Human Rights and Zimbabwe's Presidential Election: March 2002
A Special Report by the Research Unit
May, 2002

Chapter 10: Assessments and Post-Election Scenarios

Where to now, Zimbabwe? 

(a)   ‘Normality’   

(b)   Civil unrest / coup?   

(c)   Retaliation    

(d)   New elections?    

(e)   International pariah status extended

The MDC totally rejected the result as ‘a massive fraud’ and called for new elections under international supervision and observation.[1] This position seems to have been endorsed by the 54-member Commonwealth as a ‘short to medium term’ goal, as well as the ACP-EU grouping of 93 countries. The MDC also formally entered a plea to the High Court to nullify the results.

The observer missions below assessed Zimbabwe’s Presidential Election. This incomplete list reflects only those assessments publicly reported. 

† Did not comply with ‘key, broadly accepted, criteria for elections’.

* Did not comply with SADCPF Norms and Standards for Elections in the SADC Region.

The report of Zimbabwe’s own Electoral Supervisory Commission was among the last to be released, and was not available at the time this report went to press. Prior to its release, ESC chair Gula-Ndebele was reported as criticising to the Law Society of Zimbabwe the organisation of the Presidential Election and attributing this to the current constitution.[2] Advocate Pearson Nherere was quoted as describing the election as

‘total confusion. That was the intention, and it was achieved. The president behaved more as a candidate in using his powers to overrule the courts and the courts, in their wisdom, left matters unresolved until after the polls.’[3]

The state-controlled media claimed that the election results had been endorsed by China and Russia (neither of which to the best of our knowledge sent observers) and implied that the Japanese had reached a favourable conclusion despite the reservations they expressed on the number of polling stations in Harare and other cities.[4] There was no independent published evidence suggesting the Japanese had endorsed the poll as either free or fair.

Virtually all Zimbabwean civic organisations condemned the poll as unfree and unfair, and rejected the result, as show below.

In contrast, Zimbabwe’s Affirmative Action Group, Kenya, the Namibian delegation (and the sole Namibian on the Commonwealth team), the OAU, the South African Federated Chambers of Commerce and Tanzania considered this election ‘free and fair’ and the outcome ‘legitimate’. It is unclear whether the African ambassadors in Harare themselves observed the elections, despite their ringing endorsement that these were free, fair, credible and legitimate. The reasoning, like that of the Electoral Supervisory Commission, seemed to be that the participation of opposition parties ipso facto legitimised the result, even when the main opposition party and its candidate refused to accept the results of an unfree and unfair contest in which one participant (Robert Mugabe) had recurrently changed the rules to advantage himself.

With the notable exception of Ghana, which rejected the result as well as slamming procedures, most of the other official African delegations (including, rather oddly, Nigeria and South Africa) endorsed the result as ‘legitimate’ even while criticising, often severely, the shortcomings at all stages in the election process. They mostly recommended that Zimbabwe should establish a fully independent electoral commission.

The South Africans, who did not meet to decide their collective response, were reportedly split on their findings.[5] The head of South Africa’s own independent Electoral Commission, Brigalia Bam, was quoted as denying the election was free or fair or that the outcome was legitimate, and hinting at rigging of the count. Even ZANU-PF’s traditional ally, the PAC delegate, agreed with Bam’s assessment and denounced the disenfranchisement that had occurred, leaving it to the Zimbabwean people to decide whether the result was acceptable. Perhaps head of mission Sam Motsuanyane did not even believe his own lame and much-pilloried description of the urban voting chaos and resulting disenfranchisement as simply ‘an administrative oversight’. Members of the team, back in South Africa, reportedly wanted a ‘total reworking’ of the draft interim statement apparently prepared before polling by an ‘editorial committee’ led by Eddie Maloka and Itumeleng Mosala, which the team members saw only after it had been released.[6]

Like the official opposition, the overseas observers[7] and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan refused to endorse the result. Both Secretary of State Colin Powell and President George Bush of the USA publicly denounced the result as fraudulent. The United States, the European Union and all 15 of its individual members, plus Norway, Switzerland and New Zealand, extended ‘smart sanctions’ to all responsible for what the Zimbabwean opposition called ‘the stolen election’.

