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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 29 June - 5 July 2000 Issue No. 488
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A silver lining
By Gamal Nkrumah
Hoist with his own petard, chief Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai with as much grace as he could muster, conceded defeat. By all accounts, it was a sterling performance for a party barely a year old. The ruling party won 51 per cent of the votes and Tsvangirai's scored an unprecedented 48 per cent. With three-quarters of the vote counted, it was clear by Tuesday morning that the victory of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) was a forgone conclusion.
"The only route out of these elections is co-existence," said Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). In the outgoing parliament, only three seats were held by opposition figures. The new parliament will for the first time in Zimbabwe's history have a viable opposition. In the most daring power bid in Zimbabwe's history, Tsvangirai led the electoral campaign, shrilly demanding greater democratisation with a focus on economic mismanagement and rampant corruption in high places -- albeit blandly ignoring the charge by his detractors of financial dependence by his party on white commercial farmers, ex-Rhodesians and Britain.
The course of the electoral battle swayed to and fro, perhaps the most critical since Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's position is secure whatever the outcome of this week's parliamentary elections. Mugabe is constitutionally entitled to remain in power until 2002. Moreover, the Zimbabwean constitution gives Mugabe the power to appoint eight provincial governors and 12 members of parliament directly -- a built in advantage for ZANU-PF. Paradoxically, 120 seats are up for grabs, but the 20 guaranteed ZANU-PF seats plus the invariably pro-government 10 traditional rulers elected by the Council of Chiefs -- the election of the chiefs has been indefinitely postponed -- ensure that ZANU-PF needs only 46 seats to retain its grip on power.
On Monday evening, there was a flurry of diplomatic activity as the government announced that the high turn out delayed the announcement of the first results. "Voter turn-out was 65 per cent, the highest in Zimbabwe's history, and the election results proved beyond doubt that ZANU-PF enjoys widespread popularity," Zimbabwe's Ambassador to Egypt Henry Moyana told Al-Ahram Weekly.
On the question of pre-elections violence in the run-up to the elections Ambassador Moyana was diplomatically tight-lipped. "Our people, the ZANU-PF supporters, have the right to defend themselves if attacked. The land question is of paramount importance and we shall fight to the bitter end until justice is done," Moyana said.
Tsvangirai played down the importance of the land question and underestimated its popular appeal. It is clear from the results that there are many Zimbabweans who urgently wish to see radical land reform. It is also pretty obvious that a sizeable number also want to see political change. This week's Zimbabwean elections were certainly not a struggle of personalities, but rather a struggle over principles and emotive issues. The land question aroused a favourable emotional response in the Zimbabwean people. "The drums of freedom have begun to beat in the heart of our people. They are preparing for democratic change. Mugabe is history. There is life beyond Mugabe," Tsvangirai told his supporters in the Zimbabwean capital Harare during the election campaign. He has had to eat his own words.
But Tsvangirai's benefactors did not stand idly by as Mugabe's ZANU-PF put up a stiff resistance and forced the land question on the agenda. Tsvangirai's backers brought world attention to what has been dubbed the "terror tactics" allegedly applied by some of Mugabe's henchmen to intimidate prospective voters for change. "The voter rolls were rigged and the boundaries were rigged. There was systematic brutality intended to deter those voting for change," charged British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. Speaking to the BBC, Cook warned Mugabe against ignoring the wishes of the Zimbabwean people. "Britain will certainly be playing an active part in the international community, including specifically the Commonwealth, to put pressure on Mugabe to accept the will of his people," Cook said. Small wonder, then, that British diplomats were refused accreditation as monitors because the Zimbabwe government did not believe Britain was impartial.
However, even the British media has had to concede that Mugabe is no Idi Amin. "There is a free press that daily attacks [Mugabe] and his ministers for corruption, ineptitude and the incitement to violence. The judges are still independent and throughout the campaign have [been] found against Mugabe. They declared his attempt to strip holders of British passports of their Zimbabwe citizenship unconstitutional... When they declared the land occupations illegal, Mugabe could not have their judgments reversed or order their removal from office," noted David Dimbleby in the British weekly The Sunday Times.
The capacity to make his own views prevail and to achieve desired results has long been characteristic of Mugabe -- his party remains his pliant instrument. This much can be said at this point, however. The elections showed that nicety and nuance had to give way to bluntness even brutality in carrying home a point. Zimbabwe's indigenous peasants are land-hungry. Chenjerai "Dr Hitler" Hunzvi, who orchestrated the confiscation of 1,500 white-owned farms, staged a show of violence against his recalcitrance. Well-versed in the lore of revolution, the War of Liberation -- Chimurenga -- he, like many Zimbabweans, believes that his is the rightful government and that it is wrong to disobey Mugabe and the war veterans.
