01.10.2006
In late March 2005, days before Zimbabwe’s latest parliamentary elections, there was little in the everyday life of Zimbabwe’s capital Harare that seemed out of the ordinary, despite the pre-election tensions that hung over the city like an invisible shroud. Although the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had, in previous months, protested against violent and unfair treatment at the hands of Robert Mugabe’s government, it had decided not to boycott the parliamentary contest after all, hoping against all odds that the presence of external observers would help to level the playing field during polling. Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU (PF) party, on the other hand, wanted both victory and full legitimacy – and was therefore triumphant when international observer delegations declared that the weeks surrounding the election had been free of violence and visible intimidation.