Where to now, Zimbabwe?

(a) ‘Normality’?

Robert Mugabe was reported to have left Zimbabwe on a chartered Libyan plane for an undisclosed destination after he had voted on Saturday 9 March. He returned on the day the results were announced.[8] It was speculated he had visited Libya and/or Malaysia.

One of Robert Mugabe’s very first acts after his ‘re-election’, on 15 March 2002, even before he had taken the oath of office on Sunday 17 March 2002, was to sign into law the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. Presumably he did this as the outgoing President still in office.

Five days after the results were announced, on Sunday 17 March 2002, Robert Mugabe was sworn in for his third term of office. This occurred before his second term was due to have ended (on 31 March 2002). It is therefore unclear whether his swearing in and assumption of office were constitutional. Section 28(5) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe specifies that ‘A person elected as President shall assume office (a) where he has been elected … on the expiry of the term of office of the previous President’.

The hastily-organised celebrations were graced by only five SADC heads of state (from Malawi, Mocambique, Tanzania, the DRC and Namibia), the vice-presidents of Zambia, Botswana and South Africa, and the heads of the Catholic and Anglican churches in Harare. Western diplomats boycotted the proceedings altogether, together with the official opposition, whose Members of Parliament were not even invited.[9] The most notable absences were those of Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, two of the three-member Commonwealth committee tasked with deciding what to do with Zimbabwe on the basis of their observer mission’s report. The High Commissioner of Australia (the third member of the Commonwealth ‘troika’) also boycotted this possibly unconstitutional inauguration of a ‘winner’ whose legitimacy was openly questioned by Zimbabweans whose political rights had been so massively trampled upon.

Mugabe’s Inaugural Address included the following passages, omitted from The Herald’s ostensibly complete version:[10]

‘Our civil service has got to be gingered up… Those also who are negative characters, who deliberately impede government programmes because of their political inclination, will have to go…

Zimbabwe is for the Zimbabweans first and foremost. It is our land…

We are still faced with racism, blatant racism. It is showing itself much more now as we interact more closely with the West, and that ugly head that we thought through our anti-colonial struggle we had smashed, NO! we left it alive and it is rearing again, perhaps calling for another much more devastating blow – blow to the head and no longer to the body of the monster. That is what we need at the moment…’

The view in Zimbabwe was that a very severe crackdown on all forms of dissent was clearly in the offing, particularly after Robert Mugabe’s much-quoted later warning:

‘You want to rebel, to cause chaos in this country. That’s what we want to see… they think we will continue to be soft, that’s gone, it’s finished. We are in a new phase, a new chapter, and there will be a firm Government, very firm…’[11]

Two days after his inauguration, on 19 March 2002, Zimbabwe was suspended from the decision-making councils of the Commonwealth – a decision his government purported to ‘reject’.[12] President Obasanjo told the BBC that Robert Mugabe had taken ‘badly’ his phone call to tell him privately, before the announcement was released, that suspension had been agreed. Some of Mugabe’s close associates, including Didymus Mutasa, reportedly thought Zimbabwe should withdraw from the Commonwealth, presumably in ‘protest’.

Four days after his inauguration, in a secret ballot, the African, Caribbean and Pacific and European Union Joint Parliamentary Assembly was reported to have voted 63 to 2 with 3 abstentions, to send the following resolutions to the ACP-EU Council; the European Commission; the Government and Parliament of Zimbabwe; the secretaries-general of the Commonwealth, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the United Nations; and the presidents of the European Investment Bank, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD – the World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund.

‘The ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly calls for new elections to be held within the year under the auspices of the Commonwealth and international community so as to allow all the people of Zimbabwe the freedom to elect the president of their choice.

