In Business Day a few weeks ago, Tony Leon, the previous Leader of the Opposition in South Africa, quoted Thomas Friedman who observed: "If you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you five, that is a mistake. But if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you 97, that is no longer a mistake. The man you are talking with is operating with a wholly different logic from your own."

                                                                                               Tony Leon Bus Day 22.07.2013

Judging by the record of the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) unfathomable reactions to the election they are supposed to be overseeing and/or monitoring in Zimbabwe, logic does not enter the vocabulary of these organizations.

SADC was a driving force behind the so-called Global Political Agreement  (GPA). Thabo Mbeki, SA’s erstwhile President brokered it with the political parties of Zimbabwe. That agreement cost millions of US$ and took years of negotiation and deliberation. It contained a number of conditions relating to future Zimbabwean elections.

Remarkably, SADC has turned its face away from them. And when the AU president Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma wacked SADEC ‘for interfering in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs as detailed below, it eschewed the spirit of the conditions. Right now, one day before the election, those conditions are not even worth the paper they were written on and SADC in particular can shoulder the blame for that.

Without those conditions and oversight that they are being adhered to, the ‘Free and Fair’ election taking place in Zimbabwe is a farce.

For reasons that would take too long to explain here, these conditions were supposed to be made law by the GNU before it prorogued. Such is the tyrant’s reputation that when Mugabe announced the election date to be 31 July, the generally accepted explanation for selecting it was to avoid adherence to them.

Since then and to the present day – the last one before the election takes place - it is obvious to just about everybody in Zimbabwe that Mugabe & co have broken every rule in the book (of Agreements) governing this election with the specific intent to rig the result.

And if everyone doesn’t know this, Baba Jukwa, the mercurial, unidentified leprechaun who is reputed to be a Zapu PF insider, is telling the world on Facebook and Twitter precisely what Zapu PF is doing, how they are doing it and naming and shaming the individuals responsible for these malpractices. Mugabe is so upset by his inability to identify and catch him that he has placed a $300,000 bounty on his head.

The only two apparently blind and/or ignorant observers of these facts are the AU and SADC.

Speak to anyone inside or outside of Zimbabwe. They’ll tell you that Mugabe and his Zanu PF party will ‘win’ the election on July 31 but only by hook, rig and crook. Why? Because they know the aging brigand too well. They know he hasn’t changed one jot since 1976 when he quoted the following:

“Our votes must go together with our guns. After all, any vote we have, shall have been the product of the gun. The gun which produces the vote should remain its security officer – its guarantor. The peoples votes and the peoples guns are always inseparable twins.”

They know that Morgan Tsvangurai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party actually won the elections in 2000, 2002, 2005 and in 2008. They also know that the only people outside of Mugabe’s Zanu PF party who didn’t believe this was South African president at the time, Thabo Mbeki, his acolytes and some other African leaders.

To all who care to look, Mugabe has unstintingly eschewed democracy. By his actions he mocks the concept at every turn as he and his cohorts stole the country blind, filled their own coffers and maimed and murdered his opponents. And it’s continuing. Political foes just disappear and diamond revenue is pouring into Mugabe’s pockets. It’s from this source that he maintains patrimony payments to ‘his ‘Security’ Generals and Zanu PF ‘chefs’ at the expense of Zimbabwe’s people, its economy and it’s infrastructure.

Even when faced with piled high evidence of these unacceptable malpractices, many if not most African heads of state, the AU and SADC continue to genuflect to Mugabe.

So, of course, it’s common cause Mugabe and Zanu PF will win this election! But will he?

Dollarization under the aegis of Morgan Tsvangerai’s MDC (T) party has stabilized the economy. But the average Zimbabwean is economically worse off now than when Mugabe took power in 1980!

So, speak to the people of Zimbabwe and ask them who will win this July 31 election. In Bulawayo and Harare, almost to a man (if they’re not too scared to tell you what they really think) they’ll tell you they are sick of the old man’s promises, of his lies, of the intimidation by his security forces and of their dire poverty. They’ll tell you unequivocally “this time he must go.”

Significantly, in 2008, the incidence and influence of cell phones was minuscule. Now it is estimated that 80%- 90% of adults carry them. Use of Facebook and Twitter is wide and increasing exponentially and there is a soft consciousness among the people of the Libyan ‘Arab Spring’ and the Egypt and Syrian popular uprisings.  Mugabe’s recent childlike invective against Lindewe Zulu is indicative both of the politics of panic and his helplessness in the face of this newfound opinion-leading device.

