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April 2, 2008
Posted: 1350 GMT
BEIT BRIDGE, South Africa-Zimbabwe border – "Can you see into Zimbabwe with your equipment?," one man asks us, pointing at our satellite dish. He is bemused by our presence here, on South African soil, when the real action is taking place in Zimbabwe. He is desperate to know what is happening back home. We explain that we have no secret equipment, no special powers of electronic observation. Our dish is for broadcasting to Atlanta. We can only tell him what we hear from other sources. Slowly, the wheel turns. In the blazing heat of the African sun here on the border, the people filtering through from Zimbabwe bring news. The streets are quiet, police are on patrol, but the country is waiting. For something. They cannot be sure what, but they are willing to wait. For now, as the news of change trickles out. Those Zimbabweans trapped on the South African side of the border are eager for news. "What are the results?" they ask us as we stand alongside our satellite dish waiting to go live. The parliamentary results are trickling in, showing the opposition MDC just a short way ahead of the ruline ZANU-PF. But it is the results of the presidential vote that every body is waiting for. They will be the moment – both practical and symbolic - when the direction of Zimbabwe’s future is finally clear. It is the president who matters more than anyone else. He embodies the fate of the republic. People often ask why Zimbabweans have been willing to suffer so much with so little overt or violent resistance. There have been relatively few street demonstrations in the last seven years of the country’s collapse. No attempt to storm the parliament as we have seen in other countries where elections have been so blatantly rigged as in Zimbabwe. The answer must lie in the memories of violence so deeply layered into the country’s past. The brutality from both sides of the liberation war, the memory of the campaign known as the Gukurahundi in the early 1980s when Robert Mugabe’s troops killed an estimated 10,000 people in a sweep against alleged dissidents in the province Matabeleland. The generations of war have left their scars. That is why Zimbabweans are willing to wait, and to hope that Robert Mugabe will go peacefully. The alternative is too terrible to contemplate. They have seen it before and do not want to see it again. The first signs that their hopes might be rewarded are beginning slowly to come out. The opposition is claiming that they have won over 50 percent of the presidential vote. The government mouthpiece, The Herald, has today told its readers that Mr. Mugabe may not have won the election outright. There are reports that the generals who hold the key to the country’s stability are divided. They are talking among themselves about what strategy is best to take the country forward. Change is in the air. Posted by: CNN Producer, Hamilton Wende
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