The ACP-EU calls on President Mugabe to drop all charges of treason immediately against the legitimate leader of the opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai and his colleagues and to rescind immediately all the draconian legislation proposed and adopted by the government which has restricted the freedom of speech, freedom of the media and democracy in Zimbabwe before, during and after the election’.[13]

Jonathan Moyo threatened to use his Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act against the Daily News unless it ‘corrected’ this report.[14] He seemed to think that the ACP countries had not been party to the resolutions, but even The Herald acknowledged that the ACP members had not repudiated the resolutions.

(b) Civil Unrest / Coup?

Robert Mugabe reportedly asserted in advance of the poll that ZANU-PF would rule Zimbabwe for the next six years even if the international community rejected the result of the presidential poll.[15]

The day before polling saw the prohibition of all light aircraft movement within a radius of 25 kms of Harare International Airport, and the closure until 15 March of all airfields within this radius, with the exception of Charles Prince Airport (on the western boundary of Harare).

All armed forces’ leave had been cancelled and they were placed on alert in the week before polling. Soldiers thought to sympathise with the opposition were reportedly transferred out of Matabeleland and the Midlands, and replaced with others whom residents complained were harassing them even before the poll. Soldiers were stationed at GMB depots and reportedly placed milling companies ‘under surveillance’.[16] The Zimbabwe Liberators’ Platform made a special public appeal to the armed forces on the basis of their shared experience of armed struggle, inter alia to uphold the Constitution and ‘to remain professional, fair and serve as an anchor of stability during these trying times’.[17]

After the result was announced, security forces on high alert ‘forcibly ordered pedestrians to clear [Harare’s] streets overnight’[18] after the announcement had generated anger and despair, still visible and palpable a month later at the time of writing. As in July 2000, uniformed soldiers and police enforced an unofficial night-time curfew and assaulted residents of urban high-density residential areas. ZANU-PF militia attacks against all suspected opposition voters were also widely reported in urban but, more especially, rural areas. Some opposition activists, polling volunteers and party officials received their own symbolic coffins as well as one for Morgan Tsvangirai.

Nelson Chamisa asked, ‘If Mugabe’s victory was genuine, why should his supporters continue to beat up people?’[19] We think the violence has not abated because even ZANU-PF understands that a new election, not under their control, is inevitable, sooner rather than later.[20] So the intimidation and retaliation has to continue.

(c) Retaliation

The three weeks after the poll, to the end of March 2002, saw 46,6% of all political violations of human rights in the first quarter of the year 2002. This dramatically escalated the rate of violation earlier reflected in the 53% of violations which had occurred in the ten weeks before polling. (In the usual pattern of relatively trouble-free voting, only 0,3% of violations occurred from 9-11 March.)

Even before the election result was known publicly, the incumbent regime started moving against the opposition. As counting proceeded, on 12 March 2002 Welshman Ncube was charged with treason for his role (as the MDC’s Secretary-General) in authorising the payment to Dickens and Madsen of US$500 000, allegedly to assassinate Robert Mugabe. These charges were later extended to Renson Gasela, the MDC’s shadow minister of agriculture, who was also separately charged (again with treason) with recruiting youths for military training in Australia.[21]

On Wednesday 20 March 2002, the day after Zimbabwe had been suspended from the Commonwealth’s councils, Morgan Tsvangirai was formally charged with treason, which carries the death penalty under Zimbabwean law. The South African ruling party, the ANC, was reported in the Zimbabwean state-controlled press as regarding these treason charges as part of ‘a process of healing’ and Robert Mugabe as concerned with ‘reconciliation, unity and peace’.[22]

By early April six MDC polling agents had been beaten to death and an estimated 18 000 party supporters displaced from their rural homes. In constituencies which included Nyanga, Mutasa, Bindura, all who had voted for Morgan Tsvangirai were hunted out of their homes. 66 farmers (mainly white) who had been MDC ‘resource persons’ transporting and supplying polling agents, were arrested for using their licensed radios for communication with party centres and one another. On 14 of their farms, their workers had been evicted from their farm housing.[23] Another 50 farmers had been evicted from their homes, some on only one hour’s notice, while 25 were assaulted. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of household and personal property had been looted from farmhouses which the owners were forced to abandon at the expiry of the 90-day notices they had been served with in late 2001. By early April 2002, the State was reportedly planning a further assault on property rights by expropriating without compensation all movable farming equipment from designated farms.[24] Much was meanwhile looted by farm occupiers.

