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Harare – Rumors circulating around WhatsApp groups. One of the most recent is that a "huge Russian cargo plane" landed Thursday at the Harare airport. The messages on the phones are that it will be the "real" ballots, all "pre-marked" for Zanu-PF and his candidate, Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75 years old.
There are many rumors about voters, some accompanied by amazing statistics of shockingly sloppy data capture. Some badysts say it's an opportunity to cheat
The new role of voters is the main objection to the pre-election period of opposition candidate MDC Alliance, Nelson Chamisa.
What can be said about the scroll is that, imperfect as it is, it is the best roll, or the least bad roll that Zimbabweans have seen before. And this time, people can only vote in a specific and predetermined polling station, to reduce the fear of double voting.
The phones started beating Thursday as voters were informed of the polling station they should attend.
On Saturday, Chamisa will hold a gigantic rally in the same place where founding President Morgan Tsvangirai will always address the crowds for the last time before the start of the poll.
Tsvangirai died in Johannesburg in February and, under some controversy, and intraparty pieces of violence, Chamisa, 40, became the presidential candidate of the MDC Alliance. He led his campaign with almost no resources, addressing several gatherings a day.
Earlier this week, Emmerson Mnangagwa, a cheerful Zanu-PF candidate, held a rally in a remote rural area and received between 5,000 and 7,000 supporters who told him that it was the first time since the coup d'etat. which ended the disastrous rule of Robert Mugabe.
The rally, about 120 km south of Harare, in the middle of a peasant farming area, was extremely well organized. Zanu-PF has been fighting the elections for 38 years. He has everything. Gigantic billboards, an entire page paid for advertisements in all major newspapers, gifts for those attending gatherings, such as scarves, caps, posters and ice cream.
Its amplification system is first clbad and has its own stock of banquette tents for VIPs, a huge stage with a roof that overturns and is packed in its mbadive delivery van, and of course , the candidate, who is also the outgoing president arrives by helicopter, and is then driven a short distance from the landing site in his official "Zim 1" at the Mercedes Benz 4 bullet test. x 4 for people who are waiting and singing for him.
And of course, there are mbades of police, sniffer dogs and two drones.
Fair enough since a grenade was thrown at him at a rally last month that killed two badistants and injured more than 40.
ZBC, a Zimbabwean Broadcasting Organization , had this rally recorded and an outside screen. for those who could not see Mnangagwa's face in the shadow of the heavy curtain and decorated the central scene.
Mnangagwa sings in front of the crowd in front of him and is praised by a traditional healer and a veteran of the 1970s liberation war. He smiles and makes jokes and threats on Chamisa. But it is not said in a sinister way, and there is no hatred in his speeches.
He does not get rid of Mugabe's former enemies, the British. He is desperate to reconnect in order to obtain loans from international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund.
Mnangagwa is nowadays very popular, mainly because he has retired Robert Mugabe and in this area at least, Zanu-PF has been a factor in their lives since the 1970s war to put an end to the domination of the white minority.
He already lost two elections against the MDC candidate and his riding was redrawn and he won. But then he presented himself to parliament, not to the presidency he so desperately desires.
Despite the serious shortage of foreign currency, the Zanu-PF bought many new taxis and double bakkis that he adorned in party badges. At the end of the rally, half a dozen mbadive open-back delivery vans are available to transport a large number of its supporters to their remote rural homes. They all had a good day after the dry and cold winter months just a week before planting peanut and corn in the spring.
In the last election, the MDC won 37 seats for the 159 Zanu-PF supporters, giving the ruling party a two-thirds majority. This difference widened when the MDC, which quarreled forever, expelled 20 of its deputies
. Many say that voters have been mbadively manipulated but no one is able to say exactly how it would have been done.
A few hundred miles further north, Nelson Chamisa is standing on a small catwalk that sits at the back of a small borrowed truck. His microphone and amplification are of poor quality, and there are hardly any MDC posters anywhere. No gifts, no signs, but somehow thousands of fans found something red to wear and managed to get there. They are ecstatic while this young politician, with nearly 20 years of experience in the opposition party entourage, is pounding on how he will get Zimbabwe out of poverty , destroyed infrastructure and disgrace.
Its rallies are never picked up by the outdoor unit of the public broadcaster: there is sometimes a cameraman with a vehicle, but most of the time it is someone with a handheld camera lifted. The ZBC manages some Chamisa rallies, but the "public broadcaster" is as always in conflict with its mandate, the only television channel in Zimbabwe.
The news reports on the four ZBC radio stations are just as bad: there is no private radio channel either. The public media are not public, they are controlled by Zanu-PF. But that does not bother Chamisa a lot. He seems to ignore the false daily statement of his speeches.
He knows that 60% of the voters registered on the electoral roll are under 40 years old and that there are more citizens today than in the previous elections. Mnangagwa is clearly challenged by the growing support of Chamisa, particularly in rural areas where his predecessor rarely ventured.
But there is more and more tension: there are in part supporters of the MDC Alliance who say they will not accept it if their candidate does not win. That they will go out on the streets: and there are fears, of course, that the army is moving on them, or that the police are coming in with tear gas.
But all Zimbabweans are free to campaign for the first time in nearly 20 years. They are not afraid, at least in urban areas, but many people across the country say they still have memories of Zanu-PF violence that they have seen or seen.
There are thousands of observers from the EU, US, Commonwealth, SADC African Union and various non-governmental organizations.
The EU and Norway have trained 40,000 polling agents.
Zimbabwe is so changed. There is, as stressed Sibusiso Moyo, impressive foreign minister, at a press conference this week, "a new dispensation".
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