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Another stillborn poll
Tendai Chabvuta
April 01, 2008

Developments in Zimbabwe in the past three days have caused great anxiety for Zimbabweans who would have wished to see President Mugabe defeated by Morgan Tsvangirai or Simba Makoni. The delayed announcement of the presidential poll results has raised fears that ZANU PF has been working with the compromised Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to alter the results in their favour. Moreover, so many post election scenarios have been permutated and highly respectable analysts have predicted a situation where Mugabe will not necessarily win the election but will 'emerge- as the winner due to rigging. The cache on this one is that Robert Mugabe will either be pronounced by ZEC as the winner even after having lost the election most probably to Morgan Tsvangirai or he will win the election after having stolen the ballot. Whichever way it will go, Mugabe will not leave state house through an electoral defeat and he is going to be the illegitimate President of Zimbabwe for the next 5 years if Zimbabweans do not do something to put an end to the madness.

A number of reasons on why Robert Mugabe will not cede power if he loses this election have already been posited in other fora before. However, it makes sense to revisit some of them again in light of the botched - up processes that the ZEC has prevailed over since 29 March and the now clear signs that Robert Mugabe could have lost the election but is still going to unlawfully declare himself duly elected as the president.

1. The first and very simplistic argument is that Robert Mugabe does not want to leave the presidency. If he had any intentions of doing so, he would not have gone to the length and breadth of imposing himself on the ZANU PF party as the presidential candidate for these elections. He could have left power to Joyce Mujuru, Emmerson Mnangagwa or Simba Makoni at the time the succession debate was heating up in ZANU PF. He did not do that and that is reason enough for him to not to want to respect the will of the people in the just ended election as recommended by the SADC EOM.
2. Robert Mugabe as an individual divorced from the ZANU PF system has personalised and pitched the stakes in these elections at a very high level where defeat is not an option. Mugabe will not want to be humiliated by an electoral defeat handed down to him by Morgan Tsvangirai, a long time nemesis who he has little respect for intellectually and in many other aspects. Thus because of this he will stay on as the President of Zimbabwe whether he has lost or not.
3. Mugabe has pitched this election as a personal battle between him and a number of people he regards as his foes. These enemies of the 'Zimbabwean cause and struggle- on the domestic scene are people like Morgan Tsvangirai -' the Western puppet- and Simba Makoni- 'a deserter, betrayer and a stooge of business people in Western countries-. Internationally, almost everyone has now become his enemy but chief among these are the British, the Americans, Swedes and a whole host of other countries in the European Union if not all. Thus, Mugabe will irresponsibly flex his muscle in the next few days and show to all his so - called foes that he is still very strong, commands great support in Zimbabwe, and that their money cannot influence or change anything in Zimbabwean politics especially in terms of cutting short his presidential incumbency.
4. The threat of being hauled before domestic or international courts in a process of seeking transitional justice is not something any dictator would fathom even in their scariest of nightmares. Recent examples of what has happened to Charles Taylor, Slobodan Milosevic and a few other leaders who have gone on to lead miserable lives in exile after being deposed from power definitely keeps tolling for Robert Mugabe and his cronies in ZANU PF. Thus as long as the threat of prosecution and being held accountable keeps hovering on Mugabe-s head and his cronies without any sense of what will happen to them when the MDC led Tsvangirai comes into power he will cling on to power even in the event that he has lost the election.
5. The service chiefs in Zimbabwe and the CIO have made it clear in previous elections that they will not salute any other leader except Robert Mugabe. The SADC EOM has noted that the service chiefs have said these things in their own personal capacities and thus the utterances could not have had the effect of influencing how people think politically or were to vote. However, what is clear is that these security chiefs have done this with the greatest of impunity and they will not be censored by anyone.The composition of the top security chiefs is full of people who have dirty hands and could be prosecutable in a new government. They know that they are safe with Mugabe as the leader of Zimbabwe because they will not be held accountable for crimes committed by their juniors through their direct commands and even themselves. Mugabe is fully aware of this situation and he knows he has the full backing of the service chiefs not necessarily because they support him but because they know they are safe from being held accountable under his rule. The service chiefs will not stage a coup in Zimbabwe. SADC, although discredited to a large extent in the way it has handled Zimbabwe will not tolerate a coup, and neither will the South Africans want such a situation especially with their world cup preparations so well underway. Thus Mugabe knows he can declare himself duly elected even when he has lost the election and the service chiefs will not raise a finger. Anyone who will brook any kind of Kenya scenario will receive the full wrath of the law. The 1998 Food Riots, September 2006 for the ZCTU, March 11 2007 for the Save Zimbabwe Campaign and a whole host of other politically motivated and organised incidences need not be reminded to Zimbabweans.
6. The economic situation will definitely work in Mugabe-s favour in the short term if he loses this election. The situation is quite bad that even if Mugabe were to be declared winner today by virtue of a stolen ballot, people would go back to their miserable complaining selves and pray that God takes care of the situation. Zimbabweans unfortunately are concerned about day-to-day issues such as access to cash, food and other amenities. Thus if anyone thought that Zimbabweans would revert to a Kenya style situation then they should think again and note that this is most unlikely to happen. Mugabe through his security agents and analysts knows this situation. As noted by one political scientist, ZANU PF is a risk taking entity that will go to any length to get its way around situations of this nature. It is clear that ZANU PF takes Zimbabweans for granted and it is fully aware that people in the urban areas are the most troublesome. ZANU PF will use the police, CIO and anything at their disposal if anyone were to move from the stay safe zone that Zimbabweans have put themselves into.
7. The international community is probably tired by now of the Zimbabwe question though they might still have huge concerns. What will most likely happen is that the SADC, AU and those members of NAM will realign and urge Zimbabweans to work together. Those from the Western countries will stop at condemning Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF and maybe tighten the sanctions already imposed on Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe will then become one of those pariah states such as Ethiopia, Somalia and or the DRC and people will sort of shy away from it. Mugabe is fully aware of this, he knows that the longer this issue drags on, the more wear and tear will be caused to the international community, civil society, opposition political parties and any aggrieved Zimbabweans. The noise from the international community will not necessarily push him away after a stolen victory and he will thus remain the president of Zimbabwe.
8. Mugabe has so much confidence in his judiciary and security agents. He is most probably more comfortable at this moment with a situation where the result can be contested and the MDC will take the matter to the courts and a repeat of 2002 will be done again. The opposition will go to court and the issue will drag on and on until he dies in power or the matter lapses with another election. The international community will keep mediating and tightening the sanctions, SADC will keep vacillating, Zimbabweans will keep having more 'Save Zimbabwe Campaigns- and Robert Mugabe will still be the President of Zimbabwe.

