‘Zanu-PF to win’

Zimbabwe Elections Conference in South Africa last Saturday ahead of what the civil society linked to the MDC-T dubbed Feya Feya Campaign. The meeting was attended by civil society participants from the Sadc region, including representatives of Zimbabwe Diaspora civil society.

Prof Raftopolous said that there were three possible scenarios to emanate from the forthcoming elections.

“A Zanu-PF victory coming through Zanu-PF riding on a restructured political economy, the threat of violence and rigging,” Prof Raftopolous was quoted as saying by Crisis Regional Media in a document seen by The Herald.

He said a win by MDC-T leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai faced resistance from the military, while the third scenario was another inclusive Government as a result of another hung Parliament.

Several recent surveys have given Zanu-PF the edge over its coalition government partner, the MDC-T.
Leading British newspaper, the Guardian and Witwatersrand University analyst Susan Booysen who supervised a Freedom House survey last year which predicted a Zanu-PF win have once again forecast a Zanu-PF victory at the polls. The Guardian said President Mugabe held all the aces in the polls, while Booysen was quoted in the American multinational media house — Bloomberg, as saying there was little chance of MDC-T springing an upset.

Booysen supervised the survey by Freedom House, a United States-based think-tank, in 2012 that found that support for MDC-T plummeted from 38 percent in 2010 to 19 percent, while support for Zanu-PF had grown to 31 percent, up from 17 percent, over the same period.

The survey results were contained in a report titled “Change and ‘New’ Politics in Zimbabwe” conducted by a local research institute, Mass Public Opinion Institute and said MDC-T support had fallen from 38 percent to 20 percent between 2010 and last year.

In contrast, the survey data points to Zanu-PF having experienced a growth in popular support, moving from 17 percent to 31 percent in the same period across all the country’s 10 provinces.

For example in Harare, MDC-T support declined from 50 percent in 2010 to 17 percent, while that for Zanu-PF rose from eight percent to 22 percent.

In Bulawayo, Zanu-PF increased its support from four percent to 15 percent, while that for MDC-T declined from 51 percent to 29 percent. Zanu-PF’s support was premised on its clarity on policies such as land, indigenisation and its stand against foreign interference in Zimbabwe.
Fifty-two percent of the respondents also said they trusted Zanu-PF compared to 39 percent for MDC-T.

In September last year, a UK-based pro-MDC-T group, Zimbabwe Vigil, said the MDC-T was likely to lose the forthcoming harmonised elections because of rampant corruption within its top leadership, among other issues.

The Afro barometer survey, entitled “Voting Intentions in Zimbabwe: A Margin of Terror?”, also put Zanu-PF ahead of MDC-T.
It said 32 percent of the 2 400 Zimbabweans sampled said if an election had been called in July this year, they were going to vote for President Mugabe, while 31 percent would go with Mr Tsvangirai. The survey further gives Professor Welshman Ncube, leader of the smaller formation of MDC a paltry one percent. Compared to the 2008 survey, the MDC-T plunged from the 57 percent support it enjoyed then to 31 percent while Zanu-PF ascended significantly from 10 percent to 31.

University of Zimbabwe law lecturer Professor Lovemore Madhuku also says the revolutionary party will win the plebiscite while the British paper, The Guardian, has predicted that President Mugabe and Zanu-PF will romp to victory in the harmonised elections.

Western media, among them CNN, the New York Times and The Guardian, have of late been highly critical of MDC-T leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai in the wake of scandals about his personal life and handling of public finances.

Another leading American left wing magazine, Counterpunch, said Zimbabweans face a simple choice at the polls, continue on the path of revolution and true independence espoused by Zanu-PF or regress to the counter-revolutionary politics of puppetry

In the article titled “Zimbabwe: The Revolution Continues” published in its June edition, Counterpunch magazine’s Eric Draitser said under President Mugabe’s leadership Zimbabwe had managed to maintain its independence despite spirited efforts by Western powers to destabilise the country and slammed Tsvangirai’s policy of Western appeasement. CNN’s “Connect the World” anchor Becky Anderson recently put it to Mr Tsvangirai during an interview that reports emanating from Zimbabwe indicated that people were fed up with him.

The CNN’s perspective on Mr Tsvangirai’s political fortunes dovetails with several recent surveys pointing to a Zanu-PF victory in the harmonised elections. MDC-T allies, among them the NCA, PTUZ, Zimbabwe Vigil, Sokwanele as well as the British paper, The Guardian, have also given the edge to Zanu-PF. In the wake of his wife’s death in a car accident in 2009, Mr Tsvangirai’s bed-hopping hogged the headlines and spilled into the courts culminating in an abortive wedding to his customary wife, Ms Elizabeth Macheka.

Among the women Mr Tsvangirai was linked to were Loreta Nyathi from Bulawayo with whom he sired a son whom he initially refused to take responsibility for including refusing to obtain a birth certificate for him. He was also linked to another Bulawayo woman, Aquiline Pamberi, Locardia Karimatsenga and South African Nosipho Shilubane.