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Staring a gift horse in the mouth
Grace Kwinjeh
June 18, 2008

http://gracekwinjeh.blogspot.com/2008/06/staring-gift-horse-in-mouth.html

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Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another? [Bertolt Brecht.1953]

In March 2008 Zimbabweans voted in the most peaceful election since independence, resulting in an unambiguous victory for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai. Three months later, the country is haemorrhaging from a massive and rising tide of political violence not seen since the state sponsored terror of the early 1980s. The ruling party and its supporters are responsible for the vast majority of the current attacks. As if to underscore his party-s public embrace of violence, President Mugabe now openly threatens to "wage war" beyond the June 27 Presidential run-off election, if his candidacy should be rejected by the people for a second time. Meanwhile the MDC government-elect, MDC party structures and much of the party-s leadership have been forced into hiding as they seek to convince voters of their right to select - and see installed in place - a president of their choice.

For SADC, the Zimbabwe conflagration has become the most comprehensive diplomatic failure in the region since the resumption of the Angolan war in the 1990s. But unlike Angola, the Zimbabwe crisis is one for which SADC, President Mbeki and the international community bear a central contributing responsibility. By pushing for secretly brokered power-sharing arrangements leading to a "government of national unity" (GNU), the international intervention in Zimbabwe has relegated hopes for a new democratic dispensation built on the foundations of the expressed popular will of Zimbabweans. By refusing to actively acknowledge the MDC-s electoral victory and insist on its recognition and acceptance by ZANU PF, regional leaders and the international community effectively ignored and silenced the democratic voice of the people. As a consequence, the MDC-s hard-won legitimate authority has been erased, and the way has been opened for ZANU PF to recover by the bullet the authority it had lost at the ballot box.

It is increasingly apparent that talk of a GNU has helped to accelerate the level of violence, not calm it; and has fostered political instability, rather than the smooth transition to a new governing order that Zimbabweans voted for in March.

This violent outcome of a proposed GNU strategy should not have been unexpected. ZANU PF-s violent riposte is reminiscent of the period immediately prior to Independence around the Lancaster House Conference, and even more so of the party-s violent campaign before the 1987 "Unity Accord" with the ZAPU opposition: indeed, it is a tried and tested tactic of ZANU PF to threaten and deploy intense violence as a strategic bargaining tool. Since independence the party has singularly distinguished itself among Zimbabwean political parties by demonstrating a capacity for - and indeed claiming the right to wage - mass violence in defense of its "national" interests. No longer heading the majority party, Robert Mugabe now cynically portrays violence as a means for defending the people from their mistaken choice.

This deeply cynical pathology is echoed more subtly in the GNU concept. Despite a clear rejection of ZANU PF under electoral conditions heavily tilted in that party-s favour, unity talks have been promoted as a means of bringing the former ruling party back into the centre of decision-making. Even though neither voters nor the MDC demanded this arrangement in March, the new government in waiting has come under enormous pressure to fall in line accordingly. Its leaders have repeatedly said that such an arrangement would deny the popular voice and reward anti-democratic, flagrantly illegal and often murderous behaviour - while only deferring, and certainly not solving, the problem of organising the transition to a new political order. It is indeed difficult to understand why those who previously promoted engagement with ZANU PF as a means of strengthening a deeply flawed electoral process, should now effectively reject that improved process and insist on power sharing terms with the author of electoral fraud and intimidation.

In contrast, it is clear that the promotion of a GNU is integral to the facilitation of an elite transfer of power which would vitiate the popular will of the electorate. This is why the idea of a GNU has been explicitly rejected by the leading membership-based civil society organisations in Zimbabwe, from the trade unions to human rights networks. These groups challenge the credibility and viability of a compromise that according to its proponents, would bring about some sort of "normalisation" of the political space without addressing the growing democratic deficit in Zimbabwe. For the Zimbabwean democratic movement, political normalisation requires before all else, recognition and acceptance of the expressed will of dominant social interests - not its circumvention through brokered elite pacting carried out under the threat of violence.

In Zimbabwe, there is abiding consternation over why ZANU PF and its militia were given the opportunity by SADC and the international community to ignore the electoral results in the first place. What would have happened if the election results - deemed legitimate by observers - had been recognised and enforced? And what would happen if a similarly free and fair process were enforced in the current second round, by insisting on the disarming of ZANU PF and its militia, and the confinement of the security forces to base? Have those mediating and promoting mediation raised these issues - the clearest and most profound obstacles to democratic practice in Zimbabwe in the current moment?

It is widely acknowledged that demilitarisation is a central precondition needed to advance a democratic outcome and ensure its consolidation in the medium term. Yet, the perpetration of violence has been treated as a negotiable right - not as an act which invalidates claims to the process of a democratic transition. Remarkably, it took 10 weeks of deteriorating conditions for SADC-s official mediator Thabo Mbeki to publicly raise his concerns about the spiralling violence. But even then he avoided commentary on responsibility, despite ample documented evidence heavily implicating ZANU PF and state security forces in commanding the terror. His spokesperson claims he is precluded from doing so by virtue of his position as mediator. However this is a hollow rationale in the face of open and mounting ZANU PF belligerence.

The absence of collective censure of violence and any pointed criticism by Mbeki has been seen by perpetrators of the violence as giving them a green light to continue employing these tactics to further their political ends. And for ZANU PF, with few political repercussions arising from the deployment of its violent supporters, there seems little incentive for abandoning this approach- and perhaps much to be gained from pursuing it. Robert Mugabe-s public declaration earlier this week that his party would go to war in the event of his defeat in the second round of voting was met with paralysing silence by Thabo Mbeki. The deployment of weapons and violence may be logistically difficult to confront: the deployment of words and threats is not.

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