Sadc's Livingstone report is now for historians: Prof J Moyo

Given that Zimbabwe is due to have its second harmonised general election this year in terms of the September 15, 2008 GPA negotiated, agreed and signed by Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations, and acknowledging that there are new differences in the interpretation of that GPA regarding the timing of the next elections under the guise of the misplaced and very dangerous so-called Sadc election roadmap, can Zimbabwe hold non-violent, free, fair and credible elections on the basis of the existing constitutional, legal and political dispensation?

This question has become necessary because, just like the official announcement of the otherwise known and inconclusive results of the March 29, 2008 harmonised elections which ended up being delayed by some five or so weeks due to serious national security considerations which arose after the US, UK, EU and the white Commonwealth prematurely and illegally declared that the next government should be formed by the MDC-T and its leader when that was not justified by the parliamentary and Presidential election results, the current debate on the so-called Sadc election roadmap risks moving from a political to a national security issue.

Otherwise the answer to the question is a resounding yes because of the indisputable fact that the run-up to and the conduct of the March 29, 2008 harmonised general election met all the requirements of free, fair and credible elections. The matter here is that if we have held free and fair elections before we certainly can hold them again without having to re-invent the wheel.

Although the ongoing but quite frankly misplaced Sadc-supported South African facilitation of unnecessary GPA negotiations on the so-called roadmap to Zimbabwe's elections gives the false impression that Zimbabwe does not have a constitutional, legal and political paradigm for free, fair and credible elections, the compelling and irrefutable truth going back to the March 29, 2008 election points to the contrary in a categorical way. Our GPA negotiators should be the first to know this better.

But before showing how this is so, it should be obvious to anyone looking at this matter that the fixation with extraordinary Sadc summits on Zimbabwe, especially since that mess-up in Livingstone on March 31, has been most unhelpful in understanding the challenges facing our country.

For example, the aftermath of the Extraordinary Sadc Summit held in Sandton, South Africa, last weekend has been reduced to a mindless debate on whether the summit endorsed or rejected the report of the ill-fated Livingstone summit which was conducted in such a scandalously unprocedural manner. Yet quite clearly, the full Sadc summit in Sandton did not endorse or reject the Livingstone report because neither option was necessary.

When summit resolved to leave Livingstone for historians

Instead, the summit noted the report and resolved to move on, leaving Livingstone behind for historians to deal with.

The notions that "noted" means "endorsed" or "rejected" are intellectually retarded and they reflect the refusal to think more than anything else.  For the avoidance of doubt to "note" is to record or take notice of what has happened as an event whose occurrence cannot be ignored, denied or wished away. Facts are facts whether we like them or not.

If you note that there's a high crime rate in the country; that cannot possibly mean you are endorsing crime. Conversely, and in the same vein, if you note that there are many Zimbabweans who are turning to God surely that cannot by any stretch of the imagination mean that you are rejecting God.

It's not about semantics but about common sense and it's tragic that many among us apparently don't have it at a time when we need it the most.

The time has come for Zimbabweans to be a bit more serious about national matters that require seriousness. When some of our vocal compatriots have not been pursuing trivia over whether the Sandton summit endorsed or rejected the controversial Livingstone Organ Troika report by noting it, they have been merchandising anecdotes from that summit and elevating them into tabloid manifestos based on exaggerated and misrepresented slips of the tongue from the floor of the summit such as the nonsense that President Mugabe mixed up President Zuma with President Mandela.

What is as ironic as it is telling about this trivia is that the riff-raff that is indulging in it is made up of well-known high school drop-outs who still have a hard time constructing a proper sentence and who are getting carried away by the accident that they are managing or reporting for hopeless newspapers that cannot afford the cost of hiring mature and competent staff.

But really that is not the point for today although this media cancer in our society needs to be confronted sooner rather than later and without fear or favour in the national interest.

At issue for now is whether our country is capable of holding free, fair and credible harmonised elections and whether we are currently going about finding a meaningful response to this question in a way that does not transform a clear and present political matter into a very serious national security issue that might end up taking precedence over the political matter as would happen in any constitutional democracy in similar circumstances.

Wide, deep constitutional changes

Many will recall that the question of having an enabling or level playing field in the political process with a so-called roadmap ahead of an election has been an MDC demand ever since its widely publicised formation by the British political establishment through its three main political parties, namely, the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats under the umbrella of the Westminster Foundation in 1999.

This demand prompted President Mugabe in his capacity as Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces to accept and endorse a Sadc decision taken at the regional body's extraordinary summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on March 29 2007 to get former South African President Thabo Mbeki to facilitate dialogue between Zanu-PF ' as then the sole ruling party with two thirds majority in Parliament ' with the two MDC formations which were in the opposition with an ineffectual legislative representation. It should be recalled and emphasised that Zanu-PF did not have any compelling reason to engage in that dialogue other than its well-documented commitment to the national interest as an expression of the legacy of the liberation struggle whose key tenet is the self-determination of Zimbabweans as their own liberators and own indigenous masters.

The essence of that year-long dialogue between Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations was to identify the necessary constitutional, legal, institutional and policy processes necessary for the holding of free, fair and credible elections in Zimbabwe. By the end of that dialogue the three parties had agreed to domesticate and institutionalise the Sadc guidelines that govern democratic elections.

