From June 8 to13 a Mission made up of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ Africa Office based in Senegal), Southern Africa Editors’ Forum (SAEF), Southern Africa Journalists Association (SAJA), the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Regional Office and the Network of African Freedom of Expression Organisations (NAFEO) visited Zimbabwe on a fact finding mission to ascertain the conditions of media and freedom of expression in Zimbabwe in the light of the arrests of journalists, both local and foreign and the deteriorating freedom of expression environment.

In a landmark decision delivered on June 5, 2008, The Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Abuja, Nigeria declared the arrest and detention of Chief Ebrima Manneh illegal and ordered the Gambian authorities to immediately release him.

I look at the portrait in my mind and hope that every parent, every caregiver, every teacher can acknowledge that every child growing up is a human being, has an ethnic, physical, mental, psychological and sexual identity all rolled up and intermingled with each other, and that the education of that child needs to equip him or her to explore all aspects of it all while learning restraint and respect for social boundaries and respect for other people's choices and boundaries.
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Bryan was my brother, ten years older than me and a paint artist. He left home when I was 8 and for a while the distance and age gap pulled us apart. After a particularly bad period of my life, Bryan made special effort to be a big brother. I needed that and still count it as one of the reasons I am still alive today.

At first, all Bryan could do was be there for me. At times, even that had to be at a distance. His work as a paint artist allowed him a few respites especially after a good exhibition sale at a gallery somewhere. Then he would take time off to come to the tiny village town where I spent my teens. While there he would ask me to pose as his subject for a painting. I recall breezy mornings on grassy green with palm trees and flowers in the background and me with a book. Then there were humid afternoons on sandy white with the jade blue ocean as our setting and yes, me with a book.

Bryan was tough, not very loud but potentially boorish after a few beers and in the company of his macho friends and cousins. When he was painting, he would be quiet and intense, listening to strange music that I have since discovered to be modern classical compositions, or alternatively asking me to read from poetry and classical books. During my career as his art subject, I read poetry from Homer's Iliad to Sara Teasdale's Peace(Sadly my own attempts at poetry are, well, deplorable!). I read Ernest Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea and children's classics like The Snow white Queen and Cinderella, the Kenyan legends like Mekatilili and Luanda Magere.

The last time I posed for Bryan's work (It can't be a pose exactly because I was allowed to sit and required to move around) I was 19 years old. I had to read both Mekatilili and Cinderella. I sneaked a few glances at the boys playing soccer further down the beach and wished to join them. I stared quite openly at the lovers covertly attending to each other hidden by the jade blue. A light skinned girl about 3 or 4 squealed with delight as her father, a foreigner, tickled her then let her run up to the edge of the water before scooping her and carrying her back to his black wife. And I wondered what Bryan's finished work would look like and if it would fetch him a bit of cash.

When I did see the finished work, I reeled in shocked surprise. In all his previous works he depicted me as an impish tomboy, caught between innocence and adulthood, hardly developed but not quite a child. One particular painting had me standing on the edge of a crag ready to dive into the ocean and obviously relishing the attention of the awed boys below. (That episode earned me a few slaps from a brother who was certain I had narrowly missed cracking my skull on jagged rock underwater.)

The portrait was nothing like that. Last I heard someone bought it for a hundred dollars (a good price then!)  and if you are reading this I will buy it back please. I might need to mow your lawn and do your laundry to get the sum together.

In the portrait, the person depicted (me surely?) is young, gentle, feminine, a woman... She looks at another person who is hidden by shadows, vague, male, not my brother. Her eyes know. Her mouth is full, sensuous, determined. Her body shocks me because it is relaxed, accepting of its own sexuality. The feminine curves are defined, the soft swell of a breast, the gentle roll of a hip just covered by the bright coloured fabric of a leso that might have flapped with the wind.

I wasn't shocked that my brother had drawn me, his own sister, in the form of a woman, and a sensuous one at that (!!!). I was more than shocked even repulsed at the idea of my being a woman, and a sexual being.

