Free elections in Zimbabwe? Not a chance!

In the normal course of life in a democratic society, elections are eagerly anticipated and highly dynamic events. The elections provide an opportunity for those in power to demonstrate how successful they have been in executing the mandate that was given to them by the electorate and, simultaneously, allows the electorate the opportunity to extend or terminate that mandate depending on how they perceive the government has performed. Well it is supposed to be that simple really. In practice it is not always that simple. Take the case of the forthcoming elections in Zimbabwe, for example.

You have a president leading a government that has been in power for 28 years, much of which has been under questionable mandates, seeking an endorsement for a further term of office. Over the period of his reign the national economy has crumbled, the currency of the country has been reduced to worthless paper, people are dying of hunger and disease, many of the citizens have fled to near and far places to seek relief from poverty and suffering. Yet and yet the president believes that he can secure another mandate from the people to continue to preside over the affairs of the state. Someone somewhere is either not being serious or is not being honest or both.

What is obvious to almost everyone, except the few fat cat generals, police chiefs and other beneficiaries of Mr Robert Mugabe’s highly poisonous largesse, is that the man has reached his endgame. The circumstances that have been created by and under his rule makes him unelectable even in a repressed and desperate society such as one Zimbabwe unfortunately finds itself in at the moment. To say that Mr Mugabe is highly unpopular is to be guilty of understatement. What has kept him in power over the past decade or so are repression, violence and electoral fraud. He has become a master at manipulating the machinery of state including the military and the judiciary, desperate party functionaries like the war veterans and traditional rulers to maintain his hold on power. And this has all been at a great cost to the generality of the Zimbabweans.

The elections coming at the end of this month present yet another opportunity for Mr Mugabe to strengthen his hold on power and to inflict further misery on the desperate and abused people of his once proud and wealthy nation. It will be argued, no doubt, that Mugabe is not contesting the elections against himself, that in Morgan Tsvangirai and Simba Makoni, he is facing credible and formidable opponents and that the electorate will, against all expectations, brave the violence and manipulation and vote for his ouster. That is wishful thinking. In my view, Mugabe has six factors in his favour.

The first is the elections administration mechanisms which are highly susceptible to manipulation and subversion. Starting with the so called independent electoral supervisory commission, it is quite evident that other than the name they go under, there is nothing independent about the commission. The members of the commission are picked by Mugabe and this single fact disqualifies them from being regarded as independent. Then you look at the voters’ roll, opposition parties and independent observers have complained bitterly that the voters’ roll is in shambles. This provides opportunity to manipulate the votes through ghost voters, constituency loading (i.e. moving voters from one constituencies of concentrated support to those were support is thin) and ballot box stuffing.

The second factor in favour of Mr Mugabe is the timing of the plebiscite. The elections were called at relatively short notice to catch the opposition off-guard and afford them as little time as possible to organise and campaign. At the time the elections were called there had been anticipation that there would be a postponement of the elections in the spirit of and as an outcome of the Thabo Mbeki mediated reconciliation talks. Mr Mugabe saw the risk of delay and decided it would not be in his best interest to stall the proceedings. He had probably calculated, quite wrongly as it turned out eventually, that the opposition would decide to boycott the elections giving him a free run. Although the opposition did not take the boycott bait they nevertheless had little or no time to organise themselves and establish a strong alliance to challenge him.

The third factor is the rabidly partisan public media which provides highly biased and unbalanced reports and commentaries in favour of the ruling party and against the opposition. It may be argued that the daily funerals of many loved ones taking place in the country, the empty stores and evaporating local currency value are sufficient testimony to the state of affairs and do not need any elaboration from the media. However, the fact is that the public media is being used to mislead the electorate to believe that the opposition and their phantom sponsors in London and Washington are the cause of these problems and the opposition is not being given an opportunity to give their side of the story. With a very limited and constrained independent press, the opposition cannot get their word out to the electorate.

Factor number four is the indifferent and perhaps complicit international community. Mr Mugabe has ensured that there will be no critical and objective observation of the election process by baring all and any countries and institutions that he deems hostile to his intentions and interests. As a consequence, the list of observers reads like a who is who in undemocratic governance – China, Sudan, Cuba and Russia, among others. Countries and institutions that have the experience and credibility of unbiased election observation such as the European Union are excluded from observing the elections. One should ask, what is Mr Mugabe trying to hide and why? Surely, if he intends to play a fair game, it should not really matter who observes the elections because the results will speak for themselves. The fact, however, is that he knows that the elections will not be fair and he needs as little criticism as possible and, even more preferably, blind endorsement of his electoral malfeasance.

