The concluding star rally for the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party. President Robert and First Lady Amai Grace wave to the party supporters., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Elections: Numbers do not lie
August 5, 2013
Caesar Zvayi Deputy Editor
Zimbabwe Herald
WHILE some western countries have jumped onto the MDC-T band wagon of attributing the party’s dismal performance in the just-ended harmonised elections to alleged rigging by Zanu-PF, a look at voting patterns since 2002 and several surveys commissioned by western think-tanks and sections of the Western media reveals that the writing had long been on the wall for embattled MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai.
A look at voting trends since the 2002 presidential election shows that 1,2 million is consistent with Mr Tsvangirai’s level of support as he amassed 1 258 401 (42 percent) votes to President Mugabe’s 1 685 212 (56.2 percent) in the 2002 poll; 1 195 562 (47.9 percent) to President Mugabe’s 1 079 730 (43.2 percent) votes in 2008; with his tally this year also hovering around the 1,2 million votes mark.
This year, President Mugabe garnered 2 110 434 (61.09 percent) of the vote, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai 1 172 349 (33.94 percent), Welshman Ncube 92 637 (2.68 percent), Dumiso Dabengwa 25 416 (0.74 percent), Kisinoti Mukwazhe 9 931 (0.29 percent).
As such President Mugabe’s 2,1 million tally is a logical galvanisation of the vote that was mobilised ahead of the 2008 run-off where Zanu-PF supporters who had been dissilusioned by the choice between him and Simba Makoni stayed away from the poll with those who showed up slicing a significant chunk of his vote to hand 207 470 (8,3 percent) of the vote to the Mavambo Kusile Dawn leader who claimed to be a Zanu-PF candidate.
International media, among them Reuters, the British paper The Guardian, CNN, New York Times and some western funded political think tanks predicted President Mugabe and Zanu-PF’s landslide victory way before the dates for the harmonised were announced. These international organisations highlighted the MDC-T’s waning support from 2012.
The leading American left wing magazine, Counterpunch, said Zimbabweans faced a simple choice at the polls, continue on the path of revolution and true independence espoused by Zanu-PF or regress to the counter-revolutionary politics of puppetry In the article titled .
CNN’s “Connect the World” anchor Becky Anderson put it to Mr Tsvangirai during an interview that reports emanating from Zimbabwe indicated that people were fed up with him.
The CNN’s perspective on Mr Tsvangirai’s political fortunes dovetailed with several recent surveys pointing to a Zanu-PF victory in the harmonised elections. MDC-T allies, among them the NCA, PTUZ, Zimbabwe Vigil, Sokwanele as well as the British paper, The Guardian, also gave the edge to Zanu-PF.
In the wake of his wife’s death in a car accident in 2009, Mr Tsvangirai’s bed-hopping hogged the headlines and spilled into the courts culminating in an abortive wedding to his customary wife, Ms Elizabeth Macheka.
Among the women Mr Tsvangirai was linked to were Loreta Nyathi from Bulawayo with whom he sired a son whom he initially refused to take responsibility for including refusing to obtain a birth certificate for him.
He was also linked to another Bulawayo woman, Aquiline Pamberi, Locardia Karimatsenga and South African Nosipho Shilubane. Witwatersrand University analyst Susan Booysen who supervised the Freedom House survey last year was quoted in the American multinational media house — Bloomberg, as saying there was little chance of MDC-T springing an upset.
Booysen supervised the survey by Freedom House, a United States-based think-tank, in 2012 that found that support for MDC-T plummeted from 38 percent in 2010 to 19 percent, while support for Zanu-PF had grown to 31 percent, up from 17 percent, over the same period.
The survey results were contained in a report titled “Change and ‘New’ Politics in Zimbabwe” conducted by a local research institute, Mass Public Opinion Institute and said MDC-T support had fallen from 38 percent to 20 percent between 2010 and last year.
In contrast, the survey data pointed to Zanu-PF having experienced a growth in popular support, moving from 17 percent to 31 percent in the same period across all the country’s 10 provinces.
For example in Harare, MDC-T support declined from 50 percent in 2010 to 17 percent, while that for Zanu-PF rose from eight percent to 22 percent.
In Bulawayo, Zanu-PF increased its support from four percent to 15 percent, while that for MDC-T declined from 51 percent to 29 percent.
Zanu-PF’s support was premised on its clarity on policies such as land, indigenisation and its stand against foreign interference in Zimbabwe.
Fifty-two percent of the respondents also said they trusted Zanu-PF compared to 39 percent for MDC-T.
