Not many people thought it would come to this. I did not. Most of us who assumed that Robert Mugabe would steal the election simply assumed that he would do so early enough to make the theft seem obvious if a bit more difficult to prove. I still expect Mugabe to keep his grip on power, but this is not how he envisioned things.
Zimbabweans still wait for results. It is hard to tell precisely whether the waiting favors the opposition, including the MDC, which claims to have pulled out an overwhelming victory for Morgan Tsvangirai (who received far less attention before the election, including from me, than did ZANU-PF dissident Simba Makoni) or if it works to Mugabe's advantage. On the one hand, the longer things take, the more likely Mugabe is maneuvering behind the scenes. On the other, the time and thus watchfulness will make more and more clear just how obviously the votes seem heavily to favor the anybody-but-Mugabe factions. And yet another X-Factor at play is the fact that even if Mugabe wins the presidency he will be facing a brave new world unless he can find a way to invalidate the parliamentary election tallies that are going against him.
Would Mugabe negotiate his own exile, an idea that has emerged in the past? Will he bide his time for a runoff that will give him another chance to control the process? Or is he simply biding his time, knowing that victory is his to declare in the Zimbabwe he has created?
