Why mugabe won election

Ghost of Mugabe looms over Zimbabwe election. Mugabe added he wanted the benefits his family was given to be "honored" by those in power and denounced attacks against his family, especially his wife. Leave, leave, leave my wife alone! Zimbabwean opposition leader Nelson Chamisa casts his vote on Monday. Real change is coming. We should all be part of it.

Chamisa called Mnangagwa's response "panicky" during a news conference later on Sunday in which he assailed the country's election commission for its role in the elections, saying it was biased in favor of Mnangagwa. Chamisa took over the leadership of the MDC after the death of its founder and longtime anti-Mugabe activist Morgan Tsvangirai, who died from cancer in February.

He is hoping to target younger voters with promises of electoral reform, tax cuts and jobs. A mother casts her ballot in a polling station in the capital, Harare. There have been few public appearances by Mugabe and his wife, Grace, nicknamed "Gucci Grace" because of her love of luxury, since their fall from power.

They have been spending time in Singapore, where he receives medical treatment, and their plush room residence in Harare. This is the first time in 16 years that the government has allowed EU, Commonwealth and US election monitors into the country.

Earlier in the week, Zec announced the parliamentary results, giving Zanu-PF seats, the MDC Alliance, which is made up of seven parties, 64 seats, and one seat to the National Patriotic Front, formed by Mugabe loyalists after he was ousted.

Although Zanu-PF won by a landslide, its majority has shrunk since the election, when it obtained seats and the MDC, then led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai, More than five million people were registered to vote in Monday's poll. Can vote heal Zimbabwe? Harare chaos in pictures. Africa Today podcasts. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. View original tweet on Twitter.

Emmerson Mnangagwa: The 'crocodile' who snapped back. Image source, Getty Images. Mr Mnangagwa's supporters celebrated after the results were announced.

Image source, Reuters. The government has blamed the opposition for the violence. Harare chaos in pictures Can post-Mugabe vote heal Zimbabwe? What happened after the vote? That is why I came back to the party. I am not even paid to do this job. It is my duty. For instance, 29 members of the MDC-T who were disgruntled with the manner the party's primaries were conducted defied the leadership and ran as independents.

Only three disaffected Zanu-PF candidates did likewise. MDC-T divisions were particularly stark in Manicaland province, where imposition of parliamentary candidates by Tsvangirai resulted in a serious rift between him and the provincial executive.

Manicaland — unlike in — voted for Zanu-PF this time. All opinion polls on the likely outcome of the election demonstrated a rise in Zanu-PF support while that of the MDC-T was shown to be declining. A largely unstated factor so far in debates about how Zanu-PF won this election is that for the first time in years the MDC-T ran a less effective campaign because of financial constraints.

As MDC-T insiders have revealed to me, the party's traditional western backers were not as forthcoming with financial support as they were in During the campaigns Tsvangirai publicly criticised the west for giving up on removing Mugabe from power in preference for eventual accommodation with the Zimbabwean president.

The west has been unequivocal in its public condemnation of Zanu-PF's victory but in the coming weeks it must answer hard questions about why it abandoned the MDC-T financially prior the election.

Zimbabwe is largely calm and peaceful in the aftermath of the election. But debate about the result is continuing behind closed doors. I have been part of furious debates among Harare's middle-class intellectuals. A clear fissure has emerged between those who maintain that Mugabe's election win is entirely down to the preponderance of incumbency and those who argue that this does not tell the whole story. I'm one of this latter group, who take the view that a multiplicity of factors converged to ensure Mugabe's election win last week.

The challenge in the coming days is for these intellectuals and indeed the MDC-T to produce hard evidence demonstrating that Zanu-PF's victory is explained by rigging alone.

Even in the MDC-T there is no consensus that rigging was to blame.