Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

President Mugabe's eldest child, Bona Mugabe, is seen here greeting Vice Presidents Chiwenga and Kembo Mohadi & their wives at President Mnangagwa's inauguration ceremony at the National Sports Stadium in Harare today President Robert Mugabe was not in Singapore today. He was at home. For a man his age, he is in remarkably good health, even though he sent a letter to the inauguration, read by President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the National Sports Stadium today, pleading ill-health. The letter was not a sign that Mugabe has forgiven Mnangagwa and Chiwenga. No. Those present at the Blue Roof when the decision was made are clear what Bona and her husband's presence at Mnangagwa's inauguration today was all about. As an aside, despite what the former president is accused of having done to this fellow citizens and to the country, some of us were amazed at the spontaneous and deafening applause that echoed through the National Sports Stadium in Harare today wh...

Zimbabweans owe a huge debt of gratitude to Morgan Tsvangirai for the fact that it is now impossible to rig elections in Zimbabwe. We will explain today why. The mistake Nelson Chamisa and his Alliance made this time around was using the pre-reform tactics to fight this election instead of adapting to the news circumstances. It is the main reason we kept saying Chamisa had brought a knife to a gunfight. But let's look at why it is now impossible to rig an election in Zimbabwe and why this last election also falls into this category of "impossible to rig". It is all about knowing how to use the tools Tsvangirai gave us as Zimbabwe. All ballot paper books printed have serial numbers. Each ballot paper has a serial number. This is incredibly important for any party that does not trust the process, especially combined with the presence of their agent at the polling station throughout voting. Each party has a polling agent at every polling station in Zimbabwe. ...

Jameson Timba, the man who mysteriously disappeared as Chamisa's Chief Election Agent on the day of the announcement of the election results, with Morgan Komichi claiming to be the Chief Election agent, is seen here in his trademark bowler hat on Friday as he filed the Nelson Chamisa's challenge to the election and their results at the Constitutional Court in Harare. Nelson Chamisa's electoral challenge, filed this last Friday, August 10 2018, is so embarrassing that in any other court of law, he would have been fined for wasting the court's time, one Nelson Chamisa's own lawyers, Advocate Dali Mpofu, has allegedly told his comrades in the Economic Freedom Front of South Africa. Mpofu is also the Chairman of Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Front. Malema has congratulated Emmerson Mnangagwa on his electoral victory and urged Nelson Chamisa to accept the results and move on. Malema and the EFF are natural allies of ZANU PF and the two are in constant ...

So, it is congratulations to President Emmerson Mnangagwa on winning the Presidential election. His party also controls parliament, which means there will be no excuse whatsoever for non-delivery. Mnangagwa now has his own mandate, in his own right, not one inherited from former President Robert Mugabe. But the margin with which Mnangagwa won means that the protestations from Nelson Chamisa and the MDC Alliance should now be taken seriously if Mnangagwa's new administration is to have credibility and legitimacy. Nelson Chamisa's approach was wrong this last week, as he sought to block the announcement of the results while he tried to double-check and tally the totals from polling stations in order to satisfy himself that he has indeed lost. Insistence on continuing to delay the result announcement because he disputed was not the main problem. It was his dishonest concealment of the fact that he was delaying the announcement because he was still double-checking and ver...

These are some of the people reported to have been shot this afternoon when Nelson Chamisa supporters gathered in the streets to demand he be declared the winner of the Presidential poll, after the opposition MDC Alliance called for people to gather in the city centre and "defend their voted" before the official results are announced. The constant agitation by Nelson Chamisa, who keeps claiming he has won the election before results are announced has managed to get loads of crowds into the streets of Harare. First they were met by riot police as the crowds of hundreds of people tried to storm the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission National Command Centre at the Harare International Conference Centre. As they became more rowdy, blockading roads, burning buildings, the police remained restrained. That was when army trucks rolled into the city centre. The army had to fire live rounds, just now, apparently, because Tendai Biti has just said publicly that he and Nelson Cha...