This made Zimbabwe one of the very few Sadc countries to do so. More specifically, the dialogue led to the enactment of Constitutional Amendment Number 18 which, among other things:

    Transformed the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission from a statutory body reporting to a Cabinet minister under an Act of Parliament to an independent constitutional body accountable to itself in terms of the Constitution;
    Increased the number of constituencies from 120 to 210;
    Created a bicameral Parliament made up of the House of Assembly and the Senate;
    Introduced a Human Rights Commission as a constitutional body to replace the Office of the Ombudsman;
    Gave the responsibility of voter registration and the delimitation of constituencies to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission;
    Occasioned consequent amendments to the Access to Information and the Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), Public Order and Security Act (POSA) which was aligned to its South African equivalent, Broadcasting Services Act (BSA) and the Electoral Act to ensure free campaigning including access to the national broadcaster, establishing electoral courts to expeditiously settle disputes after elections and the posting of election results outside polling stations immediately after the counting of votes, among many other things; and
    Led to the adoption of a Draft Constitution widely known as the Kariba Draft.

In a nutshell the changes to our Constitution, law and political process brought by the Sadc-brokered dialogue between Zanu-PF and the two MDC formations from March 2007 to March 2008 were wide and deep.

These changes accounted for the conduct of the March 29 2008 harmonised general election that is widely judged to be the freest and fairest election ever held in Zimbabwe, meaning that it was far better than the 1980 general election that was organised and run by the British government as a former colonial power.

As such, it is clear that Zimbabwe is capable of holding free, fair and credible elections because it has the legal and institutional bedrock upon which it has done so in the past and it can do so now and in the future without looking for a new and confused roadmap which has neither a map or a road that can be used by all Zimbabweans.

What is disturbing, and dangerously so, is that this very important background to and reality of our electoral politics and legal history are either being conveniently ignored or corruptly forgotten not only by the two MDC formations and their UK, US and EU handlers who seek illegal regime change in our country but also by the same Sadc that brokered the historic and very successful 2007-2008 dialogue yet is now allowing itself to be confused by focussing on a needless roadmap about which there will never ever be agreement on all of its so-called signposts or benchmarks.

When told about the achievements of the Sadc-facilitated March 2007 to March 2008 dialogue which include the fact that our country was able to hold the freest and fairest election on March 29 2008, the usual detractors respond by falsely claiming that that election was not free or fair allegedly because its results were not announced until after some five or so weeks after the fact.

That allegation is false because the Parliamentary and Presidential results of the March 29 2008 harmonised election were posted outside each of the over 9 000 polling stations across the country and were thus announced immediately after the counting of votes such that all serious parties and candidates were in a position to know the results.

What the detractors ignore is that, even though it was clear after the counting of the votes and on the basis of the results that had been posted outside polling stations that no political party had secured the required 106 out of 210 in the House of Assembly to command the necessary majority to form a government alone and even though no presidential candidate had garnered more than 50 percent plus one to win the presidency in terms of the law, the UK, US and EU imperialists immediately declared with colonial arrogance that they would only recognise a government of the MDC-T led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

2008 elections, more of a security matter than political

This illegal declaration immediately changed the election process from a political matter to a very serious national security issue and wholly explains why it took some five weeks to officially confirm what was already known as the results of the March 29 2008 harmonised general election. The rest is history.

With this background in mind, it is very difficult to understand why the South African facilitation team, and indeed why Sadc's Organ Troika itself, has hitherto been unable to reckon with the fact that the so-called roadmap to Zimbabwe's election is necessarily a treacherous pursuit fraught with regime change explosives. The only issues that can be discussed and agreed on that roadmap are those that are in the GPA.

The rest are impossible to agree on not least because they were rejected before the signing of the GPA on September 15 2008 and bringing them up again under the guise of the roadmap will not change anything besides transforming things from bad to worse.

Furthermore, it is now self-evident that the contentious issues in the roadmap are either those that the MDC formations have dug up from the rubbish pit either of things that were rejected before the adoption of the GPA or of those whose responsibility falls under Zanu-PF Cabinet ministers in the wobbling GNU.

It is notable that there's no single issue falling under any MDC Cabinet minister which is in contention in the alleged election roadmap. Something is wrong because that cannot be right.

Boards that are supposed to be appointed by Zanu-PF ministers in terms of the law are subjected to political rubbish and put under political formulae to share the spoils when the same is not done to crucial boards under ministries run by MDC ministers such as those that oversee the RBZ, the pensions of workers, among many that should clearly get the same treatment as ZBC, Zimpapers and BAZ are getting under the misplaced negotiations on the so-called roadmap to Zimbabwe's elections.

The looming danger which, if things continue the way they are going, will happen as sure as tomorrow is coming is that what is currently a political process will become a national security matter.  If that happens, all hell will break loose.  Yet that is avoidable but only if rationality can be restored to stop the roadmap nonsense.

Enough was done between March 2007 and 2008 to ensure that Zimbabwe's elections are free, fair and credible.  Much more has been done since then.

Any attempt to push matters further beyond the confines of the GPA is very dangerous and will raise national security issues which will have to take precedence over politics as happened after the March 29 2008 elections in the run-up to the presidential run-off election.

If there's a message here it is that those who do not learn from history, especially recent history, risk repeating their mistakes in ways that can be very catastrophic.

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Professor Jonathan Moyo is a Zanu-PF legislator for Tsholotsho North and former Minister of Information and Publicity. This article in reproduced from The Sunday Mail