"They are targeting polling agents particularly in the rural areas because it makes it easier to rig the elections," the MDC's legal secretary David Coltart, also a candidate in Zimbabwe's second largest city and the traditional capital of the Ndebele people. "It is obvious the environment for the elections is not free and fair. But in my constituency and in others intimidation and violence have only served to make people more determined to vote this monstrous regime out." To add insult to injury, Coltart, writing in the London-based Daily Telegraph, urged the international community to press charges of crimes against humanity against Mugabe.
A Zimbabwean peasant and her child on her back casts her vote in a rural constituency
(photo: AP)
Coltart has the nerve to call for the punishment of Mugabe when former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith can get away with the white supremacist atrocities committed during his illegal and undemocratic rule. After all, Mugabe uses modes of persuasion or coercion that are socially sanctioned in much of Africa and the Third World and even newly-democratic Russia. Smith certainly hasn't lost his taste for the odd trite remark, at 85 he has not toned things down either. "All I want to do is get rid of the present gangsters," said Smith on the eve of the elections -- which pretty much sums up the parametres of Smith's world.
No matter, the head of the European Union mission of observers, Pierre Schori, acknowledged that the election procedure was acceptable. However, he did point out that the state-controlled media in Zimbabwe was used as a "publicity vehicle" for the ruling ZANU-PF. Schori also noted that there were serious irregularities in the run-up to the elections with ZANU-PF responsible for much of the violence and intimidation.
"The violence is only the most visible aspect, but there is plenty of non-violent rigging going on behind the scenes," explained John Makumbe, political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare.
This policy misfired. Tsvangirai also conceded as much. "Given the violence, it cannot be considered a free and fair poll," he told the BBC.
In Poland, United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright attending a democracy conference warned that democracy cannot simply be "equated with the mob in the street." There are few surer ways of getting the electorate to support a policy than by applying external pressures: on the one hand, rewards and recriminations, on the other, propaganda and persuasion -- and Mugabe liberally applied them.
The MDC is by no means Zimbabwe's sole opposition party. Others such as the Zimbabwe Union of Democrats of the outspoken outgoing MP for Harare South Margaret Dongo have distanced themselves from Zimbabwe's white minority and Britain. It is an open secret that Dongo detests Tsvangirai and Mugabe's ZANU-PF might have gained from a split opposition vote. Other less effectual opposition groups include Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), an ethnic-based party whose support is in the Ndebele populated Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South provinces. ZAPU filed 23 candidates for the 24-25 June elections.
Then there is ZANU -- as opposed to ZANU-PF -- led by the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, the first leader of ZANU before his ousting by Mugabe in 1977. Sithole's ZANU had two seats in the outgoing parliament -- Sithole himself has been barred from standing after being convicted of attempting to assassinate Mugabe in 1997 and his wife Vester is contesting his seat instead. There is also the United Parties of Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the former prime minister of the interim government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia of 1979 -- immediately preceding Zimbabwe's independence. Muzorewa's party is filing 59 candidates, but it is unlikely that the relatively youthful MDC leader and supporters will join hands with the old-guard like Sithole, Muzorewa and their ilk. Zimbabwe's opposition is as divided as ever and the results of this week's elections only highlighted the divisions.
The one issue on which all opposition groups in Zimbabwe are united is Mugabe's military intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The MDC also argues that the 11,000 Zimbabwean troops fighting to defend President Laurent Kabila's beleaguered government has been technically disfranchised. The MDC claims that morale among Zimbabwean troops in the DRC is at an all-time low and many want to return home. The MDC has long campaigned against Zimbabwean military intervention in the DRC charging that only Mugabe's extensive business interests and mining concerns keeps Zimbabwe's troops in the Congo.
All said and done, the results of this week's Zimbabwean elections were that democracy in Zimbabwe is thriving as well as any other African country. Mugabe was met with the usual scornful Western froideur. Over 300 international observers from the European Union, the Commonwealth, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), South Africa, Japan, Canada and Australia accepted Mugabe's triumph. "In view of all that transpired during the campaign, including the violence and acrimonious debate, the major challenge now facing the Zimbabwean people has to do with creating a national strategy and forging forward with their development in an atmosphere of peace and harmony," the OAU monitoring team statement concluded. Surely, working hand in hand to overcome the country's many challenges is the only option now available for both Mugabe and Tsvangirai, for ZANU-PF and the MDC.
Parallels were once drawn between Tsvangirai's MDC and former trade unionist and opposition leader and now Zambian President Frederick Chiluba's Movement for Multi-Party Democracy, which toppled Kenneth Kaunda in polls in 1991. But, it seems that Tsvangirai will have to wait a little longer before he follows in Chiluba's footsteps.
