Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party are in a buoyant mood. Their resounding victory in July’s presidential and parliamentary elections, by means both fair and foul, releases them from an inconvenient four-year power-sharing arrangement with their rivals, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). They can now resume sole responsibility for mismanaging the country.
The election outcome was a foregone conclusion. The pre-election manipulation was so thorough, and the electorate so cowed by the painful memories of 2008, that ZANU-PF did not even have to resort to large-scale violence in order to deliver the result it desired.
Early signs suggest the party is unlikely to be magnanimous in victory. Mugabe gleefully said that Western powers seeking to weaken his grip through sanctions could “go hang” and vowed to embark on a new, more radical phase of wealth redistribution, immediately sending the country’s stock market into free fall.