IRIN Focus on a watershed election

For the first time in 20 years of power since independence from Britain, President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party are facing a credible opposition in parliament following the outcome of legislative elections at the weekend. People in the capital Harare, and the second city of Bulawayo, began dancing in the streets from dawn on Tuesday as the results in a race for 120 of the 150 seats in the house trickled through overnight. By the time the final count was in at around 11:00 a.m. (0900 GMT), analysts across the political divide were agreed that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had changed the face of politics in Zimbabwe forever. A strong parliamentary opposition The labour union-based MDC formed just nine months ago had captured 57 seats against 62 for ZANU-PF and 1 clinched by an independent, the veteran African nationalist, Ndabaningi Sithole. In the outgoing legislature, ZANU-PF held all but three seats. Half a dozen of Mugabe’s senior cabinet ministers lost their seats, while Morgan Tsvangirai, the 46-year-old leader of the MDC also failed to win in his marginal home constituency. Commentators described the outcome as a vote for change that showed the mood of the country after weeks of pre-election violence and intimidation - mostly blamed on ZANU-PF by local and international monitors - in which at least 32 people lost their lives and 6,500 were forced to flee their homes. The key issue now “The big question on everybody’s minds right now is whether President Mugabe will see sense and go for a government of national unity,” Masipule Sithole, professor of political science at the University of Zimbabwe, told IRIN. “We have to see whether Mugabe will have the sense to appoint a government of national unity.” Under the constitution, Mugabe has the right to appoint the remaining 30 MPs in the legislature. “The first indication of his mood will come when we see whether he simply re-appoints those ministers who lost their seats to parliament, or whether he brings in some people from the opposition. The next test will be to see if he forms his next cabinet in the same way,” Sithole said. “I am optimistic that we are seeing the end of the Mugabe regime and a new beginning. Of that there is no doubt. With a truly credible and sizeable opposition in parliament for the first time in two decades, I don’t think he and ZANU-PF will simply be able to do as they please from now on.” Sithole and other experts told IRIN on Tuesday that the presidential election scheduled for the year 2002 could even be brought forward. The MDC reaction In his own analysis of the outcome, Tsvangirai told reporters that although it was “unfortunate” he had personally failed to win a seat in parliament, he was preparing himself to fight the presidential election. “This is the beginning of the end for Robert Mugabe. I believe there are enough ZANU-PF MPs around who believe in a new direction for this country,” Tsvangirai said. Addressing widely expressed fears of post-election violence, he also appealed to young people disappointed that his party failed to gain an even bigger victory not to resort to violence. The newly elected parliament, he added, had been given “a mandate to demand change”. A new government line? From the Mugabe camp on Tuesday there was largely silence, while senior officials, so vocal during the campaign, were reportedly meeting with Mugabe to decide how the party should react. A university student asked by IRIN what he thought, said: “The government wants to print on the front page of the official newspapers that they have won. That’s all they are going for. Maybe Mugabe will address the nation on television tonight like he did after the land referendum they lost in February.” Some of the surprises For ZANU-PF, some of the biggest defeats were those of Home Affairs Minister Dumiso Dabengwa, Tourism Minister Simon Kaya-Moyo, and Justice Minister Emmerson Munangagwa, one of the country’s most powerful politicians and a close confidante of Mugabe, who all lost their seats. In the rural areas, where most of the violence occurred during the campaign, Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of the independence war veterans who led the occupation of some 1,400 white-owned farms, won his constituency for ZANU-PF with a large majority. And Roy Bennett, a white farmer whose home was trashed by men occupying his farm in the eastern Chimanimani district, won his seat for the MDC with a similarly large majority. While Tsvangirai himself failed to win a seat, the MDC secretary-general, Welshman Ncube, a law professor at the University of Zimbabwe, was swept to victory in the Bulawayo district where the party scored its biggest successes. The turnout According to the Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede, some 65 percent of the country’s 5 million voters cast their votes at the weekend in the highest turnout since the country’s first post-independence elections in 1980. In interviews with IRIN this week, rights groups said they feared violence once the result was out, especially in rural areas where intimidation was at its worst. Nicholas Ndebele, national chairman of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association told IRIN he viewed the situation in the countryside as “highly unpredictable”. “My hope is that it does not now move towards civil strife. I think this situation after the election could be anything,” he said. “We need a high level of maturity for either party to accept the results. All the parties must make a commitment to accept the results even if it goes against them. Short of that commitment and that maturity, Zimbabwe may never be the same again.” The country’s police chief, Augustine Chihuri, who was widely criticised for failing to curb violence by war veterans and ruling party supporters, went on state television on Tuesday minutes after the results were announced to warn the nation that violence would not be tolerated. “We urge everyone to respect lives and property,” he said. “We urge the candidates who have lost and their people to accept the results, and to respect the law. The deed has been done, now let’s live with the situation.” Analysts said his remarks explained, in part, the strong police presence and roadblocks which have been in evidence in the capital, Harare, for the past 24 hours. Changing the system Commented the Zimbabwean author and journalist, Brian Kagoro: “Our current constitutional dispensation makes it possible for us to have a new parliament and not necessarily a new government. It is an iniquitous framework that separates the people’s sovereign will from their governance.” He said the most “delicate” issue facing the country in the wake of the election was the country’s economic crisis and widespread corruption. As the results of the election were announced on Tuesday, the government, in a series of economic belt-tightening measures widely forecast, announced that fuel rationing would be introduced through a petrol coupon system. It did not say when or precisely how the rationing system would come into force. The last time such rationing was experienced in Zimbabwe was directly after the independence war 20 years ago.