- Email: [email protected]
The presidential elections in Zimbabwe, March 2002
516
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
The continued fall in turnout continues to worry political commentators; the TSE’s president described it as a “serious illness” for the quality of Costa Rica’s democracy. The 69% turnout in 2002 undercut even the unusually low figure recorded in 1998. As well as being low, turnout was uneven across the country. It was higher in the more populous central valley areas, ranging from 69% in San Jose´ to 72% in Cartago. But in the outlying provinces of Puntarenas and Limo´ n, turnouts were 61% and 59%, respectively. There are therefore significant regional differences amid general dissatisfaction and apathy. Acknowledgements Dr Wilson was invited by the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones of Costa Rica as an international observer for the February general election. Funding was also provided by the University of Central Florida. I would like to thank Ricardo Seevers and Jorge Seevers for their kind hospitality during the electoral process and to Kerstin Hamann and Juan Carlos Rodrı´guez Cordero for their comments. References CNN, 8 April 2002. http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/04/08/costarica.elections.ap/index.html La Nacio´ n, 2002. http://www.nacion.co.cr/ TSE, 2002. Informacio´ n para programa Observadores Internacionales. TSE, San Jose´ .
0261-3794/03/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0261-3794(03)00006-4
The presidential elections in Zimbabwe, March 2002 D. Pottie ∗ The Carter Center, 453 Freedom Parkway, Atlanta, GA 30307, USA
1. Background The 2002 presidential election in the Zimbabwe election marked a high point in the rising political tension that has gripped Zimbabwe since late 1999. In the runup to the June 2000 legislative elections, the government initiated a state program
∗
Tel.: +1-404-420-5174; fax: +1-404-420-5196. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Pottie).
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
517
of forced land redistribution, involving many thousands of ‘war veterans’ organized into militias. The militias invaded hundreds of the 4000 farms owned by white settlers, and responsible for much of Zimbabwe’s foreign exchange and rural employment. Land reform has been a long-standing policy issue in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. Initially prohibited from addressing land reform for the first ten years after independence, Zimbabwe introduced a new land policy in 1992 to redress the imbalance in land ownership between blacks and whites. By 2000, there had been little effective redistribution of land, with many claiming that what land had changed hands went to President Robert Mugabe’s friends and his political allies. The scale of redistribution and violence escalated dramatically in early 2000 after a constitutional amendment allowed for the occupation of land without compensation. This amendment followed popular rejection of a new constitution in the February 2000 referendum. The ‘No’ vote against the proposed constitution was widely regarded as a vote against Mugabe and the Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government, bolstering the hopes of victory for the opposition party—the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)—in the June 2000 legislative elections. In those elections, ZANU-PF campaigned on the slogan ‘Land is the economy, the economy is the land’, and intensified its anti-colonial, anti-British rhetoric. The deaths of several white farmers and many more black farm workers at the hands of the war veterans galvanized international attention on Zimbabwe. Since 2000, political relations between the two major parties remained tense, as the cycle of land invasions and political violence led by ZANU-PF continued. Mugabe himself led the charge, vowing to be re-elected President in the 2002 elections. Food aid also appears to have been used as a political weapon, with many reports of districts perceived as MDC areas being denied food. According to the MDC, more than 100 of its militants had been killed in political violence since February 2000. The international community watched these events closely, although countries pursued different strategies of engagement with President Mugabe and his government. Western powers typically made public appeals for reform, and threatened sanctions, in response to concerns about human rights violations. By contrast, Zimbabwe’s neighbours, led by South Africa through the regional Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), conducted ‘quiet diplomacy’. Amnesty International was particularly critical of SADC, citing that Mugabe’s many promises of reform had not been matched by action. Indeed, only two months before the March 2002 elections, in a communique´ to SADC, Zimbabwe pledged full respect for human rights, a commitment to investigate fully and impartially all cases of alleged political violence, an adequately resourced Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC) to do so, timely accreditation of national and international election observers, reaffirmation for international journalists to cover important national events, including elections, and the independence of the judiciary. None of these approaches had had much effect by the time of the election.
