Zimbabwe’s looming general election is set to be its most inclusive yet: the redrawing of electoral boundaries has put voters in Swaziland, the Indian Ocean and even Antarctica.
Team Pachedu, a pressure group that analysed the demarcations of dozens of voting wards set out by the electoral commission, said wild irregularities pointed to plans for another rigged election in July to favour the Zanu-PF party. The former liberation movement has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980 and has shown no appetite for giving it up.
Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in 2002 after an allegedly stolen election kept the late dictator Robert Mugabe in office. The country pulled out from the bloc a year later after the suspension was not lifted, but is now attempting to rejoin.
The opposition leader Nelson Chamisa, 45, who has been arrested dozens of times and claimed the 2018 ballot was stolen, said the poll would be “littered with rigging, manipulation”.
Jubilation met the ousting of the former dictator Mugabe in 2017 by his one-time enforcer Emmerson Mnangagwa, 80. But life under his rule is as miserable as ever and the crackdowns on dissent even more vicious.
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The US extended targeted sanctions against Zimbabwean figures and businesses last week, citing repression that “presents a continuing threat to peace and security in the region”. President Biden said the country had not made any reforms to warrant the lifting of sanctions imposed in 2003 for human rights violations and electoral fraud.
