Out of Africa

By the time you read this - at least, if you're in North America - Zimbabwe will likely know the results of their presidential, parliamentary and local elections that took place on Saturday. Understandably, there has been much anxiety and speculation over the electoral commission's decision to withhold results until first thing Monday morning.

Unless sitting (for the time being) president Robert Mugabe really is using the extra time to stuff the ballot boxes, the wait seems like a good indication that the election somehow went reasonably well. The most credible observers, a team from the South African Development Community (SADC), intially declared the vote to be "peaceful and credible." Let's hope the announcement of the results will be, too.