The DRC War, private property rights and credible elections were the primary criteria for imposing US sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2001. Now that the EU has removed most of its sanctions on Zimbabwe, what are the US benchmarks for removing its measures? Western countries say they will support any party that wins in a credible election. But who defines credible?
VIOLET GONDA: My guests on the programme Hot Seat are US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Bruce Wharton and Human Rights Watch Senior Researcher in the Africa Division, Dewa Mavhinga who were recently in London attending the Friends of Zimbabwe donor conference. Welcome on the programme.
BRUCE WHARTON: Thank you very much.
DEWA MAVHINGA: Thank you Violet.
GONDA: Ambassador Wharton – what is Friends of Zimbabwe first of all and what was the meeting about?
WHARTON: Traditionally the Friends of Zimbabwe has been the group of primary donor nations. Includes the United States, the UK, the European Union and all of its constituent countries, as well as Switzerland and a few, Japan and basically it’s a group of countries who, as I say have been the primary donors to Zimbabwe since Independence really. The interesting thing about this meeting, this I think was the fourth Friends of Zimbabwe meeting that’s been held in the last five years or so but the interesting thing about the one that was held in London was that it was expanded to include representatives from the government of national unity in Zimbabwe, expanded to include representatives of the SADC countries because SADC has had such a positive position and played such a positive role in Zimbabwe, and then civil society organizations as well. The Friends of Zimbabwe understood that it was important to get this broader perspective so I think that’s the unique thing about the meeting that took place yesterday.
GONDA: So what was the outcome of the meeting?
WHARTON: Well it was essentially improved coordination; these most significant donor nations got together and talked about two main sets of issues – one is conditions prior to the elections and the sorts of things that we might do to support the people and the government of Zimbabwe to ensure that an election is free, fair, credible, peaceful and then secondarily – what are we going to do after elections. What sorts of programmes will be most useful in Zimbabwe and how can we support those.
GONDA: The EU suspended sanctions, most of the sanctions on Zimbabwe and this happened the day before the actual meeting – are you as the United States going to follow suit and what did you make of these latest developments from the EU?
WHARTON: Well you know our policy on the targeted measures on Zimbabwe – again it’s 121 people in Zimbabwe and 71 entities so a very limited number of people who are affected by these. Our policy was expressed by Secretary Clinton last August when she spoke about action for action. We’ve been pretty clear from the very beginning, that is 2001, 2002, the sorts of things that we want to support in Zimbabwe – free and fair elections, equitable application of the rule of law, respect for human rights and so we are in the position where we regularly review our targeted measures and I believe that in the months ahead as we hopefully get a free and fair election, we’ll be in a position to do a fresh look and a fairly significant revision of our policy toward Zimbabwe.
GONDA: So the elections are going to be the benchmark for removing Z’DERA?
WHARTON: Well that was the original, again when the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act was passed, elections were one of the primary criteria for re- examination of our policy, yes, so free and fair elections will be vital in that process.
GONDA: Organizations like Human Rights Watch believe that it is too soon to remove or suspend any sanctions like what the European Union did.
WHARTON: I think it is interesting actually that we’ve got a range of responses to Zimbabwe right now; we’ve got the European Union taking one position, the United States taking a position further down the spectrum and then with other countries like Canada and Australia somewhere in between so there’s a whole range of incentives I think to promote free and fair elections, a peaceful process and what we all want of course is that the people of Zimbabwe are able to freely elect the government that they want and as we’ve all said on multiple occasions – we will respect and work with any government that is elected through a credible and peaceful process. So we’ve got this range of responses to Zimbabwe and it will be interesting to see how those work.
GONDA: I’ll come back to you on that issue Ambassador but let me move on to Dewa Mavhinga. First of all are western countries getting it right where Zimbabwe is concerned right now?
MAVHINGA: Well we strongly believe as a human rights organization that focus should be really on the preparations for the election, particularly on ensuring that the conditions on the ground are right for Zimbabwe to hold a credible, free and fair election. So we believe that some of this discussion may be diversions from the real issues and that really the international community, including the EU, the US and other countries, should be looking at their capacity to closely monitor the developments in a long term so that they can be in a position to independently certify that Zimbabwe has met the conditions to hold free and fair elections and have actually held credible elections that are without violence so we are looking at, in the recent weeks and months, an escalation in police attacks against civil society groups, on human rights lawyers, which are indicative of a deteriorating human rights and rule of law situation in the country. So these are for us are issues of greater concern than otherwise the other side discussions that have been taking place including on sanctions.
GONDA: So what did you make of the fact that the European Union decided to suspend quite a lot of people in Zanu PF who were on the sanction list, whereas the US government is saying that it will wait and see what is happening on the ground in Zimbabwe regarding elections?
