Zimbabwes options: Dealing with the obvious

Robert Mugabe says elections will be held next year with or without a new constitution and his counterpart in the coalition, Morgan Tsvangirai, agrees the way forward is for an election next year. But what needs to be addressed before its possible to hold a truly free and fair election in Zimbabwe? Does stability bring good elections or good elections bring stability?

The recent report by RAU was released in response to those very issues. It analysed the situation in Zimbabwe from the March 2008 election to the current time and argued that there was an opportunity in March 2008 for the crisis to be resolved if SADC had acted in a completely different way. Unfortunately, they didnt.

As a consequence of that we ended up with the Global Political Agreement and since that time, what we see is a very polarised, stuck process of an inclusive government that doesnt really operate like an inclusive government it operates like two governments largely struggling with each other and despite some small changes if you want, in the humanitarian and economic situation, the major political issues are not being resolved, said Reeler.

Crisis resolution

In his opinion, the same political crisis that existed in March 2008, exists in June 2010. The question that his report attempted to address was what will resolve the crisis?

Whatever happens, the final resolution of the crisis will involve an election and so our view was lets start looking at the quality of the election because it is the case that all elections since 2000 have been highly disputed affairs and rejected in the main by most of the international community. Thats what we were arguing in brief.

In response to questions about the inability of the partners in the GNU to resolve their differences, Reeler talked about a forced marriage.

In this sense, the Global Political Agreement which is argued to be a solution is really only a starting point for bringing two largely hostile parties together to work out a future. Its not a solution in itself, its a mechanism for a solution and what is working out in this process are the differences between the two parties that existed before the Global Political Agreement was signed and it represents the difficulty of two parties who have been contesting for political power and control of the State since 2000, since before 2000.

So this is a marriage of inconvenience you might even put it, its not the choice of either of these two parties to be in this relationship together and therefore one must expect an enormous amount of friction and difficulty and suspicion between the two parties.

MDC-M minority

When asked about his references to only two parties in the GNU, Reeler drew attention to several opinion polls that reflected the peoples view that MDC-M is a minority party.

The MDC-M grouping is there by courtesy of the Global Political Agreement, but clearly in our view and I think in most peoples view, command no real popular support. So I think their major role is obfuscation.

Mutambara holds the balance of power but he holds the balance of power because of an elite pact not because thats how the voters behaved. If we looked at how his party performed in the polls in 2008 it was pretty appallingly poor so he is a very much minority party so its a bit fatuous really to argue that he holds the balance of power.

Continuing to discuss the surveys, one of which focused on the female population in Zimbabwe, Reeler said that the findings were illuminating. The question asked was about how they saw the way forward for Zimbabwe. They were asked to list the three most important things that they felt would solve the problems in the country.

The first priority for the majority of women was an end to violence. The second was free and fair elections, and the third, democracy.

Those are very important things coming from ordinary citizens because thats what has continuously emerged from the Afro-barometer surveys over the last five or six years – is they show that Zimbabweans have a very acute understanding of what democracy is, its manifestations and that they also have a very acute understanding that they dont have a democracy, said Reeler.

!So what you can see is Zimbabweans want a solution, they want a solution in a particular way, they want elections that are non-violent that restore democracy essentially. I think they also said there has been some improvement due to the inclusive government and the Global Political Agreement and they saw some improvements in health and a few improvements in education but they also saw many areas in which there was no improvement whatsoever.

Zimbabwean perspective

What we are hearing from discussions within communities are people who are deeply concerned about whether this Global Political Agreement and the inclusive government is working and people who are very concerned that there is a resolution to this crisis. And I think what people are saying is they understand quite clearly that the solution to a political crisis will be an election. Thats the Zimbabwean perspective.

The chicken and egg situation of whether elections come before stability, or stability before elections has been debated by many in recent months. Some MPs say its too early and theres an enormous amount of contradictory opinion about whether Zimbabwe should be going to elections or not.

In our view the question is not so much whether or when we go to elections, it will have to be at some point, we will have to go to elections, it is to do with the quality of the elections that is the key issue here. And thats the major problem isnt it since 2000?

He went on to outline how the March 2008 elections were almost exemplary with little pre-poll violence. However, after Tsvangirais MDC emerged as the peoples favourite everything changed.

At that particular point, and this is the key issue for elections, SADC had a number of options. They could have insisted and applied pressure to say youve got a clear result, stability requires you to go with this result and we would put pressure on Zanu (PF) to accept the result, Morgan Tsvangirai sworn in as president, the MDC assumes the government. That didnt happen and the rest is history.

So our view is that its the quality of an election that we have to be looking at. Not when but how. Whether its in 2011 or 2012 or 2020, the crisis will be resolved by an election and that election has to be genuine, free and fair and able to be accepted by the entire international community and the key to that is SADC. They have been given by Africa, the mandate to deal with the regional issue, the regional body SADC has empowered South Africa to be the mediator and the facilitator whatever term one wants to use on this thing and they will be the guarantors and the facilitators of any election.

Security pessimism

With regard to the area of Zimbabwes security forces, Reeler made reference to the importance of the constitutional process that would then bring reform to such areas.

I think we have some pessimism in RAU that the constitutional process will deliver the kind of constitution that Zimbabweans want, but thats a personal view, we cant pre-judge the process, the process may be highly effective. But in terms of what I was talking about earlier, in SADC guaranteeing or creating the conditions for free and fair elections, the critical issue is clearly the security forces must be under total civilian control and that doesnt mean of one party, it means under the control of the government as a whole and we dont see much evidence that that has in fact taken place, notwithstanding the National Security Council.

On the issue of justice and human rights, Reeler stated his belief that democracy produces stability and the problem in Zimbabwe is that so many institutions have been compromised in the last 10 years.

We have deep concerns about the whole judicial process, weve had deep concerns about the behaviour of the Attorney General, we have deep concerns about the partisanship of the police and so on and so on. The only thing that I can be 100% certain of is that whether its next year, the year after or the year after that, we will have an election and that election will either resolve the crisis or it will attenuate and it will go on.