[Reader-list] Zimbabwe: Beyond the Vote.

[Patrice Riemens]

Editorial of The Financial Gazette, Harare, March 14, 2002.
original: http://www.fingaz.co.zw/fingaz/2002/March/March14/752.shtml

(The Financial Gazette, usually lambasted by the Mugabe regime as the 
mouthpiece of the white business community, is one of the very few 
independent media left in ZANU-PF ruled Zimbabwe. At the moment it 
provides the most extensive and immo reliable coverage of events in that 
wretched country) (http://www.fingaz.co.zw) 


BEYOND THE VOTE


THAT Zimbabwe's presidential election would not be free and fair was not 
in doubt from the very start. Independent monitors and the international 
community have now merely confirmed what this newspaper has repeatedly 
stated in the past.

The uneven playing field, marked by the government's abuse of the state 
media, its use of hastily crafted undemocratic laws which were changed 
virtually every hour to suit one candidate, its refusal to accept 
independent monitors and observers and its decision to cut polling 
stations in urban areas, was bound to produce a pre-determined result.

The long-running violence by militant government supporters to cow real 
and imagined political foes and the dire threats of war should opposition 
candidate Morgan Tsvangirai win the ballot were all in line with this 
grand strategy.

Zimbabweans who voted in their millions to try to make a difference to 
their harrowing lives and to rescue their country from its rapid descent 
into the abyss were bound to be disappointed and angered, but that is now 
water under the bridge.  They will fight another day.
Unfortunately for Zimbabweans, the poll result spells much more pain and 
suffering because, from now on, the entire international community will 
treat this country as a pariah which it is.  If Zimbabweans felt enraged 
by repeated shortages of this or that essential product and thought they 
had been brutalised enough, much worse seems destined to come because the 
tragedy of Zimbabwe's undoing only begins to unfold from today.

For President Robert Mugabe and his backers, this election will be 
interpreted as a final and heroic vindication of his black nationalist 
credentials and hardline stance on the unresolved land question which he 
says he must put to rest once and for all. But let it be said that for all 
the bitter election rhetoric, Mugabe's moment of decision only starts now.

Many in the land and beyond will be searching for clues to see if, in his 
last presidency if it stands, he will redeem himself and pull his troubled 
country back from the brink.  Mugabe must now begin to chart a new and 
different vision for Zimbabwe compared to the one he rammed through the 
nation for two decades, no matter how late.

He must work assiduously to heal a nation deeply fractured by bloody 
conflict, unprecedented economic ruin and mass hunger in one of Africa's 
richest countries.

He must take a long pause over his seizure of private commercial farms and 
instead launch transparent, legal and fair land reforms which guarantee 
food security for all in the land, no matter how late. He must re-look the 
many hurried laws which he authorised just before the ballot which he even 
knows have no place in any country which claims to be a democracy.

Above all, he must move swiftly and decisively to restore law and order 
and punish without compunction all his followers who became a law unto 
themselves during and before the election campaign. This, no doubt, will 
be his single biggest and toughest assignment upon which all his 
programmes and policies will either succeed or fail.
He may also want to seriously consider suggestions that whoever wins the 
bitterly-contested ballot forms a government of national unity to stave 
off more but needless bloodshed, particularly given the huge dissenting 
vote recorded even under the chaos that Zimbabwe called an election. 
Whether Zimbabweans and the world eventually accept Mugabe's deeply flawed 
victory will largely depend upon how he tackles these and many other 
outstanding issues which cry out for more than urgent attention.

The immediate outlook for his daunting task is very grim, to put it 
mildly. One only hopes that Mugabe will read the explosive mood within and 
outside Zimbabwe correctly and act wisely not just for his sake but for 
Zimbabwe.