Worrying trends ahead of 2023 elections
On
April 13 2018, three months before the harmonised elections, Zanu PF national commissar and leader of the war veterans, Victor Matemadanda said “If (the then MDC Alliance leader and presidential election candidate Nelson) Chamisa wants a debate, maybe he can engage the Zanu PF youth league, that is his level.
“We can’t imagine the president taking time off serious bread and butter issues to respond to a goat that is scratching the walls from outside.”
Wind down to 2022 February, VicePresident Constantino Chiwenga, while addressing Zanu PF supporters in Kwekwe, claimed that Chamisa, now leader of the newly formed CCC, and his supporters were like “little Goliaths” that needed to be crushed with a huge stone like lice until nothing remained for the flies.
It is such pronouncements from political leaders that incite citizens into political violence and as the (Zimbabwe Peace Project) ZPP recorded in the 2018 elections and the just-ended 2022 by-elections, nothing much has changed and if at all, the political and human rights situation in Zimbabwe has gotten worse in the past four years and we illustrate this in this section
In July 2018, a month before the national election, ZPP recorded 294 politically motivated human rights violations and in March 2022, the month when the country held byelections in some 28 parliamentary constituencies and 108 council wards, ZPP recorded 240 human rights violations.
The fact that the numbers nearly match point to the importance of the March 26 by-election and confirm that the by-elections were a litmus test for the 2023 harmonised elections.
The political parties did not want to leave anything to chance and different from other by-elections the country has witnessed the presidents of the contesting parties led the campaigns.
The predominant human rights violations in July 2018 were intimidation and harassment and ZPP recorded 134 compared to 115 in March 2022. While some victims of intimidation and harassment do not suffer any visible scars the invisible scars they get determine the way they will act on election day including staying away from the ballot all together.
While in the run up to the 2018 election, the then biggest opposition party, MDC Alliance held its rallies without the police banning them.
The situation was to change in 2022 when police banned five CCC rallies and at one of those, in Gokwe, they fired teargas and brutally descended on party supporters who had turned up for the rally.
Out of the five two went ahead in Masvingo and Epworth when the party approached the courts.
What was also baffling was the conditions set out for the CCC to hold rallies; they were not allowed to bus in their supporters while that condition never applied to Zanu PF where supporters were bussed in to all their rallies.
The bans on rallies marked a fresh low in Zimbabwean politics and prove that in 2018, government just intended to window dress since it was fresh from a coup.
What this also means is that in the run up to the 2023 elections, the environment is likely to be marked by more State interference into campaigns of the opposition parties, especially the CCC, which put up a good show in the March by-elections. Zimbabwe Peace Project