Some - though probably not many - Zimbabweans will go to the polls tomorrow to elect 26 senators to sit in the new second chamber created by President Robert Mugabe's government. The main interest in the election centres on how many of the 26 contested seats the deeply split opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) manages to win.

Having lost one presidential and two parliamentary elections since 2000, there is little stomach within the MDC for yet another electoral defeat. But many in the party, especially in Matabeleland where the MDC is the majority party, insist that an electoral boycott favoured by MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai would relinquish "political space" to Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party.