required to carry out this procedure in the presence of the candidates and their agents. This measure was to prove extremely important in allowing the opposition to track the voting trends in the elections. 12 Notwithstanding the progress that had been made on the mediation it was clear by early 2008 that a deadlock had emerged between ZANU PF and the MDC. This deadlock centred around three issues: The date of the election, the time-frame for the implementation of the agreed reforms; and the “process and manner of the making and enactment of a new constitution.” 13 When on 25th January Mugabe unilaterally announced the date of the election as the 29th March 2008, the view of the MDC was that the announcement “amounted to a repudiation of the SADC dialogue by ZANU PF.” 14 Gathering in Addis Ababa on the 31st January 2008 an Extraordinary Summit of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security tried to rescue what remained of the SADC mediation by claiming that ZANU PF and the MDC had “reached agreement on all substantive matters relating to the political situation in Zimbabwe” and that what remained was for the Zimbabwean parties to “conclude the outstanding ‘procedural’ matter of the enactment of the agreed Draft Constitution.” 15 Clearly the MDC position on the remaining items on the mediation agenda were in stark contrast to the SADC Summit, which once again rewarded Mugabe’s intransigence with public solidarity. It was thus against this background of electoral reforms which provided limited yet important openings in the political sphere that, that the MDC went into the March 2008 elections. 2. The 2008 Harmonised Elections The elections of March 29th 2008 included voting for Presidential, parliamentary, senatorial and local council elections. In the weeks following the announcement of the election date there was some indication of growing violence. The Zimbabwe Peace Project for example noted that since November 2007 it had recorded 1775 incidents of political violence compared with about 1000 in the comparable period in the run up to the 2005 election. Moreover the project reported that most of this violence was perpetrated by ZANU PF supporters. 16 A particularly brutal assault was carried out on nine members of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe who were arrested for distributing fliers in the Harare city centre in February 2008. It was reported that: They were allegedly taken to an underground room at the nearby ZANU PF offices where they were severely beaten with sticks and metal poles and were forced to recite party slogans and proclaim that President Mugabe rule in perpetuity. The organisation’s president sustained a fractured arm and deep cuts. It is alleged that this torture took place in the presence of an armed police officer who made no attempt to stop the beating.17 Notwithstanding these incidents the weeks preceding the 2008 elections were characterised by a relative calm and absence of overt violence in the electoral environment. This relative calm, established in the context of the SADC mediation, allowed the opposition forces to mobilize in the rural areas in a way that had not been possible since the 2000 general election. Such a situation must however always be viewed against the background of a political culture that has been deeply brutalized and traumatised by the electoral violence and coercive rhetoric of the ruling party for nearly three decades. Of particular importance in this election was the entry of ZANU PF dissenter Simba Makoni into the Presidential race in early February 2008 as an independent candidate. This development took place against another foiled attempt to find a successor to Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe’s ruling party, and the continued evidence of the growing entrenchment of Mugabe and the securocrats around him. Simba 12 Ibid MDC Press Statement on the Failed SADC Dialogue on the Crisis in Zimbabwe. 21st February 2008. 14 Ibid. 15 Media Statement on the Extraordinary Meeting of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 31st January, 1st February 2008. 16 VOA Report 13th February 2008. 171717 Geoff Feltoe, “Will there be free and fair elections in Zimbabwe?” Unpub. paper 2008. 13 11