Sunday 6 April 2008

The truth behind Zimbabwe's election fraud

As the Opposition MDC seeks a court order to release the results of the Presidential election, it is worth reading the veteran Southern Africa reporter, RW Johnson's account of the last week's events in today's Sunday Times. Johnson explains how Mugabe was told the likely results last Sunday, and ordered a fraudulent results; how Mbeki's intervention has been about promoting Makoni (a modernist technocrat of whom he approves) over Tsvangirai, whose own reputation is more as a bruiser than as an effective administrator; how the MDC has been as much responsible for delays in the publishing of results as ZANU-PF after uncovering extraordinary discrepancies between the official and locally published results. It is quite extraordinary that the Sunday Times has not highlighted all this on its front page - though perhaps a sign of news values today - but it is by far the most complete account I have read of what has been happening.

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