Zimbabwe election: disputes as usual

 a new elected government, opposition yells fraud, counter story is that the USA/West is trying to manipulate the opposition, and the elephant in the room: What did China do behind the scenes?

I congratulate President Emmerson Mnangagwa on his re-election. I wish him and the people of Zimbabwe well for the upcoming term.

— Cyril Ramaphosa 🇿🇦 (@CyrilRamaphosa) August 28, 2023

🟡Dear @ZECzim,

You have consistently denied summoning polling officers to the command center for the signing of new V.11 forms. However, to expose your dishonesty, our team was deployed this afternoon to Nyika, where they witnessed the opening of ballot boxes in the absence of… pic.twitter.com/yGpCOhSX6s

— Citizens' Coalition for Change (@CCCZimbabwe) August 28, 2023

China's official news story LINK

and they say in other articles that China is willing to help the government, (but not so much the west who are suspicious and cautious about helping).

Background: Article from the Economist 12 22 about China building a surveillence state in Zimbabwe.

most of the article is behind a paywall, but here is how it starts:

Registering to vote in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, isn’t easy. The only registration centre is two bus journeys from the most populous suburbs. Nationwide there are just 71 voter-registration centres, or one for every 216,000 people (though some mobile ones are operating ahead of a general election next year). And this is not the only worry. Since 2018 Zimbabwe has collected fingerprints, photos, addresses and phone numbers to clean up the voters’ roll, which was reportedly full of “ghost voters”. This frightens many Zimbabweans, especially those belonging to the minority Ndebele ethnic group, much of which is concentrated near Bulawayo. In 1983 some 20,000 mostly Ndebele people were massacred by the army. Emmerson Mnangagwa, now the president, was head of the security services at the time. Now, people fear data collection “is a way to re-identify and target us,” says Rodwin Sibanda of the Habakkuk Trust, an ngo in Bulawayo.

China Projects blog has an article about Chinese projects in Zimbabwe: it's the mines, stupid.

China is Zimbabwe’s biggest foreign investor and kept the nation afloat amid Western sanctions, but is now estimated to control 90% of Zimbabwe’s mining industry (with the largest lithium reserves in Africa) and helps keep the economically disastrous Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in government.

Over the years, Chinese interests have been a power behind the throne — once again, ZANU-PF triumphed in national elections last week; once again, amid accusations of rigging the system — with a hand in making and breaking its leaders.