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.

Dancing kwasa kwasa in the African Bush

There was one moment during President George W Bush’s recent visit to Africa that grabbed my imagination. It was the sight of the leader of the world’s most powerful nation dancing kwasa kwasa to some African rhythm. My initial reaction was wow! Welcome to Africa Mr President and its good to see that you are enjoying it quite a bit! And for a moment I even imagined that with all those fancy moves President Bush, who is due to leave office at the end of the year, could be a worthwhile candidate for the presidency of the much muted United States of Africa.

For all the misery and suffering that the continent has endured and continues to endure, there is still one thing that it retains in significant abundance – its rhythm and dance. From Cape to Cairo, Africa is one big music and dance party. Go to any country on the continent and if you are important enough to have a large welcoming party, you can bet there will be young scantily dressed things doing their thing on the tarmac to the accompaniment of drums, horns, marimba and other exotic musical instruments. If you are not important enough but have the courage of some sort, you could visit any of the shanty towns which are often mistaken as cities and towns dotted around the continent and you can be sure to come across a gathering or two of our citizens whiling away their time gyrating to some music of some sorts.

This is Africa for you - a land of magnificent sights and even more wonderful sounds. Yet somehow behind the bonhomie there lurk real big and daunting challenges and even greater potential and prospects. I suspect that George Bush’s visit was less about tackling the challenges than it was about exploring and exploiting the opportunities. The Americans are well aware that Africa is there for the retaking, well sort of. After the euphoria and disappointment of independence, Africa has began to offer itself, maybe not as a colony but certainly as a partner state, to those who are willing to become its friends. So far the Chinese have been quick to take the bite and are doing decent enough business across the continent in such interesting spots as Sudan.

While the economic and fellowship support from China has largely been welcomed by Africa, more so as it comes with very little or no strings attached, there remains deep seated suspicion on the motives of the Chinese benefactors in the short term and significant doubt about the long term benefits of the relationship. After all, its not just the business that they are getting, but the Chinese are also becoming a strong political influential force. They are making many good and bad friends on the continent and have become something of big brother to the continent on the international stage. The failure of the international community to force change in Darfur has been largely attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the Chinese unwillingness to apply pressure on Sudan. The Chinese have upped the stakes in Africa, not only by laying claim to a significant base of mineral resources, but by providing financial aid and political support to partner countries.

The attitude of China seems to be not to let the little matters of human rights get into the way of the real big matters of commerce and industry. This would not be such a bad idea if the commerce and industry also helped to develop the African economies. Unfortunately and at least for the time being, the benefits accruing to Africa are not that evident. Thus it is in Africa’s interest to keep its options open and continue to court friends from far and wide. To help their cause, the Americans are realising that it is not in their long term interest to let China have a free run on the African continent. In my view, the Americans want to engage Africa not just to neutralise the Chinese influence but in order to gain the following advantages.

Firstly, there are economic rewards to be realised from Africa. Africa provides both a vast market for goods and services generated in the US and a great source of raw materials to power its economic development. Trade agreements such as African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) are intended to facilitate the entry of African manufactured products into the American market but, by the same token, open a wide avenue for the American goods to enter the African markets. With Africa’s teaming population, it is not difficult to imagine the prospects and opportunities for marketing goods and services to the continent.

The second benefit which the Americans seek to gain from Africa is improved security. The very controversial idea of Africom is premised on protecting American security interests much more than it is about promoting stability on the continent. The Americans need to site their military bases in Africa in order to create the capacity and capability to respond quickly to security threats emanating from Middle East. It does not take a lot of reasoning to appreciate that American military bases on African soil will significantly enhance the former’s response time to any security threat emanating from the Middle-Eastern or, indeed, the former Soviet regions.