Perhaps this was the final lesson my brother wanted to teach me, because he was killed soon after this. As I stood there that day, shaking to the pit of my stomach, he asked me, "Wambui, you are who you are. But who are you? And what do you want to be?" The thing that has bothered me since then is the way he asked those questions. I am who I am, but who am I? What did I want to be?

It's taken me time, but I am slowly unravelling it in my mind. There have been times when I have chosen to ruminate over it, and times when I have chosen to skirt past it. However, I chose to be a teacher and a writer. As a teacher, I am in daily contact with young children and teenagers who are struggling to discover their personal identities. As a writer, I have to write about social issues and that almost always brings me back to the topic of identity.

Identity has been wrapped in issues of ethnicity, nationality and gender. Sexual identity forums almost always spiral into debates about gender roles and homosexuality versus heterosexuality. Generally, most people confuse, and lose, their own personal identities in the roles that they have to assume or that are imposed on them through the life cycle. I keep thinking, I am ME. I am a teacher, a writer, a sister, a Kenyan...I should still be ME if I chose not to teach anymore or to change citizenship. I should still be ME if I take on the roles of motherhood or say, uh..., wifehood.

Old African culture dictated the sequence of life role changes. It also provided support and symbolic rites which included a measure of educative processes that I believe helped shape and reinforce a person's individual identity for the good of the existing society. I cite the Agikuyu initiation rites which were accompanied by education from the elders and subsequent freedom to attend activities such as ngweko (a form of dating with sexual activity that was not limited to one partner but that did not allow penetration) which made it possible for a person to explore sexuality within limits. The subsequent ascension through the leadership roles with accompanying education and rites formed a kind of reinforcing system.

Times have inevitably changed. Historical developments, introduction of 'un-African' religion for example have changed the socio-cultural structures. Granted, some of the cultural traditions were shrouded in illogical shades and at times clearly violated the rights of a human being. However, it is my personal belief that the socio-cultural texture of many of the old African traditions did promote and contribute to the well being of individuals and societies as a whole. At the time.

I am not surprised then that more and more African peoples are going back to being as African as possible in this modern world. More and more people are choosing to learn, and have their children learn, at least one if not two or three ethnic Kenyan languages. Parents are choosing to have their children go through modernized forms of traditional initiation rites. For the boys, they may comprise in some cultures a 'cut' at the clinic followed by group setting counselling usually provided by a church based organization. For the girls, the counselling might be accompanied by basic skills teaching in housekeeping, social skills and so on, but eliminating female circumcision.

I think the effort is commendable. In fact I wish that I might have gone through a similar rite of passage to define the moment I passed from being a child to being a woman. As it is, life chose a very different and much more painful rite of passage for me.

That said, I must state at this point that I am very much disturbed by the manner in which we handle the development of a child into adulthood. We, African Society, chose to deny certain aspects of development (don't get me wrong here, we do pretend to talk about it) and in effect negate very important parts of the human identity, more often than not creating maladjusted individuals and therefore even more unhealthy societies.

Sexuality. As far as I know, 'counselling' in the context of the rites of passage ceremonies involves telling the youth to abstain. Abstain? From what? Sex and sexuality are deliberately and inadvertently portrayed as 'sinful' and shameful. So shameful that we cannot acknowledge that sex is part of who we are, so shameful that we in effect fail to teach the youth about boundaries and safe living. So shameful...and this in a society where a man will defile a ten year old and dare claim in his defence that she provoked him.

Back to the portrait. I am not sure what my brother was thinking when he painted the portrait. I do not know what you are thinking not, either. What I know is that it made me realize that I was a human being, with my very own identity, which does constitute a sexual component and is not at all anything shameful, even if I chose not to flaunt it. It just is.

I have though quite hard about the point I want to make with this article. I look at the portrait in my mind and hope that every parent, every caregiver, every teacher can acknowledge that every child growing up is a human being, has an ethnic, physical, mental, psychological and sexual identity all rolled up and intermingled with each other, and that the education of that child needs to equip him or her to explore all aspects of it all while learning restraint and respect for social boundaries and respect for other people's choices and boundaries.

