Africa

The Mail & Guardian has posted a Special Section on Zimbabwe that basically consists of new and recent coverage of the election campaign. This should keep you busy while I partake of the secular American holiday known as “March Madness.”

I was as surprised as anyone to read this morning that Robert Mugabe trails in recent polls taken in Zimbabwe. And I was especially stunned to see that Morgan Tsvangirai, longtime opposition stalwart and largely overlooked (by me included) Movement for Democratic Cchange candidate also running against Mugabe and operating in Simba Makoni’s shadow.

But let’s not get too excited. For one thing the numbers hardly give us any real indication of what is going to happen on 29 March:

At least 23,5% said their vote was their secret, 7,5% refused to say anything, 5,4% will not vote, 4,4% said “I don’t know”, 1,9% were categorised as “other”, and 1% will vote for Langton Towungana, the other candidate in the election. Tsvangirai is likely to win in urban areas, while Mugabe was bound to win in rural areas. Makoni has appeal both in urban and rural areas.

But furthermore, the following observation is vital:

Political scientist Prof Eldred Masunungure, who headed the national survey, said the main message from the poll was that none of the presidential election candidates would win an outright majority unless there was vote-rigging.

I like the almost wry (intentional or not) qualifier, “unless there is vote rigging.” It has become something of a mantra here, but let us all say it together: Mugabe is not going to let himself lose this election. Through violence, through corruption, through coercion, through threats, through vote-rigging, through paying the opposition, through losing boxes of ballots and peculiar rural outcomes, through denying urban residents the chance to vote and by making sure his thugs are at the polling places, Mugabe will ensure that he wins this election. Nonetheless, polls such as this one inspire hope and indicate that Zimbabweans are desperate for change, even if a silent plurality knows better than to say as much.

Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma are bound to be inextricably linked for the foreseeable future — through the resolution of Zuma’s corruption trial or the 2009 election at least — and yet increasingly they seem to represent opposite sides of the same coin. Or to be more precise, they seem to absorb the characteristics of their beholders, who project upon them images that reflect less who the two power brokers are but rather what people want them to be. At times this leaves little room for ambivalence or for reasoned analysis about how one feels about the candidates, but this nonetheless seems to be the plight of today’s ANC, which, if not as hopelessly fractured as some believe, is nonetheless characterized by some fairly important internal divisions.

Despite their vaunted status within the country neither Zuma nor Mbeki are in the most comfortable positions. Zuma has, in the words of the Mail & Guardian, engaged in a recent, and not especially successful, “charm offensive without charm,” and, oh yeah, he is looking at a fairly serious criminal conviction. Mbeki, meanwhile, is in what seems to have become his default position as a beleaguered lame duck head of state criticized on all sides. (When some of your most vocal  support comes from Robert Mugabe’s Ambassador to South Africa, who recently chided MDC leaders for criticizing Mbeki as not being an honest broker in the Zim situation, things are not good better to be damned outright than to be praised by Mugabe’s mouthpieces.) It is at times like these that the private sector must look awfully appealing to both men.

In what has to qualify as the least shocking newsflash ever: Charles Taylor was ruthless.

Well, this one provides a cynicism test: Robert Mugabe has declared March 29, the country’s election day, to be a public holiday. Now, ordinarily speaking, I believe that anything that makes voting easier and more accessible to the most people is a good thing. And yet Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe is far from ordinary, and other extraordinary circumstances in which I anticipate an election being taken, stolen, or simply massaged into the President’s corner, I tend to grow cynical. March 29 is, after all, a Saturday, which does not eliminate but ought to ameliorate the burdens faced by the masses of workers. And then look more closely:

“President Mugabe also promulgated the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) (Amendment of Electoral Act) (No. 2) Regulations, 2008, which would now permit police officers to enter polling stations.”

Now we are getting to the heart of the matter.  The police in a police state (in any state, really) have no business entering polling stations barring some sort of criminal activity. Presumably, after all, in putatively democratic Zimbabwe there was a reason why police officers were required to remain 100 metres from where voting occurred. Not now. Mugabe is worried, and this is about as naked an opportunity for intimidation as one can imagine. One cannot help but wonder if allowing the presence of the military, senior members of which have not been especially subtle in their support of Mugabe, in to polling places is not far behind.

