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Zim election 2011: Ready, set, go?
Jack Pedzisai Zaba
June 24, 2010

The Global Political Agreement (GPA) is gradually moving towards its second anniversary with its chassis structurally still in shape but the wheels have already lost alignment as they are pulling into different directions. Admittedly the great citizens of this country have been afforded some sigh of relief and an opportunity to recover economically since the formation of the existing compromise government in Zimbabwe.

Indeed the embattled people of Zimbabwe have taken a rest from the humiliating routine of scavenging for even the most basic of commodities like bread, sugar and salt as in the era prior 2009 since these commodities are now readily available in the shops, with motorists enjoying not only the free windscreen cleaning service of yesteryear from service stations, but also the ability to buy fuel worth even a dollar when you are broke.

However, from the day this coalition government was born it has always been sickly and hounded by its parent-s bickering and skirmishing over who wields more power than the other.

The sixteen month old inclusive government incrementally suffers from incoherence and fighting especially between the two main actors President Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. There remains a deep rooted incongruence between the two and the parties they represent. Mugabe refuses to share gubernatorial posts with his partners in government, he still abuses the public media to his advantage and whilst he might want economic recovery for this country he simply can-t be moved an inch towards meaningful political reform. He forgets from his several degrees that the latter facilitates the former.

Succinctly put where the MDC has moved ten steps ahead ZANU PF has yet to complete their second step towards political reform and sanitization of Zimbabwe-s fouled political infrastructure. The marriage of convenience seems to have been doomed from the start and as fate would tell, divorce papers are already being signed by the protagonists to the marriage.

Is the uneasy marriage of convenience called GPA sustainable any longer, or will it perpetuate on resilience and endurance like any other marriages within our midst? Are the pronunciations and insinuations coming from ZANU PF and MDC hinting on a possible election in 2011 instructive enough? Are the parties to the unity government themselves ready to have an election so soon?

A few weeks ago, the leader of the inconsequential and smaller faction of the MDC Professor Arthur Mutambara told his party supporters to brace for an election soon. Before this announcement Mutambara and his party were on record of being fearful of an election at any given time. Theirs has been an utopian dream that the GPA shall live perpetually for "it is the best thing ever to happen to Zimbabwe." This group of political charlatans have a strong detest for elections, admittedly so because they appreciate their apparent lack of popularity within the electorate, and in a democracy, if you have no huge base of supporters who later translate into votes, you are out of power.

Mutambara`s MDC acknowledges that their political life is only sustained by the GPA which unfortunately continues to be an unstable, unpredictable and a failing marriage of convenience. Now to think that this group of individuals would wish for an election in Zimbabwe any time soon is to the least day dreaming. Indeed nobody would wish to know or see the day his death certificate will be written. It therefore becomes axiomatic that DPM Mutambara appreciates and is actually at a closer view of the ever widening abysmal rift between Prime Minister Tsvangirai and President Mugabe. In as much as he knows that the antagonism between the two is a generational difference he has no political clout to handle them both. Therefore Mutambara`s admission and apparent pretensions that his party might be ready for elections as well, is misleading foolhardy.

The MDC led by Prime Minister Tsvangirai has been justifiably making the loudest demands for an election in 2011. They are playing the aggrieved part in the marriage. Their bitterness and frustration understandably began in 2008 when ZANU PF grabbed their morsel of bread at a time they were ready to chew. The revolutionary party went into hiding with someone-s food for five weeks before re-emerging pretending to be good boy by offering half of the looted bread as a compromise for unity.

The GPA was lucidly and clearly prescriptive that the partners in the compromise government should treat each other with dignified respect and each of them honouring to following the letter and spirit of the agreement.

With the Tsvangirai led MDC having had shown unparalleled statesmanship in agreeing to share authority with ZANU PF, who lost the election, the latter betrayed the former by refusing to implement most of what they agreed on. So the MDC has not seen a civilised ZANU PF since the advent of the GNU, instead there has been a sustained and systematic continuation of the torture, ridicule, abuse , arrest and murder of the MDC leadership and its members in general.

