The Guardian has released a short film documenting the election fraud in Zimbabwe, which can be viewed here. But how to understand the film?
The footage reflects the relationship between Mugabe’s ZANU-PF government and junior members of its uniformed forces. It is not a love relationship, and neither party trusts the other. While Paradzai Zimondi, the head of Zimbabwe’s prison services, is one of the Joint Command that has effectively taken over the running of the country since Tsvangirai won the March 29 elections, and the prison system is being used as part of ZANU-PF’s terror campaign, the junior prison officers do not share the spoils and are not loyal to the system. Their sentiments are the same as the rest of Zimbabwe, and the government has to watch them as closely as it watches the rest of the population. The same applies to the rest of the uniformed forces—the police, the army and the air force. In fact, junior police and prison officers are among the least paid and the most watched groups in Zimbabwe, and they fervently wish for change.
