14 agenda, and maintain the ability to intimidate the commercial farm workers and the people of the communal lands. After all, the Presidential Election was going to be a relatively straight forward test of President Robert Mugabe’s popularity, and few gave him any chance in a genuine election against the undoubted popularity of the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai. As it turned out, President Robert Mugabe won the election, but few believed the result was legitimate, and the election was deemed unfree and unfair by both the European Union and the Commonwealth. During this period, 2000 to 2002, whilst farmers and farm workers tried to seek the assistance of the police and the courts, members of the Zanu(PF) government consistently and publicly stated that they supported the farm invasions, and, furthermore, that they would not be impeded by such niceties as the law or the courts. As President Mugabe himself put it, “The courts can do whatever they want, but no judicial decision will stand in our way . . . My own position is that we should not even be defending our position in the courts. We cannot . . .brook interference court impediment to the land acquisition programme”. 24 The violence in the 3 Mashonaland Provinces seemed curious, as was noted in the Human Rights Forum report on the 2000 election. 25 After all, these Provinces were generally considered to be the heartland of Zanu(PF)’s political support; Zanu(PF) had won all the Parliamentary seats in these Provinces in the 1995 election. In 1995, Zanu(PF) was returned unopposed in 22 of the 34 constituencies, and won the remaining 12 seats with majorities in all cases of more than 80%. The MDC would not have seemed to present a threat to this hegemony, but there were small indications from the results of the 2000 Referendum on the proposed New Constitution that all was not well with the support for Zanu(PF). Although the poll was very low, and the MDC – for this referendum was undoubtedly a test of Zanu(PF)’s popularity – won overwhelmingly in the urban areas, with 46 constituencies to Zanu(PF)’s 10, the surprising result was that the MDC won 16 rural constituencies to Zanu(PF)’s 48. A quick calculation suggested that the MDC could win the 2000 Parliamentary elections by 62 seats to Zanu(PF)’s 58, and clearly trouble was on the horizon. The control particularly of the commercial farm workers was critical to the success of Zanu(PF) in the 2002 election. As one farm worker explained this: 24 Source: Independent 15 December and Financial Gazette 14 December 2000. 25 See Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2001), Human Rights and Zimbabwe’s June 2000 election, HARARE: ZIMBABWE HUMAN RIGHTS NGO FORUM. A Preliminary Report on Human Rights Violations on Commercial Farms, 2000 to 2005.