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Lincoln, the nation’s 16th president, served between 1861 and 1865. Lincoln was said to have been the illegitimate son of an African man, according to Leroy’s findings. Lincoln had very dark skin and coarse hair and his mother allegedly came from an Ethiopian tribe. His heritage fueled so much controversy that Lincoln was nicknamed “Abraham Africanus the First” by his opponents.

Tomorrow the 4th of November 2008, Obama will be elected the 44th President of the United States. Some say this makes him the first Black President of the United States others say no. Obama Wouldn’t Be First Black President [EDITOR'S NOTE]

There is growing evidence and realisation by Zimbabweans that the ‘ruling’ Zanu PF party does not have the moral basis to extend their rule even if they ‘win’ the next run off election. Those who back Zanu PF and are true to themselves should be reminded that protracted one party rule has the effect of creating resistance on the minds of the ruled especially when the leadership becomes lethargic, corrupt and irresponsible. In Zimbabwe’s case the people generally feel neglected, abandoned and betrayed in extreme cases. The people’s distrust of government is growing everyday and inevitably this is good news for the opposition leader.

The international corporate media including the BBC could also be spoiling things for MDC and Zimbabweans in particular. They should avoid over sensationalization which may exacerbate the situation in the country. Their increasingly antagonistic approach could be more damaging to the political negotiation process. However, as much as it is important for the foreign media to put Zimbabwe on the international spotlight, sometimes they exaggerate the crisis. Of late there has been a tendency by BBC to show horrific scenes of situations which have little bearing to the current crisis. We continue to see television footage of events that happened in 2000 at the height of land seizures as if it’s happening today. What the foreign corporate media is reporting on Zimbabwe today is exactly what Mugabe wants. He enjoys responding to vitriolic attacks and even gets stronger and more relentless when put in a position to defend what he believes to be colonialist or neo-colonialist agendas.

City election officials said they were convinced that there was nothing sinister to account for the inaccurate initial counts, and The Times's review found a handful of election districts in the city where Mrs. Clinton received zero votes in the initial results. "It looked like a lot of the numbers were wrong, probably the result of human error," said Marcus Cederqvist, who was named executive director of the Board of Elections last month. He said such discrepancies between the unofficial and final count rarely affected the raw vote outcome because "they're not usually that big."

In mature democracies elsewhere and even in some young democracies in Africa, elections are the central institution of democratic representative governments. Why? Because, in a democracy, the authority of the government derives solely from the consent of the governed. The fundamental rationale for translating that consent into governmental authority is the holding of free and fair elections. This is contrary to staged managed elections held by dictatorships and one-party governments to give their rule the aura of legitimacy in the face of public decent. In such elections, there may be only one candidate or a list of candidates, with no credible alternative choices. Such elections may offer several candidates for each office, but ensure through intimidation or rigging that only the government-sanctioned candidate is chosen. These are not democratic elections but a mere academic process of legitimising autocratic and repressive regimes.