B-movies rule in long wait for figures

ZIMBABWE: THESE LAST few feverish days in Zimbabwe have provided a particular challenge for the schedulers of state television - not to mention the usually slavishly sycophantic editors on state newspapers, writes Alec Russell .

The managers of ZBC are also clearly vexed. Before the election, the state broadcaster's news programmes ran back-to-back coverage of the "Fist of Empowerment", as Mr Mugabe's election posters dubbed the president, at campaign rallies.

But now it is rather harder for old loyalists to know what to do. All day Sunday, as the opposition claimed victory, ZBC played footage of English Premiership football matches before turning to old B-movies.

Just before midnight, a correspondent at the state-appointed Zimbabwe Election Commission finally gave the first news of results. It is tempting to claim it was to escape the tedium of the movies that Mr Mugabe ordered the official count to start. It is not true but also no more fanciful than many of the rumours doing the rounds of Harare, stronghold of Mr Mugabe's foes yet also home of his feared spy network.

The centre of the fantasies is the Meikles, the colonial hotel where many a conspiracy theory was hatched in the dying days of the regime of Ian Smith, the late and last prime minister of Rhodesia.

One veteran correspondent recalled yesterday how, the day Mr Mugabe's first victory was announced in 1980, the man next to him in the Meikles bar said "now the wheel's come off the bus". Within a week, he was in the cabinet.

Similarly, pledges of loyalty and disloyalty are about as reliable as the conflicting rumours sweeping the jittery capital. - (Financial Times service)

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times