Zimbabwe’s long wait

If Robert Mugabe had won Zimbabwe’s election the results would have been “instantly proclaimed,” said The New York Times. Now his “goons” are coercing election officials into “falsifying enough votes” to force a runoff. The “blunt repression” seems to be

What happened

As Zimbabwe’s election commission continued to withhold the results of the March 29 national election, President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai sharpened their attacks on each other. Mugabe’s justice minister accused Tsvangirai of “treason” for allegedly plotting with Britain to remove Mugabe through force. (International Herald Tribune) Tsvangirai, who is widely believed to have garnered a significantly larger share of votes than Mugabe, suggested that the president and others in power should face criminal charges before an international tribunal. (CNN)

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Mugabe’s “blunt repression” seems to be working, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Zimbabweans are “frightened and unwilling to stick their necks out,” and the violence makes a second round of voting “all but impossible.” But if “a lost election, inflation at 200,000%, and the contempt of his people can’t budge the octogenarian” Mugabe, his African neighbors must. If the “stolen Zimbabwe election” is met with “closed regional eyes,” it “reinforces the worst stereotypes about Africa.”

So let Zimbabweans vote, said Zimbabwe’s state-run Bulawayo Chronicle in an editorial. Zimbabwe’s electoral commission “received accolades from different corners of the globe” for its management of the election, and the nation should “be allowed to conclude its electoral process without undue pressure.” Despite the “bullying tactics of Britain and America,” and an opposition that is “obviously pushing the agenda of their masters” in the West, Zimbabwe is a “sovereign country,” and it will “decide its own destiny.”

Actually, Britain and other donor nations aren’t doing enough, said Ishbel Matheson in The Times of London. The “real lesson” from the Zimbabwe election is that “the ‘Big Man’ culture of the all-powerful African presidency is alive and well—while democracy is in intensive care.” African nations won’t “shout ‘cheat’” on their neighbors, so Britain and the U.S. have to, and use their purse strings as leverage.