Now to the really gory bit - number five is violence, threats and intimidation of the electorate. Mr Mugabe has, in the past, boasted of his degrees in violence and the electorate is already being sadly reminded of the potency and validity of these qualifications. The violence and intimidation ranges from the crude (physical attacks and grievous bodily harm of opponents by Zanu-PF hoodlums and renegade law enforcement and state security elements) to the subtle (threats of a coup or civil war by the army in the event of Mugabe losing the elections, such as were recently issued by the army commander and the police chief) to the sublimely cruel (starving the opposition by withholding food aid and other public services to people who vote against the government).

Lastly and by no means the least, is a thoroughly compromised and discredited judiciary. When all the manipulation and rigging is done, the opposition is supposed to turn to the courts for recourse and relief but, alas, Mr Mugabe has corrupted and compromised the judiciary by forcing out those with independent minds, bringing in his own supporters and bribing the indifferent ones with free farms and other perquisites. Mugabe knows that he enjoys the support and protection of the courts and can thus act with impunity to subvert the will of the people. The judiciary favours Mugabe in two main ways – firstly by delaying the judiciary processes to a point where the outcomes become irrelevant and meaningless and, secondly, by making rulings that are blatantly favourable to the incumbent government.

All the above factors do not potent for free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. For me there is one hope, faint though it is, that the people are now so thoroughly fed up with Mr Mugabe that they will overwhelmingly come out to cast their vote to throw him out regardless of the efforts to rig the results. I am not confident that this will work because in the past, big turnout of voters has been neutralised by very slow and cumbersome voting process to the extent that many people were denied their right to vote. There is also the prospect that the people may do a “Kenya” on Mugabe – go out into the streets and make the country ungovernable. In the circumstances, he may still emerge as the president, but with Mr Tsvangirai as prime minister. What a prospect!

Has Zimbabwe’s economy collapsed already?

Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe, once famously remarked that no country can ever get broke. Since 1997, when the first pangs of economic decline were felt in that once richly endowed country, the President appears to have made proving the veracity of that statement his sole mission in life. There is no country, in living memory, whose economy has deteriorated to an extent similar to that of Zimbabwe.

Inflation is now officially hovering around 100,000% (and unofficially, probably twice or three time that figure), the Zimbabwe dollar (ZW$) is trading on the black market at 25 million to one United States dollar (US$), the store shelves are all but empty, there is no food to feed the people and the country is now heavily reliant on food donations.

Everything else is pointing the wrong way. Unemployment levels have reached more than eighty percent, manufacturing capacity is less than 30% and the citizens have fled to all corners of the earth to escape the misery and poverty which the collapsed economy has spouted. The massive emigration of qualified and skilled people has depleted the country of its human capital and this has undermined the country’s ability to provide adequate services and infrastructure to its people.

Electricity is no longer available and people are relying more on generators (for those with the means) and candles and firewood (for the vast majority of the citizens). The roads are deteriorating at an alarming pace and water has become scarce in most urban centres. Schools and hospitals are understaffed and under-equipped and the few professional teaching and medical staff remaining are constantly on strike for one cause or another. Yet in most accounts, the country is still described as “facing” economic collapse. “Facing collapse” implies that the collapse is possible, probable or imminent but it does not reflect a fait accompli – that the economy has actually collapsed.

To all intents and purposes and other than for semantic arguments, the economy in Zimbabwe has collapsed. Take the inflation figure, for a start. A six figure inflation rate means that, at the very least, the purchasing power of Zimbabweans is being eroded by at least 270% each day. Or to put it differently, the people’s income is expected to increase by about three times each day to retain its purchasing parity. Yet, only four years ago the inflation rate was about 600% (which was quite bad, mind you!) which means that inflation has risen by more than 160 times in the short four year period. Can any economist somewhere out there tell me how a country in which the value of its cash assets are depleting more that three times daily, can be described as “facing collapse”?

Turning to the value of the national currency, the Zimbabwe dollar was trading at around ZW$10 to a US$ in 1997. There was no black market then and anyone could walk into a bank, apply for and collect foreign currency without any difficulty. Now it is virtually impossible to obtain foreign currency from any official sources, unless one is well connected to the powers that be. So all the trade of foreign currency is taking place outside the official channels in what has been termed the parallel market (or somewhat inappropriately, the black market).

On the parallel market, the ZW$ is now trading at 25 million to a single US$. If you think that is bad, wait a moment. The currency was revaluated less than two years ago and three zeros were slashed from the face value of the currency. If you add those zeros back. It means that the currency is now trading at ZW$25 billion to a US$ (or 2,5billion times what it was worth ten years ago). I must confess that I am not brilliant with figures so I desperately hope that my calculations are wrong. If they are correct, the numbers are mind boggling in a sad sort of way, to say the least.

