Will there, won’t there be an election early next year?

The media is awash with stories about the forthcoming election. Mugabe started it all by announcing that he was ‘sick and tired’ of the GNU and he wants an election sooner rather than later, with or without a new constitution. Is he politicking? Yes, of course. He’s testing the water. He’s testing the ZANU PF water and the MDC water to see how they respond to this initiative.

This weekend we heard that Mnangagwa, the erstwhile sometimes quoted to be ‘next ZANU PF president’ tells his audience that ‘we will not allow the MDC to win an election’. He bases this on the idea that to do so would be to negate the work of the freedom fighters who won independence in 1980 and who wanted to see a rich and successful Zimbabwe. In short, he is saying that if the MDC win, then there will be a coup of some kind.

I took an on-line read of the Zimbabwean newspaper published daily in the UK. Published there because it cannot be published here, although frequently I have seen it being sold on the streets of Harare. They have several stories of speculative interest. The first is that the police have been instructed that the 4th of December is the day when fresh violence will be directed at MDC supporters and that they will not, under any circumstances, investigate these incidents when they occur. A second is that ZANU PF is targeting the Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti of the MDC, and will soon accuse him of corruption and theft of monies from the national exchequer. He will then be arrested and incarcerated until shortly before the elections when he will be released for lack of evidence. This will ensure that the MDC is pre-occupied with his arrest and detention and efforts to secure his release, in similar circumstances to the arrests some years ago of Morgan Tsvangirayi for ‘Treason’.

Hmmmm! It will be interesting to see whether these forecasts have any substance. But they do sound so typical of ZANU PF election strategy.