Zimbabwe’s elections have been given a stamp of approval by a number of observer missions from intergovernmental organizations invited by the Zimbabwean government.
But the government excluded many civil society monitoring groups from its invitation list. One of those was the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA), which operates under the patronage of former Botswana president Ketumile Masire and since 2004 has observed elections in South Africa, Malawi, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Mauritius, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia.
Undeterred, EISA deployed an unaccredited observer mission, which judged the election “severely wanting” in fairness.
AllAfrica’s Verna Rainers interviewed EISA’s executive director, Denis Kadima, by telephone. She began by asking him to comment on the statement issued by the mission from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the body of which Zimbabwe is a member and which has been trying to broker an end to the country’s crisis.
The [SADC] statement is very weak. They overlook crucial issues, it doesn't help even the Zimbabweans themselves to improve what went wrong, so really it’s not helpful.
Which crucial issues have they missed?
First of all, the whole issue of transparency. Many groups have raised the issue of the voters’ roll not being reliable, and not being accessible… Then there are issues of... constituencies, an attempt to cause some gerrymandering in some urban areas. It is documented and there is evidence on that.
There are issues of voter education which didn't take place as it should, to get people to know where to vote and in which ward. There [is also] the whole issue of the role of governmental institutions in the electoral process, creating a strong impression that Zimbabwe Electoral Commission was not independent, nor was it impartial.
The accreditation [of observers] is too selective… and even there it’s not the commission that invites people, as in most countries in the SADC, it’s the government... The commission itself plays only a role of sort of rubber-stamp, because they don't have a say at all - all they do is give accreditation to those who have been cleared by [government] ministries.
These are very serious issues. If SADC is really talking about… SADC guidelines and principles, they must be rigorous, and I think that report is lacking in rigor. They are not even concerned about the delays in the release of the results, which is a problem. It causes anxiety, it causes suspicion, it can even create the impression that something wrong is being done, even if such was not the case.
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We don't need those kinds of reports. It takes us many steps back in terms of our commitment as a region to democratic development.
At the end of the statement they appeal to the parties to respect the election results. Do you think that that was in effect a message to Zanu PF rather than the opposition?
....You can only invite people to accept the outcome if, in your premise… you are sure that this was a free, open, transparent [election] with a level playing field... [But] here we know that the process was fundamentally flawed and if some aspects might not have been flawed, the lack of transparency also created perceptions.
In an electoral process… perceptions are also important and in this case when people don't know why the result is not being announced, when they don't know what the real vote is because the voters' roll is not reliable, these are very serious issues. You don't ask people just to accept the result when the earlier steps in the electoral process, the early phases, are questionable.
In conclusion?
As our countries move to a committed acceptance of democracy and clean elections, it is important that African observers take their responsibility seriously. These are not solidarity missions, these are election observer missions in a country going through some very serious challenges.