So given all this, one should really wonder at what stage will the country’s economy be declared officially collapsed? This issue is very important to establish because it determines the legality or otherwise of the actions and activities of those in power in at the moment. Everyone knows that it is crime to trade a company that is insolvent (generally defined as the situation where the value of assets is less than the value of liabilities). Directors of insolvent companies who fail to file for bankruptcy are liable for criminal prosecution. If one takes the argument that a country is actually one very large enterprise (which is probably true), it can be argued that the leaders of government (the directors) are liable for prosecution for running a country that is insolvent.

It is also a fact that under company law, persons who have filed for bankruptcy and have not been legally rehabilitated are barred from holding directorships of other businesses. By extension, this provision would disqualify all the present leadership in the country for running for office in the forthcoming elections. The principle of “existence for the general good of the public or society” which informs such laws and practices applies to governments as much as it does to private companies. There can be no exception to that. It is not good enough to blame sanctions or the opposition or, indeed, the British government for this poor state of the economy. Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known before independence, was under UN sanctions for a long time yet was able to run an efficient economy to serve the needs of its people. The same can be said of Cuba today.

Another problem that has been bothering me is why those in leadership do not realise the extent of the problem faced by their own people and their (leaders’) obligation to rectify the situation. I have developed a theory on this. Question: suppose you commit a crime, what do you do to protect yourself? Answer: you destroy the evidence. Thieves will wipe off their fingerprints from surfaces they may have touched, murderers will bury the bodies where they cannot be found and throw away or hide their weapons. Given this propensity for criminals to destroy or hide evidence, is it possible that the present destruction of Zimbabwe’s economy is a deliberate ploy or effort to destroy the evidence of massive looting of national resources by those who are ruling the country?

Let me put it this way, if billions of real “dollars” have been siphoned away to Switzerland or Malaysia, it would make sense to destroy the evidence by printing huge sums of worthless paper money. With all the re-denominations and re-evaluations of the currency taking place in the country, it will be difficult if not impossible to track and account for any embezzled funds. The evidence is disappearing before our very eyes and very soon there will be nothing to pin on the offenders and transgressors. That seems to me to be a real motivation for the leaders to sustain the present unacceptable state of affairs in Zimbabwe.

If it is indeed the case that evidence of criminality is being wilfully destroyed by the present leadership in the country, then those in power now will have even more to answer for when the moment of reckoning comes. I know it will be easy to say at that time that all this was a fault of one man, Robert Mugabe, but I suspect there will be more than enough evidence to show that this was not act of one but many persons – most of whom were willing participants and direct beneficiaries of the grand theft. This includes the politicians in the ruling elite, the officials of the reserve bank, the business community, senior civil servants, the judiciary and the law enforcement agents.

Many people will be called to account for their actions or inactions in the course of the unfolding economic collapse and many will be asked to explain how they acquired their immense wealth when everyone else was becoming poorer by the day. Many questions will be asked and even more answers sought on how and why the situation deteriorated to this extent. It may very well be that the forthcoming elections will not lead to this eventuality but, sure as day follows night and night follows day, the time will come for these questions to be asked. And when that time comes, the answers had better be good - very good indeed.

At last, good news from Kenya. Really?

There were huge sighs of relief this week when, under the watchful gaze of Kofi Annan, that consummate diplomat of UN fame, the President of Kenya, Mwaai Kibaki, and his rival in the much disputed elections of December 2007, Raila Odinga, finally signed an agreement to end their fight over the election results. It had not been a week without its drama. Frustrated with the slow pace of the negotiations, Odinga had earlier threatened to call back his supporters into the streets on Wednesday and the protest was called off at the last minute under pressure from Annan who was heading the mediation effort. And to no one’s great surprise the peace deal was clinched a few hours later.

This was an important and welcome development in resolving what had become a drawn out and internecine conflict. Elsewhere in Africa, in Nigeria to be precise, the election tribunal was handing down its verdict on yet another contested election result – that of President Umar Yar’Adua. Again, to no one’s great surprise the tribunal ruled that the president’s victory was valid notwithstanding the many and proven irregularities that characterised the plebiscite. Never mind the fact that the Chairman of the election tribunal had, a few days before the verdict, been elevated to the Supreme Court bench by the very president whose legitimacy he was adjudicating. Never mind the fact that at least six governorship election results and a host of other senatorial results (including that of the Senate President), contested for at the same time as the presidential election, have so far been annulled by the courts due to irregularities.

One does sense that the two completely different approaches to resolving a very similar problem resulted in a very similar result. The status quo in the presidential incumbency was retained although, particularly in the case of Kenya, with severe damage to the credibility and status of the incumbent. In all indications, for the moment at least, it looks like the Nigerian dispute will work its way to the supreme court for final judgement. But don’t hold your breathe, not yet anyway. The opposition candidates have been reported to be under severe pressure not to contest the tribunal’s ruling against them, regardless of the merits of their case and it is just possible that they may succumb to the pressure. Bearing in mind that the Chief Justice has also been a recent recipient of a highly coveted national honour, conferred by the very president whose legitimacy he will have to decide, the result of the appeal may well be a foregone conclusion.

