IT WAS just a few months ago when I spoke with Joy Mviro.
The young mother had brought her six-month old daughter Keisha to a maternity clinic in the heart of Mbare, the biggest and oldest township in the Zimbabwean capital Harare.
With its rundown, high-density housing and bustling informal street markets and vendors, Mbare stands in part as testimony to the slump in Zimbabawe’s formal economy under the near 40-year autocratic rule of former President Robert Mugabe.
Mbare is a tough place to live, with unemployment and poverty rife.
Zimbabweans, ever the eternal optimists, joke that in Mbare you can buy anything, including the parts they stole from your car the night before.
Joy Mviro though was convinced that hope for the future had finally arrived. Along with most Zimbabweans she welcomed the new mood that had followed the ousting of Mr Mugabe.
“We can now talk openly,” she told me. “Before Mr Mugabe was kicked out, I would have thought twice about talking to a journalist but not now,” the twenty-one year old explained.
Almost every Zimbabwean I met during my visit a few months ago shared the young mother’s eager anticipation over the forthcoming elections. They were convinced that the ballot would bring change for the better to this long-suffering African nation.
This week Zimbabweans finally had their long awaited election, but it was one marred by the deaths of six people in an army crackdown on opposition protests.
“The government still has a military core and a military ethos,” was how Zimbabwe expert Stephen Chan, of London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, summed up the situation.
“How can you be so goddamn clumsy? You’ve gone to all this trouble to stage-manage this stuff and you’ve just gone and shot yourself in the foot,” Mr Chan wryly observed.
He has a point, not least given that what again has become clear in the election’s aftermath, is the continuing extent of the deep rifts in Zimbabwean society and the instinctive heavy-handedness of the country’s security forces.
Ultimately after two days of bitter claims and counterclaims, incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the 75-year-old former spy chief, nicknamed ‘the crocodile,’ secured a comfortable victory for his Zanu-PF party, polling 2.46 million votes against 2.15 million for 40-year-old opposition leader Nelson Chamisa of the MDC Alliance.
Time and again in the run up to the elections, I listened to government officials repeat the political mantra that Zimbabwe was now “open for business.”
The bad old days of authoritarian rule they insisted were now behind the country.
Yesterday on the streets of Harare however it was police officers in vehicles with mounted loudspeakers that toured the city’s streets reassuring shopkeepers.
“Zimbabwe is open for business. We are here to protect you. Feel free to walk and open your business. All is well, fear not,” the officers insisted.
Some election observers say that the army’s deployment on Harare’s streets and the repression used has shot a hole in the government’s claims that Zimbabwe has thrown off its authoritarian past.
Mr Mnangagwa’s government is nothing more than a military junta in disguise some claim, pointing to Constantino Chiwenga, leader of last November’s coup that ended Mr Mugabe’s rule as the man really in charge.
“This has blown the slogan ‘Open for Business’ into smoke,” Ibbo Mandaza, a political analyst and a former member of the ruling Zanu-PF, told the Financial Times this week.
“The consensus now is that engagement with the west is a very far-off prospect,” he said, citing discussions with foreign observers and diplomats shocked at the violent turn the elections had taken.
If this proves to be true then President Mnangagwa and his Zanu-PF party for the moment have little to celebrate. Indeed even before this week’s poll there have been rumours of splits and factionalism in the government’s ranks ever since a bomb went off during the election campaign in an apparent attempt to assassinate Mr Mnangagwa.
As for opposition leader Mr Chamisa, his premature claims of victory and inflammatory talk before the election results were fully collated, only served to fuel more uncertainty and fears over a lack of transparency in the ballot.
Zimbabwe's constitution does allow for a legal challenge to the results, but Mr Chamisa now has the huge task of proving in court with hard evidence what until now have only been claims and accusations.
Zimbabwe’s internal problems aside, the whole notion of the country being “open for business” has been given a major setback by the way the elections were conducted and will only suffer more if unrest rears its head again.
Earlier this year in Harare, the European Union’s Commissioner for International Development, Neven Mimica, signed an agreement with Zimbabwean officials that saw new EU-funded programmes worth £20 million launched to improve people’s access to health services and enhance their livelihoods.
I asked Mr Mimica at the time whether such future funding might be reconsidered should Zimbabwe’s election fail to be free and transparent and any future administration not live up to the democratic terms laid down as conditions.
“The EU has always been a reliable partner of the Zimbabwean people, and it stands ready to accompany Zimbabwe in its process of change,” said Mr Mimica
“We do not want to be a passive partner in this process,” he added, stressing that the EU and others were watching Zimbabwe’s forthcoming elections carefully and that reforms must be made and checks carried out that such a process is underway for EU financial support to be maintained. His words have now taken on a new resonance.
This was an election on which much was riding. It was supposed to confirm the legitimacy of the post-Mugabe government and allow Harare to renew ties with the international community.
Whether now the unlocking of donor funding and investment will continue as envisaged before the poll remains to be seen, but the international community is almost certain to be wary.
As for ordinary Zimbabweans like young mother Joy Mviro, one can only hope that there own dreams for a better future are facing a temporary setback and not been dashed yet again.
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