Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF had two interlinked objectives: to terrify MDC supporters away from the voting booths - or simply drive them from their local communities so that they physically couldn't vote - in the second round of Zimbabwe's presidential election on 27 June. Botswana has been on Zimbabwe's front-line for many years and many Zimbabweans have taken refuge there. Batswana know that a privileged minority of Zimbabweans see the country as its personal fiefdom.
For the past 10 years, this minority has struggled to maintain a faade of democratic legitimacy, allowing the people to vote in elections but only if they vote the 'right' way, as Mugabe's wife helpfully put it the other day. But this small minority now depends completely on the army, intelligence services and police - plus acolytes in the judiciary, civil service, electoral commission and media - to keep its hold on power. It relies on human rights abuses to cow the population. The MDC has now been forced by ZANU-PF's violence to pull out of the second round. The chances of a free and fair election in which the MDC presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, could have emerged as the declared winner on 27 June were always small. Many Zimbabweans would have taken risks and voted for him, as is their right. The arrival of a couple of hundred African election observers last week was too late to make a difference. In the absence of Zimbabwe's respected Election Support Network, whose monitors have been killed, arrested, harassed or denied accreditation, who would have ensured that the security forces did not interfere with ballot boxes at the 9,000 polling stations? And what of the very clear messages from Zimbabwe's military leadership that it would take power even if the MDC won the vote?
