On 29 March 2008, Zimbabwe’s ninth poll took place. Zanu PF felt insecure being in power, legitimised by only 47 and 19.5 per cent in the 2005 parliamentary and senate election, respectively. Following changes to the Constitution of Zimbabwe in September 2007, the electorate was asked to vote for a set of four political representatives for: president, parliament, senate and local government council. The 2008 socio-economic contexts showed that the electoral playing field and election processes and outcomes echoed excesses of previous flawed elections. The 29 March and 27 June 2008 elections were critical watershed moments in that while the March elections were the most peaceful (and even enjoyable) since the genesis of Zimbabwe’s mega-crisis in 2000, the June run-off will go down in history as the bloodiest since independence. The pre-poll arena for the harmonised elections had hallmarks of a rigged election, especially the use of state-financed patronage, poor voter education, the decrepit state of the voters’ roll and the violent pronouncements by members of the military-security sector, all of which skewed the playing field in favour of the incumbent regime.

Chapter 6 examines the particular role of justice institutions in the incarceration wave that has yielded such a dysfunctional and overpopulated system. Our analysis focuses on arrests done by police, criminal prosecution, and trials in order to assess the types of cases that end up in criminal convictions, the type of evidence used to convict, and the role played by defense lawyers. We examine the overreliance on flagrancy detention, police and prosecutor collusion with crime, and corruption. This chapter shows that by targeting the most visible crimes, prosecutors process the easy cases, and judges rarely require high standards of proof as evidence to convict.