CETRI
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. [1] 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.
The election fix : back to the future
By focusing on the GNU, rather than the actual election results, the
SADC mediation has effectively allowed ZANU PF to return to the
brokerage scenario it had anticipated in the post election period. This
scenario, broadly shared by ZANU PF reformers, SA, some EU governments
and others before the election, was premised on the belief that the
MDC-Tsvangirai party’s support would be diminished by support for
MDC-Mutambara and for Simba Makoni, the former Finance Minister and ZANU PF reformer who was a candidate for President. A split opposition vote would enable victory in the Presidential election and at least a plurality in Parliament. Moreover, the dispersion of opposition representation across three groupings would present options for developing a ‘Kenyan-style’ negotiation that could lead to a ZANU PF dominated GNU. Makoni – the “modernising” reform face of ZANU PF - could be parachuted in under Mugabe, to soon replace him as the consensus politician. And ZANU PF could argue that, if this kind of arrangement was acceptable for Kenya, why not in Zimbabwe ? There was a lot of this kind of talk among MDC-M and Makoni supporters in advance of the election.
For ZANU PF this scenario both enabled the departure of Mugabe, a
political liability whose presence would continue to block the party’s
return to legitimacy and the resumption of desperately needed,
stabilizing financial assistance for the world’s fastest-collapsing
economy ; and the retention and renewed consolidation of power by the
ruling party. Confident of a mediated victory and needing a “legitimate”
result to back its claims to rehabilitation, ZANU PF significantly
loosened control over the electoral process in the first round of voting
in March.
As it turned out, the party’s electoral assumptions were wildly naïve.
At the election support for the MDC-M collapsed – and notably for its
leadership, which was roundly defeated. Makoni was overwhelmingly
rejected by voters, gaining perhaps just 10 percent of the vote. At the
same time, ZANU PF’s traditional voters deserted the party by voting for
the opposition or by boycotting the poll, as they had done in the
benchmark defeat of the party in the 2000 Constitutional Referendum. In
contrast, the MDC Tsvangirai party surged across the country, including
in former rural strongholds of ZANU PF that for the first time ever had
been rendered easily accessible to opposition campaigners – and to
opposition polling agents and officials. This combination of factors
meant there were too few votes to rig with, and that the conditions
allowing the playing off of opposition forces within a prospective GNU
did not materialise. [2]
The shock of the election result and the resulting conundrum for the
ruling party were quite literally written on its face. The headline of
The Sunday Mail, the most slavishly loyal of the state-controlled
newspapers, screamed the day after the election, “Anxiety Grips Zim” .
Many other state media, including the country’s only radio and
television broadcaster, ZBC, effectively fell silent, bewildered about
what to say. No party leader of note addressed the nation for several
days. It was apparent that ZANU PF was reassessing its game plan. Over
the next month it developed and then rolled this plan out, as SADC first
patiently accommodated repeated inexplicable delays in the processing
and announcement of results by ZEC, and then sat motionless as ZESN, the
key civic election monitoring network, and MDC itself were raided by
state officials in search of independently collected polling data that
could be used to disprove manipulated official figures. Even after the
long delay, only limited details of the presidential poll were
eventually released. [3]
Meanwhile, reports surfaced of remobilised war veterans and youth
militias, and of the first violent penetrations by state security forces
of “turncoat” former ruling party strongholds. ZANU PF aimed to create
conditions that would make the run-off so difficult and dreaded that
prospects of averting violence through some form of GNU and power
sharing arrangement would be welcomed : a replay of the ZANU-ZAPU Unity
Pact of 1987. ZANU PF’s transparently obvious “spin” on the violence –
which has often been taken up by SADC leaders, and swallowed whole by
much of the regional media as well – has been doubly damaging for
Zimbabwean democrats. One the one hand, substantial evidence that the
violence is disproportionately organised against the MDC has drawn muted
criticism from SA, SADC and the GNU advocates like Makoni ; on the other,
the small amount of retaliatory violence attributed to the MDC is deemed
to suggest a “crisis” and raise possibilities of “civil war” –
reinforcing the need to avoid a run-off and the urgency for a negotiated
solution. [4]
African leaders have thus far studiously avoided apportioning
responsibility for violence, in most instances couching reactions in
terms of cautioning both sides and invoking dialogue. Widespread
violations of SADC’s election ‘norms and standards’ have failed to
elicit coherent responses from them. Neither has SADC cautioned or
castigated the ZANU PF government for failing to ensure its
constitutional responsibility for safety and security, despite
overwhelming empirical evidence that the primary perpetrator is ZANU PF
and its proxies.
