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Who won Zimbabwe-s election?
Andrew Meldrum
April 01, 2005

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=3&debateId=130&articleId=2400

Andrew Meldrum, in Pretoria after Robert Mugabe expelled him, reports on a decisive moment for Zimbabwe’s people – and his own intense love-affair with the country.

As I follow the results of Zimbabwe’s crucial parliamentary elections on 31 March, I am swept by wave after wave of conflicting emotions.

Excitement and exhilaration take hold at the early lead – thirty-one victories in the first thirty-nine seats declared – won by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Maybe democracy and the people’s choice will win the day and lead Zimbabwe forward to a brighter future! Then anger and disappointment set in with the realisation that President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party will almost certainly take the vast majority of rural seats, where its traditional support has undoubtedly been boosted by a grossly inflated voters’ roll and partisan administration of voting and counting.

Pride swells up when I think of how brave supporters of the MDC have been to hold on to so many seats despite enduring five years’ systematic assault: state violence, torture and induced hunger. Thousands of people in the cities and rural areas have risked everything for their belief in democracy – that their votes can bring a peaceful, democratic change in Zimbabwe.

Then, bitterness and cynicism set in when I hear the leaders of the South African observer mission and the mission of the fourteen-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) give blithe assurances that Zimbabwe’s elections were generally free, fair and credible. I know they have been presented with documentation of violence, of the state refusing food to suspected opposition supporters, of irregularities in voter registration. I know their endorsements of Zimbabwe’s charade of elections is determined by their political bosses back in South Africa, not by anything they witnessed on the ground in Harare and Bulawayo.

Finally, I am taken by a bittersweet feeling, an appreciation of being part of the turbulent flow of the history of southern Africa.

A Zimbabwean rollercoaster
None of these feelings are new to me. I experienced this same rollercoaster, wild highs of optimism followed by dashing crashes of disappointment, during Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections in June 2000. The pattern repeated itself in the presidential elections in March 2002.

But those two election-related emotional odysseys I experienced while in Zimbabwe and very much a part of the country. Now I am in exile, thrown out by the Mugabe government in 2003. Though I am following events very closely from neighbouring South Africa, I am only too aware that I am not in the Zimbabwe I had made my home.

I had lived and worked as a journalist in Zimbabwe for thirteen years, since the country achieved independence and majority rule in 1980. I fell under the spell of its liberation and racial reconciliation and its impressive improvements in the health and education of the vast majority of its citizens. I believed Robert Mugabe was a wise and benevolent, if inscrutable, leader.

Years later I came to view Mugabe in a more critical light. The Matabeleland massacres of 1983-85 – in which Mugabe crushed dissent by sending the army on a bloody campaign where an estimated 10-20,000 Ndebele civilians were killed – made me aware that he was driven by the need for power and determined to stamp out opposition, no matter what the cost.

My perceptions of Mugabe shifted, but my love of Zimbabwe – the people and the land – grew. In consequence, my role as a journalist changed. Instead of championing the improvements gained by majority rule, I found myself duty bound to report on human rights abuses, state torture, economic mismanagement and blatant corruption. I, like many other journalists, worked to expose those injustices in the hope that they would stop, that the suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans would be halted and that the country would return to stability and prosperity.

My journalistic work was part of the larger effort to keep Zimbabwe’s democracy alive. It put me in the line of fire of Robert Mugabe’s government.

Soon after the 2002 presidential election Mugabe’s supporters inflicted a wave of violence against the opposition. More than ten MDC members were killed. When I reported on the post-election violence I recounted the grisly story of a mother who was beheaded by Zanu-PF militia. Her husband had come to Harare and told the story.

It turned out the husband was lying; his wife died of Aids, not political violence. I was arrested, held in jail for two days and put on trial for two months. Under Zimbabwe’s harsh anti-press laws I faced two years in jail for "publishing a falsehood". In the end I was acquitted. The magistrate ruled I had acted as a responsible journalist.

The Mugabe government immediately tried to deport me. Once again, the courts ruled in my favour, saying that as the holder of a valid permit of permanent residence, I had the right to live and work in Zimbabwe.

I continued my work for nearly a year, writing about state violence and torture against members of the MDC, ranging from members of parliament and lawyers to township residents and rural farmers. In May 2003 state agents abducted me, held me for twelve hours and forced me onto an airplane which took me out of the country.

Political and moral victory
I was the last foreign correspondent to work in Zimbabwe. The Mugabe government tried to silence me in order to frighten Zimbabwean journalists working for the foreign and local press. It hasn’t worked, even though the Mugabe government closed four newspapers and arrested more than 100 journalists. But those brave and dedicated professionals will not be silenced, and neither will I.

So today, I am following events intensely as the votes in the 2005 parliamentary election are counted. I believe both sides will win. Mugabe’s Zanu-PF will most likely win a two-thirds majority in parliament, thanks to the thirty seats that the president appoints and the widespread rigging believed to have taken place in the rural areas.

The MDC will also win a moral victory by successfully defending a large proportion of its seats after five years of intimidation and violence.

Such an outcome will leave Zimbabwe in a political standoff between the two sides. The stalemate is unlikely to produce solutions to the country’s pressing political and economic problems. Zimbabweans will have to work together to find new ways out of their country’s crisis. The combative, angry and antagonistic Robert Mugabe shows little sign of wanting to unite his country. He also seems determined to encourage the international community to remain indifferent to his people’s plight. Will the world’s governments and international institutions tolerate the continuing degradation of Zimbabweans’ democracy, basic rights and livelihoods? It is time for them also to choose.

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