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Africa verdict will be pivotal
Comment from Business Day (SA)
By Diana Games & Greg Mills
March 02, 2005

http://www.zwnews.com/print.cfm?ArticleID=11350

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nowhere is this more true than with Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections, scheduled for March 31. With just under a month to go, it seems the ruling Zanu PF has snookered the region again, with the electoral landscape looking worse than in 2000 and certainly not conducive to a free and fair election. This is clear to everyone except, it seems, regional leaders, who are doing their best to convince themselves and everyone else that President Robert Mugabe is acting in good faith. Over the years, no one has come to expect much from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) - but its protocol, Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections, was impressive. Region watchers believed that it might be a new start, particularly with Mauritius, a no-nonsense country, in charge. But alas, this has not proved to be the case. Zimbabwe has already violated a wide range of provisions in the protocol and nothing has been said.

Mugabe’s few gestures towards electoral reform, made to avoid censure at the Mauritius summit where the protocol was signed, seem to have been offered up to obscure what would happen next - further skewing of the electoral process in favour of the government and a greater clampdown on freedoms. A "new" electoral commission has been established, but it is chaired by a pro-government judge appointed by Mugabe. For the first time, soldiers and policemen will act as election officials. Election observers must be accredited by a committee dominated by nominees of cabinet ministers and the president, and only people invited by a minister or the Electoral Supervisory Commission - dominated by government appointees - will be eligible for accreditation. The opposition has to apply for permission to hold campaign meetings in order not to fall foul of the Public Order and Security Act, one of the country’s most repressive pieces of legislation. Opposition parties are forbidden to have foreign funding and are not deemed eligible for government funding. Only government-licensed journalists and publications may report events. Nearly 2-million "ghost" voters have been found on the voters’ roll and the military has been involved in the demarcation of electoral areas, which has seen the elimination of three opposition seats and three new ones created in Zanu PF strongholds.

Less than a month before the poll, Harare has not issued invitations to election observers. The SADC protocol requires invitations to be made 90 days before the poll to allow for adequate preparation of a regional team. The much applauded protocol, in its first real test, has been violated. Regional leaders have been disempowered by their own protocol which, like the African peer review mechanism, relies on the integrity of government signatories to abide by it and contains no punitive or enforcement measures. The short-term future of Zimbabwe depends on whether the March 31 poll is declared free and fair - not necessarily by the international community, which does not seem to have the power to change events in Zimbabwe much, but by African countries, many of which have provided a bulwark against change there. No matter what the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and international teams might think, the African "green light" is crucial in providing Mugabe and Zanu PF with the legitimacy they crave to perpetuate their rule by whatever means necessary. As with the presidential election three years ago, it is difficult to envisage a circumstance in which the African teams will not close ranks around the ruling party. South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, in the face of well-published evidence to the contrary, has already intimated that conditions look acceptable for elections to occur.

This assessment ignores the overall worsening of the political and economic environment inside Zimbabwe. Any concessions Mugabe has made have been overshadowed by the tightening of laws governing elections, the role of civil society and the media. Some economic recovery may be possible under the "close ranks" election scenario, but it will in the main be dislocated from non-African assistance, except for burgeoning Chinese economic interests. But this outcome will depend, too, on what response the MDC adopts. Zimbabwe’s opposition faced a dilemma: if they had chosen not to participate in the elections, they would have been labelled spoilers and lost relevance; if they did, they risked legitimising an apparently inevitably fraudulent process. But this is not a zero-sum game. Now it has confirmed its participation, the ball is firmly in the court of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his colleagues. heir key asset and political leverage is the legitimacy that they will accord to the process or not. This, in turn, depends on how the party handles itself and its campaign in the weeks before, and especially following, the election.

The MDC has to learn to play to its strengths and highlight the comparative weaknesses of Zanu PF. These strengths include sound, youthful and pragmatic leadership; a culture of nonviolence; broad-based support; and sensible policies. The MDC has to offer a reasonable alternative to the internecine, eccentric, egocentric and increasingly costly behaviour of the ruling party. This demands a clear and continuous articulation of its core principles of inclusiveness, not elitism; economic recovery, not continued collapse; and popular support, not party centrism. Presuming the election follows the predictable path of a hollow Zanu PF victory, most interesting is the MDC’s role afterwards. It has a number of possible strategies. First, the "obstructionist parliamentarian" model, fighting for its cause from inside parliament. Even though this may find favour with MDC members concerned about their livelihood in the parliamentary gravy train, this role is likely to serve simply to grant a stamp of approval to Mugabe, the election process and Zanu PF misrule. A second option is not to enter parliament and publicly contest the election result, using party structures and its union base to mobilise mass protests - the "Ukrainian option". But the MDC has hitherto shown little capacity or stomach for this type of action, and it is uncertain whether Tsvangirai can make the leap to mass insurrection. Of course, the Zimbabwean people have the power of change in their hands. But there is also a heavy responsibility on the shoulders of SADC countries to show proper commitment to their own principles of African democracy in order not to render them valueless.

*Games is director of Africa@Work; Dr Mills is the national director of the South African Institute of International Affairs

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