Given the fact that the drama in the Nigerian election has still to be played out, let me hold my peace until a more opportune time and focus the rest of this piece on the Kenyan situation. In many respects and for many reasons, the outcome of Annan’s mediation effort must be a cause for celebration. Over a thousand lives lost, and still counting, a quarter of a million and more displaced in a short two months, an economy turned upside down and one can begin to appreciate the scale and enormity of the Kenyan tragedy. For what? One may ask. So that there can be a power sharing arrangement? So that Kibaki retains the presidency which, to all indications, he did not win? So that Odinga becomes a prime minister, a position which he never contested for in the first place? Give me a break, please!

What has happened in Kenya is no victory for good and is nothing to celebrate, truly and honestly. It is a travesty of justice and something which Africa, represented by Annan, Mkapa, and others on the mediation panel and the world, represented by George Bush and Condy Rice who played a pivotal role in brokering the power sharing deal, should be ashamed of instead of celebrating. I do not know whether I am being naïve or something, but would this solution have been celebrated anywhere else in the democratic world. Assuming that in the last elections in the US, George W Bush had been accused with some justification of rigging the election against John Kerry, and that Kerry’s people had taken to the streets in protest resulting in the death of a thousand Americans and displacement of a quarter of a million more, would the American public have celebrated a power sharing solution necessitating the amendment of their constitution to provide for a prime minister? Would the same solution be celebrated in Britain, or France, or Germany, or Russia? I doubt it very much.

So if the solution is not good enough for the democratic world, why should be it acceptable for Africa? Is it because standards for Africans are lower or is it because African are more tolerant of mediocrity and impropriety? It will no doubt be argued that Africans, after all have tolerated debilitating diseases like malaria and Aids, they have tolerated dictators and kleptomaniacs who have pillaged their once promising and prosperous nations. Africans have been victims of lengthy civil ways and have been subjected to genocide on a massive scale. So what is the big deal in a small matter of rigged elections? I will not fault such argument but somehow, sometime, somewhere we have to break from this mould of accepting mediocrity and fractured solutions. Otherwise the continent will remain forever steeped in underdevelopment and poverty.

In my view, the resolution reached in Kenya is likely to lead to paralysis of government. Whilst the actual mechanics of implementing the agreement are yet to be exposed, one may hazard the guess that the prime minister will form the government – appoint ministers and preside over administrative management of government while the president will approve the formation of government and the laws enacted by the government. Such a situation may work reasonably well in a situation where the president and the prime minister are working in consent and in respect of each other. If the two are antagonistic, as is likely to be the case in Kenya, government decision making will be severely paralysed or compromised. That is not an ideal or desirable situation.

Therefore far from resolving a critical situation, the adopted solution will have the effect of postponing the problem to a later date. Whether that will be good for Kenyans in the long term remains to be seen. Are there other options that could have been considered? I would say, yes. Could the situation in Kenya have been resolved differently? I would think so. The root of the Kenyan problem is that a sitting president is alleged to have manipulated election results in his favour. In the circumstances, the international effort must have focused on establishing the merits or otherwise of the allegations. If the allegations were proved, the president should have been asked to give way to the rightful winner of the contest. If the allegations could not be proved, the opposition should have been told to accept the results. If there was no conclusive evidence to establish the veracity of the allegations, a re-run of the elections should have been called.

That, to me, would have been the most appropriate solution and the fairest way of dealing with the situation. As it is, the outcome merely confirmed and strengthened existing precedents of election rigging with impunity by incumbents. I believe it is high time that our leaders were held to the same standards (not necessarily, the highest) of moral and ethical rectitude as would be expected anywhere else in the world. They should not be allowed to get away with brazen and criminal improprieties such as subverting the democratic wishes of their citizens. They should be called to order quickly and firmly if and when they stray from the straight and narrow path. Appeasing them, as apparently happened in Kenya is plainly wrong, counterproductive and without justification.

Admittedly, nothing is perfect in this world and there are no perfect solutions. But that should never be used as an excuse for not trying hard. I am not terribly sure to what extent a more appropriate solution was sought in Kenya. And I quite understanding the challenges that the mediators faced in their endeavours. However, when I saw the smirk on Kibaki’s face (which was intended to pass for a smile) as he shook hands with Odinga to seal their peace agreement, I could not help but feel that Kibaki had gotten away with murder. For me and for many others, I suspect, that was a very worrying moment and a sad indictment of international diplomacy.