ZANU-PF’s poor 2023 election heist
On August 26th, 2023, Zimbabweans went to bed with shoes on - a common proverb amongst the local folks which simply translates to being heavily disappointed - after the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, in the dead of the night, announced presidential results and declared Emmerson Mnangagwa as the winner with 52.6% of the votes with his closest rival, Nelson Chamisa of the Citizen Coalition for Change (CCC)’s having gathered only 44% of the vote in the harmonized elections which were held on August 23rd and 24th. The elections were hugely shambolic and have since received widespread condemnation with regional, international and local bodies and human rights groups such as the SADC observer mission, the AU observer mission, the UN secretary general, the Carter Center Election Observer Mission, the EU observer mission, ZESN, ERC among many others. This was the second election after the toppling of Zimbabwe’s long time dictator Robert Gabriel Mugabe who was succeeded by his former long-ti