Rather than address the issue of destabilizing violence and impose
political censure for its deployment in this period of uncertainty, the
SA government, SADC, some EU diplomats and the Makoni grouping actively
talked up the need for a GNU – ostensibly as way to avert the threat of
violence coming from ZANU PF. Indeed, as independent and MDC reports
emerged demonstrated that increasing numbers from the MDC’s ranks were
being beaten, tortured, abducted and murdered, the rationale for a GNU –
and a political counter-attack to the wave of violence – was publicly
reinforced by SA and SADC.
While mediation does not preclude processes of accountability, this
approach appears to have been absent from the Mbeki initiative. As a
result the SADC intervention has directly facilitated ZANU PF’s
unfolding strategy for manipulating the conditions and issues that would
have to be negotiated. SADC’s tentative response to the March vote
allowed space and time for ZANU PF to regroup and ramp up the violence
and threats of more of the same – both fuelling a defensive “demand for
GNU”, and reasserting ZANU PF’s leading place in the setting of terms
for any negotiations. The latter now focus on ending violence and
averting civil war, rather than implementing the results of the peaceful
election or ensuring that the next round of elections are conducted in a
free and fair atmosphere – something that it appears can no longer be
ensured.
The GNU problem
If the GNU is primarily being proposed as a means to avoid a violent
tragedy, rather than as a basis for a establishing a new inclusive
democratic politics, sceptics are right to question the idea’s aims,
objectives and predictable outcomes. Just as importantly, we need to
pose a question for those advocating a non-democratic negotiated
resolution to Zimbabwe’s election crisis : by what principle can the
rights of the popular democratic will as expressed by voters be equated
with, or rendered secondary to, the rights of discredited elites and
perpetrators of violence ? For this is precisely what the idea of a GNU
proposes, in the name of an elusive, highly unstable and temporary peace.
Even if the MDC were able to extract considerable concessions from ZANU
PF, it is highly unlikely that Robert Mugabe’s party would cede its
effective control over its levers in the bureaucracy and particularly,
in the security forces. Why would it : these are the instruments of war
and obstruction that have enabled ZANU PF to climb out of the hole of
electoral defeat on more than one occasion, to protect its networks of
power. To suggest that these determinants of power would be given up
willingly is to accept the notion that ZANU PF would be willing to
abdicate. The last two months have exposed this view as profoundly
delusional. Those who have put stock in the GNU have failed to assess
their model of peace-making in light of ZANU PF’s strategic
understanding that violence is a political asset and an effective
substitute for popular legitimacy, which will not be negotiated away.
Rather than deflect and defeat the likelihood of political violence, the
construct of a GNU would formally integrate it into the lifeblood of the
Zimbabwean democratic dispensation. This is a remarkable solution to put
before a political party that has just won an election based on its
abiding commitment to non-violent democratic participation – and to the
voting majority who supported it. For South Africans, this situation
recalls the kind of power sharing arrangements that former South African
President F W De Klerk had in mind at the start of the 1990s negotiation
process, where the share of actual voter support would not determine
power arrangements. [5] This proposal was not acceptable in the new South
Africa then, and it is not acceptable in the new Zimbabwe now.
If there were no question of who were to lead and form a GNU, there
would be little space for the kind of unanswered violence that is now
seen. In effect, SADC’s weak response to the March election has
facilitated a strong and violent response by ZANU PF.
For the time being, it seems increasingly likely that the GNU route will
be not followed. This is not due to any lack of effort by the likes of
Mbeki and many in SADC, or the distasteful posturing of the rejected
Makoni, who cites rising violence as the need for inclusive negotiations
without naming and condemning those – his erstwhile colleagues – who
have created the unstable terrain on which he hopes to relaunch his
ambitions. Rather, both the MDC and its supporters are wary of
legitimizing the political role of those holding the gun to their heads
and the torch to their homes. War is not something to be prevented : it
is here already. And the only non-violent way to confront and defeat it
is the ballot box, even if that option too is flawed.