The third benefit for the Americans will be to establish a sphere of influence to promote its democratic principles and ideals. The US missed out on the partitioning of Africa jamboree and although they had small pockets of influence in countries largely occupied by former slaves, Liberia and Sierra Leone, they were left out of the larger chunks of Africa where the British, French and Portuguese held sway. These colonial influences were swept away by the independence movements of the sixties through to the eighties. The resultant influence vacuum was filled-up by the manoeuvrings of the super power during the cold war but these relationships never really gained any significant traction because they were very opportunistic, circumstantial and short-termistic in nature. To a large extent Africa continued to drift in isolation within its own sea of crises caused by civil wars, dictatorships and the AIDS pandemic.

Much of the interest which remained on Africa was dictated by limited and specific economic interests such as the exploitation of oil resources and precious minerals. Only in the period leading to the millennium transition, the late nineties and early two thousands, was some interest in Africa rekindled. The interest took many forms but was predominantly premised towards economic development, charity and humanitarian aid. The New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) which is an African-led initiative and the Tony Blair inspired Commission for Africa represent some of the more visible and broad attempts to positively influence events in Africa.

The current moves of the US can be viewed as an attempt to counter the gains by the Chinese. I think the question which begs for an answer is whether the US should be welcomed to Africa or it should be eschewed. Historically, the Americans have shown more altruistic motives in their interventions especially in Europe where they joined the fight to repel Nazism and, in the aftermath of the war, provided financial resources (through the Marshall Plan) to rebuild Western Europe.

The US is a rich and powerful nation and it can, with sufficient political will, make real and positive contributions to the improvement of the situation in Africa. In this regard, it is my view that American interests in Africa should be encouraged. In the circumstances, a bit of kwasa kwasa dance in the African bush by President Bush may not be misjudged exuberance.

Why President Obama will be good for Africa

The ongoing primary elections in the United States of America are being described as the most exciting in many decades. Much, if not most, of this excitement can be directly attributed the performance of one man – the 46 year old Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. To say that this second generation African American has electrified the election in a way which has never been witnessed in US election history is, perhaps, to put it quite mildly. As far as I can remember, this is the first time I have really followed with keen interest the progress of the primary elections in America, although I have always been fascinated by this democratic phenomenon from a very early age.

What has made this race for the Whitehouse different and exciting is that it has, for the first time, defied if not shuttered all political logic and conventional wisdom. Going into the primaries, there were a few “truths” and “certainties” about the 2008 US elections. The first was that the next president of the US will be a Democrat. This truth was informed by the sheer incompetence and high unpopularity of the serving Republican government of President George W Bush. There was little doubt and, even less, debate that come January 2009, a Democrat would be sworn in as President of the world’s most powerful nation. The other truth and dead certainty was that that person would be the former first lady of the US, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. After all, the lady had pretty well spent her whole life preparing to be the first female president of the great nation.

Given these almost certainties, the 2008 elections were considered as less of a contest than a coronation of Mrs Clinton as the 44^th President of the US. In so doing she would have registered a large number of very unique records – the first female president, the first former first lady to be become “The Man”, etc. Unfortunately no one told that to the Senator from Illinois who had come into prominence when he lighted up the Democratic Convention in Boston in July 2004 with a stump speech that left many delegates on their feet applauding for more. Within two years he was elected to the US Senate and in another short while, he decided there was another and higher call to duty and he threw in his hat into the presidential ring. Not many gave him a chance and some felt that he was there to just make up the numbers.

Not any more. After scoring an upset and impressive victory in Iowa, Senator Obama has gone on to win primaries in many more states across the US and he is now considered the hot favourite to clinch the Democratic Party nomination. Senator Obama has galvanised public interest in the presidential elections in a way no other politician has done before him. He is doing to the American politics and to the presidential race what Mohammed Ali did to boxing, what Micheal Jordan did to basketball, what Tiger Woods has done to golf and what Lewis Hamilton is doing to Formula 1 motor racing. He has torn the form book to shreds and redefined the political landscape in a manner which is both wonderful and awesome. Wonderful in the sheer brilliance with which he has got the American people to believe in his vision and project and awesome in the manner he is grinding his opponents into the ground.

