Every election these days is a “watershed”
election the term has completely lost its meaning. This is like calling a
football match pitting two teams of overweight boozers, “El Clasico”! (El
Clásico is the name given in football to any match between Spain’s fierce
rivals Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. The clash of the Titans!).
Still with
not even one democratic reforms in place Zimbabwe’s 2018 national elections is already
for foregone conclusion; Zanu PF will blatantly rig the vote and win with
another landslide victory, just as the party has done in 2013. Where is the “watershed”
significances in that!
If any elections deserve the “El Clasico” attention
it must be the March 2008 national elections and the follow up July 2008
presidential run-off election. The election was not a titanic clash of ideas or
ideologies, as one would normally expect in watershed elections. Zimbabwe’s
2008 elections will be remembered as the one occasion the nation had a good
long and hard look at President Mugabe and his Zanu PF vote rigging juggernaut
in all its naked brutal ugliness.
People have often described President Mugabe’s
corrupt and tyrannical dictatorship as an iron fist in a velvet glove. Like so
many other tyrants, President Mugabe has been very careful not to use his iron
fist in broad day; he crashed his enemies and critics in the dark. Well in
2008, for the first time ever and for a few short months, the velvet glove was
off and everyone saw the iron fist descend like a sledge hammer crashing its
victims like bugs with a sickening and unforgettable crunch!
Zimbabwe’s economic situation before the March 2008
vote had forced Mugabe to take his heavy foot off the gas of the vote rigging
juggernaut. Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown before the 2008 elections was there
for all to see; inflation had soared to 500 billion per cent, unemployment was
80% plus, the shop shelves were bear, etc. Even a cold-hearted tyrant like
Mugabe could not deny that the country was in a real economic mess and needed
some political change if only to allow some economic change.
President Mugabe allowed electoral reforms and granted
opposition political freedom in the 2008 elections that he had never allowed
before and has never repeated, again since. The March 2008 was the nearest
Zimbabwe has ever come to a free, fair and credible elections and the
electorate seized the opportunity to vote for change with both hands.
Tsvangirai won 73% of the vote in March 2008, by
Mugabe’s own admission. It is said that Mugabe would have conceded defeat was
it not for the country’s top brass securocrats and Zanu PF hardliners like VP
Emerson Mnangagwa who “hardened Pharaoh’s heart”!
ZEC was ordered not to announce the result but to
recount the votes instead. (With a landslide winning margin, only a fool would
fail to see ZEC was cooking the result.)
After six weeks of recounting 5 million votes (a
select top-secret team revisited every Polling Station across the land planting
false ballots to tally with the recount and destroy all the incriminating
evidence of the true vote, just in case opposition had been smart enough to
challenge the announced result in Court of law – that took the six weeks), ZEC
announced that Tsvangirai had 47% of the votes to Mugabe’s 43%. 47% gave
Tsvangirai victory but not the 50% plus one needed to avoid the run-off.
A run-off President Mugabe and his thugs were
determined to win at all cost. All the electoral concessions made before the
March vote were discarded. Mugabe threw the vote rigging juggernaut into
overdrive and floored the accelerator!
President Mugabe and his cronies launched a military
style Operation “Mavhotera papi” (Whom did you vote for!) whose sole purpose
was to punish the people for rejecting him in the March vote. Zimbabwe, like so
many other African countries, has always had a culture of political violence
but the sheer brutality of the 2008 violence by Zanu PF youths and rogue war
veterans backed by the Police, Army, CIO and other State Institutions was unprecedented.
“What was achieved by the bullet cannot be undone
by the ballot!” President Mugabe announced menacingly, to cheer and encourage lawless
thuggery.
Millions of ordinary Zimbabweans were forced to go
into hiding, hundreds of thousands were beaten and/or raped and over 500 were
murdered in cold blood in the four months of operation Mavhotera papi.
“Mugabe has declared war on the nation,” mourned
Tsvangirai, when announced his forced withdrawal from the race.
ZEC announced the result of the July run-off by
noon following the voting day as contrast to six weeks in the March vote. President
Mugabe had overturned the 73% defeat into an 84% landslide victory! In football
terms this would be the equivalent of Barcelona overturning a 7 to 0 thrashing
by Real Madrid in the first half into 15 to 7 victory.
FIFA, the King of Spain, Spanish government,
everyone will be demanding to know what happened. Hundreds of people would die
of heart attack during the game, if that ever happened! El Clasico, my foot!
It was not surprising that no one accept Mugabe’s 84%
July 2008 victory as a true reflection of the democratic wish of Zimbabweans given
the same people had totally rejected him only four months earlier. No one, not
even SADC and AU; known for giving their thumbs up to many dodgy elections;
would accept the July election was free and fair. To regain political
legitimacy, Mugabe was forced to team up with his political challenger, Morgan
Tsvangirai, and form a GNU.
The primary task of the GNU was to implement a raft
of democratic reforms to stop all the blatant vote rigging and wanton violence
of 2008 ever happening again. Sadly, for the nation, Tsvangirai and his MDC
friends, who were tasked to implement the reforms, failed to get even one
reform implemented. They turned out to be breathtakingly corrupt and
incompetent, President Mugabe bribed and bamboozled them with ease.
President Mugabe has learned since the 2008
elections that he can continue to rig elections and never again have any
legitimacy problems as long as he allows the opposition to win a few gravy
train seats. In 2013, MDC leaders ignored the warning that Zanu PF will rig the
vote and thus deny the people a meaningful say in the governance of the country
because they were after the give-away gravy train seats. They are ignoring the warning of Zanu PF
rigging 2018 elections for, exactly, the same reason – greed.
So, instead of the 2013 elections being the
watershed elections delivering the country’s, long awaited and first ever free,
fair and credible elections; the economic recovery; the good governance; etc.
The elections rigged and thus failed to deliver any of the hoped-for changes. With
no reforms in place all this talk of 2018 being “watershed” elections is just
nonsense; the elections will be another damp squib.
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