A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Recently, we had a bevy of leaders from southern Africa declare solemnly that Zimbabwe was not in a crisis situation. Today, we see that there has been a change of tune:

Calls by Zimbabwe's opposition for a national strike on Tuesday to protest against the authorities' failure to release election results met a lacklustre response, reflecting what even activists concede is the difficulty of taking on the state on the streets.

On the diplomatic front, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change had a boost when the ruling party in South Africa, the region's dominant power, distanced itself from the "quiet diplomacy" of the country's president, Thabo Mbeki.

The African National Congress said it regarded the situation in Zimbabwe as "dire" with "negative consequences" for the region and called for the release of the results "without delay". This was far stronger language than Mr Mbeki used at the weekend when after meeting Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, he suggested there was no crisis.

But the overall mood in the MDC remained bleak. On Tuesday night, 2½ weeks after polls closed, the state-run Zimbabwe Electoral Commission had still not re-leased the results of the presidential election, which independent projections and the MDC's figures based on official polling returns indicate Morgan Tsvangirai, MDC leader, won.

The article appears to vacillate between speculation that the populace will soon explode in outrage and resignation that the population will back down because, in the words of one dissident, "you cannot protest against AK-47's." It remains to be seen whether the people of Zimbabwe will fold before the efforts of the Mugabe government to steal the election. But it cannot be denied any longer that an attempt to steal the election is in fact taking place and that the Mugabe government appears to be increasingly confident in its ability to cheat the Zimbabwean people.

If this isn't a "crisis," I don't know what is.