If SADC does nothing about the recent Zimbabwe election, the donkey’s tail will be stuck on SA’s President Zuma and Africa will lose one of its most precious assets to China.

Zimbabwe is almost past tipping point. Leave the status quo as it is and it will topple. Only one force that can rescue it from the bleakest of futures under Mugabe’s rule – the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and it’s 14 other component countries.

On Friday 9 August, Zimbabwe’s (still) Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangerai, leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, lodged an appeal with the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe. In terms of the country’s new constitution, Friday was the last day he could legally do so. Tsvangurai’s plea is that the recent election should be declared void because it was conducted in farcical, unconstitutional and illegal circumstances and was neither free nor fair.

The evidence to support Tsvangerai’s claim is abundant, convincing, completely overwhelming and totally damning of Robert Mugabe’s ‘ruling’ Zanu PF’ party. Everything points to its deep planning and scheming to rig the result.  However, there is hardly even a glimmer of hope that Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court will annul the election because of it.

The consensus is rather that the most senior court in the land will kneel to Mugabe and ignore the evidence. After all, as Eddie Cross, MP for Bulawayo South points out, “Our courts are so corrupted by the political environment that we do not expect anything from this quarter. Our challenges to the election in 2002 and 2005 are still to be heard!”

Previously, when Mugabe announced on 31 May that 31 July was to be Election Day, Tsvangurai appealed to the Constitutional Court that such a declaration was illegal in terms of the country’s newly adopted constitution. The Court ignored the requirements of the constitution and ruled that 31 July must stand. Subsequently, several other petitions seeking an extension to the 31 July date were made to the Constitutional Court.  These were dismissed without any reasons given and the election went ahead.

In Zimbabwe, the judges who make up the Constitutional Court’s bench are judges of the Supreme Court. When the Constitutional Court sat on Friday to hear Tsvangerai’s plea, it did so with a bench comprising largely the same judges who earlier decided that 31 July election date was legitimate. Expectations are therefore that, once again, the Constitutional Court will ignore the new constitution and rule that, all the evidence notwithstanding, the election procedures were ‘fair enough’.

Throughout the life of the Government of National Unity (GNU), Mugabe has taken every opportunity to denigrate Tsvangerai.  He did so again when he autocratically declared election day to be 31 July. His announcement breached section 31H(5) of the constitution that commands him to consult with the Prime Minister (Tsvangerai) or the Minister of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs or the cabinet. None were consulted. There is no way the judges didn’t know Mugabe’s action was illegal. Yet they endorsed it.

It is well known that most of the Supreme Court and lower court judges are Mugabe acolytes and appointees. Zimbabwean judgements that do not accord with the President’s wishes are therefore unexpected and unusual. Consequently, the probablility of a rational and unbiased judgement concerning Friday’s plea is therefore very low – unless the majority of judges are struck with severe pangs of conscience.

Taking for granted that the packed bench of the Constitution Court will again mock the law and conclude the election was free, fair and acceptable, Tsvangerai and other desperate Zimbabweans who want change have only one last destination of hope and appeal – SADC in conjunction with South Africa.

What is the chance of both or either insisting that the election was a farce and that there must be a re-run? If the past is anything to go by, almost nil.

Even so, the hope is that, with all the stench and evidence of bare-faced election fraud and intimidation flying in their faces, the SADC leaders will sit up and recognize what damage will be done to their region if they let Mugabe and cohorts get way with a bogus election.

The situation presents SADC with a major opportunity to show the world that it does respect the rule of law and what democracy means. And President Zuma is being handed a golden opportunity to manifest his leadership ability.

This time Zuma and his SADC colleagues must surely admit to the facts and take a stance against lawlessness in the region. He must call the Zimbabwe election what it was: a fraud, corrupted by many illegal practices, and he must name it “Unacceptable”. And, together with his presidential colleagues in SADC, he must insist that Zimbabwe holds a fresh, free and fair election, supervised from A-Z by the regional and African Union powers but only after a legally constructed and internationally acceptable census of voters has been undertaken and a corresponding, properly audited voters roll is in place.

If Zuma and SADC try to ride the typical African slipstream of passive acceptance following Mugabe’s enormous illegal and socially unacceptable actions by announcing that the Zimbabwe ‘election’ is acceptable, the consequences for Zimbabwe, the region, and not least for SA, could be dire.

The world, but more particularly the West, is likely to conclude, once more, that Africa really is ‘the hopeless continent’. Mugabe’s ‘acceptable’ election fraud will, by definition, become popular practice without recourse. Human Rights will suffer. Democracy, never really adhered to by recently independent African states, will diminish further, investment in the region from most foreign sources will not only decline, it will be withdrawn. China’s influence in Zimbabwe is already substantial and growing. And South Africa will not be immune from these impacts.

There was a time when it was thought that President Zuma was a foil for Mugabe’s crooked ways and that he of all the Southern African presidents would help put a stop to Mugabe’s diabolical roguery. Regrettably Zuma’s recent actions have overturned this perception.

He may not appreciate the effect. But Africa, South Africa and South Africans are the losers – not to mention the long-suffering people of Zimbabwe.

Editor’s Note

In this perceptive contribution, Gerry Hirshon, who has spent the last couple of weeks monitoring the election in Zimbabwe, argues that only South Africa and the SADC can prevent what looks like being a growing disaster in Zimbabwe. Also of concern is the Zimbabwe election's impact on the image of Africa from an investor and tourist point of view. Perceptions of Africa and democracy have slowly improved over recent years as a result of acceptable and credible elections in various African countries, including Ghana and Kenya. The SADC and South Africa might have enhanced this perception in their reaction to the Zimbabwe elections. Instead, having connived with Robert Mugabe, and given their approving responses to the election - regarded by international observers and most countries with an interest in Zimbabwe as crooked and unacceptable - they've actually set back Africa. President Zuma's "profound congratulations" to Mugabe and former president Mbeki's statement about "respecting Zimbabwe rights" are retrograde positions which damage Africa generally and South Africa in particular. As far as South Africa is concerned, some slight consolation is that a Cabinet statement, while congratulating Zimbabweans on peaceful elections, consciously refrained from making a judgment on whether the polls were free and fair. The one Southern African country to come out of this Zimbabwean mess with honour is Botswana’s government which declared: "There is no doubt that what has been revealed so far by our observers cannot be considered as an acceptable standard for free and fair elections in SADC".

Denis Worrall

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