Holding free elections is a bridge too far for Zanu PF junta - a chance to demand 2008 reform.

After seizing power in the military coup in November 2017, President Mnangagwa and his putsch junta promised to hold free, fair and credible elections. Even they knew that the coup was an unconstitutional act and per se their regime was from the word go illegitimate and still is to this day.

The junta’s promise to hold free, fair and credible elections was, in itself, a tacit acknowledgement by the regime that it is illegitimate and a promissory undertaking to return to legality. There is a mountain of evidence to prove that President Mnangagwa and his junta are not going to deliver of their promise to hold free, fair and credible elections. It is the duty of every thinking Zimbabwean out there to make sure the junta delivers on this one promise and not allowed to get away with another rigged election, if it fails.

Zimbabwe is in a serious economic mess; unemployment has soared to dizzying heights of 90%; ¾ of our people are now living in abject poverty whilst the few, ruling elite, are filthy rich; basic services like health have all but completely collapsed, the ruling elite routinely travel to SA, Singapore, etc. for all their health needs; etc. The root cause of this mess is the country’s failure to hold free and fair elections. The nation has been stuck with this incompetent, corrupt and murderous Zanu PF dictatorship for the last 38 years because the regime rigged elections to stay in power.

Our ticket out of this economic and political hell-on-earth that this de facto one-party, Zanu PF, dictatorship has landed us is holding free, fair and credible elections. This is why implementing the democratic reforms necessary for free and fair elections is Zimbabwe’s holy grail. Nothing of any substance can ever be accomplished until we exorcise the dictatorship devils, implement the reforms and hold free and fair elections.

The primary task of 2008 to 2013 GNU was to implement the democratic reforms agreed in the Global Political Agreement and signed by Robert Mugabe, on behalf of Zanu PF, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, on behalf of the two MDC factions. President Tembo Mbeki of SA signed on behalf of SADC leaders, who were the guarantor of the agreement.

Throughout the five years of the GNU, SADC leaders nagged Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends to implement the reforms but were ignored at every turn. When it was clear to SADC leaders that, with no reforms in place, Zanu PF was set to rig the elections they made one more desperate bid to have the elections postponed.

“Of course, they (elections) can be postponed.  In 2013 the Maputo Summit, in June 2013, before the elections, the Maputo Summit was all about having the elections postponed – the SADC summit. I went there.” Dr Ibbo Mandaza, director of SAPES Trust, told Violet Gonda in a detailed interview.

“I was there at the Summit and Mugabe pretended to agree to a postponement of the elections. If you recall, the postponement was based on the need to reform at least electoral laws.

“And after that Summit, Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, all of them were called to a separate meeting by the Heads of State of SADC in the absence of Mugabe, that same evening. And they were told; I was sitting there outside the room with Mac Maharaj; they were told, ‘If you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done’.  

“And we came back on a Sunday and that Monday we had a SAPES Policy Dialogue to discuss the Summit and lo and behold, whilst we were discussing it, the court papers arrived calling the MDC to court to show reason why the elections should be postponed.  Mugabe had done a volte-face against the decision of the Summit. Mugabe went on TV and threatened to leave SADC – ‘who is SADC, we can leave SADC anyway’. 

“And so, under some pretext of a court application by Jealousy Mawarire, which others claim was really a ZANU PF ploy, the elections were held.

“And 3 or 4 days before the election Morgan Tsvangirai was lamenting that he had evidence that the election was already rigged. But they were warned like they are being warned again now. But blindly, they cannot make any excuses now, they going into elections again.”

The staging of the November coup has put Zanu PF, now under the management of the coup plotters, under renewed pressure to hold free and fair elections. President Mnangagwa as Mugabe’s right-hand man; especially on such matters as vote rigging, political violence including intimidation and murder and looting to bankroll the party’s vote rigging schemes and shenanigans; knew what the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA were and, if he so wished, would have implemented them after the November coup. He did not.

Indeed, instead of implementing the reforms he has continued to dismiss those calling for reforms as barking.

“Zanu PF ichatonga! Igo tonga! Imi muchingohukura! Nokuhukura!” (Zanu PF will rule! And rule! Whilst you (calling for reforms) bark! And bark!) Was the first thing President Mnangagwa told his Zanu PF supporters after the coup, to reassure on his commitment to the party’s no-regime-change mantra. This was Mnangagwa’s favourite boast before the coup and he wanted everyone to know he had not changed.

