Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the ruling Zanu-PF hope a credible victory in the July 30 election. Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the ruling Zanu-PF hope a credible victory in the July 30 election.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the ruling Zanu-PF hope a credible victory in the July 30 election will legitimise the power (party and state) they gained from the “soft coup” that toppled his predecessor Robert Mugabe last November.
With victory, they say, donors and dollars will flood into the country they have resurrected from nearly two moribund decades and Zimbabwe will thrive.
But a new survey suggests Zanu-PF should stall any premature celebration plans. According to the survey, in the space of one month, Nelson Chamisa’s MDC Alliance has closed the gap with Zanu-PF.
Surveys are conducted by Afrobarometer, an independent research network that carries out public attitude surveys across Africa, and its Zimbabwean partner, Mass Public Opinion Institute, a non-profit, non-governmental research organisation.
If the respondents were to cast their ballot now, Mnangagwa would take 40% of the votes and opposition leader Nelson Chamisa 37%. The still undecided or not-saying potential voters are at 20%. Split that and you get a 50/47 race. The MDC Alliance has a 49% to 26% lead in the cities and towns and in the countryside the figures are 30% for the opposition to Zanu-PF’s 48%. In parliament Zanu-PF would get 41% to the MDC Alliance’s 36%.
A great deal hangs on both parties’ ability to manage this interregnum.
Big trade-offs will be negotiated, ranging from coalition governments to amnesties for the chief crooks and killers.
This election is about grabbing back the core of hardwon democracy from a military dominated regime. It’s about cleansing out generations of fear.
That is a hard task at any time. It’s harder still when it took a coup to retire its prime source.
A divided Zanu-PF
Mnangagwa has been spectacularly unsuccessful at winning past elections in his own constituencies, standing for parliament three times and losing twice.
The factions in Zanu-PF that squared up against one another prior to the coup - the Generation-40 group that supported Grace Mugabe for the party and state president and Lacoste, which supported Mnangagwa - are still battling along lines more ethnically drawn than ever.
Although the perpetrators have not been found, the blast at Zanu-PF’s Bulawayo rally in late June could suggest that the party’s wounds have yet to heal.
The soldiers are not of one mind.
If the military side of the somewhat shaky post-coup pact in Zanu-PF fears losing an election, and thus access to more of the wealth more power can bring, the free and fair dimensions of the electoral contest would be drastically diminished. Would a repeat of mid-2008’s post-electoral mayhem, when at least 170 people were killed and nearly 800 beaten or raped, ensue?
There are also no guarantees that hungry and angry junior army officers would follow their seniors’ attempts to alter the peoples’ will.
Mnangagwa could be at some of the soldiers’ mercy. Some suggest that Constantino Chiwenga, the mercurial vice-president and - unconstitutionally - defence minister might be among them.
Others argue that the two leaders need each other if the régime is going to deliver on promises of a clean election
And as George Charamba, Zimbabwe’s permanent secretary for information, put it: “This election is about restoring international re-engagement and legitimacy . It must be flawless, it must be transparent, it must be free, it must be fair, it must meet international standards, it must be violence free and therefore it must be universally endorsed because it is an instrument of foreign policy It’s about re-engagement and legitimacy; we are playing politics at a higher level.”
A rising opposition
Chamisa and the MDC (the alliance is made up of seven parties, most having split from the late Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC), appear to be building on the momentum they seem to have gained by challenging the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s management of the contest.
The alliance has challenged the commission’s neutrality and raised concerns over the accuracy of the voters’ roll.
Not all its allegations necessarily stand up to scrutiny. The 250 000 alleged ghosts may be a canard, but as Derek Matyszak from the Institute for Security Studies in Harare, argues, the roll was not released in time for the primaries so none of the candidates are constitutionally valid. Emboldened by the lack of police, thousands of protesters led by the MDC Alliance marched to the commission’s headquarters on July 11. If this impetus keeps building over the next week, a victory is conceivable. So is a presidential run-off. To be sure, the ruling party might win fairly, but the opposition will have to be convinced of that. The mode of politics for the next round should be peacemaking, not war.
Low bars, high stakes
The bars are low - “the West”, led in this case by the UK, seemed to be happy with the winners of the coup, perhaps hoping that a renewed Zanu-PF. Perfidious Albion (Treacherous England) could end its schizophrenic career in Zimbabwe with a whimper about the end of a liberal democratic dream. But the stakes are high for Zimbabweans - much higher than the reputation of a minor global power past its glory. The people of Zimbabwe face a lot more than reputational damage. Maybe the former colonial power will have a Plan B that helps more than hinders. - The Conversation
* Moore is Professor of Development Studies and Visiting Researcher, Institute of Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg