Zimbabwe Election Day
The world holds its breath as Zimbabwe’s presidential and parliamentary election day approaches.
March 29 will pit 83-year-old President Robert Mugabe, in power since 1980 and leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), against leaders of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) – and possibly others.
No one wants to see the economically-hobbling Zimbabwe follow in the footsteps of Kenya – a country that only a couple months ago stood as one of the most stable in Africa.
Then, on December 27, nation’s nascent democracy was put to the test at its presidential elections.
President Mwai Kibaki, known for favoring his own Kikuyu tribe, was up against Raila Odinga of the Luo tribe. Below the booming economy, ethnic tension was pooling, and Odinga’s charge that the Kikuyus had been in power far too long won him popular support.
As Election Day wore on, Odinga’s early 18-point lead vaporized. The election commission suspected that ballots were being rigged. When it was announced that Kibaki had won on a narrow margin, riots broke out.
By New Year’s, the country had fallen into chaos. Mobs barricaded 50 Kikuyus inside a church, set it aflame and watched as women and children tried to claw their way out. Gangs burned Kikuyu homes, police cars and governmental buildings. An opposition parliament member was gunned down in his driveway.
Today, more than 1,000 people are dead and 300,000 homeless. The Kenyan air is filled with bullets and tear gas. Odinga wants a new election but Kibaki won’t back down. Former UN secretary Kofi Annan has stepped in to diffuse the situation, but to little avail.
In Zimbabwe, the opposition is threatening to boycott the elections unless they are guaranteed to be free and fair. By way of reply, Mugabe has forcibly and repeatedly dissolved MDC-organized rallies for democracy. South African President Thabo Mbeki and the inter-governmental council Southern African Development Community (SADC) stand now in Kofi Annan’s shoes.
In his handling of the election, Mugabe is dangerously close to having transgressed all five norms of diplomatic culture, as outlined by Geoffrey Wiseman in “Pax Americana.” These norms are:
- the use of force only as last resort
- transparency
- continuous dialogue
- multilateralism, and
- civility *
Last month, Mugabe ordered police to use tear gas to disperse a million-man march planned by MDC. Just last weekend, armed riot police broke up another MDC rally. Mugabe has obviously not exhausted all avenues of diplomacy before resorting to the use of force.
The second norm of transparency holds that “negotiations are more like likely to succeed if information is deemed to have been obtained overtly rather than covertly and policies and views are conveyed accurately to all parties in a frank and forthright manner” (Wiseman, 420). This is precisely the issue at hand in Zimbabwe. MDC is convinced that the March 29 election will be a dishonest one. Mugabe has repeatedly rejected proposals to bring in international election monitors. With Kibaki’s ballot-rigging fiasco, Mugabe and MDC cannot come to an agreement before Mugabe recognizes the importance of transparency.
The third norm of continuous dialogue rests on engaging, rather than isolating the “enemy.” Mugabe set the tone of disengagement when he unilaterally issued a proclamation in January that set March 29 as election day. The same document also dissolved parliament, which was at that time still in session. MDC had been asking for a June election and termed the sudden declaration an “ambush.” Mugabe has refused to back down ever since, while MDC continues to build popular support by rallying the public.
Although the multilateral organization SADC called in Mbeki to act as mediator in Zimbabwe, MDC founder Morgan Tsvangirai yesterday publicly urged Mbeki to show “a little courage” and stop his “quiet support for the dictatorship.” Mbeki has so far left much of the mediating to his aides. It remains to be seen if Mbeki will step up to pull in other African leaders, given that Mugabe will not.
Finally, the diplomatic norm of civility seems to pale in comparison against the rash of forceful and economic chokes placed by Mugabe onto his country. When one hears the hollow echo of “We wish to be left alone” that closes Mugabe’s 2007 speech to the UN (as edited for YouTube), one cannot help but feel that sensitivity has never been the way for Mugabe.
* It is, though, unclear if Mugabe’s Zimbabwe would be relegated to a footnote in Prof. Wiseman’s paper. Wiseman cast Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime as a human rights abomination that would utterly fail the test. Bush and Mugabe exchanged fire in their addresses to the U.N. in 2007. Bush labeled the country a “demagogic regime,” to which Mugabe countered that colonialist power to re-enslave Zimbabwe.
