The first round of post-Mugabe elections in Zimbabwe could see the nation reach its great potential once again

The country goes to the polls on 30 July, presenting a unique opportunity to champion its greatest assets: its people and its natural resources

As they go to the polls, the median age of a Zimbabwean is 19 years. Few citizens have ever known an election where Robert Mugabe hasn’t been on the ballot paper, let alone one that was truly free and fair. Despite the demographic facts, it is a testament to the unreliability of Zimbabwe’s electoral rolls that they contain two (unidentified) voters aged 134 and 141 years of age respectively.

The old adage about “one man one vote – once” is mostly true about this young country. Not since independence in 1980 has it known real political freedom. Before that was white racist minority rule; after, Zanu-PF dictatorship. Nelson Chamisa, the leader of the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was a toddler when Rhodesia gave way to Zimbabwe. He, perhaps optimistically, is talking about victory against “The Crocodile”, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who ousted Mr Mugabe last November.

It is too much to expect that the first round of elections of the post-Mugabe era, on Monday, will be conducted to Swedish-style standards of probity, but at least the old monster is gone, and there is a chance that the nation can once again reach its great potential. That depends on the man they call, without a surfeit of affection, President Mnangagwa. He may have been a necessary and welcome change from the long-discredited Mugabe. But, as the nickname goes, he was no angel himself. An ally of Mr Mugabe since the early 1960s, and a member of the Shona people, Mr Mnangagwa served as minister for state security in 1984, when a North Korean-trained personal Mugabe militia murdered thousands of the minority Ndebele people and drove their political leaders out of the country, in the so called Gukurahundi massacres. At that point, Mugabe’s dictatorship, and Zimbabwe’s eventual grisly fate as a near-failed state, was sealed.

It would be a surprise, then, if this ruthless individual conceded defeat under any circumstances. He has, like the crocs lurking in the Limpopo, waited for too long to seize his reward to give it up without a scrap. He is, still, a Zanu-PF man, and his party is adept at intimidation, thuggery and dirty tricks. International observers will deter the worst violence, but remote rural polling stations will be out of their ambit. Besides, despite hyperinflation, mass migration, record unemployment and international food aid being administered to what was once the bread basket of Africa, Zanu-PF retains a following and electoral appeal, and would probably poll ahead of the MDC in any case.

Mr Chamisa, like the late Morgan Tsvangirai before him, may force Zanu-PF into a runoff for the presidency, but there remains little doubt about who will win.

If Mr Mnangagwa does prevail, and the MDC is allowed (and allows itself) to form a competent voice of responsible opposition, Zimbabwe’s prospects could still improve. The reason is straightforward, and the same one that eventually drove Mr Mugabe into an imposed retirement – the economy. After years of brutal mismanagement, with the high profile blood-soaked seizure without compensation of white farms the emblem of that era – Zimbabwe had to change or starve. International sanctions added to the nation’s misfortunes, and it has simply run out of cash. Millions have migrated to South Africa, Botswana and further afield simply to make a living or escape political persecution, and the independent judiciary, media, army and police have become politicised. Yet even they could countenance Mr Mugabe’s chaotic policies no longer. They are unlikely now to invite a return to the same chaos under a different leader.

The great hope for Zimbabwe has rarely been its leadership, but its people and its natural resources. Zimbabwe has the advantage over many of its neighbours of never having fallen, quite, into civil war, and of having a recent past that was demonstrably prosperous and, mostly, peaceful and stable, excepting the worst racist excesses of successive regimes.

Their strongest allies can now be found in the international community, including regional superpower South Africa and economically expansionist China, who will invest the capital needed to rebuild the nation’s broken industry, agriculture and commerce. Corruption should be scaled back as a result as no business can operate perfectly in such an environment.

Other African states have been through worse even than Zimbabwe and rapidly repaired their economies, Rwanda being the outstanding recent example, albeit flawed. Zimbabwe’s next president should re-establish the national currency, de facto replaced by the US dollar, as the first step along the road to repairing the nation.