Africa The president of Zimbabwe denies that there has been electoral fraud in his country

Emmerson Mnangagwa has won Zimbabwe’s presidential election for the second time and after a term in which Zimbabweans have continued to face some of the same problems as when he came to power: inflation, energy shortages and repression of dissent.

Elections began to be held on August 23, but the country’s president extended voting for another day in some constituencies where the opening of polling stations was delayed.

This Sunday the head of the opposition, Nelson Chamisa, contested the re-election officially announced by Mnangagwa, and claimed his own victory, after an electoral process full of irregularities.”

In the polls, voters voted to elect a new president and members of Parliament, in an election in which the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) won a majority of parliamentary seats.

According to the preliminary conclusions of the observation mission deployed by the European Union (EU), despite the “generally calm atmosphere” on the day of the vote, “the process of registering the candidates and the campaign led to a context that prevented voters to make a free and informed decision” in these elections.

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa denied this Sunday that there had been fraud in the elections, as denounced by the main opposition party, the Citizens’ Coalition for Change (CCC).

“The elections were held in a free and fair environment, and the opposition party claims that they have been fraudulent and that is not the case. They participated and they lost the elections and they have to accept it,” Mnangagwa told reporters at the Presidential House in Harare. , the capital. The re-elected president said that it was necessary to “advance and build the country together” by noting that they have shown that they are “a mature democracy.”

Mnangagwa, 80, thus legitimized himself once again at the polls on August 23 after winning the disputed 2018 elections and after coming to office in 2017 as a result of the military coup against the late Robert Mugabe (1980- 2017).

Popularly known as “Crocodile”, the head of state achieved a victory appealed five years ago by the opposition for alleged fraud, but endorsed by the country’s Constitutional Court.

However, the promises of change that won him the support of the population at the time have not fully materialized.

Thus, although foreign investment has increased and the mining sector has grown – the country has the largest lithium reserves in Africa – Zimbabwe still faces a severe energy crisis and a high cost of living.

The country has suffered from ferocious inflation in recent years, with the local currency, the Zimbabwean dollar, having lost 86% of its value between January and June.

Likewise, the electoral campaign has been marked by complaints of repression against dissident voices, the prohibition of opposition rallies and the politically motivated prosecution of opposition leaders.

Regarding the expected international opening after the isolation under Mugabe, Mnangagwa has requested the readmission of Zimbabwe in the Commonwealth of Nations (Commonwealth), but the country continues to suffer sanctions from the West, before which the president has sought a rapprochement with Russia and China.

Born in the central region of Zvishavane into a Karanga family (the largest clan of the majority Shona ethnic group), the president has been married three times, is the father of nine children and is considered one of the richest men in the country.

For almost five decades, he lived in the shadow of his predecessor and mentor, who dominated the Zimbabwean political scene with an iron fist at the helm of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) since independence from the UK. in 1980.

A party faction sympathetic to first lady Grace Mugabe’s ambitions for power forced Mnangagwa’s removal as vice president, but this had a “boomerang effect” as the president’s longtime ally, the military, revolted against the conspirators and ended up getting Mugabe himself to resign.

The current ZANU-PF leader has a dark past: as post-independence security minister he played a key role in the massacre of more than 20,000 ethnic Ndebele members.

The “operation Gukurahundi”, which many characterize as genocide, was an ethnic purge against supporters of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU).

It ended with the merger of the formation with the ZANU-PF and earned Mugabe his definitive ascent to the Presidency in 1987, since until then he had governed as prime minister.

Mnangawa is also accused of plotting the repression of the opposition in recent decades but, faced with that past, the president assured in 2018 that he had become “soft as wool.”

However, the president is seen as a new face of the old order by the different opposition parties, including the Coalition of Citizens for Change (CCC), created in January 2022 after the refounding of the Alliance of the Movement for Democratic Change. , and led by his main rival in these elections, Nelson Chamisa, 45 years old.

During the anti-colonial struggle, Mnangagwa was part of a group of young independentistas nicknamed “the gang of crocodiles” – which gave him his current nickname – together with whom he blew up a locomotive.

Although he was sentenced to death for these events, being then under 21 years old, the president, whose nickname also responds to his well-known political cunning, ultimately spent nine years in prison in exchange for avoiding execution.

This was one of the first times that he demonstrated his innate instinct to survive, something that he seems to continue to do now on the political level, taking a new electoral “bite” to stay in power.