Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.
Despite six years of negotiation mediated in part by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) went into this week’s elections in conditions that, in many respects, were little different from those in 2008.
By 2010, Zimbabwe’s political parties, including President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, had agreed to a roadmap to new elections that would see major changes to administrative and media structures, to laws and policies, and to the way the police and army operate. By this week, many of the most important changes were still outstanding. Those include:
- the appointment of provincial governors and Cabinet ministers by the opposition
- changes to the oversight structures for state broadcasting
- holding security services to a requirement to be politically neutral
- changes to laws preventing free assembly and free speech
In negotiations around the implementation of that roadmap, Mugabe won every notable battle, leaving reform stalled. That, in turn, left Zanu-PF hardliners (or individuals considered close to Mugabe) in charge of everything from state media to the electoral body responsible for running the elections.
It also left security officials free to, if not directly threaten a bloody coup should opposition MDC leader and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai win the elections, at least make on-the-record statements to the effect that he was a “psychiatric patient”, “confused”, and generally unfit to either command or lead.
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The lack of those reforms was the basis on which opposition parties and SADC rejected Zanu-PF’s claim in 2011 that the country was ready to host a free and fair vote. This week, SADC commended the election with little caution in its language.
Still in place this week were laws that have been used to limit what journalists could report and to prevent political gatherings. And the commanders, officers and administrators who have declared their undying loyalty to Zanu-PF were still holding key positions.
As early results started trickling in on Thursday, it became clear that the major flaw in the elections, which could be the basis for later legal challenges and allegations of gross manipulation, lay in the voters’ roll.
By insisting on rushed elections, Mugabe engineered a situation that would favour his party, or at least provide a cover under which vote rigging would be harder to prove.