The other dimensions include issues to do with how the election has been handled. Issues to do with vote buying, the supplementary voters roll, postal ballots and the huge numbers of people who were turned away from the polls still pose a worrying trend in how the Presidential election results will come out. Up until now, Zimbabwe is not yet clear on how many people were turned away from voting because they were either aliens, didn-t have the correct ID documents, or their names did not appear in the voters roll even though they registered and inspected their names on the voters roll. Taking from the fact that in 2002, Mugabe won by a slim majority of close to 300, 000 votes, the numbers of people sent away; postal ballots which were not monitored; ghost voters and the irregularity of the supplementary voters roll, a thorough investigation would be required as a matter of urgency to see how this will influence the figures for Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai.

Zimbabwe should not run away from the fact that Mugabe and ZANU PF still command some respect and loyalty to certain quarters of the population because of one reason or the other. Thus the votes that they are getting (ZANU PF and Robert Mugabe) now cannot all be attributed to violent coercion. The system has been well oiled by state resources, propaganda and a lot of other things. Thus, Mugabe will get 'genuine- votes that would not necessarily come from any rigging processes. This will then aid in legitimising his stay in power and create serious problems for the opposition.

Zimbabweans now need to brace for another 5 years with Robert Mugabe as President. The most likely scenario is that the MDC and ZANU PF will win a fair share of the House of Assembly seats but no one party will necessarily have a vetoing majority. ZANU PF will make sure that it has a simple but very slight majority so as to make them be able to pass legislation to enable them to rule. The MDC will not be able to veto any of these and the ruinous governance will continue. Furthermore and more importantly, Mugabe will not want a situation where the MDC can impeach him. Thus, he will make sure that no one has the vetoing majority in parliament.

What is obvious of course is that Mugabe does not want to be humiliated by Simba Makoni or Morgan Tsvangirai. The issue of the run - off although much touted as one of the most likely possibilities is plagued by serious challenges for the opposition. A run off will clearly give Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF time to regroup and strategise. Robert Mugabe however, will not entertain the vocabulary of run - offs, as it will simply perpetuate the humiliation that he is desperate to deal with and exterminate. Robert Mugabe is simply going to emerge as the winner with the requisite 50+1 majority and therein a leader for Zimbabwe will be duly elected.

Therein lies Zimbabwe-s biggest political quagmire. The time is now or never for civil society and the opposition to jointly map a way forward in terms of swiftly responding and handling the regime that had been scuttled but has now unhappily started regrouping. The reasons attributed to Mugabe above are personal to him and should not be allowed to hold close to 51.8% of the will of the Zimbabwean people to ransom.

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