No such thing as a quiet Friday. BBC News reports that China has finally accepted defeat and recalled the An Yue Jiang (although This is Zimbabwe are still reporting it due in Angola today) – they’re labelling the decision “victory for civic society”:

Rights groups hailed the move as a major victory, a triumph of public opinion over political cynicism. It seems civil society is taking the lead, well ahead of national leaders, on the question of Zimbabwe.

In a rare show of force, African public opinion and civil organisations mobilised on a single issue to force action that politicians seemed reluctant to take.

Peter Alexander, the director for Sociological Studies at the University of Johannesburg, says the ship’s departure was a triumph for civil society: “I am amazed,” he said. “It is very impressive that such a concerted action could have such a concrete result.”

Nicole Fritz, of the Southern African Litigation Centre, which took the case to court, agrees: “The South African authorities have been driven by embarrassment in the face of what civil society has done.”

The An Yue Jiang affair is probably the clearest example of African civil society leading the agenda on Zimbabwe.

And for that, everyone involved can be proud.

Of course, things are still going on that people can be less proud of. The MDC’s Harare offices were raided again this morning, leading to the arrests of over 300 people including people from rural areas who were using the offices as a refuge – more details at New Zimbabwe, who are also reporting that the election recount in Zvimba North conveniently turned up a number of ballot boxes that hadn’t been included the first time around – apparently one polling station was overlooked. The additional votes weren’t enough to overturn the result though, and both the House of Assembly and Senate were retained by Zanu-PF (over the original results, the HoA vote was Zanu-PF +155, MDC/T +13, MDC/M -28; for the Senate, Zanu-PF +261, MDC/T +295)