Kenyan journalist Larry Madowo, who is covering Tuesday’s United States elections for the British Broadcasting Corporation says the elections have been quite revealing for him because the same things that America has been lecturing Africa on appear to be happening right there.
“There are so many parallels between this US election and elections I have covered in Africa. There is talk of rigging, which is not a word that I’d ever thought that I would hear associated with an American election,” he told the New Yorker.
A Zimbabwean journalist said the US elections were almost like Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections. Opposition leader Nelson Chamisa insisted that he would win the elections unless they were rigged. He was so confident of winning that he said if his main rival, Emmerson Mnangagwa, polled even 5 percent of the vote he would give him his 18-year-old sister as a wife.
When he lost the election Chamisa refused to accept the result and continues to do so up to this day despite losing a Constitutional Court ruling.
Unlike Chamisa, however, Trump is the incumbent, but he is behaving like the opposition, talking about rigging and refusing to step down if the election does not go his way.
One American journalist said if this had been any other country, this would have been declared a coup.
And just like the Zimbabwean elections which erupted into violence a day after the polls, reports say that businesses in the US are getting ready for potential civil unrest after the elections.
According to the Business Insider:
- Retailers are spending tens of thousands of dollars as they prepare for potential civil unrest following Election Day.
- Entire shopping districts in some cities will be closed, while some retailers take extreme measures such as positioning snow plows to control pedestrian access or installing unbreakable window glass.
- Walmart this week removed firearms from its sales floors due to “civil unrest” after protests broke out in Philadelphia following the death of Walter Wallace Jr. The company quickly said the products would be back on the floors a day later.
Trump supporters are not likely to take things kindly if he loses while blacks will consider it a slap in the face if he wins.
One of the reasons why Trump is likely to win and why his supporters might take to the streets is that Trump is probably the first American president since the 1960s civil rights movement to openly support racism and to make whites feel that there is really nothing wrong with being racist.
“He has given the white racists the opportunity not to bottle up their racist feelings telling them it is okay to be racist. Other leaders have kept this racism bottled up pretending it does not exist when it does and is very real,” an observer said.
Voting for Trump will confirm this and this is not likely to go down well for those who marched with blacks and the #blacklivesmatter campaign following George Floyd’s death in May as it would be a clear demonstration that they were faking it.
Whoever wins the US elections, this will be a turning point for the United States – for good or for bad.
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