Ship Democracy has passed

by Editor · February 23, 2005

President Thabo Mbeki and his foreign minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, have gone to extraordinary lengths to assure parliament, the public, and perhaps even themselves, that Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections in March will be substantially free and fair.

By the narrow criteria fixed by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), this may be so even if, as Dr Dlamini-Zuma suggested, Zimbabwe should refuse to admit election observers.

The SADC’s view on free and fair elections, however, is inadequate. It contains evident escape clauses which can, and in Zimbabwe’s case undoubtedly will, be exploited.

As far as next month’s elections are concerned, the good ship Democracy has long sailed by; and it won’t dock again for a while.

Free and fair elections comprise more than eschewing blatant vote fraud, opening polls with more or less valid voters’ rolls, and giving opposition parties grudging and negotiable access to public media.

Free and fair elections require a long-term culture of freedom, a political climate in which party supporters need not fear to weigh matters critically. Parties should be able to make known their manifestoes without fear of intimidation or arbitrary arrest, not to mention murder. Such a culture requires the free flow of information from a multitude of media. These conditions must exist, and be taken for granted, over a long period of time measured in months and years, not a few weeks.

Such a culture of democratic freedom demonstrably does not exist in Zimbabwe. People who do not support Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF are routinely harassed, detained, assaulted and, allegedly, murdered. Supporters of the opposition MDC reportedly have been given to understand that their participation in the March poll will have personal repercussions.

Already, MDC supporters are allegedly being starved as government food aid in impoverished Zimbabwe is widely made conditional on Zanu-PF membership.

The independent media in Zimbabwe has been systematically devastated, with many journalists being violated by the state. A particularly pernicious law requires journalists to register with the state, with the strongly implied threat that critical journalists will lose the licence to work in their profession.

It is not only the media that are almost exclusively controlled by Zanu-PF. There is little legal recourse to the constitutionally enshrined human rights in Zimbabwe: most independent judges have been driven out of their chambers. The judiciary is now controlled by Zanu-PF as are, crucially, the police and the army.

The demonisation of critics has taken on absurd proportions. Even the archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, has been called an “unholy liar” by the president himself, with little consideration for tact or nuance.

When an archbishop is prone to such treatment, who else can feel safe?

Zimbabwe is governed by fear, and fear is not a conducive element in securing a free and fair election, no matter how many polling stations are open on election day.

Whatever the outcome of the March election, no matter how large the inevitable winning margin for Zanu-PF, it will not be possible to interpret the final result as the true will of the Zimbabwean people even if that true will might have been to perpetuate the status quo.

When President Mbeki and Minister Zuma are touting the supposedly free and fair character of the March poll, they are merely applying a veneer of respectability on what will be a fatally flawed election.