Khadija Magardie, a Mail & Guardian reporter who took part in the SA team that observed the Zimbabwe election, reports on the deep schisms in the group which met this week to thrash out a final position on the poll
The presidential foot must be starting to tap impatiently. The 14 days given to the South African Observer Mission (SAOM) to Zimbabwe’s presidential elections to deliver its findings have run out and a meeting this week to try to hammer out a final report did little to mend the mission’s internal cleavages.
The combination of brickbats from the media and pressure for President Thabo Mbeki to have “something in hand” sometime soon means the SAOM’s final report, some say, will inevitably be characterised by two factors defensiveness and haste.
On Tuesday members of the original multi-sectoral observer mission met in Pretoria with the head of the mission, senior Department of Foreign Affairs officials and the authors to deliver their comment and criticism of the draft document circulated before the meeting took place.
The decision to include all members of the mission in the final process most were not consulted when the interim finding was made that the election was “not free and fair, but legitimate” has been attributed to the heavy media fire the SAOM has come under.
Coupled with this has been dissent within the observer camp: several members, including Anglogold chairperson Bobby Godsell, have penned lengthy contrary versions of events in the press. Though there has been no indication yet of an about-turn on the “legitimate” declaration, the decision to consult everybody means contrary findings by other observers could be factored into a final statement. A clearly split observer camp may even come up with a minority report.
The media coverage given to the SAOM was clearly a key player in the meeting’s proceedings a tableau characterised by the head of the mission, Sam Motsuenyane, and Dr Pandelani Mathoma, chief director for Zimbabwe in the Department of Foreign Affairs, fielding questions from about 45 members present.
The process of going through the draft report, line by line, was punctuated by remarks from observers such as: “If we say this, the media can take it out of context.”
The report delivers several stinging media rebukes of its own. In the background section it notes: “An additional context for the mission was the hostile international, regional and local environment, in the form of a grossly biased, prejudiced and partisan media.”
Motsuenyane, the retired diplomat whose words have become the “public face” of the mission, played a superfluous role in proceedings: after each comment or criticism his remarks were in the vein of “that’s a very good point, we should include that somewhere”, and “obviously it looks like there’s a lot of flesh to be added to that section”.
In the main line of fire was chief scribe and head of the “editorial committee”, Technikon North-West academic Professor Itumeleng Mosala, who has led an enthusiastic, high-profile charge against detractors, accusing the media of spreading “lies” and “distortions” about the SAOM.
Mosala handled question-time with a schizophrenia that on one hand enthused how criticism was welcomed in a bid to do a better job, but on the other responded with defensiveness to the glaring omissions and inaccuracies in the report. Many of the holes in the report, such as the lack of updated data on incidents of violence and voter intimidation in areas where the observers were stationed, were blamed by Mosala on time constraints and illegible writing by observers.
With almost every sentence scrutinised by cautious members for signs of ambiguity or bias, Mosala had a lot of writing to do. One member was even adamant that the words “South African government” be taken out of the descriptions of the mission, as this would open the SAOM to charges that it is a “lackey of the politicians”. But, as several observers noted in private conversations, the draft report’s authors did not “apply their minds” to the task seemingly motivated more by a haste to get the document out than to consider the gravity of its own words.
In many instances one did not have to look far for signs. The second chapter of the draft report opens with a question: “Why is the international community so focused on Zimbabwe’s internal problems when similar situations exist in other countries in the world? It appears that the role played by the [United Kingdom] government in general, and the plight of white Zimbabweans in particular, many of whom are British citizens, who are perceived to be the prime victims of the current land distribution campaign, should provide part of the answer.”
With the exception of the more vocal among the observers there are no clearly demarcated “yes, it was legitimate” and “no, it wasn’t” camps the rest of the members seemed to flit comfortably between the two, depending, seemingly, on how convincing a presentation was.
For instance, an uncomfortable silence greeted the presentation on Zimbabwe’s legislative framework by advocate Edward Lambani, a senior South African Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) official. Lambani stressed that though the sweeping changes made by the ruling party to the country’s electoral laws in the run-up to the elections were legal, his cogent chronology of the legislation did not leave much room for doubt as to whose electoral outcome was being favoured.
On one hand was a loose clique supporting the assertion that the election was “legitimate”. Placing notions of Zimbabwean sovereignty and principles of “non-interference” high up on the trump-card stack, heated debate ensued over whether the Southern African Development Community (SADC) electoral code included in the information brief given to observers during the election was being used as a benchmark.
That the standards used to judge elections in the region should apply to Zimbabwe was refuted by the likes of Mosala, who argued that the elections were, and should have been, judged “by Zimbabwean electoral standards alone” and not any other.
One member, a clear advocate of the “legitimate” defence, said: “We wanted to see whether people were in queues, whether they voted or not, that’s it.” Another observer in the “pro-legitimate camp” said the term free and fair, which was “drafted in Europe or somewhere”, could not be an accurate estimation.
Mosala was, however, quick to point out that the SAOM’s interim statement, in which he had a heavy hand, never described either the electoral process, or the elections themselves, as legitimate, but rather that they were “a legitimate reflection of the will of the Zimbabwean people”. Which was what the meeting steadily evolved into a debate over nomenclature.
On the other hand was a similarly loose grouping that included the “murmuring members” who quietly to themselves refuted statements in the report but did not speak in question time and the pull-no-punches bloc. Falling into the latter category was the chairperson of the IEC, Dr Brigalia Bam, who slammed the report for its apparent watering down of the pre-election situation, such as the late publication of the voters’ roll and the recruitment of only civil servants as election monitors.
“We don’t have to lie we are not helping the SADC or our own country by doing this,” she said. “There is no way some of us can produce a report that is professionally unacceptable.”
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which prepared a lengthy response to the draft document, also came out guns blazing.
Although it stated its input “must be taken in a constructive spirit” its analysis implied a rejection of the “legitimate” verdict saying from the outset that this “should not stand in the way of a different verdict being passed if there is compelling evidence to suggest an alternative judgement”.
The Cosatu response suggested the report lacked “gravitas”, arguing in its own submission that the draft “does not substantiate its arguments and does not provide evidence for reaching the legitimate verdict”.
Using words such as “badly structured”, “shallow” and “difficult to follow”, the members in the field who helped draft the Cosatu response concluded that the report was in need of “rigorous editing” before being released for public scrutiny: “Cosatu’s credibility and that of the South African government is on the line if the concerns we have raised above are not adequately responded to.”
The rewritten version of the report will be circulated to observer mission members for comment no time frame has been specified for when a final report will be handed to Mbeki.
A copy of the draft report is available on www.mg.co.za