Post-election violence in Kenya is creating pre-election nervousness among Zimbabwe's voters ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections in March, and people are beginning to stockpile food in the event of any possible unrest.

Donald Dombo, a government employee, said he saw most of his "colleagues in the civil service starting to hoard food and firewood in their homes in case the Kenyan syndrome of violence spreads to Zimbabwe after the elections".

He told IRIN that, "I am planning to take my family to the countryside because I fear that if there are to be any violent demonstrations, then they would be held in urban areas."

The scheduled elections will take place at a time when international donor agencies have predicted more than a third of Zimbabwe's population, or 4.1 million people, would require emergency food assistance, so food hoarding would likely add pressure to the country's already acute food shortages.

Zimbabwe is suffering the world's highest inflation rate, officially cited at 8,000 percent, but estimated by independent economists to be running at about 25,000 percent.

President Robert Mugabe, 83, who has been in power since Zimbabwe won its independence from Britain in 1980, has been nominated as the ruling ZANU-PF party's candidate for the presidency; the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, (MDC) remains divided.

Police commissioner Augustine Chihuri warned against any political violence, before, during and after the elections at a function on Tuesday for Zimbabwean police officers seconded to UN duties during the electoral period.

"Let those who want to cause violence be warned that a chaotic situation will not be allowed. Let Zimbabwe not emulate what we see elsewhere, getting power through violent means. I am saying this because we are approaching elections," he said.

"It is disturbing to read about the huge number of lives being lost not only in Africa but in other countries around the world," Chihuri said, apparently referring to Kenya, where more than 500 people have been killed since the disputed 27 December election.

Talks on a knife edge

Talks between Mugabe's ZANU-PF and opposition parties, sponsored by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), were in danger of being derailed after the MDC's founding president and leader of one of the party's factions, Morgan Tsvangirai, accused the government of reneging on an agreed transitional constitution to be implemented before elections.

In return, opposition parties did not oppose a constitutional amendment increasing the number of elected legislators from 120 to 210 and reducing the presidential term from six to five years, or a clause stipulating that should the newly elected president be unable to complete his term in office, parliament would sit as an electoral college to elect a new head of state.

The composition of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), which overseas the electoral process, was part of the agreement. "An unhelpful development has begun to creep in and we are deadlocked on key issues that should enable us to cross the bridge into a new era. ZANU-PF has begun to backtrack on some of these agreed points and is going it alone," Tsvangirai said in a statement to IRIN.

Tsvangirai said the concessions were made in the spirit of the talks and with the expectation that this would be reciprocated in the reconstitution of the ZEC, and that elections would be held under a new transitional constitution, agreed to by both the ruling party and the MDC's two factions. Such an eventuality would have delayed the constitutionally scheduled March elections later this year.

But at the recently held ZANU-PF extraordinary congress, which endorsed Mugabe as ZANU-PF's presidential candidate, Mugabe said, "Let me repeat, elections will be held in March as per our constitution. If any political parties are not ready for elections then that is their problem."

Tsvangirai told IRIN: "We settled on a transitional constitution, following assurances that the agreement would be implemented before the next election, but ZANU-PF is now against the spirit and content of that agreement, insisting instead that the transitional constitution can only be implemented after the election. That is unacceptable."

False election

Tsvangirai said despite agreement that an independent electoral commission would delineate new constituency boundaries, register voters and prevent military, police and intelligence personnel from occupying key electoral positions, the government had appointed senior officials to head the ZEC and had ordered them to mark new constituency boundaries without consulting opposition parties.

"Mugabe and ZANU-PF want a false election and if we become part of it we will become a danger to ourselves," Tsvangirai said.
Retired army officer and chairman of the ZEC, George Chiweshe, told the state-controlled newspaper, the Sunday Mail, that the electoral commission had completed the delimitation of ward and constituency boundaries throughout the country.

"What is left is to polish up the preliminary report, which we will soon present to the president," Chiweshe told the Sunday paper. "The focus is on the elections being held in March, as this is when the presidential election will be held."

Asked whether the exercise could have waited for the completion of the SADC negotiations, Chiweshe said: "But we don't work like that. We simply consider the law, and we know that the harmonisation of the elections has been captured in the law accordingly. If any changes are to be made, they should be reflected in the law."

The SADC talks are being brokered by South African President Thabo Mbeki, who was mandated by the SADC in March 2007 to find a solution to Zimbabwe's economic and political decline.