If the current pressures for a GNU do indeed fail, all is not lost for
ZANU PF : Makoni or another ZANU PF senior reformer could return to the
forefront if Mugabe were to win the run-off, further destabilize the MDC
and civil society, and then retire on his own terms – handing over power
to a reformer to negotiate a new GNU from a position of regained
legitimacy and strength. But this first requires another successfully
manipulated election result, and a frontal assault on MDC and civil
society resistance. The arrest on treason charges this past week of MDC
Secretary General Tendai Biti does not bode well ; neither does the
relative weakness of the SADC response to this latest development. And
is there any reason to think that additional ZANU PF manipulations
during and after the second round of voting will not take place, given
the success of such interventions in the first ?
Accepting responsibility, acting responsibly
The options chosen by SADC and the international community for dealing
with the March 2008 election have directly contributed to the options
chosen by ZANU PF. It was a choice not to recognise the MDC victory and
to allow the illegal charade over the recount to occur. [6] It is enough
here to point out that the MDC won the Parliamentary elections, that
Morgan Tsvangirai won the Presidential election, that nearly 3 million
Zimbabweans did not vote, and consequently it is very clear that Robert
Mugabe and ZANU PF do not enjoy the support of the vast majority of the
population.
This set of circumstances allowed for an alternative political response ;
a recognition of and call for an MDC government to be accepted by ZANU
PF. However, the failure to support this option has contributed directly
to the current confusion between promoting conditions for a free and
fair re-run and negotiations for a GNU. Despite a widespread acceptance
that conditions cannot be free and fair for the June 27 poll, and calls
for a GNU, the MDC is sticking to the electoral path and holding out
prospects for an inclusive government of national healing in which it
would play a lead role after the elections. This position is not openly
supported by SADC, who seem stuck to a moribund engagement that is
destined to undermine the democratic will of Zimbabweans, and that will
promote an elitist management of transitional arrangements under the
auspices of a power sharing arrangement that will effectively insulate
and protect those responsible for perpetrating violence and gross human
rights abuses – as happened with previous election amnesties for party
violence, and most seriously with the Unity Accord in 1987.
As regards the re-run, the keys to re-establishing a recognisably fair
playing field are not adequately being pursued by SADC and South Africa,
which plays directly into the agenda of those who wish to ensure it does
not proceed. Although it is no longer possible to create the conditions
for a free and fair poll, with less than 10 days before the poll, there
could and should be certain steps taken to remedy the most egregious
violations and potential for destabilisation. This should include :
deploying adequate numbers of election monitors, especially in areas
where violence and intimidation has been reported, and playing a more
active role in monitoring the activities and decision-making processes
of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission ; promoting an agenda of disarming
ZANU PF and its militia / war veteran proxies hands ; censuring the role
of the security forces, censuring hate speech and talk of war by any
political parties ; commenting on access of candidates to state media ;
question and establishing a strategy with rewards and penalties for
compliance/non-compliance with SADC election guidelines.
Thabo Mbeki did state ahead of the 2005 elections that there would be
consequences if the SADC Principles and Guidelines were seriously
violated, but this was said against the background of woefully
inadequate provisions for monitoring on the ground. [7] Meanwhile, in June
2008, the corpses of MDC officials and suspected opposition supporters
are accumulating, thousands have been displaced by the political
violence, likely thousands more continue to be beaten and brutalised,
hate speech fills the airwaves, and a discredited President threatens
the majority with war – and still, there is no sign of serious electoral
censure in the air from regional leaders.
It is time for fresh thinking and fresh action. In advance of the second
round of presidential voting, problems need to be anticipated and
prevented before the arise. Several critical questions emerge.
What would have happened if SA, SADC and the international community
rejected the delays by ZEC and ZANU PF, demanded the transparent
compilation and immediate release of results - and ensured that all
parties abided by them ?
What would have happened if all civil society organisations and
democratic parties and politicians had stood firmly behind the MDC
government-elect, rather than soliciting for all-inclusive
extra-electoral GNU ? If more support for the winning party MDC had been
expressed, what options then would have remained for elite transitions ?
Who, then, really enabled ZANU PF’s violent election strategy, sending
the defeated party, its leaders and violent supporters inside and
outside the state all of the wrong signals in the immediate
post-election period ?
And consequently, whose responsibility now is it to end the violence by
terminating discussions about an all-inclusive GNU, and insisting on a
government of transition and renewal headed unambiguously by the party
elected by the people : the MDC Tsvangirai.