Let us not pretend that Zimbabwe’s crisis is over
THE Southern African Development Community has endorsed President Robert Mugabe’s election victory in Zimbabwe, but this should not be taken to mean that all is well in that country. Opening an SADC summit in Lilongwe yesterday, Malawi’s President Joyce Banda congratulated Mugabe and pledged the support of his African peers.
President Jacob Zuma, who inherited the SADC task of overseeing Zimbabwe’s return to the international fold from his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, hinted as he arrived in Malawi that he was ready to sign off on the election and effectively declare Zimbabwe’s crisis of democracy over. He said a formal report from the SADC observer mission was likely to be submitted to the summit and that he expected it to be positive.
The African Union has also given the 89-year-old Mugabe a green light, leaving Botswana alone on the continent in its reservations about whether Zimbabweans really have freely expressed their majority support for Zanu-PF and its leader.
The African verdict appears to be based largely on the fact that there was very little pre-election violence this time around. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change was allowed to campaign to a degree, its leaders were not often detained or harassed, and some opposition media voices were heard, even if the SABC shut down its transfrontier service shortly before the poll.
Western governments and agencies were not allowed in to observe the election, and the African monitors ignored widespread allegations that millions of voters were left off the roll and millions more were on it who should not have been.
The case against Mugabe’s claim to a legitimately renewed mandate was further weakened on Friday by MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to withdraw his court challenge against the result, which he has branded a massive fraud. Tsvangirai said the challenge was pointless in Zimbabwe’s Mugabe-aligned courts, and he probably is right. But his decision means there is now no obstacle to Mugabe being sworn in for another five years.
Foreign pressure has done little to restrain Mugabe over the years since he began his ruinous policies of so-called indigenisation, but with absolutely no one left looking over his shoulder, he can be expected to smash the last remnants of Zimbabwe’s small but once modern economy and reverse the slight gains made since the SADC began to lean against his destructive winds.
The European Union, among other international bodies, has said it will be guided by the SADC on how to handle Zimbabwe going forward.
That is why it is so important that the SADC should not end its engagement, and that Zuma or another regional leader should retain the mandate to shepherd Zimbabwe back towards international acceptance and a place in the global economy.
Zimbabwe’s crisis is not over — far from it. To pretend for whatever reason that it is, would be of no service to Zimbabwe, its people or its neighbours.