I am deeply sorry to bring to the notice of the writer that this article is full of observations that are deeply primitive and immature in itself.

One of the most primitive ideologies of the century being sold to all the citizens of the African countries by their so called leaders is that the Western world is always dictating to Africans of how they should govern and be governed. That ideology is primitive because the leaders of Africa have not been wise enough to determine when to admit that SOME IF NOT ALL OF THE SUGGESTIONS PROVIDED TO BOTH AFRICANS AND THEIR LEADERS ARE IN THE BEST INTEREST OF AFRICANS. I am an African I can assure you that most of the Leaders in Africa rule their citizens as dictators without respect. The only few Africans who are in agreement with the leaders are their very own cronies who support the leaders' dictatorship so that together they cheat the rest of the hard working citizens to accrue the wealth of the land to themselves and their families only. They start to hide behind the ideology of colonialism when the western worlds start to criticize such dictatorships and impunities. Who is to be blamed for the genocide in Rwanda? Any one who blames the West or the Europeans and their leaders for this matter is a hypocrite. Was it the western powers who asked the Kenyans to kill each other with hatchets, hoes and cutlasses after their elections failed? The African leaders could not do anything while fellow Africans were killing fellow Africans. Are we still primitive enough to settle land disputes by hatching one another down? Should one tribe being cheated resort to resolving their disputes by innocent killings? Kenyans should have stripped both Kibaki and Raila Odinga down because they failed to contain the citizens from committing such atrocious evils. Or they are the war lords who commanded their slaves to kill one another to settle the land dispute. What brand of leadership is that?

African leaders please learn to come up with the so called kind of democracy that will set all African citizens free on their own lands from the hands of their dictatorial leaders who have become slave masters of the innocent citizens they are ruling.

The African leaders are full of greed even though I admit that not all of them are. More could be said but chew upon this for the mean time.

Ahhh.... but do the Ghanan authorities in power routinely assault, maim, and kill those affiliated with other political parties?

It's not an apples to apples comparison after all, is it?

There is a *world* of difference between having a runoff due to no one party or participant getting 50% + 1 vote in a free and peaceful election; and having one in an election that was neither free or peaceful from the start.

And, even in spite of that, one where the opponent of the entrenched party not only outpolled them, but *almost* won.

If all the votes had been counted, and all the electorate freely allowed to cast their vote as their conscience, and not their bruises, dictated, there probably would not have been a need for a runoff.

A brainless article. But, to the authors credit, shamelessly defending Mugabe with the pen is a hard game - if not impossible. The cracks in the argument could swallow someone the size of Joyce Majuru. The contestation over the Zim poll situation is not that there was a runoff, but the nature of the runoff - it was bloody - unbelievably bloody - and that is the bottom line. Is political victory through blood and force the African Way? If power through murder is the true African way then the core argument of your article is valid.

Esigonowhere,

This was a great article, well thought out and perfectly presented. There are no cracks in the author's argument as you would like us to believe. It is you with a skewed mind who thinks like that because you despise anything that supports the position of the Zimbabwe electoral processes/system but upholds the same system elsewhere.

You say that "The contestation over the Zim poll situation is not that there was a runoff, but the nature of the runoff". You are wrong. Let us start from where it all started. While the process of counting, collating and verifying, leading to the announcement of results was taking place, Biti started announcing "MDC parallel results" which were at variance with the official ZEC results. Biti first told the whole world that MDC had won 68% of the presidential vote, only to climb down to 58% and further climbed down to 53% and further revised the percentage to 50.3%.

That’s where the contestation all began. And you know as much as I do that the elections of March 29 were characterised by peace and tranquility. No wonder, ZEC had to delay announcing results for some time while thoroughly verify results to see why they were so different from those being announced by MDC's Biti. It was, however, later discovered that this was just some sinister move spearheaded by the CIA and MI5, embedded with the MDC, who were trying to sway public opinion against the govt - It did not work.

You very well know that Tsvangirai did not want to participate in the run-off believing that he had won when in actual fact he had not and this is what this article is saying. It took the intervention of McGee for the sellout stooge to agree to return to Zimbabwe from his self-imposed exile in Botswana and participate in the run-off. Iam sure this was the time he was assessing the strength of his bandits who were being trained by Khama. So the contestation was not about "the nature of the runoff" but was about runoff itself.

Next came the period between the March 29 and June 27. If you remember well, during the month of April, reports coming in from most parts of the country were of Zanu pf supporters being killed while others were beaten by MDC thugs. During this period, close to 50 Zanu pf supporters and war veterans were killed by MDC thugs - nothing is said about these people. My own brother and some relatives were beaten and their homes and property destroyed by MDC thugs for being Zanu pf supporters. They only returned to our village (Minda mirefu) when Zanu pf came in full force to campaign in the area.

During the later part of that period we started hearing reports of MDC youths and supporters being beaten or murdered. While I do not condone violence of any nature, I believe that we could have witnessed worse violence than we saw considering the polarization that exists in our country today. I believe our people restrained themselves and conducted themselves in a very civilized manner which is unparalleled anywhere in Africa.

Yes we lost lives but the situation could have been worse had leaders like President Mugabe not spoken strongly against violence. Therefore, the violence we witnessed (from both sides of the political divide) did not warrant boycotting, thus, "contestation of the nature of the run-off". Hence, the run-off was not "...bloody - unbelievably bloody" as you put it.

The bottom line is that Mr Boycott, as is his nature, boycotted the run-off after realizing that he was going to lose the run-off hands down. The Zanu pf strategy - of being with the people - took Tsvangirai, McGee and all CIA agents embedded with NGOs unawares to the extent that the only face serving move was to withdraw at the 11th hour.