THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has called for applications from organisations and individuals who wish to be observers for the August harmonised elections, a fairly routine process these days.
While ZEC has its own criteria, President Mnangagwa speaking for us all, has noted that he welcomes outsiders looking on if they wish, so that they can be happy that we know what we are doing, in both organising our polls and in voting.
It should be noted that outside opinions do not change elections, or for that matter make them more or less acceptable.
Our elections are decided by our voters, lining up patiently to decide just who they want, each and every one of them, for their local councillor, their local constituency member of Parliament, which also helps decide who their special women's representative and Senator will be, and of course their President.
No one else's views on which of these people should be elected is desired, and if we have any disputes among ourselves the courts have assigned large teams of judges to hear electoral petitions promptly, and have also set up priority magistrates to hear any charges of criminally interfering in elections or trying to stir up violence or being involved in the violence.
The large contingents put on standby, 35 judges and 75 magistrates, is partly that regardless of what happens, the judiciary can cope, but even if just one magistrate or one judge is activated, then that can be the magistrate sitting closest to where someone tried political violence, and the judge can be the one sitting closest to the constituency where there is a legal dispute, so everything can be sorted out very quickly.
We had this sort of large contingent set aside for that group of by-elections last year, and the fact that there were no electoral petitions and that the couple of minor incidences of violence in the campaigning seemed the result of an obstreperous drunk at a meeting showed that perhaps we are growing up.
Observers, although not part of the process, are not useless. Very often, if they do their job properly, they can say what they saw and even say how that fits into a normal election process.
This can help calm some people down. There are many losers, and we saw this in the last US Presidential election, who find it hard to accept that some people simply do not want to vote for them.
When sensible outsiders can state quite openly that they did not see any criminal or other dubious activity at a polling station, and between them at any polling station, this tends to move allegations from the realm of serious consideration to the realms of fantasy where they generally belong.
We always need to keep in mind that if something serious did happen, the appropriate authorities can intervene and that goes all the way up to the Constitutional Court which makes the final decision on any election petition for the Presidential election.
But observers can help make it clear that if someone is generating fiction in a corner that pretending this has any truth value is not going to get other witnesses to agree.
There are some observers who have to be accepted. SADC, tired of fact-free disputes, has for several years now had a treaty that obliges the organisation to send a properly made up team of observers from the neighbours of each country for every set of national polls.
This means that the rest of the SADC leadership has some solid fact to base any decision on and when they give an election the all clear, after the local courts have intervened as they once had to do in Malawi, the winner thrown up by the polls is the winner the neighbours all congratulate.
The SADC policy is not to decide who runs a member country. That is the function of the voters in that country since we are all democracies now. Some winning Presidents are friends of others, some are not, but no President has ever said their good friend deserved to win. They all, in unison, congratulate the winner as soon as that result is confirmed.
SADC leaders have even, for example when the DRC was still making its last moves back into the democratic camp, helped the political classes in a country accept the results and work out how to implement them. Again it was the result, not the personalities, who were important.
The Africa Union has a recognition role in all African elections. We all these days must have an elected government to be a fully-participating AU member, but while the AU likes a presence, generally the regional organisation does more of the formal observing.
There are many other observers. A number of internal church organisations like to have a presence for example, and they probably keep tempers calmer than most. Most embassies as part of their work do tour polling stations for their reports back home, and fair enough.
But the main point for all observers is that they are there to "look not touch" to quote the sort of cries parents make when their children rush forward.
Observers are not participants in the process, they are watching the processes, and this is where some may become tempted, and there are strong suspicions that there are some who plan to interfere from an early a stage as possible.
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This happens in some other countries. Again recent American elections have brought up criticism of some of what the far-out political groups do or say.
We also have those outside the country who assume that only their friends can possibly win a fair election, and then in an inverted piece of logic define any election their friends do not win as an unfair election.
The whole point of having observers is so that everyone can see the process, and then when the results come in simply write these off as to what Zimbabwean voters wanted.
Everyone in their heart of hearts wonders at times how some political leaders are elected almost everywhere, but the discussions should be where there are free processes on what they offered their voters and why their voters decided to back them.
Anything else leads into very dangerous and dictatorial territory.
So ZEC can be reasonably free with accreditation, but needs to make it clear that observers observe, not act, and if they cannot keep their actions to themselves they should not bother applying.