MAVHINGA: Well we have said and we’ll reiterate that the real benchmark that is a significant benchmark to measure conditions on the ground would be the actual election and not a referendum on a constitution as other countries have looked at it because really, a referendum on the constitution was a position agreed to by the main political parties and therefore would not have been a litmus test to test the conditions on the ground. We also believe that in terms of the true character of transformation on the ground that will be seen when we get into the real elections. So perhaps it may have been really a premature move for the western countries now to believe that a referendum is the milestone upon which they would measure conditions on the ground. We also believe strongly that it is not about having a new constitution only or in itself, what is required is to go a step further and have a translation of that new document into practical, tangible values of change for the people of Zimbabwe, in terms of what they aspire to, in terms of their ability to express themselves freely in elections.
GONDA: But there are other people who say placing all those people on the sanctions list in the first place was not effective and that perhaps what the EU has now decided to do, by removing quite a number of people from the list and just leaving a small group, is more effective and that they should just be targeting a few to get the right results from Zimbabwe.
MAVHINGA: Well we strongly believe that really that is not the focus, it’s a side issue, it’s a diversion, it’s a red herring. What we need to be focusing on now, as the people of Zimbabwe, as the SADC community and the international community, is to focus on the conditions that would make it possible for the people of Zimbabwe to freely express themselves in elections which means that we are looking at the minimum conditions.
Directly and specifically we are looking at the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission – its capacity and independence to deliver a free and fair election, a cleaned-up voters roll. We are looking at the state media – is it giving equal access to political parties – Zanu PF, the MDCs and others. We are looking at the security forces in Zimbabwe – are they observing a strictly neutral political position in the political affairs of the country. These are the things that we really should be focusing on now as I believe that discussions on sanctions are a diversion and will not really, will take away important focus and attention on the real issues on the ground.
GONDA: Ambassador Wharton do you agree with this and can Zimbabwe meet these minimum conditions that Dewa Mavhinga has mentioned before elections with what you have seen on the ground right now?
WHARTON: Yes in fact I do agree with this notion that what matters right now are the conditions leading up to the election and that a lot of talk about targeted measures or sanctions is a distraction. You know one of the things that we discussed in the Friends of Zimbabwe meeting was the shared concern that we’ve all got about this current harassment of civil society. There’s obvious concern about political violence and we collectively strongly urged that those things must cease. Zimbabwe needs a vibrant civil society; they have a very important role to play in Zimbabwe.
The other issues that Mr Mavhinga suggested as well – the voters roll is absolutely critical – that’s got to be cleaned up and it’s going to take a lot of work because of course the new constitution defines who can vote in different ways than the old constitution did – so there’s a huge amount of work to be done to prepare for elections. But it’s the underlying conditions – what role are the police playing, what role are the military playing, is civil society able to operate openly, do all political parties have the same access to broadcast media in Zimbabwe. That’s a fundamental issue, that’s one of the things that the SADC election guidelines recognize as an important element of free and fair elections. So I would encourage everybody to go back and take a look at the SADC guidelines, I think that is an important set of considerations and we should all work together to do everything we can to make sure that conditions are appropriate for a free and fair election.
GONDA: What was discussed when you met with the Zimbabwe delegation on the issue of observers?
WHARTON: Yes well we made clear that we believed that having the broadest possible range of observation efforts from well organized domestic observation efforts to regional observation efforts such as from SADC and from the AU or the SADC Parliamentary Forum, to having broader international observation efforts – all of those things will do a couple of things – they will help ensure that the conditions are good and observing should begin now frankly and continue through the election, after the election.
But those things can help ensure that the people of Zimbabwe understand that they have the freedom to vote however they wish, and then finally they can guarantee or strengthen the credibility of the election and the legitimacy of whatever government is chosen through that election. So we urged the broadest approach to observation efforts. The government of national unity – there’re various opinions in that government. Some of the members of the government welcomed that, others have a more restrictive view of it. And one of the things that I hope that people will consider are independent observation efforts such as from the Carter Centre: not aligned with the government, a good track record in fact of disagreeing at least with the US government on some elections. So if the Carter Cetre were allowed in then the difficult question of judging the credibility of an election would be much more easily tackled.
GONDA: Zanu PF has said that they will not allow international observers to come and observe the elections so is this something that the donor community will insist on?
WHARTON: What Zanu PF has said is that they would not welcome observers from nations that imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe so the Carter Centre for example which is not affiliated with a government may be acceptable to Zanu PF and I think that would be a very important signal of Zanu PF’s own commitment to free and fair elections.
GONDA: Dewa Mavhinga – the SADC observers were there during the last disputed elections and many people said that there was a lot of violence before and after the elections and that this didn’t really reflect in the reports that were published by some of these observer missions.
