The New Patriotic Front (NPF) party, led by Ambrose Mutinhiri and formed by the vanquished – which apparently has Mugabe’s backing – claims it will reap the benefit of the votes of the youthful disaffected.
It is pointed out that 60% of those on Zimbabwe’s newly constructed voters roll now comprise people under 40. The NPF argues that Mnangagwa, who struggled to win constituency elections under Mugabe, cannot win under these circumstances.
The Mnangagwa government is also unstable, according to this account, due to a deep rift that has developed between Mnangagwa and Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, the former commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces who led the military intervention in November.
Rumours were generated that Mnangagwa has thwarted Chiwenga’s own political ambitions and agenda and that Chiwenga intended to engineer Mnangagwa’s removal before the elections and stand as the party candidate himself – or to cancel the polls.
A further battle is supposed to be ongoing between the police and Central Intelligence Organisation – believed to be aligned to Mugabe before the military intervention of November – and the military, which supported Mnangagwa.
Both these narratives have one thing in common – the press articles that promote them are singularly short on evidence. Journalistic ethics have been abandoned in favour of eye-catching headlines that promote the instability narrative and sell copy, but are devoid of hard facts.
Similarly, details of investment deals prompted by the purveyors of the stability narrative are hard to come by.
These narratives are, of course, spilling over into party rhetoric around the elections. The NPF claims that Mnangagwa cannot win a free and fair poll because of the antipathy towards him by the former ZANU-PF faithful.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance says it has the vote of the youth in the bag by advancing Nelson Chamisa, 40, as their presidential candidate.
At the end of the day, however, the outcome of the election will be determined, as it always has been, by ZANU-PF’s manipulation of the vote in rural constituencies where figures from the new roll suggest that over 70% of the electorate (including 60% of the youth) reside.
Aware of this, the opposition and instability narrators claim that ZANU-PF has lost its control over rural constituents.
ZANU-PF controlled the rural areas through the police and Central Intelligence Organisation, it is said, and these structures in the rural areas have now been neutralised by the military.
As a result, opposition election campaigns can now penetrate ZANU-PF’s rural strongholds in an unprecedented manner and villagers feel free to vote as they wish.
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