As all MDC voters were ‘hunted down’ and another half-billion Zimdollars sought for new national youth training camps,[25] ‘war veterans’ and ZANU-PF youth reportedly took control of maize distribution in order to deny food to those who had voted ‘the wrong way’. Four years and three months after nine people had been killed in the food riots of January 1998,[26] shoppers queuing for maize meal at a Mucheke supermarket in the newly-proclaimed City of Masvingo were dispersed and some injured by police using dogs and batons.[27] Predictably the first of many such incidents as the food crisis worsened, it symbolised the electoral defeat of Zimbabwe’s impoverished urban working class.

The Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association called for the Zimbabwe Congress of Trades Unions to be deregistered and disbanded.[28] In Rusape and many other places, those thought to sympathise with the MDC in the civil service, parastatals and uniformed services, were explicitly threatened to leave their jobs and town. The Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture led the way in terminating the services of employees sympathetic to the MDC.

(d) New Elections?

The MDC called for new elections under international control, having prepared a detailed report on the electoral violations, including the actual vote count. In April, those who had been deprived of their votes in Harare formed the Disenfranchised Voters Movement to press for new elections.[29]

‘Whether Robert Mugabe likes it or not, there is going to be an election rerun. No matter what he does, Mugabe’s victory is illegitimate. We have overwhelming evidence that he did not poll more than 850 000 votes…

The problem with us is that we have been fighting to be nice people, but as the majority we should not be intimidated. We must exercise our responsibility as the majority… As a party, we must not do what would injure us but rather what changes the country for the better’.[30]

Nigerian President Obasanjo reportedly expressed his personal opinion that new elections should be held as soon as possible, under a ‘credible’ electoral authority, and that until such time as these could be arranged, a coalition government should jointly attempt to resolve Zimbabwe’s immediate food and economic crises. This possibility was rejected out of hand by ZANU-PF. ‘The Politburo made an unequivocal statement that ZANU-PF will not tolerate the talk and whispers in some subversive circles about a re-run of the Presidential Election’, Jonathan Moyo was quoted as saying,[31] echoing Robert Mugabe’s flat refusal to entertain such a possibility. ZANU-PF rubbished the very idea, as ‘colonial’, that Zimbabwe’s elections might not be held under its own control.

The day after Robert Mugabe’s re-installation on Sunday 17 March 2002, pressure was reportedly exerted by Presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki (neither of whom attended the ceremony), on both ZANU-PF and the MDC to form a government of ‘national unity’. Both refused. But by early April, the MDC had agreed to meet with ZANU-PF as a party, not as government, to discuss what they called transitional co-operation toward a new election under international supervision. These talks were brokered by the Nigerian and South African envoys, Professor Adedeji and Mr Motlanthe, despite their difficulties in achieving ‘consensus’ over the MDC’s non-negotiable demand for new elections under international supervision.

The government team was led by Patrick Chinamasa and included Jonathan Moyo, Witness Mangwende and Frederick Shava, Emmerson Mnangagwa (initially named to lead it) having mysteriously disappeared from this group. The MDC had perhaps expected that its own team, led by secretary-general Welshman Ncube, and including major party leaders and shadow ministers, would not be confronted by publicly aggressive people apparently holding no similar rank within ZANU-PF.

Ncube laid out what the MDC sought from these talks:

‘an immediate restoration of law and order and the rule of law, guaranteeing the security of political freedoms of each and every Zimbabwean without regard to political affiliation; and an unconditional return to legitimacy through a fresh presidential poll held in a climate of peace where the freedoms of all political players are guaranteed’.