518
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
2. Election campaign The election campaign revealed the distance between political reality in Zimbabwe and Mugabe’s pledges to SADC. Only twelve days before the elections, as part of an on-going campaign to discredit Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC, Tsvangirai was charged with treason based on a videotape allegedly showing him discussing a coup plot. The MDC also claimed that many of its supporters had their national identification cards confiscated, thereby disenfranchising them, while others were attacked or abducted by ZANU-PF, arrested by police, and their vehicles burned. Other tactics involved police bans on MDC rallies, with 79 MDC rallies reportedly broken up by police or disrupted by ZANU-PF militants. To mediate between the two parties, the ESC sought to establish a code of conduct for the election campaign. Talks between the parties broke down, however, when ZANU-PF allegedly rejected an amendment calling for the cessation of violence, abduction, and torture. Although the ESC does not conduct the elections, it exercises broad supervisory powers over the administration of the elections. Prior to amendments before the 2000 legislative elections, the ESC was also responsible for the accreditation of observers. Subsequently this authority was allocated to the government and the Minister of Justice.1 The 2002 presidential election was primarily a contest between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, but three other candidates also challenged for the presidency: Wilson Kumbula, Shakespeare Maya and Paul Siwela. These three were largely unknowns with no obvious base of political support. Both Kumbula and Siwela failed to win the support of their respective regional parties. The capacity of ZANU-PF to mobilize its supporters was evident, especially for political intimidation. Early in the campaign, some 5000 ZANU-PF supporters ran through the streets of Harare and destroyed the front office of MDC headquarters. ZANU-PF activity was also bolstered by the new Public Order and Security Act that restricted freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Among other conditions, the act made it an offence to undermine the authority of the president by ‘engendering feelings of hostility towards’ him, required all participants in a public gathering to carry identification documents, and gave the police broad powers of search and seizure without warrant. Media coverage of the elections was also affected by the tightened grip of the ZANU-PF government over basic political freedoms. New media legislation placed severe restrictions on the activities of the media and journalists, and dictated that foreign journalists must obtain permission from the government before covering election campaigns. All foreign journalists previously working in Zimbabwe also faced new restrictions; many had their visas revoked and were expelled from Zimbabwe. The international organization, Transparency International, called for the complete repeal of Zimbabwe’s restrictive media laws.
1 The Registrar General since 1980, Tobaiwa Mudede, is a civil servant who heads up the main administrative body responsible for the conduct of the elections.
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
519
3. Conduct of the election The election was held on 9–10 March, with polling extended for a third day to 11 March. In addition to the general climate of widespread intimidation, especially in rural areas, voter access was affected by the reallocation of many polling stations (estimated at 5600 in total). This was particularly important since voters must vote in their constituencies. The changes in the allocation of polling stations increased the number of polling stations in rural areas while reducing the number in urban areas. For example, the number of polling stations was reduced in 16 of the Harare constituencies, in some cases by nearly 50%, thereby raising the number of voters per polling station to over 2000. By one calculation, the resulting pressure on the remaining polling stations would be severe; with turnout around 70%, those stations would have to process a voter every 30 seconds or less. In many instances, voters remained in long queues over the three days of polling. Other cities such as Bulawayo and Gweru also had the number of polling stations reduced, while the rural constituencies in Midlands province received an increase of 34%. For some Zimbabweans, the practice suggests a ZANU-PF strategy to dis-enfranchise voters in urban areas, generally perceived to be pro-MDC, and to concentrate voting in the ZANU-PF strongholds in rural areas. As a further impediment to voter access, the location of the polling stations was only announced three days before the elections. Moreover, MDC was unable to place party agents in nearly 50% of rural polling stations owing to political intimidation. The voters’ roll was an additional source of controversy. According to Zimbabwe’s electoral law, the voters’ roll is open to public review; in practice, the roll remained out of view. Opposition parties and civil society organizations had long fought to gain access to the voters’ roll, without success.2 Following several court orders, the Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust (Zimcet) was granted the right to review the roll, which then stood closed at 5.2 million voters. A Zimcet audit of the roll revealed that only approximately 50% of the voters on the roll lived at the listed address. Voter registration was to have closed on 10 February, but appears to have been retrospectively extended twice by the Registrar General to 3 March. The final roll listed 5 612 272 voters. For some, this is an impossibly high total since other studies estimate Zimbabwe’s total voting population at 4.8 million. For the MDC, this discrepancy suggests that the Registrar General kept the roll open in order to swell the numbers of ZANU-PF voters. In addition to being listed on the electoral roll and voting in their constituency of residence, voters were required to present their national identification card and proof of residence, such as an electricity or municipal rates bill. Thus people who had fled their homes or had otherwise been displaced by political violence (estimated at 400 000), or who, like many of the urban poor, live in informal settlements and lack formal proof of residence, were unable to vote. Despite these obstacles, approximately 54% of registered voters turned out on
2
Despite offers by the EU to pay for the distribution of cd-rom versions of the electoral roll.
