One year on from Zimbabwe's heavily disputed 2013 elections, we asked Simukai Tinhu, a Zimbabwean political analyst (and regular AA contributor) and Nicole Beardsworth, a PhD student at Warwick University, to comment on how they think President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party have performed in the past year. Simukai Tinhu: 'ZANU-PF's first order of business was to consolidate power and banish the opposition to the fringes of Zimbabwe's political playground.' On the 31st July 2013, Zimbabweans went to the polls to choose a new government. Despite complaints of election irregularities by the opposition and the West, voters decided to retain President Mugabe over his long-term rival, Morgan Tsvangirai. His party, ZANU-PF, even secured an overwhelming majority in parliament, paving the way for the President's government to change or introduce new laws at will. In the run up to the July elections, though the economy had improved significantly, the country was still beset with high unemployment, international sanctions (which led to political isolation) and human rights abuses. ZANU-PF party campaigned on the promise to improve the situation in all these spheres. Mugabe also told his party supporters that he would extinguish the opposition from the nation's political landscape. ZANU-PF's first [...]
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