Furthermore:

 ”Section 59 of the Electoral Act has also been amended under the regulations and will permit two electoral officers or employees of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and a police officer on duty to assist illiterate voters.

The same applies to Section 60 of the Act under which two electoral officials and a police officer on duty would assist physically incapacitated voters, the Herald said.”

Again — under ordinary circumstances wouldn’t one want illiterate and physically incapacitated voters to have the opportunity to cast a vote with full cognizance of what they are doing? Of course. But then why was it necessary to amend the law now? What provisions were in place before these amendments to protect the rights of those with difficulty reading or physical limitations but that still protected the integrity of the vote without inviting rampant coercion? I do not trust Mugabe, I do not trust his minions, and I do not trust the hired henchmen.  And this distrust is the direct product of Mugabe’s behavior for well more than a decade.

IRIN has two stories on the work of the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) in Africa. One involves providing emergency food aid for tens of thousands of people affected by cyclone Jokwe in the north of Mozambique. The other addresses the concerns about food scarcity in Sierra Leone (which the UN has judged to be the world’s least developed country) as the result of rapidly rising food prices.  

I do not even feign to be an economist, but many observers, including Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, worry that the country’s current account deficit represents a “major chink in [South Africa’s] armour.” The declining value of the rand and the tenuous state of global markets is also a concern, but as Manuel points out, probably wisely, “If I were concerned every time the market moves I would probably have been committed to an asylum a long time ago.”

You know that Simba Makoni is no one’s puppet. And I know that Simba Makoni is no one’s puppet. It is absurd to posit, as Robert Mugabe and his supporters have tried to do in recent days, that Makoni is a tool of the west, of the British or the Americans. Which is why it strikes me as being questionable for Makoni even to answer the charges, even to deny them, especially in the terms of debate that the crafty Mugabe has set. Better to ignore them, I would argue were I one of Makoni’s advisors, than to keep the very question in the minds of the public. The very accusation is set up on “when did you stop beating your wife?” grounds that cannot, by their very nature, favor the challenger.

While some still look to cast blame in Kenya, is appears that the narrative in that country, which saw an explosion of unexpected violence after several years in which it appeared that the country would be a model for all of Africa, has turned to reconciliation. Of course to have true reconciliation, there will have to be a process of determining what went wrong, and thus who or what was responsible. The new parliament and cabinet prepare to sit in the new coalition government this week and set about the hard work of governing after the chaos. The decisions they make would go a long way toward determining whether Kenya and its people are able to move forward.

More touchy will be what to do about those who engaged in violence, fomented riots, urged others to harm and maim and kill. In a country further removed from the razor’s edge, the obvious answer, which some even now advocate, is rigorous prosecution. But the question then becomes whether or not the legal system, police forces, and general bureaucratic apparatus is prepared to engage in the sorts of investigation and prosecution that would be called for, and whether doing so would not lead to more convulsions of violence across the country. prosecution in these cases cannot be selective, and it cannot go after the rank and file at the expense of those whose will was being carried out. And if those whose will was being carried out are still in the power structure — and we can rest assured that they are — won’t prosecuting them almost inevitably lead to more paroxysms of the same violence, pursued along ethnic lines even if the ultimate goal is political gain, from which the country is trying to recover?

This is not to advocate against demanding accountability for lawlessness and murderous behavior. But it is to take pause and realize just how formidable the task ahead is. In the end, perhaps the only real solution is to continue to develop democratic systems, rule of law, and accountability from leaders, and to ensure that those leaders do not grow so powerful that the will of the people becomes secondary to protecting their fiefdoms.

British immigration authorities have decided to deny asylum to more than one thousand Zimbabweans living in the country and to expel them from the country. The Home Office has decided that the asylum seekers face no risk of danger if they return to Zimbabwe, which is prima facie absurd. Zimbabwe is a pariah state — one need look no further than British leaders’ own statements on the matter — and thus by definition forcing Zimbabweans back into the maw of Robert Mugabe’s rule is irresponsible and indefensible.  

Pithy condemnation and finger wagging without a concomitant commitment to a policy of protecting people from those at whom the stetements are aimed and fingers are waved represents the worst form of opportunistic grandstanding. The Brits must reconsider this grossly unacceptable plan to send those who have escaped Zimbabwe back to that country, especially on the eve of an election that runs the risk of descending into chaos.