I do not think it is easy to change the mind-set that now dictates our society today. But that is all it is; a mind-set. It can be reset. The reset, however, requires that we all accept 3 things:

-It is human to be sexual, just as there is nothing wrong with accepting our cultural and psychological identities, and that there is nothing wrong with accepting our own sexuality.

-Times will continue to change, therefore education systems within and without the family must evolve while encompassing the human development.

-A child does have a sexual identity, but there is nothing at all acceptable about an adult exploring or exploiting a child's sexuality. (I suppose we are now going to be debating about who is a child, but the boundaries for that are limited, too.)

So who am I? I still need to think about that for a while longer. I do know that I am well on the way of accepting myself for who I am.

*Juliet Maruru is a Kenyan writer.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org

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On June 19, the United Nations Security Council is set to debate the relevance of sexual violence in conflict to its work. The debate may result in the adoption of a historic resolution which would require the Council to analyze and address the occurrence of sexual violence in all conflict-affected situations on its agenda.

On March 29th 2008 Zimbabweans went to the polls and changed history. For the first time since Independence in 1980, the Zanu PF party lost its majority in parliament and Robert Mugabe lost the Presidential vote. The regime immediately embarked on a campaign of violence and reprisal attacks against the civilian population. This map aims to convey some sense of the scale of the violence and it also tries to locate responsibility in relation to key perpetrator groups.

The Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union (AU) expressed their deep concern over the confrontation between the armed forces of Eritrea and Djibouti that began on June 10. The PSC urged the two countries to commence dialogue to resolve the dispute and to withdraw all forces, that have been positioned since February 4, from the border. The PSC also thanked Djibouti for their cooperation with the AU mission and requested that Eritrea do so. Further, an AU team led by former Sierra Leonean President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah will be sent to Zimbabwe to observe the presidential run-off election due to be held June 27. The AU expressed concern over violence and intimidation during the electoral preparations and called for effective measures to address the situation. In addition, prominent African leaders, including former heads of state, business leaders, academics and leading campaigners, have also called for an end to violence and intimidation in Zimbabwe. They stressed the need for every citizen to be able freely express their political choice in a peaceful and transparent manner. Still in peace related news, the AU has been called to intervene in Darfur by sending between 5000 to 10000 troops instead of the 3000 present there in order to stop an apparent genocide.

The People’s Republic of China, one of Africa’s newer investors, has reiterated its stance that it has no intention of colonizing or exploiting Africa as is being speculated by western countries. According to Ms. Wang Ke, Counsellor of the African Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, China considers ‘African countries as friends and wants to build partnership based on trust, sincerity, equality, mutual support and common development’. Despite China’s energy-reliant and booming economy, the country holds under two percent of Africa’s oil. Also in economic news, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) seeks to create a pan-African board to attract more investors in Africa but its main peers, the Nigeria Stock Exchange and Nairobi Stock Exchange have responded unenthusiastically calling the decision politically unsound.

In development news, African environmental ministers called on the AU to adopt a common position on climate change at its 13th summit in 2009, ahead of the Copenhagen climate change summit in December that year. The ministers agreed that a common strategy on climate change will help persuade developed countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by between 25 to 40 percent by 2020. One of the consequences of climate change is the current food crisis in the world. In East Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have announced budgetary measures to alleviate some of the burden of soaring food prices on their respective populations.

African experts on slavery are meeting in Banjul, Gambia in an effort to create a common position on slavery. During the transatlantic slave trade, more than 13 million Africans were captured and enslaved and four million other killed in the transit. Also in human rights related news, a draft proposal for the merger of the African Human Rights Court and the African Court of Justice will be presented during the AU Summit in Egypt.

Finally, while welcoming partnership with Europe, Libyan president Col. Muammar Gaddafi has opposed plans for a Mediterranean Union saying that it would harm efforts towards Arab and African unity.

FAMEDEV is deeply concerned by the situation in Zimbabwe. As a result of this concern, FAMEDEV dedicated 35 minutes in their online radio to Zimbabwe and its current social, economic and political events. On this programme which was aired under our Assignment programme, they engaged John Masuku, veteran Zimbabwean broadcaster and Lucy Makaza, a renowned Zimbabwean Civil Rights Activist, on the current issues in the country.

