What on earth were the hordes of South African observers doing in Zimbabwe? They certainly didn’t see the election we witnessed, if their reports are anything to go by. Living it up at the Meikles, no doubt, and probably shopping up a storm on their allowances. We should ask for our money back.
It is true that there are none so blind as those who will not see, and the free and fair bill of health bestowed on the poll is a joke. The observers’ brief was limited to taking a narrow snapshot of election day and the fortnight preceding it, when President Robert Mugabe allowed a false calm to fall over his troubled land to secure a thumbs-up from the malleable poll “watchdogs”.
If anything won out, it was the electorate’s feelings of hopelessness — and the low percentage poll reflects this.
Luckily, not all African observers served us as poorly as those from South Africa and our region. As government and African National Congress spokesmen rushed to endorse Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections as “credible and dignified” and “reflecting the will of the people”, the African Union observer mission head, Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, voiced grave doubts and called for the investigation of alleged electoral fraud. Afari-Gyan pointed to the large numbers of Zimbabweans who were “assisted” to vote and turned away from polling stations.
The South African observers went to Zimbabwe with a predisposition to give the poll a clean bill of health and accepted conditions that would not pass muster in South Africa, including an inadequately prepared electoral commission of questionable independence, an unaudited voters’ roll, the failure to release the results of any individual polling station (in breach of the Southern African Development Community’s protocol) and the failure to publicise results in four of Zimbabwe’s nine provinces. By all accounts, the observers saw little of the rural areas where intimidation and manipulation of voters is said to have been at their most intense.
President Thabo Mbeki’s idea seems to be that if South Africa pretends all is well in Zimbabwe, the rest of the world will meekly follow suit. That is, of course, nonsense. In the wider world, away from the parish pump politics of the Southern African Development Community, Zimbabwe is still seen as a gross violator of democratic norms. The African Union, the European Union and the United States all had observers on the ground who took a more accurate picture of the skewed poll.
But equally, the election result was not good news for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The low poll turnout — officially 42%, but said by one NGO to be nearer 25% — combined with the MDC’s loss of 16 seats since the 2000 parliamentary poll, suggests it has lost ground. We may be seeing a reversion to the pre-2000 pattern, when voters disillusioned with the repeated failure of elections to bring reform stayed away from the polls in increasing numbers. The MDC’s decision to go into the election, when virtually none of its conditions had been met, now seems a strategic blunder which may have further convinced the electorate that it cannot deliver change.
Playing by Mugabe’s rules has not served the cause of freedom and justice in Zimbabwe; the MDC and Mbeki have been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Mugabe, the former with strong-arm tactics, the latter by skilfully playing the anti-imperialist, African brother tune to which he knew the South African leader would dance.
As civil society activist Lovemore Madhuku suggests in this edition of the Mail & Guardian, taking to the streets to push for a national constitutional assembly now seems the meaningful course open to the opposition.
For the love of the game
Once again a Bafana Bafana coach is under fire — and once again the reasons have little to do with performances on the football field. This time it is Stuart Baxter, the victim of a whispering campaign vented in the daily press by reporters who sometimes cannot distinguish between valid criticism and vested interest.
Baxter was hired a year ago to qualify South Africa for next year’s African Cup of Nations and the World Cup. He is on track to do just that, using a core of experienced, foreign-based players for these vital qualifying games and blooding youngsters for the future in less important fixtures.
But this is not enough for some club owners and agents, who see potential big-money transfer fees disappearing when the latest local sensation is not picked for high-profile games. If the national coach cannot be bent to their whim, they plant poisonous rumours with their pet publications and try to whip up popular fury against him. It was a strategy that was used to get rid of a number of coaches, from Clive Barker to Carlos Queiroz and Shakes Mashaba.
This time the stakes are particularly high. As we are hosting the 2010 World Cup and get an automatic berth as the host, there will not be that many official fixtures after this round of qualifiers for the 2006 tournament. The effect is to reduce the “shop window” for ambitious owners and agents to showcase their players.
Baxter has a settled team and a good record, and is steadily building a squad capable of competing with distinction in next year’s big tournaments. What those who want him out — and who hide behind the tag of “anonymous sources” — need to ask themselves is: Should the long-term interests of South Africa’s national game be sacrificed on the altar of short-term personal enrichment?
It is time the old saw “for the love of the game” was brought out of retirement.