Just Africa

Zimbabwe's own never ending election

Last week Morgan Tsvangirai, Prime Minister-designate of the Zimbabwean government was not in attendance at talks in Swaziland on the crisis in his country because, according to the New York Times "President Robert Mugabe, refused to give him a passport.”

This comes over a month after SADC sponsored power sharing agreements were finalized and signed, in what most observers, including Africa Action and then President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, deemed a historic moment and precedent in African mediated solutions for African problems.

Since the signing on September 15, this bright vision has dimmed each day, however,  as the two main parties privy to the agreement, Zanu-PF (led by President Mugabe) and the Movement for Democratic Change (Morgan Tsvangirai) have deadlocked over the distribution of four key ministries: defense, foreign affairs, finance, and home affairs. The deal requires consensus over these ministries, yet critics predicted from the get-go that did not seem likely. This “limbo over key ministries” has only emphasized that the power-sharing agreement has really just come down to a power-getting battle.

As South African Politics Blaze in Controversy, Zimbabwe Drops From Western Spotlight

A common critique of South Africa’s relations with its southern African neighbors has been its tendency to monopolize the attention of the international community. Since even well before 1994, South Africa’s politics, economics, and societal progress have dominated the scant Western news coverage of the African continent. The momentous events that have rocked South Africa's political sphere this past week are well worthy of coverage. Indeed, without the U.S. presidential election circus and financial crisis, they probably would be more prominent.  The small Western appetite for African affairs however, seems to have settled on the Mbeki drama as its sole sustenance. Zimbabwe's landmark power-sharing deal has been swept off the headlines.

South Africa was widely criticized by Western commentators for its silence on the on-going crisis in Zimbabwe, and President Thabo Mbeki took the brunt of it for his so called "silent diplomacy" policy when it comes to Zanu-PF's violent repression of political opposition. Yet despite the ANC's apparent policy of denial, Mbeki was appointed by the Southern African Development Community to facilitate a resolution that would end the violence in March 2007. Since then he made several fruitless visits to Zimbabwe attempting to facilitate a compromise between the long standing president, Robert Mugabe of Zanu-PF, and MDC opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Mbeki came to Harare after the presidential runoff that was widely condemned locally and internationally as unfair, to head the Southern African Development Community (SADC) sponsored power-sharing talks in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare.

Video: Briggs Bomba Discusses Zimbabwe on VOA-TV

Voice of America's Chris Simkins put together this report, featuring Africa Action's Briggs Bomba, on the historic Zanu-PF/MDC power-sharing arrangement.

Zimbabwe's Parliamentary Election of 1980: A Personal Recollection

Posted on behalf of Tilden LeMelle. Written July 2008.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning as happens only in Southern Africa in the beginning of autumn. The sky was a deep blue canvas dotted with billowing white cumulus clouds floating lazily toward the horizon. The cool/warm Zimbabwean late morning air breezed zephyr-like as I sat in the back of the moving open military truck with rifles pointed at my head by obviously drunken Rhodesian Force soldiers. How did I get myself caught up in this incongruous situation I wondered--thousands of miles away from the comfort and security of home in New Rochelle, NY, and my academic administrative office at Hunter College.

The immediate answer was obvious. I had agreed to join George Houser, Executive Director of the American Committee on Africa and Director of the Committee’s tax exempt affiliate, The Africa Fund, as part of a UN approved unofficial delegation to Zimbabwe to monitor the 1980 parliamentary elections. Those elections had been scheduled as a result of the agreements reached at Lancaster House to resolve the crisis created by the so-called Internal Agreement which had resulted in a sham African majority government headed by Bishop Abel Muzorowea. The Muzorowea government had not been recognized by the international community and in the US efforts by Dixiecrats and other pro-white rule supporters had been defeated in Congress. President Jimmy Carter had vetoed the Senate’s vote to lift sanctions.

The crisis in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia could only be resolved through a negotiated agreement which included the formerly excluded representatives of the nationalist political parties that had taken up arms against continued minority white rule-ZAPU and ZANU. The election, scheduled for the last three days of February 1980, was the most important and final step in the long struggle to achieve democratic majority rule in what was to become the nation of Zimbabwe. As a member of the board of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) and its interim president for several years and a member of the Board of The Africa Fund, when George Houser invited me to be a part of the ACOA delegation, I did not hesitate to accept. That is how I found myself on the back of a Rhodesian Force military truck with guns pointed at my head on one of the most beautiful Sunday mornings I had ever seen and felt in my lifetime.

Ballots vs. Bullets in Kenya and Zimbabwe

This post, written by Africa Action's Briggs Bomba and edited by Africa Action board chair and Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) co-director Emira Woods, was originally published by FPIF here.

The world’s attention has been riveted in 2008 by election crises in Africa, first Kenya, and now Zimbabwe. In both cases, challenges remain in converting electoral victory to political power. Can a victorious opposition come to power in the face of an obstinate incumbent? This question is particularly relevant when the incumbent regime controls the coercive apparatus of the state and the opposition only has the ballot in its corner. In the battle of the ballot vs. the bullet, can there ever be a fair match?

Historically the answer has been no. But new developments on the democratic front in Africa in the last decade have strengthened election support and monitoring by key regional bodies, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU). In 2004, SADC adopted “Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections” aimed at “enhancing the transparency and credibility of elections and democratic governance as well as ensuring the acceptance of election results by contesting parties.”