbabwe. The MDC has already begun to speak this way. But their success on the matter feels unlikely. Mugabe has repeatedly shown that he’ll resort to any means necessary to stay in power. And Zimbabweans have, in recent years, become increasingly less willing to engage in mass protests or street demonstrations. Perhaps now the stakes are high enough, and victory close enough, that with strong enough popular leadership they’ll reconsider.

A good start is the t-shirts I saw two young men wearing tonight. Whilst I have my own objections to the idea of wearing anyone’s face on my body, the slogan is exactly what we’ll need to see more and more of, if Zimbabwe is going to shake off the shackles of Mugabe’s dictatorship. “Morgan Tsvangirai – People’s President” they read.

A new road has been built near my house. When it opened, they closed off a bit of old road at the top of the new one. I know that no cars can come down this road, but still when I run down it I find myself looking behind me, nervous at having all of this space, certain that something will come and invade it. Metaphorically, the MDC needs to create and claim spaces exactly like that – and hold them long enough that we stop looking over our shoulders anticipating the klap, and instead look straight ahead of us, confident that the space is ours, that victory is ours.

This entry was posted on April 6th, 2008 at 6:44 pm by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Elections 2008, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.