Africans a-Liberate Zimbabwe, Yeah

Zimbabwe voters went to the polls on Saturday. It's Tuesday, and there's still no winner. While opposition parties are racking up more seats and votes than any time since 2000, it's impossible not to conclude that Robert Mugabe's thugs are massaging the count. But so far, that's not enough.

Zimbabwe's ruling party today privately conceded that Robert Mugabe had lost the first round of the presidential election to the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

But Mugabe's Zanu-PF party said a second round would be needed as Tsvangirai had failed to clinch the necessary 51% of the vote to win outright, according to Reuters.

Even if you're rigging it, how can you win re-election in a country with 100,000 percent inflation and a 20 percent employment rate? Propaganda helps.

President Mugabe became the talk of the world and has been condemned for merely doing what is best for his people.

Tsvangirai globetrotted asking for sanctions and persuading the whole world to stop aid to Zimbabwe.

The economy was sabotaged, we have hit hard times, people are struggling to make ends meet, decent meals have disappeared from our tables and the future looks very uncertain.

Morgan Tsvangirai has been on cloud nine dreaming that the hardships will propel the electorate to turn to him as the Messiah.

We are not fools.

Damn, they're on to us! We must be making this up, too.

A senior diplomatic source who received accounts from two people privy to the JOC meeting said it discussed shutting down the count and Mugabe declaring himself re-elected or the army stepping in to declare martial law on the pretext of defending the country from instability caused by the opposition claiming victory.

"In the JOC meeting there were two options for Mugabe: to declare victory on Sunday or declare martial law," said the diplomat. "They did not consider conceding. We understand Mugabe nearly decided to declare victory. Cooler heads prevailed. It was decided to use the [election commission] process of drip, drip where you release results over a long period, giving the opposition gains at first but as time wears on Zanu-PF pulls ahead."

More reason on Zimbabwe here.