Zimbabwe’s Problems Go Beyond Mugabe

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

 

Are there some countries where elections cause more damage than good? Zimbabwe comes to mind.

Autocrat Robert Mugabe may be gone, but the recent Zimbabwe election was, perhaps predictably, marred by violence – and the outcome is dubious, at best, and rejected by the opposition.

On July 30, candidates competed for the presidency and seats in parliament. Turnout was high, estimated at 75 per cent.

The results showed a victory for former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who became head of state when Mugabe was forced from office last November, ousted by the military after 37 years in office.

Both have been major figures in the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), which has been in power since independence in 1980.

Mnangagwa won 50.8 per cent of the vote to 44.3 per cent for Nelson Chamisa, the presidential candidate of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance. The 21 other candidates took the remainder.

Chamisa carried the cities of Harare and Bulawayo.

By crossing the 50 per cent threshold, Mnangagwa also conveniently avoided a second-round runoff.

ZANU-PF also was said to have won 145 seats in the House of Assembly to 63 for the MDC Alliance. 

Chamisa accused officials of vote-rigging and insisted he was the victor. He called it a “coup.”

According to his own observers, the MDC Alliance had won as much as 56 per cent of the vote.

Violence and chaos ensued, and the army was deployed in Harare, the capital.

Human rights groups reported dozens of abductions, beatings and rapes; thousands of MDC Alliance members went into hiding.

A senior Zimbabwean opposition figure, Tendai Bit,i was arrested as he tried to flee to neighbouring Zambia.

Nkululeko Sibanda, an MDC Alliance spokesperson, called the repression “worse than under Mugabe.”

The 40-year-old Chamisa, whose skull was fractured when beaten up by state security agents in 2007, succeeded Morgan Tsvangirai, the former opposition leader who died last February. 

Mnangagwa, known as “the crocodile” because of his political shrewdness, is 75.

Tsvangirai had lost to Mugabe in a rigged election in 2002 and withdrew from the 2008 contest, describing it as a “violent sham.”

“In African elections, often stakes are very high and nobody has a backup plan for losing,” explained John Dramani Mahama, former president of Ghana and head of the observer mission from the Commonwealth.

Zimbabwe, a country that once had one of Africa's most promising economies, suffered crippling hyperinflation under Mugabe.

It desperately needs the International Monetary Fund to start giving it loans again. It also needs the United States, European Union and others to lift sanctions.

But the European Union and United States have condemned the post-election violence.

The task of putting Zimbabwe back on track after 37 years that were tainted by corruption, mismanagement and diplomatic isolation was never going to be easy. Of course, a fraudulent election won’t make matters any better for the embattled nation in southern Africa.