Just as SADC leaders had predicted in 2013, this year’s elections too “are done”. There is no free public media, the voters’ roll is in a shambolic state, Zanu PF has unfettered access to public resources and to billions of dollars of looted public wealth to bankroll it vote rigging juggernaut, etc., etc.; these elections are not going to be free, fair and credible.

In their bid to regain their lost legitimacy, President Mnangagwa and his junta; extended the official invitation to observe the elections to many other nations and organisations including USA, EU, Commonwealth, etc. besides the usual ones SADC, AU, China, Russia, etc. The task of every thinking Zimbabwean is to make sure the international observers judge these elections honestly and truthfully.

The basic tenets for free, fair and credible elections; free media, verifiable voters, transparent party funding, etc.; are the same the world over. If these tenets are missing, then the observers must declare these elections null and void. That is all we are asking, and it is not too much to ask!

To President Mnangagwa and his junta, you promised to hold free, fair and credible elections; the people of Zimbabwe have waited for the last 38 years for the first such elections; you must deliver! If these elections are free, fair and credible; then the regime must step aside to allow for the appointment of an administration that will implement the 2008 GPA reforms; hold free elections and thus, finally, allow this great nation to escape from this hell-hole!

To the people of Zimbabwe; we wasted the golden opportunity to end the de facto one-party dictatorship during the GNU when Zanu PF was forced to agree to 2008 GPA following the party’s failure to hold free and fair elections. Holding free and fair elections has proven to be a bridge too far for the post-coup Zanu PF dictatorship, we must seize on this to force the party to revisit the 2008 GPA and get the reforms implemented this time!

Zanu PF junta "controls ZEC", admit MDC - penny has finally dropped but how far! P Guramatunhu

The issue of producing verified voters’ roll is an important one. Without an audited voters’ roll it is impossible to verify that all those eligible to vote are on the roll and only those eligible to vote are on the roll. When the voting takes place; only those on the voters roll vote and vote once. Without a verified voters’ roll it is impossible to have free, fair and credible elections because it is impossible to stop vote rigging; impossible!

In the last elections nearly one million, mainly opposition supporters were denied the vote because their details were not in the constituency voters’ roll they expected. Meanwhile Zanu PF was able to bus its hooded youths and army recruits from one polling station to the next, casting multiple votes. Everyone, including the few foreign election observers, witnessed the blatant vote rigging but with no verified voters’ roll, the smoking gun, it was impossible to prove anything. 

The 2013 AU election observer team, headed by Chief Olusegun Mathew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo former Nigerian President, noted in their report Zimbabwe’s failure to produce a verified voters’ roll a month before the elections, the very latest, as demanded by the country’s constitution. The AU let Zanu PF off the hook by noting this serious failure as an “irregularity” the regime must put right in future. 

The whole world is watching the AU election observer team for this year’s election to see if the team will once again let Zanu PF get away with yet another rigged election. Because the regime has still done nothing to ensure there is a verified voters’ roll before this year’s election and thus comply with the country laws and AU’s demands. 

“The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has refused to provide election stakeholders with copies of the provisional voters roll which was being inspected by voters for the last ten days,” reported Zimeye.

No one who has been following the chaotic way Zanu PF, through it surrogate body ZEC, has conducted the whole registration exercise is surprised to hear that. The whole voter registration exercise was started very, very late; September 2017 when it should have started January 2015, at the latest. Even with all the good will in the world, there was no way ZEC was going to register 7 million voters in the allocated five months; in the end only 5.4 million were registered. Even then, no one has had the time to audit the 5.4 million registered voters. 

The 5.4 registered voters were given 10 days to check the provisional roll; another impossible task. 

The voter registration exercise was started very late and now everything is being rushed through without being checked; this was all deliberate and for one purpose – to ensure there is no verified voters’ roll. 

Yesterday, Tuesday, the Elections Resource Centre filed a court application demanding that ZEC release the provisional voters’ roll.

As of today, President Mnangagwa has set 30 July 2018 as the day the nation will go to the polls to elect a new government. The voting day has been set and still the nation has no clue who are on the voters’ roll and, no doubt, will never know who voted at the end of the day. 

“This is a critically important case. The question is why the ZEC has to be taken to court at all to get this information? If this was a truly independent body, and not controlled by the military, one would think it would be committed to transparency,” said David Coltart, former MDC Senator and an aspiring MDC Alliance candidate in this year’s elections.

No Mr Coltart; the most important question here is why is the opposition dragging the nation into flawed and illegal elections, yet again. You, yourself admitted the folly of contesting the 2013 elections knowing there was no verified voters’ roll, amongst many other irregularities. 