In September last year, a UK-based pro-MDC-T group, Zimbabwe Vigil, said the MDC-T was likely to lose the forthcoming harmonised elections because of rampant corruption within its top leadership, among other issues.
The Afro barometer survey, entitled “Voting Intentions in Zimbabwe: A Margin of Terror?”, also put Zanu-PF ahead of MDC-T.
It said 32 percent of the 2 400 Zimbabweans sampled said if an election had been called in July this year, they were going to vote for President Mugabe, while 31 percent would go with Mr Tsvangirai.
The survey further gave Professor Welshman Ncube, leader of the smaller formation of MDC a paltry one percent. Compared to the 2008 survey, the MDC-T plunged from the 57 percent support it enjoyed then to 31 percent while Zanu-PF ascended significantly from 10 percent to 31.
University of Zimbabwe law lecturer Professor Lovemore Madhuku also says the revolutionary party will win the plebiscite while the British paper, The Guardian, has predicted that President Mugabe and Zanu-PF will romp to victory in the harmonised elections. A non-governmental organisation that has been closely working with MDC-T has also acknowledged that Zanu-PF has better chances of winning the forthcoming elections.
Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition chairperson for the South African branch, Professor Brian Raftopolous said it was highly likely the revolutionary party would win.
He made the remarks at a Zimbabwe Elections Conference in South Africa last Saturday ahead of what the civil society linked to the MDC-T dubbed Feya Feya Campaign. The meeting was attended by civil society participants from the Sadc region, including representatives of Zimbabwe Diaspora civil society.
Editorial Comment: West must respect people’s will
August 5, 2013 Opinion & Analysis
Zimbabwe Herald
Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T suffered a devastating defeat in the harmonised elections, a defeat reminiscent to that which Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa suffered in 1980. It was a defeat that did not only shock the MDC-T leadership and its supporters, but their Western sponsors as well. They had taken it for granted that Zimbabweans do not know who they are, where they came from and where they are going. The Western world believed that Zimbabweans like Tsvangirai also needed massive hand-holding.
However, their reactions to Zanu-PF and President Mugabe in particular are so predictable and they have not hidden their disdain and in the process they are crying that they have been robbed.
The same countries take the lead, countries that think that they are masters of the universe when we know that their backyards are smouldering. Why is the West — the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Australia in particular crying foul and also crying more than the bereaved?
It was the MDC-T that lost the July 31 harmonised elections after Zimbabwean voters sat in judgment over them
So, why this hullabaloo about “substantial electoral irregularities” and an impending crisis, which Western media institutions have been peddling the moment they realised that the MDC-T, even with the combined force of smaller political parties did not stand a chance against Zanu-PF?
What is disturbing is that the West created the MDC-T and sponsored it to the hilt to do its dirty work of pitching for illegal regime change here.
It was their institutions that also predicted a resounding victory for Zanu-PF long before Zimbabweans were certain that elections would be held this year.
They also analysed Tsvangirai’s shortcomings and lack of leadership qualities. Their damning assessments are in the public domain. The rebranding of Tsvangirai and the MDC-T through the 2013 manifesto was such a shoddy job, which failed to sell the MDC-T. This is why we are surprised at United States Secretary of State John Kerry who was quoted on Saturday as saying, “In light of substantial electoral irregularities reported by domestic and regional observers, the United States does not believe that the results announced today represent a credible expression of the will of the Zimbabwean people.”
We wonder which Zimbabweans Kerry was referring to, when the very same people made their choices known to the world on July 31. Not to be outdone, Germany had the temerity to remark that the election “casts a big shadow on the political and economic future of Zimbabwe.”
By calling for a “re-run of the elections based on a verified and agreed voters roll”, former British colony Australia demonstrated how far removed the Anglo-Saxon world is from reality on the ground.
This dovetails with Tsvangirai’s calls that the poll result should be considered null and void, a conclusion he arrived at when he realised that his bragging about announcing the election result was not going to be; a conclusion, which he made even before the results had been announced, which later proved that he was singing from his masters’ hymn book.
At the centre of the rigging claims is the voters’ roll. As observers pointed out, no country, even the United States and/or Britain can claim to have a clean and perfect voters’ roll. Observers highlighted some of the challenges to Zimbabwe’s voters’ roll, but instead of allowing Zimbabweans to look at the recommendations from the continental observers, the West has decided to stick to recommendations made by local observers such as ZESN, which they heavily fund.
By relying so heavily on the MDC-T’s parallel structures, which they have been sponsoring, the West never realised how the MDC-T was soon going to be history.
Why do they also want to give a false impression that the people that were turned away were MDC-T supporters only? If ZESN and its partners had the interests of Zimbabwe at heart, they would have told their sponsors the truth, that even Zanu-PF supporters were turned away?
