/ 29 July 2013

Zuma calls on Zimbabwe to stage free, fair elections

President Jacob Zuma.
President Jacob Zuma.

" … I think you will agree with me that in the last elections [2008] … there were problems in Zimbabwe: with violence … and everybody was convinced the elections were on a very slippery kind of slope, but I can say today there has been a very, very, very good atmosphere," he said on Monday.

South Africa had been chosen by the South African Development Community to facilitate talks to help Zimbabweans towards free and fair elections.

Zimbabwe produced a new Constitution which led to elections set down for Wednesday.

Parties had not been able to campaign everywhere before the last election, Zuma said. "This time I think they have."

There was the "usual campaign politics", where things were said about the opposition, but this should not be seen as unusual.

Zuma believed that this time around there had not been any campaign violence. He believed Zimbabweans were proving that they had a learned a lesson from the last elections.

Zuma's international adviser
Last week, the ANC refuted claims that it is protecting  Zuma's international adviser Lindiwe Zulu after an apparent reprimand from the presidency.

"The ANC has noted the coverage that suggests that the ANC through its secretary general [Gwede Mantashe] has defended the international relations adviser to president [Jacob] Zuma, comrade [Lindiwe] Zulu, against a statement released by the presidency," spokesperson Jackson Mthembu said on July 22.

"This is not true."

Zulu reportedly said that there were difficulties ahead of the July 31 elections in Zimbabwe, following problems with early voting.

Thousands of Zimbabwean security forces could reportedly not make their mark in early voting with polling stations opening late, and lacking indelible ink, stamps, voter rolls, ballot papers and boxes.

"If things didn't go right in the special vote, those things need to be looked into by the time of elections on July 31," Zulu was quoted as saying at the time.

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe reacted by calling Zulu "a stupid, idiotic street woman", Agence France-Presse reported last week.

'Have your elections in peace'
Zuma said Zimbabwe had done the best it could in the short time it had had to prepare.

"So we would say to the Zimbabweans, please have your elections in peace so that they can be declared free and fair, so that the Zimbabweans can then face the task of reconstructing Zimbabwe and indeed proving that democracy can come back to Zimbabwe.

"So we wish them well. We wish all the parties well in their campaign," he said.

He was speaking during a media briefing with South African-born Hollywood actress Charlize Theron about her work as a UNAids messenger for peace. UNAids is the joint UN programme on Aids. – Sapa