I find it interesting that while Botswana is preparing for a peaceful handover of power from one leader to another, judges in Kenya have annulled a presidential election result and ordered a re-run.
While Botswana’s much maligned practice of a ruling leader appointing or positioning his personally-favored successor is in practice, it does force leadership change at intervals. Whether or not those changes make a difference is debatable but a change of leadership is guaranteed.
The same cannot be said of the rest of Africa where the mere talk about succession is taboo as we can see just across the border in Zimbabwe.
In spite of a few positive surprises here and there, elections in Africa remain deadly traps where, after thorough beatings, disappearances and burned down homes, the people are paraded into voting booths where overzealous supporters of an incumbent leader are menacingly active as if they are part of election officials.
This month’s report by the Zimbabwe Peace Project recorded 149 human rights abuses and, for the first time, expressed concern about political violence not party against party but supporters of one political party turning against each other.
At last count, Zimbabwe had 60 political parties lying to the people as elections approach. A look at Zimbabwe’s top five political parties will show that they are all seriously infested with factionalism born out of tribal allegiances, corruption and pure blackmail.
The fact that the last free and fair elections held in Zimbabwe were the elections that brought Robert Mugabe to power in 1980, Zimbabwe’s neighbours and SADC have never found any of Zimbabwe’s elections faulty.
As far back as 2004, SADC adopted what they deceptively called ‘the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections’ to which no member state paid any attention because SADC has no truly democratic member state.
There is not a single time that SADC intervened when its member state rigged elections, abused people or violated its own elections guidelines and yet they are always first to be invited as observers.
In the elections of 2013, Zimbabwe met only one of SADC’s guidelines and principles but SADC ran out of accolades.
“In the course of observing the Elections, the Mission noted that there was general adherence to the relevant national legal instruments and the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections,” the SADC Observer Mission said.
These are the elections in which Zimbabwe met only one of SADC guidelines ÔÇô that of holding regular elections.
Even before the counting of the ballots was over, we learned about the role that an Israeli company, Nikuv, had played in rigging elections at the source at Mugabe’s invitation.
But, all the same, SADC ran out of words to express satisfaction of a terribly flawed exercise that, like Thabo Mbeki did, is still causing the deaths of our compatriots.
On this particular election, SADC observers, who are entrusted and tasked with assessing the conduct of an election process “as independent witnesses”, surprisingly told the world that, during this their tour, they learned and observed “best democratic practices” and listed what they liked which were issues mostly concerning the treatment their observers got.
They were impressed by “the continuous call for peace”, which in itself is an indication that people were being physically abused and that is not part of a ‘free and fair election’.
They praised the “Prompt accreditation of Observers…” things that have nothing to do with the abuse of voters the welfare of whom almost always the main reason observers go to observe.
While they praised the use of “indelible ink to prevent double voting” and the “use of translucent ballot boxes”, they turned a blind eye to issues including the government’s refusal to avail opposition parties the Voters Roll and access to the Registrar General’s office where citizens’ information is recorded and kept.
They did not address the mass beatings, withholding of food, some disappearances, denial of access to state-run media, etc.
African leaders love observer missions to their elections because these missions have to be approved by the incumbent president or leader and there are always pecks that only they can be afforded.
I cannot think of any plausible reason why someone comes from a foreign country to praise wrong, deadly things performed by a government and ignore the killings of many for personal gain; maybe these observers feel they need to pay back for the hospitality of the host who can only be an incumbent leader of the country holding the elections.
In this regard, SADC and people like Thabo Mbeki are responsible for the disappearances and murder by Mugabe of thousands of Zimbabweans. For a long time, they were not only complicit but accomplices.
Many on the African continent, including this writer, applauded the “fearless freedom of the Kenyan judiciary”, not because I supported one over the other but because it was that rare display of fairness hardly seen in such circles in Africa.
I wondered what really happened in Kenya ÔÇô a first in Africa, something that would definitely not happen in many countries like Uganda, Zambia and more others.
Because fewer people were killed during the elections and that less incidents of violence were reported compared to the last election, international election observers declared Kenya’s August 8 elections as free and fair.
Observers from the European Union, the African Union, the Commonwealth Countries and from the United States-based Carter Center all endorsed the results of Kenya’s Aug. 8 election.
Former US Secretary of State, John Kerry, headed the Carter Center Mission and, like all other observer missions, applauded the process as “free, fair and credible”.
Now the Kenyan High Court reached a decision that the elections were so flawed they have to be held again and a new date has already been set.
This exposes the danger in flying into a country, walk around for a week or so then make a pronouncement about the country as if you know the people. In this regard, John Kerry insulted Kenya, Africa and many countries they take for granted and support incumbents because they are friendlier to the United States but care less about the abuse of the locals.
Now these observer missions are trying to squeeze in belated caveats which they claim exist in their end of mission statements.
Observers say, “Well done, Kenya!” But Kenya says, “Are you kidding; this was awful and we have to do it over again!”
I believe the Kenyans.
