Chamisa says Zimbabwe’s voters being forced to choose ZANU-PF or death

Zimbabwe has significant mineral resources — including Africa’s largest deposits of highly sought-after lithium — and rich agricultural potential, and could be of huge benefit to the continent if it gained the political and economic stability that has eluded it for years. Zimbabwe was shunned by the West for two decades because of abuses during the regime of Mugabe, who died in 2019.

Mugabe’s removal sent Zimbabweans into the streets to celebrate, and Mnangagwa promised democracy and freedom would be born from the coup. He maintained recently that “Zimbabwe is now a mature democracy” under him.

Rights groups say it’s a mirage and the 80-year-old Mnangagwa, a former Mugabe ally once known as his enforcer, has been as repressive as the man he removed.

Under Mnangagwa, critics and opposition figures have been jailed, including CCC lawmaker Job Sikhala, who has been in detention for over a year after accusing ruling party supporters of hacking to death an opposition activist. Some have faced legal backlash for seemingly minor criticisms, like world-renowned author Tsitsi Dangarembga, who was arrested for participating in a protest that called for better services for citizens.

A court decision disqualified all 12 CCC candidates in Bulawayo, the second-largest city, from standing in the election, even after the electoral agency said they had registered properly. They successfully appealed to the Supreme Court to be allowed to stand.

“I am nowhere near the court,” Mnangagwa said, denying any influence on the initial decision to bar the opposition candidates.

Chamisa, a 45-year-old lawyer and pastor, said Mnangagwa was now overseeing a second coup in Zimbabwe.

“You can’t have a contest without contestation. You can’t have an election without candidates,” Chamisa said. “Once you eliminate candidates, you are actually eliminating an election. And that’s the point we are making. … It’s a coup on choices.”

The elections will be monitored by observers from the European Union and African Union, who were invited by Mnangagwa. He says he has nothing to hide. Human Rights Watch has questioned if the observers will be allowed to access all parts of the country, while their small numbers make it likely they won’t be able to monitor the entire vote. There are 150 observers from the EU and more than 12,500 polling stations across the country.

Chamisa said that his party has put in place systems to be able to independently check vote counts, but there are also doubts that the CCC can deploy enough members to watch over those stations, many deep in rural areas regarded as ZANU-PF strongholds.

Should their calculations show fraud this time, as was alleged in 2018 and other elections before that, Chamisa warned it will “plunge the country into total disaster and chaos”.

He urged Mnangagwa to step back from his repressive policies in a country denied democracy under white minority rule before 1980 and again — according to international rights groups — under the only two leaders it has seen since: Mugabe and Mnangagwa.

“He must be stopped because he can’t drive the whole nation and plunge it into darkness and an abyss on account of just wanting to retain power,” Chamisa said of Mnangagwa. “Zimbabweans deserve peace, they deserve rest. They have suffered for a long time.”- AP

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