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Shameful 'election'
Beatrice Mtetwa
June 22, 2008

It is less than a week until Zimbabweans go to the polls for the second time in four months, and this time I believe the chances that it will be a free and fair election are virtually zero.

As a lawyer, I spend my days defending civil society and opposition activists who have been arrested just for trying to campaign and engage in a political discourse that is taken for granted elsewhere.

It would be foolish not to be fearful. I have been beaten up twice, including last May when I was among a group of lawyers petitioning the Minister of Justice to stop the harassment of our profession.

Four of us were picked up by police, taken to an open space and severely beaten.

Recently, when I was defending Ian Key, an opposition MP-elect accused of inciting violence, we were followed by a van bearing the logo of Zanu PF, the ruling party. Luckily my client was able to shake them off.

I have learnt that my name is on a list of lawyers targeted for 're-education'. This is alleged to have been drawn up by the security forces, who dislike the fact that lawyers are exposing what they are up to by going to court.

Some lawyers have been forced to leave the country.

What I'm doing is not political - if the security forces arrest political activists, they are as entitled to a lawyer as anybody else.

Their intention is to force the lawyers to leave but I won't be forced out.

The treatment of lawyers is, however, indicative of the way the government views this electoral process and its determination to make sure that the ruling party's candidate, Robert Mugabe, wins, no matter what.

It is a tragedy that such a beautiful country has been reduced to this.

The opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai, has been prevented from campaigning.

State-controlled media have refused to take its advertisements or give it coverage. Police bans and constant harassment have made it virtually impossible for the opposition to hold rallies, while its leaders have been arrested.

If Secretary General Tendai Biti, facing the death penalty on charges of treason, and one of Zimbabwe's most well-known advocates, Eric Matinenga, an MP-elect in the MDC, can be locked up, surely the ordinary man on the street must think: 'How safe am I?'

Then there is the violence. We've had murders, torture and arson on a scale that is unbelievable for such a short space of time.

The latest figures put the number of opposition supporters murdered at close to 80, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Yet although most of the perpetrators are known, particularly in rural areas, nobody has been arrested.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), which is supposed to be an independent body overseeing the election process, acts as if it is an extension of the ruling party.

It has not conducted any voter education and has also stopped civil groups from doing so.

The result is that rural voters have virtually no access to any election material, other than that of the ruling party.

Meanwhile, the number of independent election observers has been drastically cut.

For the first election on March 29, the Zimbabwe Law Society, of which I am president, had 50 lawyers accredited by ZEC. This time we have been allowed just five.

The independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network, which played a key role in limiting abuses in the first round, has had just 500 observers accredited. For the March election it had about 9,000 observers, and even that was not enough.

However, new accreditations have been given to groups sympathetic to the ruling party, such as the war veterans.

Then there is the issue of polling officers, many of whom were civil servants. Since the March election at least 120 have been locked up for alleged electoral fraud, so who would want to volunteer to do it now? Those who do so will be far too scared to expose any electoral irregularities.

There is no point in running to the courts for relief. The judiciary in Zimbabwe has not been known for its independence at the best of times but now that it has seen lawyers beaten and locked up just for trying to enforce basic rights for their clients, it fears the same can happen to judges.

Sometimes I wonder if it is fair to charge people, knowing you are not going to get any justice.

But sometimes you get lucky. We still have some magistrates who apply the law. Not all have been bribed with 4x4s and farms but, of course, they are frightened.

One magistrate had to run away after his car was burnt and he was threatened by war veterans for refusing to give bail to Zanu PF supporters.

All of this is being done with one aim - to secure the ruling party candidate as the president.

If you can frighten suspected opposition supporters into running away from the areas where they are registered to vote, it means the opposition will have fewer people voting for it. If you beat up opposition supporters and scare others, it will have the same effect.

Meanwhile, even in middle-class areas of Harare, groups of war veterans and Zanu PF youths have become a regular sight on the streets.

Their intention is to intimidate but I've lived through this for so long I just take it for granted. What else would you expect from a 22-year-old so-called veteran of a war that ended in 1979?

In the past two weeks the economic situation has deteriorated at an almost unbelievable rate. A loaf of bread yesterday cost five billion Zimbabwean dollars - that is a quarter of the monthly salary of the average person.

So if the ruling party comes along with bags of maize and maize meal and tells people to go and vote for it, people will do so because they think it is the only way of getting food, particularly now that the government has stopped food distribution by independent humanitarian groups.

Just buying a slice of cheese is a big issue but I am lucky that I travel a bit so I am able to bring food back home with me.

My daughter is supposed to be going to college next year but I don't know how I will pay for it. At my office we have to revise the staff salaries virtually every week because their transport costs go up every two days.

Even other African leaders are now starting to say enough is enough. But it is too little, too late.

They have allowed this situation to escalate by not being firm enough with Zanu PF.

African electoral observers have begun to arrive but the only place we see them is on TV.

It carries no weight for the head of the Pan-African Parliament's observer mission to say they have heard about the violence. He should be saying they have seen it with their own eyes.

What, then, is the point of the opposition contesting this election? In the past few days there has been speculation that it may pull out.

But to have come so far and then give up would, I believe, be a mistake.

The ruling party will say it won unopposed and it is the legitimate government.

It will be irrelevant whether the elections were free and fair. It would be like handing them victory on a platter.

People would also think the MDC cannot be trusted. You die for it, you'll be tortured, you'll be raped and, at the end of the day, they pull out and leave you in the lurch.

I won't be voting on Friday - I was born in Swaziland so I'm among the foreign-born Zimbabweans who were disenfranchised by the government in 2005.

But I believe that what I am doing is important. By litigating and forcing the state to respond it means there is a record of what is going on.Things are bad now but if Zanu PF does claim victory, I fear it would literally be the end of life as we know it.

Yet I have to be hopeful. It is the only thing that keeps us going.

*Beatrice Mtetwa is president of the Zimbabwe Law Society.

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