Zimbabweans bog for democracy

ZIMBABWE’S ROBERT MUGABE is no stranger to power, but the old dictator now faces a force he is not too familiar with, the power of political blogging.

Whilst Zimbabweans have been casting their votes for presidential and parliamentary elections, the country’s bloggers have been having a heyday, filling the world in on important blanks resulting from Mugabe’s ban of foreign press coverage of the current elections. Only one foreign news service, Al Jazeera, has been given permission to cover the Zimbabwean elections, an unsuccessful ploy by the long term dictator to restrict coverage and attention of the elections in the West.

But 28 years at Zimbabwe’s helm obviously did nothing to prepare Mugabe for the coverage his own citizens would gladly provide the world via their blogs. Ranging from wild rumours, to sobering facts, to humour, the Zimbabwean corner of cyberspace was today reflecting the country’s tense mood leading up to the slow release of results in what is being called the most crucial election since independence.

Mugabe is up against three opponents; Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Simba Makoni a Mugabe ally and former finance minister and Langton Towungana, an independent candidate.

The painfully slow release of results currently has the MDC tied with Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF, some 36 hours after polls have been closed. Most bloggers seem to agree that this stalling is a tactic for Mugabe to rig the results and extend his already seemingly endless dictatorship.

Both Reuters and the BBC have reported extensive Zimbabwean blogging leading up to and during the elections, with the BBC even claiming that Zimbabweans are so adamantly opposed to the incumbent president that they were unable to find even a single pro-Mugabe blogger or internet forum online.

The main blogs substituting the foreign press in their coverage of the elections are This is Zimbabwe run by the Sokwanele Civic Action Support Group, Zimbabwe Today, Kubatana.net and the Botswana-based news website zimbabwemetro.com. All seem resigned to the fact that vote rigging is an inevitability, but also express hope that by publicising the point, Mugabe and his henchmen may not be able to escape the citizens’ wrath any longer. It also shouldn’t be taken for granted that it takes genuine courage to blog in a dictatorship.

Some blogs, like the Sokwanele group, have posted maps showing where incidences of election breaches have occurred, whilst others tell of defiance by the population, even in the face of violent threats and intimidation. There have been reports about police having access to voting booths, purportedly to help the handicapped, arrests of opposition campaign workers, the names of dead people still on the electoral rolls and of ghost voters whose addresses place them on totally empty plots of ground.

Bloggers have also used their internet platform to slam Zimbabwe's disintegrating economy which has left the currency practically worthless with over 100,000 per cent (some estimates at 200,000 per cent) inflation.

As "Snoopy", a Zimbabwean living in Australia, succinctly puts it in a blog post for Zimbabwemetro, “there will be blood on the streets if you steal this election and again tell the people you do not care ... Go now Bob". µ

L’Inq
Reuters

BBC