MAVHINGA: Well it’s absolutely essential that Zimbabwe has external observers for its elections for credibility and legitimacy, particularly beginning with SADC and the African Union – these are critical players and friends of Zimbabwe really. In previous elections in 2008 and also more recently in the referendum that SADC has observed, the challenge that we have noticed has been that the deployment has not been sufficiently for a long period enough to allow for the observers to really get the views across the country. You’d find that for this past referendum, SADC deployed its observers a mere six days before the election and there were only 78 of them for a country with thousands of polling stations. So what needs to be done is that there should be an early deployment in sufficient numbers by SADC, by the African Union and the international community so that they can be in a position to have unfettered access to all parts of the country to witness and observe and monitor developments that would then put them in a stronger position to certify that in terms of the conditions as we go into elections and also for a significant period after the elections so that they can look at the post election environment as well.
But yes critically the international community, international groups such as the Carter Centre should be in a position to observe elections if Zimbabwe is to emerge with credibility and legitimacy in terms of the outcome of the elections.
GONDA: On the issue of credible elections, we have heard the European Union, we’ve heard SADC and we’ve heard the Americans saying that the referendum was credible and peaceful – do you as the civil society agree with that and to what extent do you call an election credible when you still have some aspects of society who are targeted?
MAVHINGA: Well we believe that for Zimbabwe, for the regional bloc SADC that has got guidelines on the conduct of democratic elections, these are useful instruments for use in measuring elections but we also believe that conditions on the ground should be free and fair, we are looking at aspects of the freedom of civil society to be able to conduct their activities, to take part in voter education and also to look at aspects like the voters roll – which were not applicable or used in the referendum. So this is why we go back to the issue that the referendum is not a good test to measure the conditions on the ground because it was voting on the basis that someone was 18 or above and a Zimbabwean citizen and not necessarily the need for the other intricate aspects of electoral management that would be applicable in a full-fledged election.
So we are saying that it would not be the real focus. What we now need is the government’s commitment to ensure that civil society groups are not harassed, they are not intimidated and that they are free to conduct their activities freely within the country and that political parties have full access to state media and that state media does not operate as an instrument for campaigns for one particular political party.
Most importantly the role of security forces – the army, the police, the Central Intelligence officials – they should observe a neutral political role, they should not be partisan. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission officials should also be strictly neutral and independent in the discharge of their mandate. So these are things which we now need to closely look at and we believe that there is need for there to be sufficient time for the various aspects of elections in the new constitution to be translated into meaningful change on the ground before Zimbabwe can be said to be ready for a full election at the level of the president, at the level of senators and members of parliament as well as councilors.
GONDA: But on the issue of credible elections, are we saying there can be few incidents of violence or no violence at all for an election to be defined as credible?
MAVHINGA: Well looking at the guidelines, the SADC guidelines on the conduct of democratic elections, but we’re looking at the threshold – it’s not just about incidents of violence, it’s also about the framework of the rule of law, it’s about what role the state institutions are playing. When there is violence, what steps have been taken procedurally to ensure justice. We have in the past seen that the police have failed or neglected to act to defend the interests of victims in the country and also to ensure that there is justice and accountability for the perpetrators of violence and these are issues of real concern for us as human rights groups that there has been a failure which really is because of political partisanship and partiality on the part of certain institutions. So this must be addressed.
We are not saying that there should totally be no incidents of violence but that in the cases where there is violence, there are decisive clear steps that are taken by state institutions to restore confidence, public confidence that we are not looking at a police force that is effectively a militia for one political party but we are looking at a police force that defends the interests of all the people of Zimbabwe regardless of which political formation they are coming from.
WHARTON: Well let me say very quickly that I think that it’s important that we all recognize that the government and the people of Zimbabwe did a pretty remarkable thing when they developed a draft constitution and then went and had a peaceful credible referendum to approve that constitution. You know I’ve been in Zimbabwe, looking at Zimbabwe for a long time now and that was a pretty remarkable achievement and so I think I’d like to offer the people and the government of Zimbabwe a few moments to be proud of what they achieved. I think it is important but I agree that the exercise of the constitution referendum was very, very different, it was a sort of consensus issue, not a controversial topic and the election is going to be much different but again I think it important to recognize success and achievement where it happens so I wanted to say that. The credibility of an election is essentially whether or not the people of the country of Zimbabwe feel that their will was respected – it’s not an easy thing to measure because you do have to look at the broad environment that exists in the weeks and months leading up to an election but broadly it is whether or not the people believe that their voices were respected.
GONDA: You appear to have been giving running commentary on rights violations; if I can give a couple of examples – when Christpower Maisiri died you issued a statement and also when the house of a Zanu PF official was petrol bombed recently you also issued a statement but a lot of people were surprised that you didn’t say anything about the arrest of Beatrice Mtetwa and the officials from the Prime Minister’s office.
