Conditions for credible democratic elections do not exist in Zimbabwe, says an international pre-election observation team
Mercedes Sayagues
Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections, to be held on June 24 to 25, have dim prospects of being free and fair. Even in the likely scenario that the violence engulfing the country will decrease as international observers arrive, the damage has been done.
State-sponsored terrorism since February has claimed 23 lives; scores have been beaten, raped and tortured, and their property destroyed because they supported the opposition.
As a result many people do not trust the secrecy of the ballot. Zanu-PF scares villagers with tales of hidden cameras, numbered ballots and secret ink. That works for the least educated.
In practice, pro-opposition districts will be identified when votes are counted. People and businesses have been assured of swift retri- bution if the ruling party loses. War veterans threaten to be at the polling stations. If the opposition wins, they have repeatedly said, war vets will go to the bush and wage war.
As long as the militia creates mayhem on 990 occupied farms, rural people cannot feel free to vote. Farm workers account for one-fifth of the vote, or 1,3-million.
“The conditions for credible democratic elections do not exist in Zimbabwe at this time,” reports an international pre- election observation team from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), an American NGO that promotes democracy worldwide.
The team, led by Alex Ekwueme, vice- president of Nigeria between 1979 and 1983, had experts from Namibia, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Canada and the United States.
“The violence … has substantially restricted the exercise of freedom of opinion, expression, association, assembly and movement as well as the right to be secure from physical harm due to political affiliation,” said the NDI report, released on Monday.
“I have monitored 35 elections worldwide and the conditions in Zimbabwe are among the worst I have seen,” said Patrick Merloe, NDI director of programs on elections.
Awaiting deployment of observers, the terror campaign continues – one week after President Robert Mugabe assured Commonwealth secretary general Don McKinnon of a “de- escalation of violence” before elections.
Hundreds of rural youths are dragged to re-education camps lasting from one night to several days of indoctrination. Some are forced to join the marauding gangs to intimidate other villages and farm compounds.
A pattern is emerging. A core of war vete- rans and intelligence agents sets up a base on an invaded farm whose owners have fled. Equipped with cellphones, government vehicles, rifles and AK-47s, the militia terrorises the area for 10 to 15 days, then moves on. As the Zanu-PF campaign gets into full swing, the militia demand from farmers and businesses fuel, transport, food and people for rallies. Last Sunday in Marondera, 70km from Harare, gangs of Zanu- PF youth told shops to close and marched residents to a rally at the stadium addressed by Minister of State for Security Sydney Sekeremayi.
Sekeremayi told the white farmers: “After the votes, we will see who has been fooling who and we shall deal with each other.” The minister was involved in the Gukurahundi massacres of the mid-1980s in Matabeleland. He added:”We don’t want people that are violent when the observers are here. Do not be like children who misbehave when there are visitors in the house.”
If there were any doubts about who sponsors violence, at a rally in Chimanimani the Minister for Women’s Affairs at the President’s Office, Oppah Muchinguri, jokingly boasted: “Zanu-PF started the beatings, Zanu-PF can call them off.”
“My husband went to the rally because if you don’t go, your house may be attacked the very same night,” whispered a woman sitting in the park in town. The couple are civil servants. When the husband returned, they asked me not to talk to them until Zanu-PF supporters had cleared the town. “You understand you compromise us,” he said with a sad smile.
On May 16 a truckful of thugs swept through the scenic village nestled at the foot of the majestic Chimanimani mountains along the border with Mozambique. They attacked three schools. At one they herded the teachers into an open area and beat them up in front of the students, accusing them of being members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The thugs then threatened civil servants at the power utility and post office.
On Thursday five MDC members were abducted at gunpoint and tortured at Charleswood farm. Owned by MDC candidate Roy Bennett, who gave the farm up instead of renouncing the MDC, Charleswood is now the war vets’ base.
For the rally, the militia demanded transport and food from local farmers and timber companies. About 1 200 people attended, in a dispirited mood. One-third never raised the fist for “Pamberi ne Zanu- PF!”.
New farm invasions, reinvasions, pegging, the disruption of winter wheat planting and seed-bed preparation, tree cutting, stealing fences, killing cattle, poaching wildlife, commandeering of trucks and diesel occur daily. Zim Rights, a monitoring group, reports that 5 300 villagers have fled to cities. They tell of gang-rapes of women and collective beatings in the militia-infested areas of Mutoko, Murehwa and Mrurwi.
To protect the safety of its candidates, the MDC will delay announcing their names. A retired policeman in Mukumbura who was to run for Parliament was beaten to death in early May. The home of the candidate for Kwe-kwe Central and the shop of the candidate for Nyanga were burnt down. The candidate for Insiza was seriously injured in a beating.
“Mugabe is acting in a deceptive way when he says violence must end,” said MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Civil society has requested international observers urgently in rural areas. The European Union will bring 140 and the Commonwealth 40. Analysts believe that Mugabe’s latest trick to delay their arrival was his sudden ban on British observers.
Equally important are local monitors. The 4 000 or so who, during the constitutional referendum in February, stayed by the ballot box day and night can take credit for preventing widespread rigging. Where monitors were not allowed, the government won. About 24 000 people from 23 civic groups have been trained as monitors. Some will bow out, fearing reprisals. Not only candidates but pro-democracy activists have received death threats and beatings.
“Violence either intimidates or emboldens people,” says Thoko Matshe, chair of the National Constitutional Assembly. For women monitors, the threat of rape is real. Gang rape of farm workers’ wives and daughters is frequent during farm invasions.
Moreover, every stage of electoral preparations offers the government a chance to rig the process in subtle ways. One is gerrymandering constituency boundaries. Cities, perceived as opposition strongholds, are losing seats to less populated rural areas.
The voter’s roll is in a shambles. A United Nations electoral team said so last year. In one sample ana-lysed, for Harare South, 41% of the roll were not genuine voters. At a massive voter registration drive early this year, voters were not given any proof of registration. The registrar general, Tobaiwa Mudede, a faithful Zanu-PF stalwart, ignored protests. He can do it: the existing legal framework empowers the registrar general and the president to manipulate the electoral process at every stage.
The MDC, which has no access to the state broadcasting monopoly, is taking Mudede and Mugabe to court over alleged violations of electoral law. Because candidates must be nominated by 10 people in their constituency, the MDC has demanded to see the voters’ roll and constituency boundaries before the nomination period closes on May 29. Mudede is not above tampering with the voters’ roll.
In a recent study on the politics of Zimbabwe’s 1995 general elections, Behind the Smokescreen, political scientists Dr John Makumbe and Daniel Compagnon describe in great detail how the state used every trick in the book to stage a fraudulent election.
“The political system in Zimbabwe is largely based on fear, intimidation, ignorance, state control of the media, legal impediment and financial privileges, all of which aim to protect the hegemonic rule of Zanu-PF and specifically of its chefs [Zimbabwean political elite],” says the book.
Makumbe describes Zanu-PF chefs as steeped in a culture of political intolerance and ingrained conviction that power belongs to them by virtue of history and brutal force. Fraudulent elections disguise a de facto one-party state. “The ruling party will never concede a nationwide defeat at the ballot box,” he concludes. The research was completed in 1997, before the MDC burst on to the scene, before political awakening and popular protest soared. Today, warns Makumbe, “people are finally seeing right through the smokescreen. The writing is on the wall.”
This is why Zanu-PF is prepared to destroy the economy and wage a low-intensity war on its people: because a de facto dictatorship needs elections to obtain a pretence of popular legitimacy and democratic respectability.