(d)urban(a): Election News Around Here

I'm looking forward to reading news of Super Tuesday tomorrow in the US and the major news outlets here in SA have provided some coverage of the US election season - in fact, when I landed in the Johannesburg airport I was surprised to see the giant front-page headline devoted to news that Ted Kennedy had officially announced his support of Barack Obama. However, another election has occupied much of the media's attention here.

Over the last week, reference to the economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe and its upcoming elections has arisen in nearly every conversation I have had. Bordering South Africa to the north, Zimbabwe has been in an economic spiral for the last seven years with most major news outlets attributing the current hard currency shortage and hyperinflation to President Mugabe's compulsory land redistribution policies beginning in 2000. While the idea of the redistribution was altruistic - it was meant to reclaim land for indigenous Zimbabweans from the small minority of whites who possessed over 70% of land - the implementation of the program and the subsequent standstill in farming and mining has made the redistribution project a disaster. The situation in Zimabwe has been so grim over the last seven years that the World Health Organization reports the average life span for Zimbabweans has halved - from 69 years in 2000 to 35 years today. BBC News and CNN have been banned from filming and reporting in the country and the government has enforced strict suppression of the press and free speech.

Thousands of Zimbabweans are fleeing the country each day, many into South Africa with the Zimbabwe Civic Action Support Group, amongst other groups, estimating that about three million have fled to South Africa since 2000. SA president Thabo Mbeki has attempted to mediate efforts in Zimbabwe, especially in regards to its upcoming elections, which are scheduled for March. Charges of electoral rigging have already been waged against the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, led by President Mugabe, which has been the ruling political party since Zimbabwe's independence in 1980. Today, it was just reported that talks to unite the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change have collapsed, a failure that may ensure Mugabe's reelection next month.