Iden Wetherell
There are 120 seats at stake in this weekend’s parliamentary elections and for the first time since independence in 1980 an opposition party is contesting them all. Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai says he is not looking at sending a handful of MPs to Parliament in Harare. He intends to win a majority.
That may be easier said than done. Zanu- PF currently occupies all but three of the seats. A further 30 seats are in the gift of President Robert Mugabe. Introduced in 1990 after the Senate was abolished, the appointed members were intended to reflect Zimbabwe’s civic diversity. Instead they have become levers of patronage with failed candidates from Zanu-PF, geriatric chiefs and provincial governors shoring up Mugabe’s majority.
Other obstacles faced by parties challenging the old man’s arthritic grip on power are government departments making up the electoral rules as they go along. An electoral supervisory commission, appointed by Mugabe but recently in rebellious mood, has seen its constitutional responsibility for regulating the election usurped by the registrar general’s office – widely viewed as an agency of the ruling party.
In the past few weeks Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede has modified the postal ballot to enable government employees to vote abroad and issued regulations governing the activities of local monitors and international observers.
He has also helpfully diluted feisty opposition MP Margaret Dongo’s Harare South constituency by diverting to a polling station there the votes of Zimbabwe’s 11 000 troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Dongo has seen her constituency carved up both by boundary changes and land invasions by Zanu-PF supporters led by a candidate she defeated in 1995, Vivian Mwashita of the President’s Office. Minister of Justice Emmerson Mnangagwa gave his party a head start in anticipating new electoral districts by passing on the recommendations of the Delimitation Commission before anybody else had seen them.
Official manipulation has been compounded by suffocation of political discourse. It took a supreme court order to open up the official media to opposition voices last week. They are now given a few minutes coverage ahead of the news. But the news itself is skewed with large chunks given to official representatives claiming Mugabe’s “star rallies” last weekend attracted crowds of more than 70 000 when other newsgroups put the figures at 5 000 or less.
The MDC needs to win 76 seats to overturn Zanu-PF’s built-in majority. Its best bet are the urban constituencies. In the February constitutional referendum Harare with 19 seats and Bulawayo with nine (now eight) declared overwhelmingly against the government blueprint.
In the cities a post-1980 generation is proving impervious to Mugabe’s demagoguery on land. They want jobs which they hope will flow from an investor- friendly MDC government.
But there doubts that the MDC’s legions of youthful supporters are all registered voters.
In some urban constituencies the opposition vote will be split by the absence of strategic pacts although this should not stop the MDC picking up seats in the Harare township of Chitungwiza where it is difficult to find a Zanu-PF poster.
While those rural constituencies where the No vote prevailed in the referendum, particularly in Matabeleland, have the threat of retaliation hanging over them, some such as Gwanda are not easily cowed.
Manicaland, where the No vote also did well in February, is likely to see MDC gains.
In Masvingo, official Zanu-PF candidates will face independents, some sponsored by regional strongman Eddison Zvobgo. Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare also have “independent Zanu-PF” candidates challenging the official machine. While the presence of international observers and a partial resuscitation of the police have meant intimidation is now less widespread, it remains a factor in Zimbabwe’s election, specially in places like Mberengwa where war veterans terrorise the local population.
Despite South African parliamentary observer mission head Tony Yengeni’s confident assertion that reports of violence have been exaggerated, the fact remains that thousands are held hostage on farms by war veterans who have set up roadblocks across the country.
An official campaign to persuade people that their vote is secret comes too late to convince farm workers and villagers who firmly believe Mugabe has eyes in the voting booth if not fingers in the ballot box.
In the circumstances the MDC’s hopes of victory will likely prove premature.