Amnesty International cited examples of intimidation, including one case where three MDC activists were forced to rip down and eat election posters they had put up.

Zimbabwe‘s ruling party is offering voters a generous incentive to re-elect President Robert Mugabe for a sixth term: “If you want a farm, vote ZANU PF”. The message is being relayed in a campaign jingle for the ruling party that is being played repeatedly on the country’s four radio stations, all state-controlled, ahead of Saturday’s parliamentary and presidential polls. As well as offering a farm to government loyalists, the jingle goes on: “If you want a tractor, vote ZANU PF. If you want a company, vote ZANU PF.” Mr Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned property, which began in 2000, was supposedly for distribution to landless blacks but was abused on a grand scale by the ruling elite. It destroyed commercial agriculture and began the downward spiral of the economy. Now expropriated farms do not produce enough food to feed even half the population.

Handouts of seized farm equipment are a mainstay of Mr Mugabe’s campaign. Despite the jingle, his government could never afford to give all voters a tractor, as it promises. While a new law has been passed requiring all businesses to become majority owned by Zimbabweans – a nationality which is defined in the legislation as excluding whites – few doubt that if it is put into effect on a wide scale the remains of the economy will soon crumble. The minute-long jingle begins more lyrically: “Growing up I thought that I would look for a job. But now I am the one who is giving people jobs. Visionary leadership, vote ZANU PF, consistent leadership, vote Zanu PF, black empowerment, vote ZANU PF.” But the blanket airplay it is receiving illustrates complaints by opposition candidates, human rights organisations, and the US State Department that the polls will not be free and fair.

For the first time, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change is being allowed to advertise on radio, and its chorus runs: “Change the way you think, be free to speak, be free from fear.” But Denford Magora, the spokesman for Simba Makoni, the former finance minister who is standing against Mr Mugabe, said that his advertisements were not being carried by newspapers. “We book, we pay and they say they won’t accommodate them,” he said. Tendai Biti, the MDC secretary-general, added: “The conditions are definitely not conducive for free and fair elections. Our supporters are still being harassed and the police are being used as weapons for intimidation.” In a statement, the US state department spokesman Sean McCormack listed a litany of “significant shortcomings” ahead of voting, including “inaccurate voter rolls, violence and intimidation, overproduction of postal ballots, absence of independent observation of the counting of postal votes, inadequate polling stations in urban areas”.

Amnesty International cited examples of intimidation, including one case where three MDC activists were forced to rip down and eat election posters they had put up. Zimbabwe‘s police dismissed the accusations as part of a Western plot to discredit the polls. Police are being allowed into polling stations to “help” infirm voters, but a blind man, Masimba Kuchera, 26, has gone to court seeking the right to be helped by someone of his choice. “That person should be someone he can trust and confide in,” said his lawyer Jeremiah Bamu. “The amendment is a violation of a voter’s right to privacy, which can only be guaranteed through the secrecy of the ballot.”

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