The interesting thing about the recent elections in Zimbabwe is not that Zanu-PF and Robert Mugabe lost the vote (which has happened before) but that they seem to have lost the count as well. In the March 2002 presidential poll the Movement for Democratic Change leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won a substantial majority of votes cast. However, the count was fixed to give Mugabe victory. The International Herald Tribune reported at the time that all results had been channelled through a Zanu-PF command centre in Harare headed by two Mugabe loyalists.

"Officials at the ZANU-PF command centre realized that despite attempts to reduce the opposition vote Mugabe was running well behind and was in danger of losing by 200,000 to 300,000 votes. The Mugabe operatives were said to have been surprised," the article continued, by how well Tsvangirai was "doing in Mashonaland, a rural area in central Zimbabwe that was expected to back Mugabe. Fearing they would lose, officials in the ZANU-PF command center ‘fiddled the figures' by adding tens of thousands of names to Mugabe's total before the ballots were sent on to the Registrar-General, Tobaiwa Mudede, for a final count."

Zanu-PF certainly had the power to something similar this time around, as the Zimbabwean Electoral Commission is completely under its control. According to The Guardian (UK) Mugabe met with his intelligence and military chiefs on Sunday evening to discuss their response to Tsvangirai's apparent victory in the presidential poll. The article quoted a diplomatic source as saying that one option was for Mugabe to simply "declare victory. Cooler heads prevailed. It was decided to use the [election commission] process of drip, drip where you release results over a long period, giving the opposition gains at first but as time wears on Zanu-PF pulls ahead."

This may have been a fatal mistake. Because the count was posted at each polling station - as well as sent through to the ZEC - the MDC and independent monitors were able to collect these results, publish them, and thereby pre-empt any Zanufication of the results. The regime was forced into conceding through The Herald, firstly, that Mugabe had not won a majority of votes cast; and, secondly, that Zanu-PF had lost its majority in the lower house of parliament.

There is still some room to fiddle the totals. An article in The Herald on Thursday claimed that in the parliamentary vote "Zanu-PF had won 45,94 percent of the votes, MDC-Tsvangirai 42,88 percent, the MDC 8,39 percent and the minor parties and independent candidates 2,79 percent."

There is a very real possibility that Mugabe will tell the ZEC to declare that he won a plurality of the vote. It is possible too that the senate will also be packed, to offset the MDC's majority in the lower house. A rerun of the presidential poll would allow Zanu-PF a second chance to intimidate the electorate and fix the result. This is, after all, what happened in early 2000. Following Zanu-PF's loss in the constitutional referendum in February, the regime was able to regroup. They then used violence, intimidation, and vote-rigging to secure a slim majority in the parliamentary elections in June of that year.

Zanu-PF has not yet given up, and it has every incentive to try and cling onto power. The problem today is the same as it was in 2000. How can Zanu-PF ever willingly hand over power to those it has brutalised and mistreated for so long? This dilemma was well described by Benjamin Franklin in a letter to Lord Howe during the American War of Independence. Were it possible for us "to forget and forgive" the atrocities committed by the British in their efforts to put down the American rebellion, he wrote, "it is not possible for you (I mean the British Nation) to forgive the people you have so heavily injured; you can never confide again in those as fellow subjects, & permit them to enjoy equal freedom, to whom you know you have given such just cause of lasting enmity. And this must impel you, where we again under your Government, to endeavour the breaking our spirit by the severest tyranny, & obstructing by every means in your power our growing strength and prosperity."

The Zuma factor

It is notable that Robert Mugabe retained his grip on power for longer than Thabo Mbeki did, but not much longer. It is only now that Mbeki is finished politically that Mugabe's hold on power has begun to slip. In the last three stolen elections Zanu-PF could always safely rely upon Mbeki to go to great lengths to legitimise the results. Could it be that one reason for Zanu-PF's prevarication last Sunday was that they were now suddenly unsure of the ANC's continued support? Whatever his earlier complicity in keeping Zanu-PF in power, Jacob Zuma certainly owes a moral and political debt to the anti-Mugabe forces Zimbabwe.

As noted before, Aristotle observed in Politics, "it is not easy for a person to do any great harm when his tenure of office is short, whereas long possession begets tyranny in oligarchies and democracies." By keeping Mugabe in power, and allowing him to bring ruin to Zimbabwe, Mbeki provided the ANC with an object lesson in the danger of allowing a leader to extend his term of office. The metaphor by which the delegates at Polokwane justified their rejection of "Thabo Mugabeki" was that they didn't want "another Zimbabwe" in South Africa.

Diplomatic Virodene
The West can always be relied upon to do the wrong thing in Africa. The Times reports that Western diplomats are involved in brokering a deal whereby Mugabe will - in return for accepting his loss in the elections - get immunity from prosecution and the right to retain his ill-gotten property. Zanu-PF will meanwhile continue in power through a government of national unity. The article quotes a Western diplomat as explaining way the moral squalor of this proposal by describing it as "African solution to an African problem."

The ANC, to its great credit, did not buy into this kind of Afro-nonsense when it came to jettisoning its own leader. It voted Mbeki and his cronies out of office and they just had to accept it. There was no "African solution" there, just a perfectly normal democratic one to a problem of a leader who had outstayed his welcome.