LITMIR.BIZ

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using the new media legislation to weaken the independent press. Another means was the harassment of opposition supporters by the police and the ZANU-PF militias. This was particularly true in the June 2000 parliamentary elections and the 2002 presidential elections, when the rural areas in several provinces were sealed. To further curtail opposition parties’ activities, new repressive laws were implemented, such as the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) of 2002, which replaced LOMA. It made it an offense to criticize the president and gave arbitrary powers to the police to ban opposition parties and civic organization meetings and demonstrations. POSA also prohibits public statements “inciting public disorder or public violence or endangering public safety.”¹¹² The violence was turned down immediately before and during the 2005 parliamentary election, and the MDC was allowed to hold some campaign rallies as the government felt itself under the scrutiny of its Southern African Development Community (SADC) and African Union (AU) counterparts.

      As stressed in the above-mentioned study of the 1995 elections, the ZANU-PF-controlled state has used various forms of patronage to control the vote in rural areas, such as free tillage, free seeds, and fertilizer packages. However, this blackmailing of the most destitute among the electorate reached a new low in the run-up to the 2002 and 2005 ballots. Known or suspected opposition supporters were denied food aid where it was most needed. The breakdown of the vote at the polling station level in 2005 allowed a fine tuning in the subsequent retribution against communities supporting the opposition, making the ruling party campaign threats more serious. The traditional chiefs and headmen, who are on the government’s payroll, have been co-opted furthermore into the ZANU-PF machine since the passing of the 1999 Traditional Leaders Act. They received hefty pay rises before each general election and have been relied upon since 2000 to coerce their clansmen to vote in favor of ZANU-PF.¹¹³

      On election days various techniques were used to tip the balance for ZANU-PF from one constituency to another, to increase the margins through tampering with the supplementary voter rolls. The number of polling stations for the presidential elections in 2002 was reduced in the big cities, to lower the effective turnout in opposition strongholds, and the MDC had to seek an urgent order from the High Court to have the polling stations reopened for a third day of voting (but even here, the registrar general did not fully comply with the order). Not every voter managed to cast a vote in the urban areas in 2002. The postal voting system also provides room for foul play: it is restricted to the members of the police, army, and public service who have “good reason” to be away from their constituency on the polling day, also government employees on a foreign posting, thus excluding more than three million Zimbabweans of the diaspora who are considered unlikely to vote for the ruling party. Opposition parties and civic organizations have no control over the postal voting process, and the government can tamper with these ballots and use them in areas where they can make a difference.¹¹⁴ Similarly the provisions for assisted voting intended for illiterate or disabled persons are widely abused by presiding officers to influence the people’s choice. Electoral officers are chosen according to their loyalty to the regime,¹¹⁵ and include an increasing number of military, CIO, and War Vets.

      Counting and announcement of the results offer also some good opportunities for rigging. Interference with the counting of ballot papers before counting was completed in selected constituencies in 2005 led to allegations of ballot box stuffing.¹¹⁶ A statistical analysis conducted by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) on the basis of the data collected by its 6,000 observers deployed in the polling stations shows that the published election results did not make sense in nearly 30 constituencies.¹¹⁷ The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) provided no convincing explanation for these inconsistencies, and it refused to release a detailed breakdown of the voting by polling station in the disputed constituencies. However, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum concluded in its postelection report that these irregularities were “not significant enough to affect the result” and that “the MDC [did] not appear to have lost the election due to a rigged ballot.”¹¹⁸ The MDC defeat could be better explained by other government tactics such as the political use of food aid in the months prior to the election, effective propaganda linking the MDC to colonialist interests, and threats of retaliation.¹¹⁹

      Despite Mugabe’s endorsement of the Principles and Guidelines for Democratic Elections, adopted by SADC in August 2004, the amended Zimbabwean electoral law still did not comply with the minimum requirements for free and fair elections. In a typical window-dressing exercise the ZANU-PF introduced in December 2004 some limited reforms: a new ZEC, the reduction of polling days from two days to one, the creation of an Electoral Court, the use of translucent ballot boxes and the counting of votes at polling stations.¹²⁰ The new act was designed to legitimize the upcoming elections in the eyes of African leaders, and thus alleviate the pressure exerted on Mugabe by his SADC neighbors, without compromising his party’s control of the electoral process. For example, Robert Mugabe appointed the chair after consultation with the Judicial Service Commission (JSC)—stacked with presidential appointees—while he also appointed the four other commissioners from a list of seven nominees submitted by a Parliamentary Committee dominated by ZANU-PF members.¹²¹ This was a far cry from the independent commission demanded by SADC guidelines. Moreover, the ZEC did not carry out voter registration, which remained in the hands of the registrar general’s office. There remained also many overlaps between the functions of the ZEC and the Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC), existing under the country’s Constitution—a source of confusion (they both appointed a chief elections officer in early 2005!) and an opportunity to evade further scrutiny. Had the government sought a compromise agreement with the MDC on the creation of an independent electoral commission, it could have succeeded in amending the constitution and removing the redundant ESC prior to the 2005 election. In any case, the electoral process became increasingly run by the military (even ZEC’s chairman appointed in January 2005 was former army officer George Chiweshe),¹²² with the police, and the CIO, under the National Logistics Committee and the JOC, rather than by the impotent rival electoral commissions.

      The control of the electoral process by Mugabe’s close aides has deprived the MDC of likely victories in all national elections since the June 2000 parliamentary elections, where it narrowly lost with 57 constituencies against 62 for the ruling party (in addition to the 30 MPs appointed directly or indirectly by the president), and one for the late Ndabaningi Sithole’s ZANU Ndonga.¹²³ This remarkable achievement in a political climate of violence brought a real opposition back to Parliament for the first time since 1987, and deprived the ruling party of the capacity to further amend the constitution—a true embarrassment for Mugabe when the succession debate developed in 2003. Although ZANU-PF managed to retain all its parliamentary seats and gain a few more in subsequent by-elections between 2001 and 2004, the required two-thirds majority remained beyond its reach until the parliamentary elections of 2005. The MDC also gained control of local government in the country’s six largest cities, through the mayoral and council elections between 2001 and 2003. However, in Harare, Chitungwiza, Chegutu, and Mutare, MDC-led councils were subsequently dismissed and replaced by government-appointed commissions or “caretaker” mayors, as part of ZANU-PF’s attempts to regain control of the cities.¹²⁴ It is also likely that Morgan Tsvangirai was the real winner of the presidential election in March 2002, although Robert Mugabe’s popularity had risen, after reaching a record low in October 2000. Rigging on a large scale, as reflected in the Commonwealth and Norwegian observer missions’ reports—and countless reports produced by local NGOs—remained necessary to produce the official outcome (55.2 percent of the vote cast for Mugabe against 41.4 percent for Tsvangirai).¹²⁵ The MDC electoral petition filed in April 2002 contained ample evidence of such practices,¹²⁶ but it was ditched by a partisan High Court judge after months of procrastination.

      According to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, ZANU-PF polled nearly 60 percent of the vote in March 2005, an increase of 11 percent over the 2000 results, and the MDC’s vote fell 9 percent to 39 percent. MDC representation in the House of Assembly was therefore reduced to 41 seats. Whether these results were doctored or were the logical outcome of years of intimidation and propaganda, the MDC emerged severely weakened from its third electoral defeat in a row. The stunned opposition party then failed to formulate adequate responses to the Murambatsvina tragedy in May–July 2005; even the MDC-led municipalities

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