“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious – withdraw from the elections,” you admitted in your book. 

“The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility.” 

The MDC family has since regroup to form the MDC Alliance. What is your excuse this time for once again failing to do the “obvious” thing and withdraw from these flawed elections? Zanu PF is blatantly rigging these elections and you, Mr Coltart and your MDC friends are giving the process the modicum of political credibility for the sake of the few gravy train seats Zanu PF is giving away as bait to the oppositions. 

“If this was a truly independent body, and not controlled by the military, one would think it would be committed to transparency!” Yeah right! As if the penny has just drop! Well, now that the penny has dropped, you now know that know ZEC was controlled by the junta, that there will be no verified voters’ roll, that Zanu PF is blatantly rigging these election as we speak, etc.; are you finally going to withdraw from participating in these flawed and illegal elections?????

Clearly Zimbabwe’s opportunistic opposition cannot be trusted to do the obvious thing and boycott these flawed elections. One hopes that the international election observers, including the AU and SADC, will have the courage to do the right thing and judge these flawed elections null and void! How can elections be free, fair and credible when there is no something as basic to elections as, verifiable voters’ roll!!!

Elections will be free, say UN - if cannot speak truth to power, then shut up

Dear Mr Bishow Parajuli, UN Resident Co-ordinator

Many thinking Zimbabweans out there are asking: What organisation is Mr Bishow Parajuli working for?

On paper, you are the “UN Resident Co-ordinator for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Zimbabwe” but it is impossible to see how you can be working for the UN because your assertion that Zimbabwe’s elections are “free and fair” contradicts everything the UN says it stands for!

“The mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is to work for the protection of all human rights for all people; to help empower people to realize their rights; and to assist those responsible for upholding such rights in ensuring that they are implemented,” we understand.

Instead of working to protect and empower the ordinary Zimbabweans to realize their democratic right to free, fair and credible elections you are doing the exact opposite by falsifying the political reality in Zimbabwe.

"As far as we see it, there are some good signs because the new voters' rolls are being developed, with 5,4 million in new voter registration," you said, according to report in Bulawayo 24.

"There is a lot of engagement between political parties and the ruling faction; engagement between the election commission, civil society and others. The political parties themselves are getting together to agree on a code of conduct for holding peaceful elections. So, all these signs are positive."

As the UN Representative in Zimbabwe, Mr Parajuli, you should know that many Zimbabweans will be denied a meaningful vote in these elections. The voter registration exercise, for example, was started very late, September 2017 when it should have started in January 2015 at the very latest, and so only 5.4 million were registered instead of the expected 7 million. So, nearly 25% of the voters have already been denied the vote for no fault of their own!

The 5.4 million registered voters have been given 10 days to check their details in the provisional voters’ roll. After the first five days only 694 030 voters had done so physically. The authorities say over 3 million others have done so using text messages, this is wilfully inadequate since this is supposed to be purely a biometric voting system and not a name, ID, etc. system. It is clear these elections are going ahead with no verified voters’ roll.

In the past Zanu PF has blatantly rigged the elections but it was impossible to prove this without a verified voters’ roll, it was the missing smoking gun. Since there is no verified voters’ roll again, it is clear the elections will be blatantly rigged as before and, once again, there will no smoking gun.

Zanu PF has pointedly refused to implement the democratic reforms to ensure a free public media, to ensure the Police is free and independent, etc. It is laughable that anyone would agree with President Mnangagwa’s suggestion that a code of conduct agreed between political parties can ever be a substitute to implementing the reforms.

SADC leaders wanted Zimbabwe’s 2013 elections postponed so the democratic reforms agreed at the onset the GNU could be implemented. “If you go into next month’s elections, you will lose; the elections are done!” they warned Morgan Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders.

As we know, Zanu PF went on to blatantly rig the 2013 elections and, still with no reforms implement since the last elections, the party will likewise rig this year’s elections. As the UN representative one expected you, Mr Bishow Parajuli, to be “assisting those responsible for upholding such rights (Zanu PF) in ensuring that they (reforms) are implemented!” Instead you are helping the regime dodge its obligations to the common people!

Zimbabwe is in this economic mess and political chaos because, for the last 38 years, the nation is stuck with this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship that has rigged elections to stay in power.  The people of Zimbabwe are fighting for the country to hold its first ever free, fair and credible elections as their only hope to get out of this hell-hole.

Mr Bishow Parajuli, if you are not going to speak truth to power then, please, please shut up!

Yours truly,

Wilbert Mukori

Secretary General

Zimbabwe Social Democrats.