These twin demands required, in detail: an immediate end to violence, human rights abuses, partisan policing, selective law enforcement, party political activities by the Central Intelligence Organisation, and militia training; disarming and disbanding the existing militia; disarming the ‘war veterans’; ‘re-professionalisation’ of all uniformed services; agreed impartial mechanisms to monitor and verify the above; the repeal of all legislation infringing basic constitutional rights – notably electoral law amendments, POSA and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act – and a guarantee that presidential law-making powers will not be used to reinstate such legislation. Notably, there was no demand for fresh elections to be held under a new constitution.[32]

It was clear, from Patrick Chinamasa’s formal address to the talks, that ZANU-PF would agree to none of these demands, especially fresh elections under foreign control. ‘Both de facto and de jure’, he averred,

‘Zimbabwe has a lawful and legitimate Government whose mandate flows from the general will and preference of the majority Zimbabweans as expressed through the poll results of June 2000 and March 2002. That … ZANU-PF Government has a clean, clear and unqualified mandate to rule’.[33]

Moreover, his stress on ‘multi-partyism to which my party is committed’ suggested that ZANU-PF understood that a coalition government would be impossible for two parties with such divergent policy objectives.

As one editor saw these talks, they were:

‘merely an exercise in deflecting domestic and world criticism and preparing the basis for failure, because there never was in the first place an intention to succeed on the part of the government’.[34]

(e) International Pariah Status Extended

Zimbabwe’s repressive new legislation and political violence were roundly condemned locally and internationally as ‘designed to suppress the constitutional rights, the legitimate, peaceful and lawful aspirations of Zimbabweans’ and contributing materially to a flawed electoral process.[35] UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was quoted as being

‘acutely concerned by the promulgation in Zimbabwe of laws that would severely restrict the ability of political parties to campaign freely, and would limit the freedom of the press. He emphasises that freedom of assembly and association, and an independent judiciary, are essential building blocks of democracy. These are key features of the New Partnership for African Development, to which all African states have subscribed, and indeed basic principles of SADC itself’.[36]

George Soros warned that the flawed election result would impact very negatively on investment in Africa generally, particularly if African politicians accepted it as legitimate.[37] Local financiers agreed: ‘Whatever little attractiveness as an investment destination the country had retained up to now has been blown to pieces’.[38]

The USA, Switzerland and other countries joined the European Union in applying ‘smart’ travel and financial sanctions against Robert Mugabe, his wife Grace and those who ‘formulate, implement or benefit from policies that undermine or injure Zimbabwean democratic institutions’ and/or ‘derive significant financial benefits’ from such policies.[39] By mid-April, the European Union had reportedly extended these personal sanctions to

‘a moratorium on bilateral ministerial contacts with Zimbabwe until further notice, except for the conduct of political dialogue intended to promote democracy, human rights, the rule of law in Zimbabwe, regional security and for addressing humanitarian needs’.[40]

The Australians cancelled their cricket test tour scheduled for April 2002.

In bringing to an end this extended report, Learnmore Ndlovu[41] deserves not the last word, but a serious hearing.

‘ZANU-PF has learnt from the Referendum and two subsequent elections, that it cannot allow an uncontrolled, democratic, free and fair election if it wants to retain power. No-one can imagine for one moment that a vote for a new constitution that limits or abolishes that power, will be allowed to succeed at the ballot box.

Does anyone seriously believe that President Mugabe is going to accept a new constitution that limits his authority and restores a democratic government to the people? If that was the case, we would have had a democratic, free and fair Presidential Election…

One person did not rig the election by himself. It required collusion by a lot of people in government and in positions of authority to enable the election result to be manipulated. The people we trusted to be impartial and sincerely carry out their constitutional duties failed us…

Another referendum for a new constitution will lose at the ballot box, because Mugabe will not allow it to succeed, and once again there will be far too many people prepared to be dishonest and allow the process to be manipulated…

The worst enemy of democracy and the people of Zimbabwe, are the people of Zimbabwe. We want democracy but we are not willing to demand democracy. We want democracy but we are not willing to participate in the monitoring of the election without being paid…

Until that situation changes, and the good people are willing to do what is required to defeat corruption and defend their right to democracy, we will not have a new constitution or democracy’.

The last word must be the age-old problem – how is it possible to terminate autocratic regimes by democratic means that respect human rights? – for that is precisely what Zimbabweans have tried to do since the start of the third millenium.