It may be too early to say, but the world would be better advised to start preparing to deal with a president of the US who is non-white. I prefer to use the term non-white rather than black because I think that is a more accurate description of Senator Obama’s demographic classification. Here in Africa, a person of Obama’s background would not be classified as black. In my country, a person of mixed parentage would be called a coloured. But I do not think that this presidential race is about colour and Obama has done very well to steer himself clear of such stereotype issues. Obama’s rallying call has been about change and, implicit in that call, is a challenge to the US to break with its past – good and bad – and move forward in a new and probably better direction.

That is the message that is desperately needed for Africa and this makes me believe that a President Obama would be a very good thing indeed for Africa. There is little doubt in my mind that Africa is regressing at a rapid and alarming pace and, so far, no one seems to have a solution to the problem. In the past two months there have been two major international incidents – the first being the elections crisis in Kenya which has seen hundreds of people killed and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes and the other being the attempted overthrow of President Idriss Déby in Chad by some rebels. President Déby has, with a little help from his French friends, been spared for a little longer while Kenya, with a great help from many friends from all over the world, is still struggling to find a solution to its quandary.

These are the latest additions to an already overcrowded state of misery and suffering in many other countries on the continent including in Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Zimbabwe. The continent is bleeding badly and is in desperate need of real and practical measures to resolve its problems. The world at large has claimed that Africa’s problems should be solved by the Africans themselves. This is both erroneous and too simplistic an approach to the problem. Africans have consistently proved themselves to be incapable of resolving their problems and, to the contrary, have proved very adept at compounding those problems. The African Union has failed to assert any degree of moral authority and leadership on events taking place on its soils and regional bodies such as SADC, ECOWAS, etc have not been any more successful.

Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian author, has averred that the problem of Nigeria (and by extension, Africa) is one of bad and incompetent leadership. Africa has too many leaders who have overstayed their welcome and ground their countries to abject poverty through corruption and poor policies. There is very little renewal or “change” taking place as those in power continue to entrench themselves and those in need (the poor) continue to multiply. An Obama presidency represents a significant opportunity and hope for Africa. As a non-white president, Obama will probably confirm what is already known – that there is nothing inherently and intellectually inferior about the African race. It will confirm that leadership incompetence is Africa is more about the individual leaders themselves than about the African race generally.

An Obama president will provide the first ever opportunity for America and, indeed the world, to make the call on Africa’s bad leadership without being accused of racism. Until now, any criticism of Africa by the US and other developed countries has been quickly dismissed as being motivated by racist and imperialistic tendencies. With President Obama in the Whitehouse, that will become too lame an excuse. Apart from that, the youthfulness of President Obama will make it that much more difficult to relate and empathise with the current and antiquated stock of leadership on the African continent. This will provide a motivation and impetus for the emergence of a new breed of younger and more zestful leaders on the continent.

I am highly optimistic and excited about the prospects of an Obama presidency in the US. But I do recognise that there remain immense obstacles and dangers lucking on his relentless march to the Whitehouse. There is still the wild but possible prospect that some crazy lunatic may physically eliminate him from the race as happened to Robert Kennedy those many years ago or has so recently happened to Benazier Bhutto in Pakistan. There is also a possibility that Mr Osama bin Laden may decide to lend a little help to Obama’s campaign, as he did to John Kerry’s effort in the last elections, thereby handing over the presidency back to the Republicans. Many, I suspect, will not wish any such misfortunes on Senator Obama.

Simba Makoni – Zimbabwe’s saviour or Mugabe’s decoy?

In a country in which there has, for a long time, been very little or no good news, the announcement this week by the former Zimbabwean minister of finance, Dr Simba Makoni, that he will contest the upcoming elections as an independent was quite exhilarating. However it was hardly a surprise, after so much speculation in the preceding weeks that he would do so. If there was anyone who was surprised, it was probably the man with whom Dr Makoni will lock horns in the contest, President Robert Mugabe, who he had met in a private but much publicised tête-à-tête two weeks previously.

