"Incidences" from the Zimbabwean election

As reported here on Wednesday, there was an election -- of sorts -- in Zimbabwe this week. Walt, who is an ex-resident of one of the darkest spots on the hide of darkest Africa, watched the proceedings with interest, to see if the people of the last country on the list would put an end to the 33-year reign of Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

They did not. Latest results from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (R. Mugabe, Prop.) show Uncle Bob re-elected in a landslide, and his thuggish, incompetent and corrupt party, ZANU-PF, winning about 2/3 of the seats in Zimbabwe's parliament. If they get 2/3 or better, as projected, they will be able to amend (again) the country's constitution. They could even make Bob "President-for-Life". As it is, he will be 95 at the end of his new term -- a bit old, surely, to have to fight another election.

Of course he wouldn't have to fight too hard. He and his cronies are past masters of coercion, rigging and election fraud. Case in point: this election's vanishing voters roll.

All parties contesting the election were to receive a copy of the roll prior to the election. MDC, the main opposition party, got its copy on the very eve of polling day. And it was hard copy too, impossible to check for duplicates and residents of graveyards, of which there were seen to be many 1000s.

But never mind. That's par for the course for an African election. Although the MDC and local impartial observers declared the exercise a sham and a farce, monitors from other African organizations -- SADC and the African Union -- declared the election "free and peaceful". Notice they didn't say "fair". Here's part of an article on the BBC website.

African Union (AU) mission head Olusegun Obasanjo dismissed the complaints of fraud, saying the election was fair and free "from the campaigning point of view".

He acknowledged incidents "that could have been avoided and even tended to have breached the law" but added: "All in all, up to the close of the polls, we do not believe that these incidences [incidents] will amount to the result not representing the will of the people. The former Nigerian president added: "I have never seen an election that is perfect. The process continues and we have to limit our comments."

Monitors from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) described the elections as "free and peaceful" but said it was too early to call them fair. "In democracy we not only vote, not only campaign, but accept the hard facts, particularly the outcome," said SADC mission head Bernard Membe.

Which brings me back to the point I was making on Wednesday. The correction shown in brackets -- "incidences [incidents]" -- was made by the BBC, not Len or Ed. I quite believe that Mr. Obasanjo said "incidences", and that the BBC's stringer in Harare wrote it that way, because -- I repeat -- the misuse of "incidence" for "incidents" is so widespread, even amongst supposedly educated people, that it seems futile to point out the error. [So shut up then! Ed.]