520
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
election day, with many in the urban areas standing in massive queues. Election day was largely peaceful although there were reports of many hundreds of arrests, ostensibly of voters seeking to vote twice. The MDC petitioned the High Court for an extension to a third day of voting, but, even as this petition was granted, police chased away voters from some polling stations. Polling stations in Harare opened as late as noon on the third day of voting. The electoral law prohibited party agents from travelling with the ballot boxes to the counting centers; and MDC officials complained that their observers had been locked out of the counting centers in Harare and Bulawayo. Overall, MDC claimed that it was unable to monitor 52% of polling stations and 9 out of 120 counting stations.
4. Election results Mugabe was re-elected president of Zimbabwe with 56.1% of the vote; Tsvangirai won 42%. According to official figures, voter turnout reached over 70% in rural areas but only 40% in urban areas (see Table 1). As in 2000, Tsvangirai won a majority of votes in Bulawayo and Harare, with much of his support concentrated in urban areas whereas Mugabe won substantial majorities in all the other provinces. The relative levels of support by constituency for both ZANU-PF and MDC remained unchanged in Bulawayo and Harare, where MDC won a strong majority of the vote, suggesting that ZANU PF did not seek to turn the tide of the urban vote in its favour. However, compared to the 2000 elections, ZANU-PF increased its level of national support by a total of 480 000 votes, while the MDC dropped 90 000. In those constituencies where Mugabe did not win, he narrowed the margin with Tsvangirai. For example, Tsvangirai carried Silobela constituency in Midlands province, with a margin over Mugabe of 6861 votes. However, ZANU-PF picked up an additional 3000 votes compared to the 2000 elections when MDC had won by a margin of 10 000 votes. Indeed, in a further 57 constituencies, ZANU-PF either added to their own Table 1 Results of the presidential election in Zimbabwe, 9–10 March 2002
Robert Mugabe Morgan Tsvangirai Tarugarira Wilson Kumbula Shakespeare Maya Paul Siwela Spoilt ballots Total votes cast Total valid votes Source: Registrar General, Zimbabwe, 2002.
Votes
Valid votes (%)
1 681 212 1 262 403 31 368 11 906 11 871 48 131 3 046 891 2 998 760
56.1 42.1 1.0 0.4 0.4
100.0
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521
substantial majorities, narrowed the MDC margin of victory, and in a few cases, overturned previous MDC victories. This pattern of apparently increased support for Mugabe and ZANU-PF sparked MDC’s suspicion that the announced results did not reflect the popular will. MDC long felt that the voters roll provided the government with a supply of additional voters to be added where necessary to ensure a ZANU-PF victory. The confusing announcement of results added to this suspicion. For example, on 13 March, Registar General Tobaiwa Mudede announced that a total of 2 298 758 votes had been cast, yet a subsequent announcement of the final results in other media indicated that 2 998 758 votes had been cast, a discrepancy of 700 000 votes. For the opposition MDC, these variations indicated that the ZANU-PF government was attempting to cook the final results. In an added twist, the final results announced on 10 April again differed from those announced on 13 March. Mudede’s final announcement reduced Mugabe’s total by 4000 votes from a previously announced total of 1 685 212 while Tsvangirai’s total rose by 4000 votes from 1 258 401 to 1 262 403. When the media sought clarification of this discrepancy, Mudede called on officials to clear the press conference.
5. Electoral observers The elections attracted considerable international attention, drawing many international observers to Zimbabwe. Among the observer missions was a 45-member team from the Commonwealth led by General Abubakar of Nigeria, a 37-member team from the SADC Parliamentary Forum, as well as teams from the Electoral Commissions Forum of SADC Countries, the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and the SADC Electoral Support Network. Several African governments, including Namibia, Nigeria, and South Africa, sent their own delegations. The European Union (EU) sent what would have been the largest delegation with 300 proposed observers, but they eventually withdrew from Zimbabwe (18 February), citing the government’s refusal to allow its observers to move freely. The government had already banned observers from Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden in the wake of statements critical of Zimbabwe’s human rights situation. Pierre Schori of Sweden headed the delegation but he too was expelled from Zimbabwe when his tourist visa expired. Following the withdrawal of the EU team, targeted sanctions were imposed against the government of Zimbabwe, including an embargo on the sale and supply of arms, technical advice and equipment which could be used for internal repression in Zimbabwe, a visa ban, and a freeze on the overseas assets of Mugabe and 19 close associates. EU foreign ministers stated that the “EU remains seriously concerned at political violence, serious violations of human rights and restrictions on the media…which call into question the prospects for a free and fair election”. The EU took the view that the sanctions were designed not to harm ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe but were “aimed solely at those whom the EU judges to be responsible for the violence, for the violations of human tights
522
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and for preventing the holding of free and fair elections in Zimbabwe” (Reuters, 18 February 2002). Domestic observers from the human rights group Amani Trust agreed, but felt that the international observers, particularly in rural areas, could document, and even deter, the intimidation, violence, and torture that the group was reporting. But given the government’s attempt to control the presence and activity of international observers, few observers were in place with accreditation more than three weeks before election day. The result, according to domestic human rights organizations, was that the majority of the violations took place out of the direct view of international observers. Domestic observers were themselves severely restricted, with only civil servants qualifying as election monitors. Given the diversity of interests in Zimbabwe, the international observers did not speak with one voice, despite the widespread reporting of intimidation and electoral violence. Indeed, one is struck by the different, and often confusing, assessments of the Zimbabwean electoral process. For example, some observers condemned Zimbabwe’s presidential elections as chaotic and flawed. According to Kare Vollan, head of the 25-member Norwegian observer mission, “The presidential elections failed to meet key, broadly accepted criteria for elections” (Independent, 12 March 2002). By contrast, observers from the OAU, Nigeria, Namibia, and South Africa issued generally positive assessments of the electoral process, declaring that the elections were peaceful and reflected the will of the people. The spotlight was particularly focused on the South African mission, given President Thabo Mbeki’s lead on the quiet diplomacy approach. The mission’s preliminary statements suggested that all was generally well with the elections, but public disputes over the content of its draft final report revealed that not all members of the delegation supported the mission’s official conclusion that, while not free and fair, the elections had been “legitimate”. Sam Motsuenyane, South Africa’s mission leader, said there was no contradiction in this view. South Africa’s colleagues in the SADC Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF) observation mission concluded that the elections did not comply with the Forum’s norms and standards for elections in the SADC region. The SADC-PF statement cited the prevalence of violence throughout the election campaign (its own observers were themselves targets of an “orchestrated attack”), that the majority of the violence affected MDC members, and that police were not impartial in the discharge of their duties. SADC-PF also noted many serious procedural irregularities, such as the release of the voters roll only three days before the elections, and the congestion caused by the reduced number of polling stations in urban areas. The SADC statement thus represented a major African voice critical of the presidential election. The SADC-PF statement may have had an impact on the Commonwealth, itself in a difficult position over the elections. Prior to the elections, the Commonwealth was reportedly split between the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand—all of whom favoured a stronger critical stance—and African and other developing country members who did not. The Commonwealth agreed to form a tripartite panel comprised of Nigeria, South Africa, and Australia to report on the situation. The 54-member election observation team was to report within a week of the elections; and, in the
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
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event of an adverse report, the Commonwealth would take action. In the end, the Commonwealth observer team concluded that “the conditions in Zimbabwe did not adequately allow for a free expression of will by the electors”,3 and the Commonwealth formally suspended Zimbabwe for a period of one year.
6. Imperfect future Regional dialogue continued after the elections but with no appreciable success. Party-to-party talks between South Africa’s ANC and ZANU-PF also bore little fruit. ZANU-PF and MDC engaged in high-level talks, but these broke down apparently over ZANU-PF’s insistence that MDC drop all election petitions. In the meantime, the US added its weight to EU sanctions, restricting travel to the US for President Mugabe and many of his most senior officials. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s economic decline continued, as food, land ownership, and agricultural production reached crisis proportions. Inflation rose to over 100%, unemployment to 80%, with shortages of basic commodities and foodstuffs. When regional drought struck much of the SADC region, famine in Zimbabwe threatened millions—even as 2900 white farmers faced an August 2002 deadline to vacate their farms. Thus ZANU-PF’s political choices started a growing humanitarian crisis. As one black settler on a white-owned farm stated, “We are starving, there’s nothing to eat at all” (Sunday Times, 11 August 2002). Zimbabwe’s presidential elections once again brought international attention to the political crisis in the country, even as a much larger humanitarian crisis loomed. Targeted sanctions may prompt reform efforts from within ZANU-PF, especially as the economic crisis intensifies. But, as the March 2002 presidential elections demonstrated, President Mugabe remains very much in charge, and he appears to remain committed to a political struggle on the land issue, even if it pits him against the majority of Zimbabwe’s citizens. 0261-3794/03/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0261-3794(03)00003-9
3 Commonwealth Observer Group to the Presidential Elections in Zimbabwe, 9-10 March 2002, Preliminary Report, 14 March 2002.
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
The continued fall in turnout continues to worry political commentators; the TSE’s president described it as a “serious illness” for the quality of Costa Rica’s democracy. The 69% turnout in 2002 undercut even the unusually low figure recorded in 1998. As well as being low, turnout was uneven across the country. It was higher in the more populous central valley areas, ranging from 69% in San Jose´ to 72% in Cartago. But in the outlying provinces of Puntarenas and Limo´ n, turnouts were 61% and 59%, respectively. There are therefore significant regional differences amid general dissatisfaction and apathy. Acknowledgements Dr Wilson was invited by the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones of Costa Rica as an international observer for the February general election. Funding was also provided by the University of Central Florida. I would like to thank Ricardo Seevers and Jorge Seevers for their kind hospitality during the electoral process and to Kerstin Hamann and Juan Carlos Rodrı´guez Cordero for their comments. References CNN, 8 April 2002. http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/americas/04/08/costarica.elections.ap/index.html La Nacio´ n, 2002. http://www.nacion.co.cr/ TSE, 2002. Informacio´ n para programa Observadores Internacionales. TSE, San Jose´ .
0261-3794/03/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0261-3794(03)00006-4
The presidential elections in Zimbabwe, March 2002 D. Pottie ∗ The Carter Center, 453 Freedom Parkway, Atlanta, GA 30307, USA
1. Background The 2002 presidential election in the Zimbabwe election marked a high point in the rising political tension that has gripped Zimbabwe since late 1999. In the runup to the June 2000 legislative elections, the government initiated a state program
∗
Tel.: +1-404-420-5174; fax: +1-404-420-5196. E-mail address: [email protected] (D. Pottie).
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
517
of forced land redistribution, involving many thousands of ‘war veterans’ organized into militias. The militias invaded hundreds of the 4000 farms owned by white settlers, and responsible for much of Zimbabwe’s foreign exchange and rural employment. Land reform has been a long-standing policy issue in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. Initially prohibited from addressing land reform for the first ten years after independence, Zimbabwe introduced a new land policy in 1992 to redress the imbalance in land ownership between blacks and whites. By 2000, there had been little effective redistribution of land, with many claiming that what land had changed hands went to President Robert Mugabe’s friends and his political allies. The scale of redistribution and violence escalated dramatically in early 2000 after a constitutional amendment allowed for the occupation of land without compensation. This amendment followed popular rejection of a new constitution in the February 2000 referendum. The ‘No’ vote against the proposed constitution was widely regarded as a vote against Mugabe and the Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) government, bolstering the hopes of victory for the opposition party—the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)—in the June 2000 legislative elections. In those elections, ZANU-PF campaigned on the slogan ‘Land is the economy, the economy is the land’, and intensified its anti-colonial, anti-British rhetoric. The deaths of several white farmers and many more black farm workers at the hands of the war veterans galvanized international attention on Zimbabwe. Since 2000, political relations between the two major parties remained tense, as the cycle of land invasions and political violence led by ZANU-PF continued. Mugabe himself led the charge, vowing to be re-elected President in the 2002 elections. Food aid also appears to have been used as a political weapon, with many reports of districts perceived as MDC areas being denied food. According to the MDC, more than 100 of its militants had been killed in political violence since February 2000. The international community watched these events closely, although countries pursued different strategies of engagement with President Mugabe and his government. Western powers typically made public appeals for reform, and threatened sanctions, in response to concerns about human rights violations. By contrast, Zimbabwe’s neighbours, led by South Africa through the regional Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), conducted ‘quiet diplomacy’. Amnesty International was particularly critical of SADC, citing that Mugabe’s many promises of reform had not been matched by action. Indeed, only two months before the March 2002 elections, in a communique´ to SADC, Zimbabwe pledged full respect for human rights, a commitment to investigate fully and impartially all cases of alleged political violence, an adequately resourced Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC) to do so, timely accreditation of national and international election observers, reaffirmation for international journalists to cover important national events, including elections, and the independence of the judiciary. None of these approaches had had much effect by the time of the election.
518
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
2. Election campaign The election campaign revealed the distance between political reality in Zimbabwe and Mugabe’s pledges to SADC. Only twelve days before the elections, as part of an on-going campaign to discredit Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC, Tsvangirai was charged with treason based on a videotape allegedly showing him discussing a coup plot. The MDC also claimed that many of its supporters had their national identification cards confiscated, thereby disenfranchising them, while others were attacked or abducted by ZANU-PF, arrested by police, and their vehicles burned. Other tactics involved police bans on MDC rallies, with 79 MDC rallies reportedly broken up by police or disrupted by ZANU-PF militants. To mediate between the two parties, the ESC sought to establish a code of conduct for the election campaign. Talks between the parties broke down, however, when ZANU-PF allegedly rejected an amendment calling for the cessation of violence, abduction, and torture. Although the ESC does not conduct the elections, it exercises broad supervisory powers over the administration of the elections. Prior to amendments before the 2000 legislative elections, the ESC was also responsible for the accreditation of observers. Subsequently this authority was allocated to the government and the Minister of Justice.1 The 2002 presidential election was primarily a contest between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, but three other candidates also challenged for the presidency: Wilson Kumbula, Shakespeare Maya and Paul Siwela. These three were largely unknowns with no obvious base of political support. Both Kumbula and Siwela failed to win the support of their respective regional parties. The capacity of ZANU-PF to mobilize its supporters was evident, especially for political intimidation. Early in the campaign, some 5000 ZANU-PF supporters ran through the streets of Harare and destroyed the front office of MDC headquarters. ZANU-PF activity was also bolstered by the new Public Order and Security Act that restricted freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Among other conditions, the act made it an offence to undermine the authority of the president by ‘engendering feelings of hostility towards’ him, required all participants in a public gathering to carry identification documents, and gave the police broad powers of search and seizure without warrant. Media coverage of the elections was also affected by the tightened grip of the ZANU-PF government over basic political freedoms. New media legislation placed severe restrictions on the activities of the media and journalists, and dictated that foreign journalists must obtain permission from the government before covering election campaigns. All foreign journalists previously working in Zimbabwe also faced new restrictions; many had their visas revoked and were expelled from Zimbabwe. The international organization, Transparency International, called for the complete repeal of Zimbabwe’s restrictive media laws.
1 The Registrar General since 1980, Tobaiwa Mudede, is a civil servant who heads up the main administrative body responsible for the conduct of the elections.
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
519
3. Conduct of the election The election was held on 9–10 March, with polling extended for a third day to 11 March. In addition to the general climate of widespread intimidation, especially in rural areas, voter access was affected by the reallocation of many polling stations (estimated at 5600 in total). This was particularly important since voters must vote in their constituencies. The changes in the allocation of polling stations increased the number of polling stations in rural areas while reducing the number in urban areas. For example, the number of polling stations was reduced in 16 of the Harare constituencies, in some cases by nearly 50%, thereby raising the number of voters per polling station to over 2000. By one calculation, the resulting pressure on the remaining polling stations would be severe; with turnout around 70%, those stations would have to process a voter every 30 seconds or less. In many instances, voters remained in long queues over the three days of polling. Other cities such as Bulawayo and Gweru also had the number of polling stations reduced, while the rural constituencies in Midlands province received an increase of 34%. For some Zimbabweans, the practice suggests a ZANU-PF strategy to dis-enfranchise voters in urban areas, generally perceived to be pro-MDC, and to concentrate voting in the ZANU-PF strongholds in rural areas. As a further impediment to voter access, the location of the polling stations was only announced three days before the elections. Moreover, MDC was unable to place party agents in nearly 50% of rural polling stations owing to political intimidation. The voters’ roll was an additional source of controversy. According to Zimbabwe’s electoral law, the voters’ roll is open to public review; in practice, the roll remained out of view. Opposition parties and civil society organizations had long fought to gain access to the voters’ roll, without success.2 Following several court orders, the Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust (Zimcet) was granted the right to review the roll, which then stood closed at 5.2 million voters. A Zimcet audit of the roll revealed that only approximately 50% of the voters on the roll lived at the listed address. Voter registration was to have closed on 10 February, but appears to have been retrospectively extended twice by the Registrar General to 3 March. The final roll listed 5 612 272 voters. For some, this is an impossibly high total since other studies estimate Zimbabwe’s total voting population at 4.8 million. For the MDC, this discrepancy suggests that the Registrar General kept the roll open in order to swell the numbers of ZANU-PF voters. In addition to being listed on the electoral roll and voting in their constituency of residence, voters were required to present their national identification card and proof of residence, such as an electricity or municipal rates bill. Thus people who had fled their homes or had otherwise been displaced by political violence (estimated at 400 000), or who, like many of the urban poor, live in informal settlements and lack formal proof of residence, were unable to vote. Despite these obstacles, approximately 54% of registered voters turned out on
2
Despite offers by the EU to pay for the distribution of cd-rom versions of the electoral roll.
520
Notes on Recent Elections / Electoral Studies 22 (2003) 503–559
election day, with many in the urban areas standing in massive queues. Election day was largely peaceful although there were reports of many hundreds of arrests, ostensibly of voters seeking to vote twice. The MDC petitioned the High Court for an extension to a third day of voting, but, even as this petition was granted, police chased away voters from some polling stations. Polling stations in Harare opened as late as noon on the third day of voting. The electoral law prohibited party agents from travelling with the ballot boxes to the counting centers; and MDC officials complained that their observers had been locked out of the counting centers in Harare and Bulawayo. Overall, MDC claimed that it was unable to monitor 52% of polling stations and 9 out of 120 counting stations.
4. Election results Mugabe was re-elected president of Zimbabwe with 56.1% of the vote; Tsvangirai won 42%. According to official figures, voter turnout reached over 70% in rural areas but only 40% in urban areas (see Table 1). As in 2000, Tsvangirai won a majority of votes in Bulawayo and Harare, with much of his support concentrated in urban areas whereas Mugabe won substantial majorities in all the other provinces. The relative levels of support by constituency for both ZANU-PF and MDC remained unchanged in Bulawayo and Harare, where MDC won a strong majority of the vote, suggesting that ZANU PF did not seek to turn the tide of the urban vote in its favour. However, compared to the 2000 elections, ZANU-PF increased its level of national support by a total of 480 000 votes, while the MDC dropped 90 000. In those constituencies where Mugabe did not win, he narrowed the margin with Tsvangirai. For example, Tsvangirai carried Silobela constituency in Midlands province, with a margin over Mugabe of 6861 votes. However, ZANU-PF picked up an additional 3000 votes compared to the 2000 elections when MDC had won by a margin of 10 000 votes. Indeed, in a further 57 constituencies, ZANU-PF either added to their own Table 1 Results of the presidential election in Zimbabwe, 9–10 March 2002
Robert Mugabe Morgan Tsvangirai Tarugarira Wilson Kumbula Shakespeare Maya Paul Siwela Spoilt ballots Total votes cast Total valid votes Source: Registrar General, Zimbabwe, 2002.
Votes
Valid votes (%)
1 681 212 1 262 403 31 368 11 906 11 871 48 131 3 046 891 2 998 760
56.1 42.1 1.0 0.4 0.4
100.0
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substantial majorities, narrowed the MDC margin of victory, and in a few cases, overturned previous MDC victories. This pattern of apparently increased support for Mugabe and ZANU-PF sparked MDC’s suspicion that the announced results did not reflect the popular will. MDC long felt that the voters roll provided the government with a supply of additional voters to be added where necessary to ensure a ZANU-PF victory. The confusing announcement of results added to this suspicion. For example, on 13 March, Registar General Tobaiwa Mudede announced that a total of 2 298 758 votes had been cast, yet a subsequent announcement of the final results in other media indicated that 2 998 758 votes had been cast, a discrepancy of 700 000 votes. For the opposition MDC, these variations indicated that the ZANU-PF government was attempting to cook the final results. In an added twist, the final results announced on 10 April again differed from those announced on 13 March. Mudede’s final announcement reduced Mugabe’s total by 4000 votes from a previously announced total of 1 685 212 while Tsvangirai’s total rose by 4000 votes from 1 258 401 to 1 262 403. When the media sought clarification of this discrepancy, Mudede called on officials to clear the press conference.