However, the West seems bent on using the MDC-T’s demise to create a collision course with Africa. The West has decided to spurn the different African observer missions that declared the elections peaceful, free, fair and credible.
Even the facilitator to the Global Political Agreement, Sadc facilitator President Jacob Zuma congratulated President Mugabe for taking 61 percent of the votes.
But the West still thinks that it can play big brother and display their holier than thou attitude. When the violence motif failed, the best way they could reject President Mugabe’s thunderous victory was to find flimsy reasons of extending the illegal sanctions. We hope that Africa sees through the West’s hypocrisy and double standards.
However, when all is said and done, Zimbabweans have spoken. They do not need minders to tell them what their choices imply. So, the West must back off. If they are not prepared to accept the people’s choice and deal with the Zimbabwean leadership as equal partners, they should realise that there are other countries that are willing to work with Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe will also not brook any threats against the democratic choices it makes. We are masters of our destiny, and we are charting our destiny. The West and their proxies should never fool themselves that what worked in other parts of the world at their instigation, will work in Zimbabwe. We fought hard to attain independence, and we will safeguard it jealously.
MDC-T pullout won’t affect Parliament: Zvoma
August 5, 2013
Zvamaida Murwira Senior Reporter
THE resolution by MDC-T’s national council that the party’s legislators withdraw from Parliament in solidarity with losing candidates to protest alleged rigging will not impact on the business of the Eighth Parliament given Zanu-PF’s overwhelming majority, Clerk of Parliament Mr Austin Zvoma has said. Zanu-PF scored a crushing victory against MDC-T in the July 31 harmonised elections, amassing 160 seats to MDC-T’s 49 in the 210 seat National Assembly, with the remaining seat going to independent candidate Mr Jonathan Samukange who pitched for, but failed to run on a Zanu-PF ticket.
This gives Zanu-PF a two thirds majority, well above the National Assembly quorum of 25 members.
There is no need for a quorum to be present at all times.
Mr Zvoma said if MDC-T legislators failed to come into the house within the stipulated time frame, the legal provision dealing with declaring seats vacant would be invoked.
The comments come in the wake of threats by MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai who said his party would disengage from all Government institutions, including Parliament as part of a cocktail of measures that he said they would employ, to force a fresh election.
Addressing a Press conference at the weekend at his Highlands residence, Mr Tsvangirai alleged that the harmonised elections were rigged and he would challenge the result in the Electoral Court and complain to Sadc to press for an election rerun.
But Mr Zvoma said the law was clear on how to deal with such situations should they arise.
“For Parliament to meet, it should constitute a quorum and in this case, Zanu-PF has more than two thirds which is more than the quorum required for Parliament to meet. So Parliament is not in any danger should MDC-T withdraw from Parliament.”
He said once Parliament is constituted, what is envisaged by the Constitution that all pillars of the State should be functional would have been achieved.
“If Parliament is functional, it means all the pillars of the State, that’s the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary are functional and that is what the Constitution requires.”
The Constitution, said Mr Zvoma, provided a period within which one could go unpunished for missing sittings.
“The criteria for declaring a seat vacant would come into effect if they fail to come within that stipulated period,” said Mr Zvoma.
In his address, Mr Tsvangirai said his party would compile a dossier to submit to the Electoral Court and Sadc so that the regional bloc can convene a summit to deliberate on the elections.
He said Zanu-PF legislators could sit in Parliament without MDC-T, but that would not improve the lives of ordinary people.
“Given the illegality of this election, the MDC national council resolved that it will not legitimise institutions created by an illegal election and therefore will not engage in institutions of Government.
“The MDC is determined to pursue peaceful, legal, political, constitutional and diplomatic remedies to resolve the current crisis,” Mr Tsvangirai said.
“The MDC national council resolved that once all remedies have been exhausted, the people of Zimbabwe should be allowed a fresh opportunity to freely and fairly elect a Government of their choice. In this regard, a credible, free, fair and legitimate election must be held as soon as possible.”
Zanu-PF, MDC-T and the MDC are the only parties that managed to send representatives into the Eighth Parliament, with the MDC representatives coming courtesy of proportional representation in the women’s quota.
MDC spokesperson Mr Nhlanhla Dube said although the party was still to decide on the election outcome, they would be going to Senate and the National Assembly.
MDC lost in all the National Assembly constituencies that it participated in and has only four seats, two under the women’s quota and two in Senate under proportional representation.
“We do not act based on the basis of what Mr Tsvangirai does. By going to an election alone, the MDC made a decision as a party as such we will be guided by the decision of our executive not what other parties are doing,” he said.
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