Harare: calm after the storm

Last Modified: 02 Jul 2008
By: Channel 4 News

Our Zimbabwean blogger recounts one man's experience of Friday's election.

I was so relieved to see Leonard back in town on Monday, three days after the elections.

He looked weak and dejected and was exhausted. He'd walked the last six kilometres into town because he'd run out of money.

Five days ago when he left town the minibus fare one way to his village was $2bn; today to travel the same distance they were charging $5bn, so he had no choice but to get out half way.

Leonard had been to his rural home to vote, not because he wanted to but because that's where his wife and children are and they'd been threatened by the government supporters.

Everyone calls these young men and women the "youths" and the bunch harassing the people in Leonard's village are barely in their twenties, but you defy them at your peril.

Everyone in the village had seen the "youths" in action: hounding down suspected opposition supporters, chasing, running, shouting, beating people with sticks and hide whips; tying people up with barbed wire, burning houses.

"We know that if they come at night it means they are coming to burn and to kill."
Leonard

The vote

All the eligible voters in Leonard's village had been told exactly what to do on election day.

Even though there were nine polling stations in their ward, the local Zanu-PF organizing committee had told them that they should only vote at one specified polling station.

"If we try and go and vote at another polling station, even ones close by, they said they will come and find us at night," Leonard said.

"We had no chance at all and we know that if they come at night it means they are coming to burn and to kill."

All the people from Leonard's village had to line up at the polling station behind the head man in a specific order. Lists had been drawn up and everyone knew their number in the queue.

A known Zanu-PF organiser with a note book stood some metres away. He watched, wrote things down and ticked off people's names as they were shunted into the polling station. "Like a train," Leonard said. "In line, in time, one by one."

"Suddenly the observers looked scared and they just got in their vehicle and left."
Leonard

Observers powerless

"I was going to spoil my paper," Leonard said. "Many of us had agreed to do so because this election is all wrong.

But when I saw them writing us down, checking numbers and names, I knew I had to vote for the old man."

At one point two election observers arrived at the polling station near the village and they watched for a while.

When they saw the Zanu-PF organisers writing down names and numbers, the observers told them that wasn't allowed and they should stop it.

"Something happened then but we couldn't hear what it was," Leonard said. "Suddenly the observers looked scared and they just got in their vehicle and left."

Leonard had said goodbye to two of his relations before he came back to town and didn't know when he'd see them again.

Both were heading for the South African border.