5. Electoral observers The elections attracted considerable international attention, drawing many international observers to Zimbabwe. Among the observer missions was a 45-member team from the Commonwealth led by General Abubakar of Nigeria, a 37-member team from the SADC Parliamentary Forum, as well as teams from the Electoral Commissions Forum of SADC Countries, the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and the SADC Electoral Support Network. Several African governments, including Namibia, Nigeria, and South Africa, sent their own delegations. The European Union (EU) sent what would have been the largest delegation with 300 proposed observers, but they eventually withdrew from Zimbabwe (18 February), citing the government’s refusal to allow its observers to move freely. The government had already banned observers from Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden in the wake of statements critical of Zimbabwe’s human rights situation. Pierre Schori of Sweden headed the delegation but he too was expelled from Zimbabwe when his tourist visa expired. Following the withdrawal of the EU team, targeted sanctions were imposed against the government of Zimbabwe, including an embargo on the sale and supply of arms, technical advice and equipment which could be used for internal repression in Zimbabwe, a visa ban, and a freeze on the overseas assets of Mugabe and 19 close associates. EU foreign ministers stated that the “EU remains seriously concerned at political violence, serious violations of human rights and restrictions on the media…which call into question the prospects for a free and fair election”. The EU took the view that the sanctions were designed not to harm ordinary citizens of Zimbabwe but were “aimed solely at those whom the EU judges to be responsible for the violence, for the violations of human tights
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and for preventing the holding of free and fair elections in Zimbabwe” (Reuters, 18 February 2002). Domestic observers from the human rights group Amani Trust agreed, but felt that the international observers, particularly in rural areas, could document, and even deter, the intimidation, violence, and torture that the group was reporting. But given the government’s attempt to control the presence and activity of international observers, few observers were in place with accreditation more than three weeks before election day. The result, according to domestic human rights organizations, was that the majority of the violations took place out of the direct view of international observers. Domestic observers were themselves severely restricted, with only civil servants qualifying as election monitors. Given the diversity of interests in Zimbabwe, the international observers did not speak with one voice, despite the widespread reporting of intimidation and electoral violence. Indeed, one is struck by the different, and often confusing, assessments of the Zimbabwean electoral process. For example, some observers condemned Zimbabwe’s presidential elections as chaotic and flawed. According to Kare Vollan, head of the 25-member Norwegian observer mission, “The presidential elections failed to meet key, broadly accepted criteria for elections” (Independent, 12 March 2002). By contrast, observers from the OAU, Nigeria, Namibia, and South Africa issued generally positive assessments of the electoral process, declaring that the elections were peaceful and reflected the will of the people. The spotlight was particularly focused on the South African mission, given President Thabo Mbeki’s lead on the quiet diplomacy approach. The mission’s preliminary statements suggested that all was generally well with the elections, but public disputes over the content of its draft final report revealed that not all members of the delegation supported the mission’s official conclusion that, while not free and fair, the elections had been “legitimate”. Sam Motsuenyane, South Africa’s mission leader, said there was no contradiction in this view. South Africa’s colleagues in the SADC Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF) observation mission concluded that the elections did not comply with the Forum’s norms and standards for elections in the SADC region. The SADC-PF statement cited the prevalence of violence throughout the election campaign (its own observers were themselves targets of an “orchestrated attack”), that the majority of the violence affected MDC members, and that police were not impartial in the discharge of their duties. SADC-PF also noted many serious procedural irregularities, such as the release of the voters roll only three days before the elections, and the congestion caused by the reduced number of polling stations in urban areas. The SADC statement thus represented a major African voice critical of the presidential election. The SADC-PF statement may have had an impact on the Commonwealth, itself in a difficult position over the elections. Prior to the elections, the Commonwealth was reportedly split between the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand—all of whom favoured a stronger critical stance—and African and other developing country members who did not. The Commonwealth agreed to form a tripartite panel comprised of Nigeria, South Africa, and Australia to report on the situation. The 54-member election observation team was to report within a week of the elections; and, in the
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event of an adverse report, the Commonwealth would take action. In the end, the Commonwealth observer team concluded that “the conditions in Zimbabwe did not adequately allow for a free expression of will by the electors”,3 and the Commonwealth formally suspended Zimbabwe for a period of one year.
6. Imperfect future Regional dialogue continued after the elections but with no appreciable success. Party-to-party talks between South Africa’s ANC and ZANU-PF also bore little fruit. ZANU-PF and MDC engaged in high-level talks, but these broke down apparently over ZANU-PF’s insistence that MDC drop all election petitions. In the meantime, the US added its weight to EU sanctions, restricting travel to the US for President Mugabe and many of his most senior officials. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s economic decline continued, as food, land ownership, and agricultural production reached crisis proportions. Inflation rose to over 100%, unemployment to 80%, with shortages of basic commodities and foodstuffs. When regional drought struck much of the SADC region, famine in Zimbabwe threatened millions—even as 2900 white farmers faced an August 2002 deadline to vacate their farms. Thus ZANU-PF’s political choices started a growing humanitarian crisis. As one black settler on a white-owned farm stated, “We are starving, there’s nothing to eat at all” (Sunday Times, 11 August 2002). Zimbabwe’s presidential elections once again brought international attention to the political crisis in the country, even as a much larger humanitarian crisis loomed. Targeted sanctions may prompt reform efforts from within ZANU-PF, especially as the economic crisis intensifies. But, as the March 2002 presidential elections demonstrated, President Mugabe remains very much in charge, and he appears to remain committed to a political struggle on the land issue, even if it pits him against the majority of Zimbabwe’s citizens. 0261-3794/03/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0261-3794(03)00003-9
3 Commonwealth Observer Group to the Presidential Elections in Zimbabwe, 9-10 March 2002, Preliminary Report, 14 March 2002.