BY DR MASIMBA MAVAZA | A month after the elections in the United States of America time we still don’t know the final outcome of the U.S. presidential election. We may not know for some time. But it is likely true that Joe Biden might have won and Trump is indeed on his way out. The result ultimately depended on a small number of states, including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The uncertain outcome precludes a full reckoning with what the election results tell us about politics, public policy and broader trends in American society. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t start to draw some preliminary insights based on what we know thus far — including, of course, the unexpected tightness of the race between President Donald Trump and former vice-president Joe Biden. Nobody expected that America will bring to the world such confused results and a fierce tug of war. It was never expected that American President will refuse to lose gracefully.
It might be true that once again the world underestimated President Trump’s level of support with the American electorate. The situation surrounding the 2020 USA elections and their disputed outcomes is not a unique one at all. Sincere people have always known that democracy is not an exact science and that indeed elections are an ineviably emotive affair.
What makes the events in America astonishing is the clear sign of confusion exhibited by a nation which has appointed itself a master of efficiency and democracy.
What is new, however, in the USA’s election contestation, is that President Trump, to his supreme credit, has blown up in smoke the myth and the universal hypocrisy that Westerners in general and Americans in particular are infallible human beings; that their processes and systems are impeccable; that their democracy is saintly and that their politics is frictionless. The standard America tries to place on other countries has obviously escaped the American System.
Many governments around the world do right to adopt a stance of non-interference in the USA post -election situstion. We refrain not because the USA is a superpower but we do so because non- interference with the internal affairs of sovereign state is the right thing to do. We do so because we not only do we respect the democratic right of Americans to choose but also their right to resolve an election aftermath issues.
We invite ambassador…… ( USA ambassador to Zimbabwe) who has a perchance for meddling, to reflect on the stance we take and learn therefrom.
The controversy surrounding the USA 2020 elections are really not the issue. The controversy is a symptoms of underlying issues in the USA society at all levels, including societal divisions, poverty, race issues , inequality etc. Americans are deeply and viciously divided. We now have known that the oft,-repeated prayer ‘God bless America” which presumtously assumes a special blessing for Americans, cannot mask the fact that there is nothing new under the sun. Everyone has their trials and tribulations.
America has been divided since the days of the slave trade, which phenomenon is an indeliable ugly scar on the face of humankind. This has continued to the 1960s, the era of the fight for civil rights. Now we have the agonised cry of “Black Lives Matter”.
Zimbabwe does not aim to show that the USA is a bad country. Far from it. There are wonderful things happening in that country. Just to name a few, the USA is an extraordinarily rich country whose resources support millions of people around the world either through direct assistance or via the United Nations’s multiple organs such as Unicef, Save the Children and WHO. The USA is a leader in technology and innovation. The point, however, is that it is not an infalliable nation. Therefore it is important that the USA uses towards itself, the very measures and standards that it imposes on other nations. ( How many nations have summoned the USA representatives in their capitals to come and explain what is happening ? None. Can you imagine what the USA government would be doing if the boot was in the other foot! The Western media would be going on and on portraying thst country as a banana republic.
Perhaps what is happening right now in the USA lead some in that country to re-think the counter productive doctrine of American exceptionalism. Donald Trump was continually ridiculed for referring to himself as the greatest USA president after President George W.Washington. While the latter left the Americans to victory over imperialism, President Trump has triumphed liberating many Americans from the dehumanising and self-induced doctrine that they are a perct nation always looking down to “inferior nations’. Brovo President Trump on this one achievement.
While Americans spent a lot of time being the world’s police In the actual sense they had become turned off by Trump’s erratic handling of the pandemic, his norm-breaking leadership and the persistent drama that has followed him and his administration. The world is again hoodwinked by Biden’s implicit message of a “return to normalcy” means that all the years America was insulting Zimbabwe the behaviour was not normal.
Even if Biden ultimately pulls out a narrow victory, it’s now clear that there are some fundamental lessons to be drawn from Trump’s political fecundity.
The first is that Trump has shown that the way we think about modern campaigning, including how politicians mobilize voters, is basically wrong. The conventional view is that voters are motivated mostly by appeals to their narrow economic self-interest.
There’s something bigger happening in the world of politics and in Western societies more generally. A political realignment is occurring. The clear lack of democracy in the USA is a sign that we cannot ignore it.
As Africa we have learnt that America is not the big deal. Our Zimbabwean Democracy is the best fo Zimbabwe. The American Ambassador to Zimbabwe must be asked to eat a very humble pie.
The minister of foreign Affairs must call American Ambassador and register our disquiet.