It is early days yet to decipher and clearly understand what strategy Makoni has to unseat the man who has been on the hot seat for 28 years - all of Zimbabwe’s life as an independent country. Many before him have tried and failed. The first real challenger to Mugabe’s power was Edgar “Two-boy” Tekere, the maverick politician who broke out of Zanu-PF famously declaring that, under Mugabe, democracy in the party and the country was in the intensive care unit. He formed the Zimbabwe Unity Movement and in 1990 contested the presidential elections which he lost to Mugabe. After many years of turmoil within his party and within his personal life, he rejoined Zanu-PF only to be expelled again after the publication of his best-selling biography which was somewhat unflattering to Mugabe’s leadership credentials.

The next serious challenger to Mugabe was Enoch Dumbutshena, the former chief justice of the country who led his new party, The Forum Party, in a contest against Mugabe in 1995 and, not unexpectedly, lost the competition. Justice Dumbutshena was a popular, humble and honourable man who could have been trusted to rule the country in a fair and just manner. But he was no much against Mugabe’s slick and well oiled election machinery and his failure to unseat Mugabe ensured that he would be consigned to the dustbin of history. After Dumbutshena came, we all now know, Morgan Tsvangirai, the astute and articulate former trade unionist who, with his colleagues cobbled up the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999 which nearly won the 2000 parliamentary elections. The MDC was the first party since the country’s independence to give Zanu-PF a serious run for their money and there is widely held belief that the party won the contest but were rigged out of their victory. In the presidential elections in 2002, Tsvangirai went head to head with Mugabe in the presidential election and “lost”. (I place “lost” in parenthesis because the results were highly disputed and questionable.)

Without doubt Tsvangirai is a popular and savvy politician who could have as easily lead the country back to prosperity but, like many of us, he is not infallible. I suspect that he may have made some errors of judgement which allowed his party to be split into two factions. As a consequence and with Tsvangirai’s credentials under scrutiny, the MDC is likely to present a weak and fractured opposition to Mugabe in the forthcoming elections. The split opposition vote will allow Mugabe a reasonably clear run for re-election. Enter Simba Makoni. The one thing that is certain about politics is that it is a game of opportunism and there is indeed an opportunity for Makoni to make himself a national hero. With the MDC in near shambles, Makoni may present the electorate with the only credible and realistic option to unseat Mugabe.

Zimbabwe is a country which is yearning and desperate for change and the leadership trophy is there for the taking by anyone brave enough to stand up to Mugabe and present himself as a serious contender. Makoni comes in with a number of real advantages. He has the experience emanating from his tenure as a government minister and as the executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community. He is what one would call an “insider” who has been privy to the workings of national governance and international diplomacy. I would add that he is well connected to the national, regional and international “power grids” and could, if he won the election, move very quickly to restore Zimbabwe’s standing within the international community.

Makoni is clever and articulate (you do not earn a PhD by being dumb!) and can make a persuasive case to the electorate and to whoever cares to listen to him. He understands economics, having been a minister of finance. He has worked with youth organisations, as a former minister of youth and sports. His SADC experience has burnished his internationalist credentials. But most importantly, he has the endorsement of the man whom he seeks to replace. He was sacked as minister of finance by Mugabe and that is as a big an endorsement as one could ever get in the current scheme of things in Zimbabwe. The conventional wisdom in Zimbabwe is that in a free and fair election just about anyone can run and win against Mugabe. Makoni is certainly not just anyone.

Having made the case for Makoni’s participation in the forthcoming elections let me, for a moment, look at the downside of his mission. The first thing is that his entry is bound to raise a lot of suspicion in the minds of many about his motives and sincerity. The fact that he met with Mugabe in a private session a few weeks before his announcement raises the spectre that some kind of deal could have been cut. It is quite possible that Mugabe could have encouraged Makoni to run in order to split the opposition vote. Mugabe knows very well that the more opponents there are in the contest, the better his chances are of retaining power. Of course Mugabe would be taking the risk that the opposition could decide to coalesce around Makoni thus making him a real and potent challenger but I suspect that that is a risk a very desperate Mugabe would be prepared to take. I would also expect that if a deal was indeed cut, Mugabe would have ensured that there were adequate safeguards and guarantees to protect him.

