Zim Telegraph
By Getrude Gumede
March 20, 2010
The political stalemate in the coalition is blocking reforms and economic recovery and may force a snap election – if South Africa can’t forge a deal
President Jacob Zuma’s suggestion that fresh elections might offer a way out of the current impasse has sparked off a complex game of ‘call my bluff’ amongst the parties to the power-sharing government. It seems clear that Zuma and his advisors would prefer some form of power-sharing to continue in Zimbabwe, even after polls.
The timing will depend on whether Zuma’s 16-18 March mission to Harare can secure a deal on the key battles between the parties: appointing provincial premiers, the Reserve Bank Governor and the Attorney General, and President Robert Mugabe’s unilateral decision to strip four ministers from rival parties of any effective powers. Otherwise, it will be back to the election gambit. None of the parties really wants elections now but they are happy to pretend that they do, in the hope of extracting concessions from their rivals.
If opinion polls mean anything, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai would benefit most, winning a decisive majority in free and fair elections. Yet without electoral and security reform, there is little prospect of free elections: present conditions, with growing political violence in areas such as Epworth near Harare, favour Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara’s faction, MDC-M, has most to fear. It was already punching well above its electoral weight in the division of jobs in the unity government. Since then, it has expelled three of the initial ten members of parliament and not one of those remaining holds office; only Senator David Coltart, the Education Minister, has a popular mandate. Yet MDC-M holds the parliamentary balance of power between ZANU-PF and MDC-T, each having won 100 seats in 2008.
Dumiso Dabengwa’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) is expected to siphon off MDC-M support in Matebeleland; only Coltart has a good chance of winning, thanks to a personal following in Bulawayo. Industry and Commerce Minister Welshman Ncube would face a tough choice: does he keep the faith or revert to Tsvangirai or ally himself with Dabengwa, Simba Makoni or even ZANU-PF?
MDC-T would prefer to fight an election under a new constitution, with a properly verified electoral register and a new delimitation of constituency boundaries under independent monitoring. That process has hardly started: even without delaying tactics, preparing for credible polls could take at least another 18 months. MDC-T fears that without these changes, ZANU-PF will repeat the military tactics of 2008 to win, even if that risks finally alienating most governments in the region.
The long serving Registrar General, Tobaiwa Mudede, had ensured that the chaos in electoral registers favoured ZANU-PF, on whose Central Committee he served. Over the past decade, the ratio of urban to rural seats has systematically fallen, although the urban population has risen. On the basis of population distribution, urban areas are under-represented by 15-20 seats, most of which the MDC would have won. South Africa has offered its expertise in cleaning up the register but this has been politely rejected as impinging on Zimbabwe’s national sovereignty.
Having reasserted his authority after reversals last year (AC Vol 50 No 21) Mugabe can live with the status quo but has said that if God and the party want it, he will happily be a candidate for the next election. Using his extensive presidential powers, he can continue implementing controversial policies such as business indigenisation (see Box), on the basis that the enabling legislation predates the February 2009 unity agreement, so the regulations he approves are purely administrative. He can also delay post-agreement reforms and appointments.
Fear of elections and losing power also galvanises ZANU-PF and dampens the faction-riddled race to succeed the 86-year-old Mugabe. Those within ZANU-PF who fear the party is in terminal decline will want to delay polls to maximise revenue from the current sources of patronage: farm seizures, diamonds, rhino horn and now, compulsory takeovers of foreign/white-owned businesses.
If Zuma is unable to speed up electoral and constitutional reform, elections next year are likely. When asked in London this month whether he would support credible external monitors from the United Nations and Commonwealth for Zimbabwe’s elections, Zuma avoided the issue. Holding elections with a flawed register and few credible monitors amid rising violence would be disastrous for Tsvangirai’s MDC.
Now the MDC-T lacks a majority in the lower house, it cannot use its parliamentary weight to push through reforms. In the Senate, ZANU-PF still has an unelected blocking majority. Elections would be organised under the existing flawed system, as would a referendum on any new constitution. Even before the outreach teams started setting out options for a new constitution, ZANU-PF had been mobilising the rural areas against any option other than its Kariba draft, with a strong centralised presidency.
If elections prove too problematic for all sides, the parties might agree to hold the 20 or so outstanding by-elections, now that that moratorium (agreed as part of the Global Political Agreement) has expired. It would be a relatively low risk strategy and might allow the likes of Dabengwa and Makoni to return.