With the caveat that news from Zimbabwe these days is increasingly sketchy, it is clear that things there continue to fester. Agustino Zacarias, the United Nations senior representative in Zimbabwe, declared on Tuesday that the escalating violence is expanding countrywide, in rural and urban areas, and could reach crisis levels. Supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have been the victims of most of the violence, with the perpetrators supporters of Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF.
In the meantime MDC presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai is saying all of the right things, including placing his faith in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), despite the fact that South African President Thabo Mbeki's reputation continues to tumble and that according to Zimbabwe's former home affairs minister Dumiso Dabengwa, Zim is effectively operating under military rule.
Suffice it to say, it seems less likely with each passing day that viable plans for a runoff that will actually be actionable will be put into place any time soon.