A proposal to elevate the office of the Leader of the Official Opposition to an official Office of State is now in jeopardy as President Mnangagwa went into the election without signing it off. Aides to Mnangagwa suspect that the President feared the move could be spun by detractors to paint him as a man who was setting up a cushy office for himself in preparation for defeat at the Harmonised Poll of 2018. Hence it was left to be picked at the beginning of a new President's term. Sources in ED's office revealed that the matter has since been complicated further. Now that he and those around them know they have won the election, the President fears it would be misinterpreted as a sop to a man complaining about his victory being stolen". Which would distract from government business as it could embolden a beaten man to think the approach a sign of weakness.  Because of Chamisa's chosen strategy of agitation and threatening anarchy, this important pillar ...

Former President Robert Mugabe endorsing Nelson Chamisa today his Blue Roof mansion under the watchful eyes of Grace Mugabe and his first born, Bona Chikore. The choreographed dance between Nelson Chamisa and Robert Mugabe, which started on this last Saturday, came out in the open on Sunday. The two scheduled simultaneous press conferences in anticipation of each other's big reveals. It is a classic Jonathan Moyo move, designed for nothing else but to give the impression of momentum. What this move on Sunday telegraphs is an alarming state of affairs in the opposition camp. Because, you see, this is an extreme move. In other words, a last-ditch effort. One does not go broke unless one knows they have nothing left to lose. Desperate times, they say. Desperate measures. The strategy's risks are not lost on a man of the smarts and intelligence of Nelson Chamisa. Not at all. So, knowing this, aware of the fire-breathing electoral dragons that live down this road, Ne...

President Mnangagwa with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Harare earlier this year. President Emmerson Mnangagwa has spoken to Vladmir Putin in South Africa who promised to alert American President Donald Trump of what the ZANU PF government considers unfair prejudging of the elections by elements in the American Senate, specifically. We received this information earlier today. Both Mnangagwa and Putin were in South Africa for the BRICS summit, together with the Chinese President. The discussion with Putin was to discuss the various investments that Russia and Russian companies have committed to Zimbabwe, such as the Darwendale Platinum Group Minerals mining project. The Russians are also setting up a refining and smelting plant in the area. It was during the course of that discussion that President Putin asked about Mnangagwa's prospects in the coming election. The Zimbabwean leader responded by telling Putin that all indications are that he, Mnangagwa, is ...

Observers say they are stunned at the complete absence of any strategy or campaign at the constituency level by Nelson Chamisa's MDC Alliance. It is a criminal neglect of a key pillar of his success as a presidential candidate Nelson Chamisa, the presidential candidate of the MDC Alliance so carefully and thoughtfully put together by the late Morgan Tsvangirai, is running an utterly criminal election campaign that focuses solely and almost entirely on his own personal ambition only. Chamisa has convinced all watchers that he does not believe in the Alliance he purports to lead. Evidence of this is scattered all over the electoral landscape like bodies on a battlefield. Parliamentary candidates for the Alliance have been neglected and their dejection is on full display around Zimbabwe, in contrast with the candidates of Khupe's MDC and Mnangagwa's ZANU PF. Even independents like Fadzai Mahere in Mt Pleasent are outgunning Alliance candidates in terms of energy, ...

This qualifies as one of the top of the images from the 2018 Zimbabwean election. The various Mapostori Christian sects in Zimbabwe number more than a million. The Johanne Marange sect, whose Passover celebrations President Mnangagwa is seen here attending is by far the largest, followed by the Masowe sect. Now, just wondering: we all know about the rivalry between these two sects and the many others scattered all over Zimbabwe. Does this mean the other sects will now boycott Mnangagwa and vote someone else because they hate the Marange faction? Not entirely sure if all of them are registered to vote, but this sect has become a stomping ground for ZANU PF leaders and they have tended to support the ruling party. Getting this bloc to support you and vote for you is a prize coveted by every politician in Zimbabwe. Mnangagwa, seen here sitting right in the middle of the throng, sitting on the dusty ground like everybody else, has taken this to another level. Mugabe and Chiwen...

JUSTICE Chigumba, the ZEC Chair, briefing observers at the Harare International Conference Centre earlier today, doubled down on a trend of refusing or failing the transparency test. She is within the law on everything she has done, but ignoring the key test of transparency impacts massively on the credibility of this poll, to the detriment of whoever end up winning this election. We have always defended ZEC against the baseless accusation thrown against them by an opposition that is bent discrediting the election in the hope of it being declared not free and fair and thereby, hopefully, forcing a Government of National Unity with Nelson Chamisa as Prime Minister, but the needless lack of transparency by the electoral body is now wildly carvoting in sabotage territory. Take Justice Chigumba's briefing with Observers today at the Harare International Conference Centre. One thing that has raised alarm bells is her announcement that the electoral body will not be using indeli...

