We knew it was a rigged election and we knew it wasn't free or fair. We knew there was intimidation and that the voters roll was a complete fabrication!
Here is what we know:
1. The voters roll was never made truly public. Even the Zimbabwe Electoral Committee said in an interview that they did not have a copy of the final document.
2. The parts of the voters roll that have been seen show
over a million voters who have already died (some born as long ago as 1898 - in an AIDS ridden, poverty stricken nation....)
hundreds of thousands of young voters between the ages of 18 and 35 in urban areas left off the roll
hundreds of thousands of people turned away from registering for inconsequential or fake reasons.
many known ZANU-PF supporters had their names repeated up to 6 times.
3. On election day there were so many 'irregularities'
thousands of literate and able members of the rural community being forced into seeking an 'assisted vote' - whereby your vote is cast for you by a member of the army or police.
thousands of under age members of the Border Gezi youth were bused into urban areas, with false papers, to vote repeatedly in different polling stations.
thousands of voters, previously on the roll, were turned away as they were not on the final document.
hundreds of polling stations didn't have pens, thus hampering voting.
4. AU and SADC observers were few and far between - there is no way they could have kept an eye on what was going on across the country.
And the results? A complete farce. No-one is saying that there aren't any people who support Mugabe. We all knew he would get a fair portion of the votes. However, the extent of the rigging is dramatic.
During the early 1980s Mugabe ordered a Korean trained national army into Matabeleland (the southern areas of the country who had opposed his move to power). The army murdered hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. The bodies were thrown down disused mine shafts. This action was called Gukurahundi. The people of Matabeleland have never forgiven Mugabe for this and have always, out of principal, voted for whoever his opponent is. And yet Mugabe won a 'landslide victory' in Matabeleland. I read a newspaper article, one of the hundreds I have poured over, which said it would be like Jewish people voting for Hitler!
Urban areas are incredibly strong supporters of MDC. It is here where the younger members of the population get the most information, where there is more open talk and where there is a higher level of literacy. Even in the capital, a known MDC strong hold, the ruling party won 'a landslide victory'.
The extent of this fraud is amazing. If ZANU-PF put as much energy into running the country properly as they did into rigging the elections, there is no doubt that the country would return to being the Bread Basket of Africa.
so what now? Well it's not good.
for a start Mugabe now has enough of a majority to change the constitution away from the more democratic version it is now (thanks to the MDC's involvement in the government during the last 5 years.)
There is a threat of more 'indigenisation' whereby the more powerful of the ZANU supporters can, essentially, take any business, school, land that they want. Do not for a moment think that this means that the poorer members of the population will benefit for even a moment! We will see what happened with the farms - they were taken away under the guise of helping the local community but instead they were placed in the hands of politicians and their families and left to fall apart. The local people, farm workers etc, in most instances were not even allowed to grow their own crops to feed their families on a subsistence level - and were punished if they tried.
Amenities like running water and electricity are already on the brink - some areas haven't received municipal water for years! Now there is little chance of any of it being fixed.
Any international aid that had been promised to the ruling government on the proviso of free and fair elections has been withdrawn.
Sanctions, that had slowly started lifting, are slamming down again - leading the country towards years of empty shop shelves, starving millions, stagnant water - cholera and typhoid outbreaks... The medical sector is already stretched with it's lack of funds and medicines - and now it will only get worse.
the chances are that the Zim dollar will be reintroduced - another sure sign of a collapsing economy. Before MDC were part of the Unity Government we experienced inflation of up to 5 BILLION percent. It's not an exaggeration. When we were paid our salaries we had to spend it immediately because the following day it would be worth half as much.
And what is the international community doing? Sweet F-all. It's barely reported on the news. And if Mugabe gets away with this, which I'm terrified he will, the rest of Africa will fall into further ruin as dictators and tyrants follow his lead. Sanctions, which the USA and UK are threatening to impose will only hurt the general population. Does anyone think that the government officials and their families were ever affected? They all had passports in fake names. Most ZANU-PF children enjoyed tertiary education in the USA for goodness sake, even though there were sanctions against them! Pathetic!
The last of our rhinos will be butchered so their horns can be used in China (this was already happening to a smaller scale - we know what will happen now.)
Our elephants, and the rest of our beautiful wildlife, be next.
Diamond mining (from the largest diamond deposit in the world!) will continue on the backs of slave labour - blood diamonds in the truest sense- being sold in China, Malaysia and India, the money lining government pockets.
Any sign of a reviving education system will be destroyed so that the population will be left penniless, desperate and illiterate - a mass of serving minions with no way at all of helping themselves out of their situation.
There will be a further 'brain drain' on the country - the young, educated members of the population will seek employment in other parts of the world.
There are no words to explain the depths of despair that my husband and I feel. And our feelings merely mirror those of millions of Zimbabweans - both in Zim and across the world - who were desperate for the change and democracy that was promised. The millions of disenfranchised Zimbos who were desperate to return home, bringing new expertise, education, technology, hope back to the country.
It could have been awesome.
We remain heart broken.
