45 years after independence in this day and age, we still failing to hold free and fair elections
By Wilbert Mukori | “And we are failing to cross the street!” remarked President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania was told about the Americans landing on the Moon in 1969.
I have always admired President Nyerere for that quotation. It represents an honest admission of Africa’s shortcomings and, more significantly, a concerted effort to answer why Africa has lagged behind.
Zimbabwe is a failed state. The evidence we are a failed state is there for all to see. I will go straight to the why we are a failed state, and not what time restating the evidence or rebutting the denials.
One of the reasons why Zimbabwe is a failed state is our failure to hold free, fair and credible elections. The nation has been stuck with this corrupt, incompetent and murderous Zanu PF dictatorship for 45 years and counting. The party has rigged elections to stay in power and, up to now at least, the nation has all but failed to stop Zanu PF rigging elections.
It is no secret that Zanu PF has an inbuilt electoral majority from the rural vote. Zanu PF withdraw many of its freedom fighters to Assembly Points as agreed in the Lancaster House Agreement during the 1980 elections. The operatives remained in the field and their election campaign message was that if Zanu PF did not win the elections, the bush war would continue. Many of the rural areas with these Zanu PF operatives were “no go areas” for other contesting parties.
The rural voters, at least, voted to end the bush. One does not argue looking up the business end of an AK47 rifle!
Rural areas have remained, to this day, Zanu PF strongholds and no go areas for all the other parties. Zanu PF kept the rural folk poor by deliberately denying title deeds to even a few square metres of land on which their mud huts stand. This is the one right that would mean everything to these people and would set them for meaningful economic and political empowerment.
It is no surprise that Ian Smith’s white colonial regime realised this and it too denied rural blacks title deeds for the same selfish political reasons.
Indeed, when blacks was the war of independence was fought over the land issue, that is exactly what they are talking about. Why were the whites allowed to own vast tracks of land and yet the blacks were denied the right to own even a postage stamp size yard!
The seizure of white owned farms, often accompanied by the gratuitous violence, was supposedly to give the land back to the landless peasants. In practice, the seized farms were given to the Zanu PF ruling elite and their cronies.
Mnangagwa has announced the recipients of the former white owned farms will now get title deeds to the farms and with it the full legal ownership rights. The Regime continues to demolish houses in Ruwa and other rural areas where Land Barons had given away land underlining the regime’s policy that rural folk must not be given title deeds to any land.
The bottomline is Zimbabwe’s rural folk, constituting 60% of the electorate, are nothing more than medieval serfs beholden to the Zanu PF ruling elite and the proxies, the village heads, chiefs, war veterans, Zanu PF militia, etc. It is no secret that party operatives have repeatedly frog-marched rural folk to attend party rallies and to vote for the party. How could Zanu PF lose an election with such a built-in majority?
The one occasion in the March 2008 election when Zanu PF, under pressure from SADC, was forced to loosen its electoral control, the nearest the country ever got to holding free and fair elections; the party lost the vote. The party intervened to stop the results being announced. The party ordered a recount of 5 million votes which was to last six weeks. The presidential vote count was last to be announced; Tsvangirai’s 73%, according to Mugabe’s own Freudian slip, had been whittled down to 47%. Enough to force a run-off.
During the run-off Zanu PF launched Operation Mavhotera Papi (Whom did you vote for) desired to punish the voters for having dared to reject the party in the early vote. If anyone had thought Zanu PF’s threat to use violence to win elections was a bluff, Operation Mavhotera Papi left no one in any doubt this is not an empty threat.
Both SADC and AU refused to accept Zanu PF’s political legitimacy and forced the party to agree to the formation of GNU. The primary purpose of the GNU was to implement the democratic reforms to end Zanu PF’s political struggle hold especially on the rural voters to ensure free, fair and credible elections.
Alas! Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends who were entrusted the task of implementing the democratic reforms during the GNU, failed to implement even one token reform in 5 years. Mugabe bribed them with the trappings of high office, the E-Class Mercedes Benz, the generous salaries and allowances, a US$4 million mansion for Save himself, etc., etc. And in return MDC leaders kick the reforms into the Cactus thicket!
Zanu PF emerged out of the GNU with all its carte blanche dictatorial powers including its heavy boot on the throat of the rural voters.
Even now, with the benefit of hindsight, many Zimbabweans have no clue the primary purpose of the GNU was to implement the democratic reforms much less that MDC leaders sold out.
Last month, Zimbabweans observed the country’s 45th year of independence, 45 years of rigged elections and there is nothing to suggest the penny has finally dropped. The nation will be going into its next elections with the same skewed electoral system in which Zanu PF thugs retain their heavy boot on the throat of the rural voters to guarantee the party’s in-built majority.
45 years after independence and we are still failing to cure ourselves of the curse of rigged elections and bad governance. We are failing to cross the street when others are landing on the Moon.
“And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand.” Genesis 4: 9 – 11.
Forget being our brother’s keep; by turning a blind eye to Zanu PF thugs keeping their heavy boots on the neck of the rural people we denied ourselves the blessing of good governance. 45 years after independence in this day and age and we still failing to cross the street of free and fair elections.Of course we deserve to suffer the curse of rigged elections.-SOURCE: zimbabwelight.blogspot.com