The second disadvantage which Makoni will face will be the limited time left for him to put together an election machinery which will deliver to him the desired results. A period of less than two months is simply too short for anyone to launch a credible campaign in a national election. There is a possibility that a lot of homework may have been done before the announcement and that structures may already have been secretly put in place. But I doubt this very much. Mugabe has over the years strengthened his intelligence capacity and services to the extent that nothing big or serious is likely to happen within the country and his party without him getting to know about it. And when he does, he acts with ruthless efficiency to weed out the miscreants as Professor Jonathan Moyo and others involved in the abortive Tsholotsho saga will readily testify.

The MDC had barely seven months to organise and prepare for the 2000 parliamentary elections. But they were bringing with them a whole national trade union organisation. Apart from a few and as yet unknown disgruntled elements within Zanu PF, Makoni has no known such organisation and machinery and he wants to pull off a win in a presidential election with barely two months left on the calendar! That is a real tall order, even running against a widely unpopular and thoroughly discredited opponent like Mugabe. Makoni will have to work his socks off every hour and minute of the remaining days to the election and pray very hard for divine intervention if he is to make any mark on the plebiscite.

Finally, Makoni has not yet shown how and whether he can stand up to the Mugabe’s intimidation and disruption tactics. As an insider and having lived all his political life sheltered under the Zanu PF umbrella, he is most certainly untrained and inexperienced in fending off the poisonous arrows and barbed spears which will undoubtedly be spewed towards him by the massive Mugabe propaganda machinery. He may have shown that he has the balls to stand up to Mugabe, but can he sustain the challenge in the face of adversity? How he handles himself in the next two months will determine whether he will become a hero and saviour of the Zimbabwean people or whether he will be regarded as a decoy for yet another Mugabe grab for power.

Elections in Zimbabwe – contest or no contest?

Last week’s announcement of 29 March 2008 as the date for elections in Zimbabwe should have come as a welcome relief to many but it almost certainly didn’t. You would think that with a leadership that has presided over the collapse of a country’s economic and social infrastructure, that has survived by brutalising its own people and which has demonstrated a propensity for making wrong policy decisions, the citizens would be so fed up that they could not wait for the next election to throw out such bad leaders. But this is Zimbabwe and the rules of common sense do not apply here.

President Robert Mugabe, against all the protestations and pressure of the opposition which had sought a postponement to enable better preparation for the event, has decided that he cannot wait any longer to have his mandate confirmed and extended by his loyal and committed subjects. He has decided that the time to hold the elections is now and he is convinced and confident that he will be re-elected. The question of whether the lections will be free and fair is not material nor should it be allowed to stand in the way of his unbridled lust to hang on to power for life. The issue that the people who he rules over are suffering daily mostly because of his government’s misplaced, ill-conceived and ill-considered policies is of no consequence.

One would have thought that the whole point of holding elections is to choose a leader who can make lives better for his people - a leader who will lead the country to prosperity and development and who will leave the country in a better and stronger position for future generations. Mr Mugabe has been at the helm of the country for 28 years and he has very little if any success to boast of. Under any real democratic conditions he would have long been shown the door by the electorate but he has survived because he knows how to manipulate the election system in his favour.

His strategy for manipulating elections has three main components. The first is to intimidate the opposition though brutal force and violence which are perpetrated through the machinery of the state such as the army, the police and the intelligence units and his party’s elements including the war veterans and the youth league. The opposition parties are restricted from campaigning widely by beatings, torture and murder of their candidates, officials, agents and supporters. Zanu-PF has declared certain areas as “no-go” areas for the opposition and ensured that only their candidates are allowed to campaign freely in such areas. Mugabe has even boasted of his degrees in violence and these credentials are likely to be in full evidence during the forthcoming elections.

