Zimbabwe Election: Mnangagwa Narrowly Wins Presidential Poll

Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s pres­i­dent and leader of the rul­ing Zanu-PF par­ty, has won the country’s his­toric and hot­ly con­test­ed pres­i­den­tial election.

Officials from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) announced ear­ly on Friday that Mnangagwa had received 2.46m votes, or 50.8% of the 4.8m votes cast. Nelson Chamisa, the can­di­date of the oppo­si­tion Movement for Democratic Change par­ty (MDC), won 2.14m votes or 44.3%, the ZEC said. Mnangagwa need­ed to win by more than 50% to avoid a runoff vote.

Mnangagwa, 75, was a close aide of Robert Mugabe, the 94-year-old auto­crat who ruled for 37 years and was oust­ed by the army nine months ago, and was impli­cat­ed in atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted under his rule. Chamisa, 40, is a for­mer lawyer and pastor.

Priscilla Chigumba, the chair of the ZEC, urged the coun­try to “move on” with the hope­ful spir­it of elec­tion day and beyond the “blem­ish­es” of Wednesday’s “chaos”, when the army opened fire on pro­test­ers in Harare, killing six peo­ple. “May God bless this nation and its peo­ple,” she said.

Mnangagwa tweet­ed that he was “hum­bled” by the result. “This is a new begin­ning. Let us join hands, in peace, uni­ty & love, & togeth­er build a new Zimbabwe for all!” he said.

View image on Twitter

President of Zimbabwe

✔@edmnangagwa

Thank you Zimbabwe!

I am hum­bled to be elect­ed President of the Second Republic of Zimbabwe.

Though we may have been divid­ed at the polls, we are unit­ed in our dreams.

This is a new begin­ning. Let us join hands, in peace, uni­ty & love, & togeth­er build a new Zimbabwe for all!

7:06 PM — Aug 2, 201

On Friday morn­ing Chamisa called the results “fake” and said the elec­toral com­mis­sion should release “prop­er and ver­i­fied” num­bers. “The lev­el of opaque­ness, truth defi­cien­cy, moral decay & val­ues deficit is baf­fling,” he said on Twitter.

The MDC had reject­ed the results even before they had been announced in full. Minutes before the final result, the MDC’s chair­man, Morgan Komichi, made an impromp­tu tele­vised state­ment at the com­mis­sion, say­ing the elec­tion was “fraud­u­lent” and that the par­ty would chal­lenge the results in court. He was then removed from the stage by police.

A few Mnangagwa sup­port­ers cel­e­brat­ed near the entrance to the con­fer­ence cen­tre where the results were declared but there was lit­tle in the way of pub­lic cel­e­bra­tions in Harare oth­er than some car horns.

Charity Manyeruke, who teach­es polit­i­cal sci­ence at the University of Zimbabwe, said she was delight­ed. “There is con­ti­nu­ity, sta­bil­i­ty,” she said at the con­fer­ence cen­tre. “Zimbabwe is poised for nation-building.”

The Zimbabwean cap­i­tal was calm on Friday morn­ing, the pave­ments filled with peo­ple going to work. Many also gath­ered around news­pa­per stands. The army, a vis­i­ble pres­ence this week, had with­drawn by 7am. A police pres­ence remained, with two vehi­cles equipped with water can­non out­side the MDC head­quar­ters and an armoured vehi­cle full of riot police.

Most MDC sup­port­ers appeared resigned to the result and unwill­ing to take to the streets to protest. “We are just accept­ing what­ev­er is there for the sake of peace, for the sake of busi­ness and calm. Life goes on. I wouldn’t sup­port a protest. Check what hap­pened this week when peo­ple tried it,” said Shepherd Warikandwe, a 38-year-old chef.

Hazel Moyo, a 25-year-old super­mar­ket cashier who had vot­ed for the first time, said that protest­ing would make no dif­fer­ence. “We will just have to put up with it. We need change but will have to wait some more,” she said.

The count took more than three days, lead­ing to grow­ing ten­sions and calls from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for a swift resolution.

Although the cam­paign has been free of the sys­tem­at­ic vio­lence that marred pre­vi­ous polls, the MDC repeat­ed­ly claimed it was hin­dered by a flawed elec­toral roll, bal­lot paper mal­prac­tice, vot­er intim­i­da­tion, bias in the elec­toral com­mis­sion and hand­outs to vot­ers from the rul­ing par­ty. Several of its com­plaints have been upheld by mon­i­tors’ reports.

Eighteen oppo­si­tion offi­cials were detained by police dur­ing a raid on the MDC’s head­quar­ters in Harare on Thursday afternoon.

Prof Stephen Chan, an expert in African pol­i­tics at the University of London, said the elec­tion could be judged “plau­si­ble to cred­i­ble” but could not be called “free and fair”.

Chan, who is in Zimbabwe, said he believed the prob­lems with the count were down to incom­pe­tence rather than con­spir­a­cy but that the alleged irreg­u­lar­i­ties before the poll could have been sig­nif­i­cant, espe­cial­ly in avoid­ing a runoff.

“The nar­row­ness of the result sug­gests that Mnangagwa is the last of the Zanu-PF giants and that at the next elec­tion the oppo­si­tion will have every­thing to play for,” he said.

Mnangagwa’s share of the vote was low­er than some expect­ed. Zanu-PF had swept to a two-thirds major­i­ty in simul­ta­ne­ous par­lia­men­tary elec­tions and was broad­ly con­sid­ered the favourite by ana­lysts. But the oppo­si­tion cam­paign gath­ered sig­nif­i­cant momen­tum in the last days of campaigning.

The announce­ment of the result was delayed while fig­ures for Mashonaland West, a major province and Zanu-PF strong­hold, were finalised, and was dis­rupt­ed by an MDC spokesman who said the par­ty reject­ed the results because they had not been ver­i­fied by polling agents.

All polling sta­tion data would be made avail­able to the media and par­ty offi­cials, the ZEC said.

Zimbabwe now faces new uncer­tain­ty and a poten­tial peri­od of insta­bil­i­ty. The coun­try si hop­ing to rein­te­grate into the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty after years of iso­la­tion. Foreign pow­ers will have to decide whether the elec­tions give Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF the legit­i­ma­cy need­ed to seek to rejoin insti­tu­tions such as the Commonwealth.

Without a mas­sive and rapid infu­sion of for­eign aid, the coun­try is also fac­ing total eco­nom­ic breakdown.

Polls had ear­li­er giv­en Mnangagwa, a dour for­mer spy chief known as “the Crocodile” for his rep­u­ta­tion for ruth­less cun­ning, a slim lead over Chamisa, a bril­liant if some­times way­ward orator.

Support for Zanu-PF has his­tor­i­cal­ly been strongest in rur­al areas, where more than two-thirds of vot­ers live. The par­ty dom­i­nat­ed its tra­di­tion­al heart­land provinces of Mashonaland Central and East, while the MDC won the major cities of Harare and Bulawayo convincingly.

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