Tinashe Sambiri| Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa is using his surrogates to destroy genuine opposition, President Nelson Chamisa has said.

In a strong article published by a leading African publication, President Chamisa accused Mr Mnangagwa of lying to the nation after assuming power in 2017.

Mr Mnangagwa’s new dispensation is killing and tormenting opposition members in spite of promising to uphold democratic principles.

Below is part of President Chamisa’s article:

Here in Zimbabwe, we know all about false and misleading promises. When the current regime took power from Robert Mugabe in November 2017, it made grand promises including a new democratic dispensation, respect for human rights and re-engagement with the international community.

But it went on to do the exact opposite – disputed elections, violating human rights, and subverting democracy. Lately, it has been using surrogates to undermine and shut down the opposition. It has taken money due to the opposition and diverted it to its surrogates. It has facilitated the removal of the opposition’s elected representatives from Parliament and local authorities.

Africa cannot afford further corrosions of democracy in this decade. Government should be by the meaningful consent of the people. That consent is transferred through a transparent, free and fair election process. Consent that is coerced is not legitimate consent because it is not free choice. Election results that are announced when there are serious and glaring irregularities lack legitimacy.

The global community should not keep rubber stamping these illegitimate outcomes in the name of maintaining peace. The consequences of such ratifications are the continuation of exclusionary systems of government in the face of a demographic wave.

We have seen four elections in Africa that were compromised by the behaviour of incumbents and institutions meant to uphold electoral integrity. Unfortunately, those elections were sanitized by the global community even in the face of massive irregularities and patently unfair conditions of campaigning.

The following elections should not have been sanitized in any shape or form by the global community. The Zimbabwe 2018 elections, Mozambique 2019 elections, Tanzania 2020 elections and now most recently the Uganda 2021 elections.

These normalisations from the international community perpetuate a culture of unfair competition and illiberal democracy which is anathema to progress.

Let’s consider the Uganda elections, what the world witnessed throughout 2020 and in the final weeks of the election race was the blatant use of power by Yoweri Museveni to derail his opponent for President Bobi Wine:

• The killing of 55 protestors in November 2020 who were protesting after yet another illegitimate arrest of Bobi Wine on spurious grounds;

• The denial of accreditation to international observers which prevented robust scrutiny of the election. The American delegation of observers withdrew from observing the election noting that the election lacked transparency and credibility while a coalition of hundreds of civil society organizations noted that only 10 out of their 1900 accreditation requests had been granted.

• The deliberate internet and social media blackout which was intended to prevent the free flow of information in monitoring the election.

These tactics are not new to me or my fellow Zimbabweans. We have a government legitimacy problem because of a deeply flawed election in 2018. I have seen the Mugabe regime and now Mnangagwa regime roll out the same tactics all of my adult life. When we began the MDC in 1999, it was to fight this culture of despotism. Two decades later, we are still in the trenches, fighting a vicious regime.

Mugabe is gone, but his successor is just a different face with the same methods. As most Zimbabweans have experienced, to their great disappointment, nothing has changed.

Now the dictators are callously exploiting the COVID pandemic to strengthen repression. They have been clamping down on dissent and criticism. In Uganda, Museveni used the pandemic to prevent his main rival from campaigning effectively. In Zimbabwe, the regime suspended by-elections under the guise of fighting the pandemic, but it carried on with its political activities.

The Mnangagwa regime has been arresting opponents and journalists and throwing them into crowded and squalid jails, exposing them to the novel corona virus.

When our spokesperson at the MDC Alliance, Fadzayi Mahere left prison recently, she tested positive for the virus. By arresting her on the most spurious charges alongside journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and our deputy Chairperson Job Sikhala, the regime had deliberately placed her in harm’s way.

The problem is there is no robust peer review among the old generation of African politicians. Dictators that rig elections and use violence against opponents are given a free pass.

That’s what happened in Zimbabwe in 2018. It happened recently in Tanzania and now in Uganda…