Baba Jukwa has recently blown Zanu PF’s cover of a fraudulently expanded and unrepresentative voter’s roll that remains unseen by anyone except the Register General – the self-same person who was responsible for the deeply floored voter’s roll in 2008.  Even today this roll is not available even to the parties fighting the election.

Zanu PF’s cheating and fraudulent influence on previous election results is now common knowledge in international diplomatic circles and, to their shame, to the disgusted populous of Zimbabwe. And obviously SADC and the AU are also acquainted with this information.

Leaving the AU aside for the moment, SADC’s qualifications for assessing whether or not the election was free and fair extremely worrying. For each time that Mugabe has confronted SADC and challenged it, SADC behaved like a scared and overwhelmed puppy and democracy and the law have been the losers.

Immediately after Mugabe announced 31 July as election day, Tsvangerai appealed to SADC that there was too little time for all eligible voters to register, that the all -important extra-constitutional conditions for a free and fair election agreed to by SADC itself and required by all the signatories to the GPA - were not in place that the electoral roll was neither complete nor transparent, that ZEC was no longer obliged to abide by conditions and therefore that the election could not, by the GPA’s and SADC’s own definitions, be free and fair.

SADC’s benignly inadequate response to Tsvangurai’s appeal was to send the Zimbabwe Justice Secretary, Patrick Chinamasa, back to Zimbabwe to ask the self-same Constitutional Court that had approved the date in terms of the old constitution, to extend it by a miserly two weeks. When the Constitutional Court refused to do so, SADC said nothing. In doing so it ignored its own requirement for the extra-constitutional conditions to be imposed. Worse still, SADC’s inaction gave Mugabe its tacit consent to proceed unhindered. Everyone knows what that means: rig, rig, rig - with SADC’s approval.

SADC whimpered again on Saturday 20 July when several of its presidents met in Mozambique with SA’s President Jacob Zuma who is SADC’s appointed facilitator with Zimbabwe. The purpose of this meeting was to consider the statement by SA’s presidential ambassador Lindiwe Zulu that conditions for a free and fair election were not in place.

It should have been swift and easy for SADC to arrive at a consensus. All the evidence pointed toward the veracity of her statement. Yet, instead of emphasizing this, and demanding a significantly later election, SADC’s response was a blindingly biased statement by Tanzania’s Kikwete. He had the temerity to exclaim he would stand behind Zimbabwe and ensure the vote was ‘credible enough’. And the very next day, President Zuma’s office rapped Ms Zulu over the knuckles for daring to make such a statement.

One more example sample of SADC’s mind-boggling illogicality occurred when the 15-member body disqualified its own specially created tribunal. The tribunal sat to hear the pleadings of a number of Zimbabwean farmers who were suing the Zimbabwe government because named members the government had taken their farms from them with no compensation. The tribunal found in favour of the farmers. Mugabe objected to the judgment. So SADC disbanded the tribunal.

Even with all the above-listed negatives, intuition suggests that the huge ground swell in favour of Tsvangerai’s MDC party and will sweep Zanu PF away. Remember, Tsvangerai won the 2008 election. This time it’s likely that hundreds of thousands more will vote for MDC (T) than then.

Two possible adversaries stand in the MDC’s way. Zanu PF’s rigging machinery is in full swing. It knows that on a cleared battlefield it will go down. And they are doing everything to avoid this.

Secondly, if MDC wins, it may have to face another, perhaps insurmountable obstacle in the form of the Generals of the security forces.

Remember what Mugabe said: “The peoples votes and the peoples guns are always inseparable twins.” Believing this, there is a distinct possibility the security forces’ generals will try to take matters into their own hands. At this stage they are an unknown quantity. However, they have brazenly and repeatedly stated they will not accept the situation if Zanu PF loses and they will not serve Tsvangerai!

SADC’s past reactions and the biased, irreconcilable recent AU response to SADC’s ruling leads to the distressing conclusion that neither body will lift a finger should the Generals take over. If this happens, Zimbabwe’s only hope will lie with international intervention and South Africa’s in particular.

Only one thing is certain. Zimbabwe will never be the same again after July 31. The MDC may  win the battle. Democracy may lose the war.

Editor's Note: On the eve of the election tomorrow we are very pleased to publish two up-to- the-minute points of view from within Zimbabwe. The first , which is by the Human Rights NGO Forum, sets two criteria for what would be an acceptable election. The second is by the distinguished South African finance journalist Gerry Hirshon. Hirshon, who sent us this report from Zimbabwe where he has personally been observing developments, says his "gut feel is that there is a huge groundswell of support for the Opposition ". Both very interesting and uniquely relevant.

Denis Worrall

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