Financial Gazette (Harare)
Mavis Makuni
17 April 2008
column
Harare — The Southern African Development Community (SADC) so-called emergency summit held in Lusaka last weekend in many respects mirrors the Zimbabwean elections of March 29 whose aftermath necessitated the heads of states' jamboree in the Zambian capital.
Both events have turned out to be a complete waste of time and resources and seem to have been stage-managed only to deceive and legitimise the indefensible.
The Zimbabwean elections were held amid inordinate chest-beating by government officials about their record of holding "democratic" elections at regular intervals in line with SADC protocols. Alongside this self-congratulation however, Zimbabwean officials embarked on a sinister and ominous campaign during which they warned menacingly: "We will never allow the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) to rule this country".
Service chiefs representing the army, police and prison services made no bones about the fact that they would never salute the leader of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai.
The sub-text in all these dark warnings was obviously that only one pre-determined outcome of the March 29 elections would be acceptable and that outcome would only be victory for the right party, ZANU-PF.
One does not need rocket science to figure out that the controversial aftermath of the elections involving the challenging of the results by ZANU-PF before they have been announced is a self-fulfilling prophecy bringing to pass the vehement pre-election pronouncements against the opposition.
The head of state, President Robert Mugabe and the service chiefs who made these dire warnings about never allowing the MDC to govern never elaborated on how they intended to ensure that the opposition party would be barred from forming a government in the event that the electorate voted for it overwhelmingly in the harmonised elections.
And true to his duplicitous modus operandi under "quiet diplomacy", South African president Thabo Mbeki, the SADC troubleshooter on Zimbabwe, was not alarmed by these pronouncements despite his repeated posturing that he wanted the outcome of the elections to be accepted by all parties.
Surely, it was wrong for an interested party to make declarations about whose victory in the elections would be unacceptable?
Not according to Mbeki, who despite the non-announcement of the election result almost three weeks after the polls, has insisted this does not constitute a crisis.
He is untroubled by what could be happening to the ballots behind the scenes after ZANU-PF challenged the results of the presidential polls and demanded a recount before the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has announced how the voting went.
Mbeki has resorted to his notorious all-knowing, ivory tower arrogance to tell the world that there is nothing wrong with a run-off because this is provided for under Zimbabwean law.
But the bone of contention is not that there should not be a run-off if this is a properly determined next step or that election results should not be challenged. The issue is the un-procedural, illegal and forcible manner in which ZANU-PF has usurped the functions of ZEC.
How can an interested party be allowed to challenge the poll results before they have been transparently and properly transmitted to the electorate? Common sense dictates that an aggrieved party can only file its complaints after the announcement of the results. Jumping the gun as the ruling party has forcibly done can only mean that it is not prepared to accept defeat under any circumstances and will do anything and everything to engineer a victory that has nothing to do with the will of voters. Mbeki, the unpopular lame duck president of South Africa is aiding and abetting ZANU-PF in these illegal machinations.
And to highlight its impotence and duplicity, SADC is prepared to go along with these scandalous manoeuvres. Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa, who is the current SADC chair, convened last week's emergency summit because he believed the electoral impasse represented a crisis and the regional body could not continue to standby.
But just as was the case when Mwanawasa described Zimbabwe as a "sinking Titanic" last year over the brutalising of opposition figures by the police, his good intentions were sabotaged by his peers, led by Mbeki.
As a result, SADC once again emerged as a moribund grouping existing only to rubber-stamp ZANU-PF's embellishments and outright fabrications about events in Zimbabwe. The regional body has proved a total failure in tackling the Zimbabwean crisis and it should now stop wasting time and resources pretending to be addressing the problem.
It has been hamstrung by the leaders' hypocritical sympathy for the Zimbabwean government instead of the people. There is no way the regional body could make any constructive contribution towards resolving the crisis as long as it relies on Mbeki as its point man. Mbeki's muddled thinking and arrogant head-in-the-clouds detachment from reality, which cost him the presidency of the ANC, is well documented in his own country.
The man has simply failed to rise to the occasion as a national and continental leader and has been a terrible letdown as a successor to the principled and compassionate Nelson Mandela.
SADC's folly in Lusaka will stand out like a sore thumb now that the ANC has disassociated itself from Mbeki's dishonest pronouncements and declared that as far as it is concerned, the electoral stalemate in Zimbabwe constitutes a crisis.
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