The second strategy has been to bribe the voters. Small and large favours are doled out to anyone who are willing and prepared to deliver their votes to him. In a country which is now suffering from the highest levels of poverty and deprivation, there is unlikely to be a shortage of takers of Mr Mugabe’s political and economic trinkets. If bribery fails, he resorts to blackmail. Where people have not accepted bribes have been blackmailed by being denied support and services. In times of food shortage, as are prevailing at the moment, opposition supporters are denied food aid and access to other public services. To a population that has been utterly brutalised and demoralised, both bribery and blackmail are very potent weapons of cohesion.

Mugabe’s third strategy has been the use of propaganda. No effort has been spared to drum up support by churning out misleading, false and other self-serving messages mainly through the public owned media. The state owned television, radio and newspapers have been comprehensively deployed to hype government’s successes and programmes and to undermine the opposition. Enemies have been cleverly invented to blame for each and every failure of government. Foreign powers, the opposition, poor weather, the dead and the living have, at one time or another, been trumpeted as the instigators of national misfortunes and perpetrators of evil misdeeds against the country.

And to make absolutely sure that nothing will go wrong, the forth strategy has been to subvert and manipulate electoral agencies and other institutions which are responsible for administration of the elections. The electoral supervisory bodies have been compromised to ensure that constituencies are unfairly demarcated, that voters’ roles are in shambles so as to be easily manipulated and that the whole electoral process is as biased against the opposition as possible. Law enforcement agencies such as the police and the army have been used to harass the opposition and make it as difficult as possible to freely campaign. Even the judiciary has been compromised to ensure that they do not give judgements that are not favourable to Mr Mugabe’s government.

In such circumstances are there any chances that the opposition will win the election? I doubt it very much and hence I can quite understand why the opposition should contemplate boycotting the forthcoming elections. In the absence of the constitutional and other guarantees which they sought for a free and fair election, the opposition in Zimbabwe have got no chance in hell of unseating Mr Mugabe. That notwithstanding and against all good reasons, it is important that the opposition participates in the forthcoming elections. I say this because of a number of reasons.

Firstly, there is a very good chance that Mr Mugabe has called the elections in anticipation that the opposition will boycott them which would give him a clear and unopposed run. By refusing to succumb to the boycott bait, the opposition will make it difficult and painful for Mr Mugabe to retain power. He will be exposed to some form of competition, notwithstanding its weaknesses, which will force him to confront the issues which impinge on his credibility and suitability to continue in office. If he is going to steal the elections, as he no doubt must if he is to remain in office, then the theft will be openly exposed and the whole world will see him for what he is. The world will be watching and Africa will be watching too and Mr Mugabe may just realise that he cannot snort a cock on the outside world without further hurting himself.

Secondly participation will be an act of hope and faith. By not participating, the opposition will have consigned the nation and it’s suffering people to the deepest abyss of hopelessness and despair. Zimbabweans are desperate for some form of hope that there will be an end to their suffering. Any act which rekindles or restores that hope, no matter how small or desperate the act, is a source of comfort and cause for celebration for the suffering masses. The opposition feel that participating will legitimise Mr Mugabe’s hold on power and one cannot argue against this logic. But that is the risk they have to take. If they do not participate they are taking the even greater risk of becoming irrelevant and obsolete.

Finally, and this is the real clincher, there is a chance that against all odds – against the intimidation, the bribery and blackmail, the propaganda and the sword of the state machinery – the opposition will win the election. The people of Zimbabwe have suffered so much that they may turn out in overwhelming numbers to vote for change and no amount of rigging will be able to alter the vote. And if Mr Mugabe decided to subvert the will of the people they will react with such passion and courage which will make the country totally ungovernable, much as is now happening in Kenya. Which will be a real pity.