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Dear Mr President Robert Gabriel Mugabe
Rejoice Ngwenya
June 04, 2007

Sir, this is the second instance I have taken time off my active yet troubled life to write a letter to you. I want to put it on personal, local, regional and international record that I and the other six million adult Zimbabweans at home and abroad, have a compulsive desire for unreserved and total submission to your authority. But the price of this humble, yet unprecedented gesture is high - there has to be one hundred per cent consensus between us citizens and the SADC, the African Union, the Commonwealth, the United Nations, and the European Union, that your party, ZANU-PF, will have emerged a winner from utterly, absolutely, conclusively and beyond reasonable doubt free and fair municipal, parliamentary, presidential and senatorial elections in 2008.

Mr President, correct me if I am wrong. My point is that free and fair elections are not merely about losers conceding defeat, no, but both the victor and the vanquished having first agreed to the rules of the game.

Rule number one, sir, is that none of the contestants should set the rules. The reason why I have personally contested and challenged your party-s electoral legitimacy in the previous elections, Mr President, is that you have always emerged a winner out of a contest in which you determine the players, the spectators, the venue, the referee and the adjudication.

It is your man, Tobaiwa Mudede, who constructs and updates the voters- roll. It is your man, Patrick Chinamasa, who writes, passes electoral laws and regulations. Is it not your man, Augustine Chihuri, who deploys police details to 'look after and transport- ballot boxes? Need I remind you, Mr President, that the election commission is presided over by a man personally appointed by your office! When it comes to defining electoral boundaries, you appoint a confidant to manage the de-limitation process. In the past, your man, Mariyawanda Nzuwa had been given authority to 'direct- the elections. Supreme Court leader Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku has been under your personal supervision since the Constitutional Commission in 1998, while the main determinant of broadcast and press laws is none other than Tafataona Mahoso, your perennial and unashamedly public apologist. So you can see my point, sir, that to you the elections present an mirage of freeness, but to me they are a reality of typical unfairness!

Rule number two, all contestants must be allowed to communicate freely with their supporters, trainers, managers and sponsors. For the past 25 years, all political contestants that were not in one way or another aligned to ZANU-PF have routinely and systematically been prevented from campaigning. Laws and regulations have been made to prevent rallies. Your appointees have, with the passion of extremist religious zealots, either censored, regulated or manipulated opposition presentations in the public broadcaster and public press. Your supporters and police have blockaded roads and highways leading to venues of opposition public meetings. Posters have either been pulled down, or those distributing flyers arrested on frivolous charges. Mr President, seminars, workshops and public dialogue meetings organised by those that oppose your views have been regulated, banned or spied on. Opposition parties have not been able to freely train and deploy their election and polling agents.

Sir, it is your government that made the rules that no opposition party must be supported by funds from external strategic partners, yet your party, ZANU-PF, before, during and after the struggle, received material and financial support from people like Tiny Rowland, Muamar Gaddafi and the Chinese. Even as I write, on one hand, computers, tractors, maize and fertiliser are publicly distributed to your supporters in the guise of donations from Chinese as a way of electoral campaigning while on the other, your people slander and insult opposition members who talk to their friends in the West. Right now, it is more that just a rumour that all non-governmental and church organisations who do not pay routine homage to you are under threat of de-registration. Mr President, these are hypocritical double standards of the highest order. I want to put it in simple language, sir, that you fear fair competition. You are petrified by the thought of losing in a balanced contest. I am at loss as to why you resent, ignore or simply are oblivious of fair competition, Mr President, in a country that you yourself call democratic. It is your responsibility to prove to us that you are not afraid of fair competition in 2008.

Rule number three, Mr President, all contestants must be allowed free and unhindered access to the field of play. I have, in the past 25 years, witnessed opposition political candidates financially and physically prevented from presenting nomination papers. You party has been responsible for instigating some of the most crude and costly electoral registration procedures in the world. No opposition parties in Zimbabwe have been able to afford excessive monetary demands imposed on them by your government for participating in elections. There are numerous regulations for registration demanded in nomination courts presided over by your appointees. Even when opposition candidates manage to get their papers in order, they are harassed and physically prevented from presenting papers to your courts. Some, like a man named Albert Ndlovu, were almost killed a few metres from the court in Chegutu while your supporters, conveniently dressed in police uniforms, watched helplessly. Even during elections, those candidates that oppose you are physically prevented from going to voting and counting stations. Your government has persistently refused and prevented my twin brother and about three million of his colleagues based in South Africa, England, America and other countries from voting. These are Zimbabwean citizens that have both a moral and constitutional obligation to determine the political fate of their country. Yet employees in foreign missions and soldiers in foreign countries are allowed to vote. And even when they do, the votes are counted only in the presence of your protégés. Mr President, what kind of 'free and fair election- is that? And then thereafter, you actually claim that you have won. Surely you can do better than that!

Therefore, I want to put it this way sir. You, like the rest of Zimbabweans both at home and abroad, have a right to participate freely in elections. However, your privileged position as President of Zimbabwe is being abused to stifle competition. If you sir, want the citizens of this country, and the international community at large to respect [not fear] your authority and acclaim your legitimacy, your party, ZANU-PF, should submit itself to the universal rules of fair electoral competition. You sir, are an educated man, and highly literate. Just read the SADC norms, study the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and all protocols that define what fair electoral competition is.

In addition sir, for 2008, I propose that ALL laws and regulations that hinder free electoral competition be repealed, and that a truly independent electoral institution be given the authority and financial support to run the electoral process from voter registration to announcing the results. The current electoral institutions are disabled by your hypnotic influence, and that is not good for other contestants and democracy as a whole. Commonsense, sir.

My humble submission, Mr President, is that laws be changed to allow independent radio and television stations, newspapers and magazines to thrive in Zimbabwe, so that citizens can have access to views other than your own. I propose that every Zimbabwean citizen over the age of 18 years get an identity card, register and be allowed to freely vote from whichever part of the world they are. In civilised countries like Botswana, they term this alien phenomenon 'postal voting'. Sir, in 2008, just be a competitor like everybody else, and let an independent referee, linesman and match commissioner run the game. Anybody who has an interest - local, regional and international press, local, regional and international NGOs - must be allowed to watch the electoral game and adjudicate its freeness and fairness.

Mr President, let me lay it out straight - as long as you and your party ZANU-PF are defining the rules of this game, in April 2008, it is only your supporters and sympathisers who will acknowledge your victory. Your contribution to the history of political deliverance of this country will be erased, thus leaving a bad legacy for your children. South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Malawi, our very own neighbours, have institutions and regulations that define what free and fair elections should be like. These are your friends. Learn from them, sir, so that those you vanquish voluntarily accept your victory. Above all, I will personally encourage citizens to submit to your authority only if you have been universally certified to have won fairly. Why me? Imagine, Mr President, after the 2008 elections, if there were six million adult Zimbabweans who, like me, believe that you and your party-s victory would have been hollow and unfair? Six million unhappy, frustrated and hurt Zimbabwean adults? A very uncomfortable situation, sir, very uncomfortable.

Sincerely yours,
Rejoice Ngwenya

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