Mugabe calls for price cuts

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is demanding a general rollback on prices of basic goods and services, days before Zimbabweans go to the polls. Mugabe wants businesses to reduce prices to the levels of February 12, when civil servants were given a salary increase.

News Editor for the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper, Dumisani Muleya, says that the action of cutting prices is part of a series of many vote-buying tactics by Mugabe. He has also bought maize and distributed it to the people. “This only to justify, not his victory - which will never come by if it were a free and fair election, but ... the manipulation of the election.”

Muleya has also spoken about vote rigging being a serious problem. “Firstly the voters roll is fraudulent. There are people there who have long been dead but are still on the voters roll. Opposition parties are ignoring this but it is one of the issues which will in the final analysis determine the outcome the voters roll.

“I don’t think that there will be a change … Mugabe will scrape through the election, not because he is popular but because he is … still in control of the country."

Fourth candidate
Meanwhile, there is a good chance that Zimbabweans don’t know there are four candidates running for presidency on the ballot paper for Saturday. The fourth candidate, Langton Towangana, has no political experience. He is a Pentecostal preacher and businessman and believes that Zimbabwe is in need of a divine intervention.

Mugabe is also facing two serious challengers including his own former Finance Minister, Simba Makoni, and opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Campaigns by all parties are taking place all over the country. Tsvangirai claims to be the candidate to get Zimbabweans out of a crippled health system and food shortages, whilst Zanu-PF shows images reminding Zimbabweans of revolutionary arms struggle to gain independence. - - edited by Khensane Maranele