ZIMBABWE

I was thinking about them this week because March is almost over and that means their election is soon. There are three candidates like I’ve said. And Mugabe would definitely lose in a fair election against his two opposition guys. The problem is that it most likely won’t be fair.

The media (government controlled) is against the opposition. The registrar-general is another Mugabe-man. And the voter list which is run by registrar-general contains dead people who still vote) and incorrect names. The head of the electoral commission is a Mugabe former general. The one day for voting is not enough for rural people to travel to polling stations; there are not enough urban polling stations for people; Zims outside of Zim are not allowed to vote. Ballot box stuffing (with fake votes) happens frequently because the opposition doesn’t enough people to man all 8,212 polling places. The list goes on and on. The police head, army head, and prison head have all said they will not let Tsvangirai win (he’s the opposition guy who has been opposing for 9 years, the one with greater amassed ground support than the new opposition guy, Makoni).

And all the other problems are still going on with Zimbabwe. Inflation is 100,000%. There are still two markets, the official and the black. Food is scarce as well as everything else you would find in the stores. Racist laws still take land from pre-1980 benefactors to pre-1980 victims (in other words, taking land from whites and giving to blacks). The only problem is that little of that land has gone back to blacks and it’s not a very Obamaesque/Mandelaesque way to forge ahead. So the white population has dwindled. And everyone waits with bated breath for the next election.