WHARTON: Well first of all, the statement on violence, I understand the history of elections and violence in Zimbabwe so I’m very concerned about the potential that violence becomes a feature of the elections this year so I thought it was important to stand up quickly and both of those statements actually make no judgement about the source or the rationale for the violence but simply point out that this is an important opportunity for the authorities in Zimbabwe to show their commitment to a violence free process by investigating quickly and professionally. And if there is criminal activity involved to move swiftly to arrest and bring those people to justice.
I did in fact speak out about Beatrice Mtetwa; I did it in Twitter instead of in a press statement. My concern about Beatrice was not that she was arrested, I mean I think that I don’t really have competence to know whether a police officer has grounds to arrest someone or not. My concern there though was that the same day that she was arrested, the High Court instructed the police to release her and the police, as far as I can tell, simply ignored that instruction and it took another eight days or so for Beatrice to be granted bail. So I try to be careful not to second-guess a police action but when I see a clear miscarriage or refusal to acknowledge a High Court order then I think that’s worth talking about and so I did speak about that.
GONDA: Right and just going back to the issue of sanctions – if you look at Z’DERA, it talked about some of the reasons that you imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe was the DRC war, you wanted to see credible elections in Zimbabwe and also the restoration of private property rights, the issue of the land – so if there’s a credible election in Zimbabwe and the land issue has not been resolved, what will you decide?
WHARTON: Look I think there has been a lot of progress in Zimbabwe in the last few years; it’s important to take sort of the longer view. For us right now I think that elections are going to be a critical element in the way we consider our policies towards Zimbabwe but restoration of rule of law, equitable application of the rule of law, whether that relates to the activities of a human rights activist or property law, those things are important as well.
GONDA: But on the issue of the land issue specifically, what is your perception of that outside having credible elections because it would appear that those are the two outstanding issues left in terms of Z’DERA because the DRC issue is done?
WHARTON: Yes I think the people of Zimbabwe are going to have to sort out the land issue honestly. I know that there are some mechanisms that are beginning to form – there’s a Compensation Board, there are some court cases in process and so I think that over time the people of Zimbabwe will be able to resolve that satisfactorily but again the principle that is most important here is the rule of law and the equitable application of law.
GONDA: And this is one question that we received from our listeners when we were talking about this meeting in London and the group calling itself Friends of Zimbabwe, so one of our listeners asked is this not a misnomer that the Friends of Zimbabwe is a group that has a current sanctions regime on the country?
WHARTON: Well I would simply ask them to acknowledge the fact that this same group of countries over the last four years, five years, has contributed $2.6 billion in human and economic and humanitarian development for Zimbabwe. We are in fact the Friends of Zimbabwe; people can disagree with the policies that we pursue but our combined intent here is to help Zimbabwe become strong, democratic, just, prosperous and healthy; that’s in the long term best interests of all of these friends and we’re using a variety of means to try and help support that evolution.
GONDA: And Dewa Mavhinga, your critics say that civil society groups are crying too much, are concentrating too much on rights violations and that there is a lot of progress on the ground in Zimbabwe right now but civil society organizations are not acknowledging this.
MAVHINGA: Well we do acknowledge progress but we want to caution that there is need not to jump the gun, not to rush headlong into elections because these are make-or-break elections and this is a significant process in the life of Zimbabweans and the issues of violence are very serious matters because it means people may lose lives, may lose property, you know the injuries. So we really need to approach that with sensitivity and we’re saying that if you look at the character of violations in Zimbabwe, the rule of law structure in Zimbabwe, what you see is that there is a disconnect, there is a difference between what exists on paper and what pertains on the ground.
So you may have yes, a document that may appear to be progressive, to be a better constitution yes, but in terms of its application on the ground, this is where you have challenges. Look we have a High Court that directs that the Beatrice Mtetwa should be released immediately, so on paper that is okay, but in practice, on the ground, the police officer refuses or the police refuse to comply with that order.
So this is what we want to draw attention to – that there is not just a matter of progress on paper but we want to see matching progress on the ground. We should not take our important decisions on the basis of what pertains on paper only but insist that these so-called paper reforms be translated into reality.
If you look at the 2008 elections Violet, in March and in June there was really no significant change of the law but the differences are huge. The extreme violence that we saw in June and the relative peace that obtained in March, it was only a difference in attitude, a difference in action on the ground by state institutions, by individuals. So this is what we need to look at and this is why we are insisting that it is important that there be unfettered observation by domestic actors including civil society, by the regional bloc SADC and the African Union as well as by the international community and it is only through that that we can really say this process has been credible and is legitimate and the people of Zimbabwe are in a position to have that kind of confidence that they can freely express their wishes in terms of whom they wish to govern over them. – SW Radio Africa News
LINK: http://www.swradioafrica.com/hot-seat-transcript-ambassador-bruce-wharton-and-dewa-mavhinga/
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