According to sources close to the development, the reason we are seeing Nelson Chamisa going ballistic in the last few days is because of a message delivered to him by a representative of President Mnangagwa, whom he met this last week. The message was in response to Chamisa's repeated attempts to meet with Mnangagwa and the two letters he has sent asking for a meeting. The first one, already published, asked for the meeting as a "courtesy visit". The response to Chamisa has been that President Emmerson Mnangagwa will only meet Nelson Chamisa in the presence of Thokozani Khupe, who also claims to be the legitimate leader of the MDC-T. The visit last week from an ED representative was to update this position and the message, we are reliably informed, was: "We had hoped to arrange a meeting after the court case you had brought against Khupe and the other MDC-T. That court case would have settled who really is a representative of the MDC-T. Unfortunately, y...

Nelson Chamisa, it turns out, is playing straight into the hands of ZANU PF with his constant agitation around the voters' roll and the ballot paper. This was revealed to us yesterday, Sunday, 08 July, entirely by accident. We were not supposed to hear what we are about to tell you and I hope we will not get into trouble for it! ZANU PF, like the Republicans in the USA, the Tories in the UK and many other parts of the world, knows that one of the most effective ways to "rig" an election is to ensure that your opponents' supporters do not show up on voting day. It is called voter suppression. It is a micro strategy that the Republicans used in the USA for decades before the Dems and the Independents woke up to what was happening (and it involved manipulating local laws to demand the sort of ID documents the Republicans knew Democratic supporters were unlikely to have). Demotivating MDC supporters is ZANU PF's number one prize, and Nelson Chamisa and hi...

"Nelson Chamisa is embarrassing and Emmerson Mnangagwa is very very dull," is what one American journalist with an international news network put it to me when she called this morning to get an update on the election and sentiment on the ground. It is a stunning turn of events, this complete ignoring of Zimbabwe's 2018 elections by international media. For the first time since 2000, the international media (CNN, BBC, SKY, even China Global Television) are almost completely ignoring the Zimbabwe elections. Haru Mutasa, at Al Jazeera, is the only international journalist who is getting the story of this election out, but in very small drips. Previous Zimbabwe elections were a daily fixture on international news platforms before. Mugabe's rallies were covered on a weekly basis from the week he started campaigning to election day. Tsvangirai was never covered as much but featured as a counterpoint to the fiery rhetoric of Robert Mugabe. This time around, ther...

Justice Chigumba meeting with the European Union Observer Mission to Zimbabwe earlier this week Under immense pressure from the government of Zimbabwe and the opposition parties, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission will now take the step of appointing an international audit firm to monitor the printing, transportation and storage of ballot papers and boxes throughout the Zimbabwe electoral process currently under way. An epic battle has been under way behind the scenes between President Mnangagwa's government and the Electoral body around the issue of transparency. The ZEC Chair, Justice Chigumba, who has been described as "intransigent" by government sources, has been adamant that she and her Commission must not be seen to taking instructions from any body or organisation in Zimbabwe. Her main argument has been around the precedent set by being seen to be commanded by parties or even government in Zimbabwe. Two weeks ago, a suggestion was then put to Justice Ch...

The EU Observer Mission giving a press conference in Harare, at which only one journalists, from Openparlyzw, proved to be the only real journalist operating in Zimbabwe today. The European Union Observer Mission to Zimbabwe for the 2018 elections held a press conference today in Harare.  That press conference should be a cause for grave concern for ZEC and for the government of President Mnangagwa. The statement itself was full of diplomatic speak but it was the question and answer that really bust the whole thing wide open. Zimbabwe and the government should thank the guy called Daniel from Openparlyzw, who is the only journalist in that room who asked a real and pertinent question. All the other so-called journalists in that room appeared to have been there just to eat the sandwiches and are disgrace to the profession. Daniel asked about the process of observing the printing of the ballot paper and asked the observers to say whether they had come across similar issues...