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Citizen of Zimbabwe: Conversations with Morgan Tsvangirai 96 In this chapter I will try to update the career of Morgan Tsvangirai. I have not spoken at length with him since the 2005 elections, but we have exchanged messages and his have always been, characteristically, and even when I was writing critically of him, full of good cheer. If he were judged on nothing but human spirit he would be ahead of us all. He has his own human failings, however, and some of these have translated into political judgements. There were a lot of wrong calls along the way to the Prime Ministership. I want to remain critical of him, not simply validate him, but make it clear that I admire him. These are cards I place openly on the table. There is far too much blind or blinkered support or demonisation, pure and without nuance, when it comes to African politics. People and situations are complex. All exonerations and condemnations have mitigating circumstances. Cases for the defence can be as powerful as those for the prosecution. The last thing Africa needs is more black and white. Morgan Tsvangirai is a vexed, difficult, contradictory, courageous, idealistic and determined person. It takes a lot to absorb all there is about him. Many of his closest lieutenants broke away from him, unable or unwilling to stomach the combination any more. Thabo Mbeki of South Africa took literally years to come to a balanced view of him. Robert Mugabe has his own ambivalent views of him. When Tsvangirai comes to London, the Foreign Office really are uncertain how best to handle him. They want to support him, but think he makes things difficult for them. The postmortems , late at night in King Charles Street, overlooking the sleeping pelicans of St. James’ Park, are not as straightforward as ZANU(PF) might have imagined. The 2005 Parliamentary elections These were important elections insofar as they marked a radical departure from previous practice by ZANU(PF) – and this was the careful planning of centrally coordinated rigging. Rigging had been largely The Twisting & Turning Road Forwards 97 The Twisting & Turning Road Forwards localised and ad hoc up to this point, with low intensity intimidation being preferred as a device before elections, rather than rigging as a device after the polls had closed. Even so, ZANU(PF) was sufficiently confident that previous polling patterns would be repeated – giving it victory – that the plan to rig was established as a fall-back mechanism. Having said that, rigging was not the only reason why ZANU(PF) won the 2005 elections. The MDC made many mistakes. The pattern – of ZANU(PF) intimidation and confidence, rigging as a default plan if things looked like going wrong, and MDC mistakes – was repeated in 2008. The key mistakes made by the MDC were four-fold. Firstly, the MDC lost one of its most important city seats, Harare South. The party had not been helped by boundary changes, but it had also imposed an unpopular candidate, removing one who had much local support. This was a mistake, as was the failure, nationally, to contest the boundary changes – which were all approved in a legal manner. Secondly, the MDC held onto most – but not all – its rural seats in the two Matabeleland provinces. There had clearly not been a signi ficant enough outreach either to the rural areas in general or, in particular, those that had predominantly Ndebele populations. The east-west divide would return to haunt the MDC, but the insecurity of its only real rural base helped cement the image of the MDC as an urban formation. Whenever ZANU(PF) rigged rural votes, therefore, it was able to look credible. Thirdly, the MDC would have secured a higher share of the vote, but many people were turned away at the polling stations for not having registered properly beforehand, or for turning up at the wrong constituency. The MDC had not run any properly coordinated voter education campaign or registration drive. Fourthly, particularly in the rural areas, with the strategic role played by village chiefs and headmen, ZANU(PF) was able to channel misinformation to the voters, for example, that the transparent ballot boxes that conformed to African Union regulations would reveal how an individual had voted; that the dye used on fingers to mark someone who had voted would betray fingerprints on a ballot paper and, again, allow a vote to be traceable – but MDC party agents, both...

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