The long-awaited date for the presidential and legislative elections was finally announced on Wednesday by the 80-year-old incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Elected head of state in 2018 following a coup that deposed President Robert Mugabe a year earlier, he is currently completing a second term.
His main rival, lawyer and pastor Nelson Chamisa, 45, expressed his impatience on Tuesday, accusing Mr. Mnangagwa of maintaining “opacity over the dates” of the elections expected for several months.
During this waiting period, the party he leads, the newly formed Citizens’ Coalition for Change (CCC), accused the ruling party of repressing political opponents. Opposition meetings have been obstructed, and officials, including MPs, arrested on the pretext of illegal assembly.
Detained for nearly a year, Job Sikhala, a popular opposition deputy in the suburbs of Harare, who despite himself has become a symbol of this repression denounced by rights organizations, was sentenced in May for obstructing justice.
Source : Africanews