This has created a hopeless situation for Tsvangirai to imagine that the GPA would manifest into a stable governing authority. To him, as he always suspected, ZANU PF is reluctant to reform into a modern civilized party, a behaviour that militates against efforts towards political sanitization and economic recovery. The MDC-T has belief that an election conducted in fairness and freeness should usher in a legitimate and people chosen governing authority. Their hope is that by 2011 Zimbabwe would have undergone far reaching political reforms that are adequate for the conducting of an acceptably free and fair election. Buoyed by their 2008 victory, the MDC can confidently " . . . .urge the immediate convening of a SADC summit to discuss the roadmap to an election and guarantees to the legitimacy of that election", as was declared by Prime Minister Tsvangirai some weeks ago.

More interestingly, ZANU PF a party which since 1980 has been associated with the bloody and anarchic elections that characterized Zimbabwe-s post colonial era, has also declared in numerous occasions that they are readying for an election in 2011. Robert Mugabe clarified even further that these elections will certainly go ahead with or without the constitutional reform process being complete. I became a bit scared and worried at hearing this?

Since the emergence of the MDC, ZANU PF has been losing elections routinely, although they remained in power. They are erudite enough to know that the people of Zimbabwe have lost confidence in their governing style.

Elections have been conducted at adequately regular intervals in Zimbabwe since 1980 with Mugabe controversially retaining power during that period. Now he still wants to be in power but circumstances are greatly changing. The GPA provided a great opportunity for political reform in Zimbabwe. Whilst this should be good news to most Zimbabweans, the doomed revolutionary party has become more scared and paranoid. Above all ZANU PF seems to be determined to remain a barbaric and uncouth political party which thrives on anarchy-Machiavelli style. Now, how can ZANU PF wish for elections which they have even lesser chances of winning?

Of course it is greatly misleading to take their wish for an election as an expression of their willingness to reform and show the world that they are now a modernized political formation. Indeed calls for an early election by ZANU PF could be emanating from the hard core vampires within the party, who for long had been refusing to embrace the GPA as a necessary process to cleanse Zimbabwe-s political fabric. People like George Charamba (Nathaniel Manheru) still struggle to come to terms with the fact that the MDC, he so much loathes, has representatives whose offices, as government officials are also located at Munhumutapa building. He is still in a denial mode. He foolishly wishes for the day the MDC shall be crushed, either in an election or physically. Charamba is the epitome of such denialists within ZANU PF, and this is the group of barbaric politicians who masterminded the maiming, killing, arson and rape of many people leading to a sham and uninteresting drama that happened on June 27 2008. And they called it an election, without even an iota of shame.

So this is the same group with the same political style calling for an election in 2011. They still have a score to settle against Tsvangirai. However such people are well aware that if Zimbabwe is left to conduct a free and fair election, with no violence, no manipulation of the results and equal access to the media, then it will be the end of ZANU PF. Hence they are so determined to scuttle any processes that would enhance the freeness and fairness of elections in Zimbabwe. This tells why Charamba didn-t celebrate the coming in of new media players, he stills wishes to stop the coming in of a new private broadcasters and the general exorcism of the fouled political infrastructure in Zimbabwe.

Yes ZANU PF might therefore be calling for an election to satisfy their egos that this country shall remain in the sole grip of their party. They have a misguided feeling that in the next election their party will be victorious. Interestingly they have no modern triumphant strategy except to repeat ZvaJune (the June 2008 madness).

Such is a call for Zimbabweans to be on alert whenever ZANU PF intimates that they are preparing for an election. This ongoing constitutional reform process provides a platform for everyone to contribute towards the setting up of legal and institutional governance structures that are insulated from the manipulation by individuals in power. This is a rare generational priviledge to shape the democratic destination of this great nation.

Jack Pedzisai Zaba is a political scientist and an elections specialist based in Harare. He can be contacted on zabajack09@gmail.com

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