POLLS THAT CAUSED SPLIT.

What could have been utilized as a golden opportunity to curb the powers of Robert Mugabe, the dictatorial ruler of Zimbabwe for a quarter of a century now, actually ended up further bolstering his political clout.
It is the Senate Elections that were held in this trouble-torn southern African nation on 26 November, 2005. The senate was created in August this year by the passage of a controversial constitutional amendment that gives the senate little real power and mandates that the body will go out of existence in 2010. Critics say that President Mugabe created the Senate as a source of jobs for ZANU-PF cronies.
This election, which witnessed Mugabe’s party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) winning an overwhelming majority of seats, had registered an average voters’ turn-out of mere 15-20%, the lowest in any national polls since the country’s independence in 1980. This was because many Zimbabweans regarded the new senate as, at best, an irrelevance, and more likely as a wasteful extravagance that the country can ill afford.
But what made the election a cynosure for the international community is the fact it has caused a split in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the only opposition party that could have offered a serious challenge to Robert Mugabe. The cause of the split is the differences between Morgan Tsangirai (the president of MDC) and Welshman Ncube (the party’s secretary) over the question whether the MDC should take part in the election. The former had called for a boycott of the polls on the grounds that President Mugabe would not allow a free and fair election, and therefore, participation in it would only legitimize a bogus process.
But the faction behind Ncube was firm on its stand that the MDC should run the polls, for a boycott would only strengthen the ruling ZANU-PF’s control over yet another administrative institution.
But there are other causes of the split and tribalism is one of them.While Tsangirai is a Shona,-along with three-fourth of his compatriots), Ncube is a Ndele, a tribe constitutes a majority in Matabiland where thousand of Ndeble people were killed in the 1980’s by the security forces.Naturally, the Ndeble were eager to participate in these elections.
Another factor, which can be cited as a cause of division in the MDC is the gradually increasing dislike for Tsangirai’s autocratic leadership.This discontent further deepened last month when Tsangirai overruled the decision of MDC’s National Council to run in the elections and went to the extend of expelling twenty six MDC members who had decided to stand as candidates against his orders. Tsangirai and his supporters have described the low turn out at the elections as an evidence people’s faith in his decision.
However, what he attempts to ignore yet remains conspicuous is the truth that the election campaign has left the MDC bitterly and perhaps, irrevocably divided. And, as it moves closer towards performing a political hara-kiri, the common Zimbabweans have lost almost all hopes of emancipation from the undemocratic, violence-ridden rule of Robert Mugabe. It is most palpable that the elections will do little or nothing to address Zimbabwe’s enormous and labyrinthine problems.
More than seventy percent of Zimbabweans cannot find employment in the ever-contracting economy. Inflation exceeds three-hundred percent. More than four million people are at risk of hunger. Government mismanagement has led to severe shortages of fuel and foreign exchange. The new senate may provide jobs for politicians, but it will not put food on tables or bring wages into alignment with inflation.

The future of Zimbabwe politics seems to have become all the more bleak.