Today was the day Robert Mugabe was desperately seeking legitimacy in Zimbabwe. His problem was that his rival pulled out so he declared the pull out illegal and was basically competing against a ghost. And ghosts usually come back to haunt you.

Most Zimbabweans don’t want to give Mugabe legitimacy. Had a friend on the line from Zimbabwe telling me there were more people queuing at the Bar and at bus stations than at the polling stations. He thought there was at the most a 15% turnout for the elections. But this was in the urban areas. In rural areas it looked more grim. Reports we received confirmed that war veterans were manning polling stations in Chipinge, recording the identities of the voters, their addresses and their finger prints. They have embarked in the “show me your ink” campaign – anyone not able to show she or he had voted were going to be targeted. In case you doubt it’s serious: just today seven young MDC activities were found dead in the suburbs of Harare.

The well know South African hospitality has its limits. The MDC supporters I had mentioned earlier who took refuge at their embassy were deported today from the embassy under the watchful eyes of the minister of social welfare and the head of the UNDP. Only problem from what I heard is that they will be brought to Ruwa Refugee Camp, a Zanu PF controlled dumping ground.

Speaking about South Africa. News broke today that Africa had been providing Zimbabwe with arms for the last year. Arming Mugabe is just the right thing to do for a country that is supposed to mediate between him and his opposition party. The minister who is heading the commission making decisions on whether or not to export arms to Zimbabwe is the also the chief negotiator for South Africa. Now this is impartiality! Mbeki told his parliament yesterday he would wait until after the elections to say whether elections were free and fair – or not. And he told them it was up to Zimbabweans to solve their problems, they could only assist. Nice assistance indeed! Anyone still surprised Tsvangirai calls on Mbeki to step down as a negotiator?