The latest report from the International Crisis Group examines the ruling National Democratic Party’s (NDP) hard-line stance and the Muslim Brothers’ ambiguous approach to political participation. At a time of political uncertainty surrounding the presidential succession and serious socio-economic unrest, it offers an alternative to the current short-term thinking that carries very uncertain longer-term returns.

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seeks a Postdoctoral Fellow (PDF) for its Environment, Production and Technology Division. Under the supervision of the Division Director and guided by the Research Fellow and Senior Scientist leading the Global Change research theme of IFPRI, and in close collaboration with other staff as appropriate, the successful post-doctoral fellow will conduct research and analysis on land use patterns and shifts under alternative scenarios of global environmental and economic change.

Demonstrators in many Brazilian cities and San Francisco denounced Brazil's brutal 4-year military occupation of Haiti -- on the occasion of the May 28th visit to Haiti by Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva, marking the 4th anniversary of the arrival of Brazilian U.N. troops in Haiti. Organized labor played a key role in coordinating the actions in Brazil.

This radio interview addresses the question of Charles Taylor's possible involvement in the assassination of Thomas Sankara.

We, women representatives from different organisations in Africa, representing farmer’s, Community Based Organisations, Landless Peoples Movements, Pastoralists and Youth, from Western, Southern and Eastern Africa, meeting in Nairobi from June 16-18, 2008, to share our diverse experiences on women’s access, control and ownership of land/natural and productive resources in Africa and governments’ extent of implementation of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) Declaration in Africa and the current food crisis.

This report from the International Crisis Group, analyses the frozen border conflict between two states who fought a major war in 1998-2000 and recommends an approach to overcome the stalemate. Following Ethiopia’s refusal to accept virtual demarcation of the border by the now defunct Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission (EEBC), Asmara unilaterally implemented it and forced out the UN peacekeeping mission (UNMEE), significantly raising the stakes and shattering the status quo.

Imagine a Uganda where bruises and broken bones don’t keep mothers away from caring for their children
Imagine a Uganda where women walk the streets and paths at night without looking over their shoulders
Imagine a Uganda in which girls live a life free of violence from their teachers, relatives, strangers, etc.
Imagine a Uganda where perpetrators of violence against women and girls face the full rigour of the law
Imagine a Uganda Without Violence Against Women and Girls…

For consumers in developed markets, using a mobile phone for banking services is a smart add-on to a bank's branch network. But to people in the developing world, the arrival of mobile banking - or m-banking - is potentially revolutionary. If money is an economy's lifeblood, improving its circulation plays a critical role. Many Africans living in rural areas, for instance, rely on money sent home by members of their family who work in towns and cities. But getting that cash to a village that could be hundreds of miles away is a tricky business.

His Excellency Mr. Antonio De Aguiar Patriota, Brazilian Ambassador to the United States 3006 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC 90008

Her Excellency, Ms. Theresa Maria M. Quintella, Consul General of Brazil 8484 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills, CA 90211

Your excellency,

It is time, after nine months of uneasy anxiety, that some authority charged in the name of the international community with responsibility for security in Haiti, advise the international community, that is, the international public, of its findings in regard to the scandalous kidnapping or disappearance of Haitian citizen and patriot, Mr. Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.

The date of Mr. Pierre-Antoine’s disappearance is well established. It is also known that he had been helping human rights delegations from two countries -the USA and Canada, countries with famous courts and parliaments.

Please do not misunderstand this appeal. It has great hope in the United Nations as a peacekeeping agency and much hope in the evolution of democracy in Brazil, which holds a leading position in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti. My disappointment is therefore considerable. Every son and daughter of Haiti deserves the protection of the law and of special international arrangements. Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine is a son of Haiti, one who is well-known in the region and is becoming better known in the world. His international reputation is a standard of judgment of the peacekeeping force. Their reputation will rise or fall with his fortunes. In the present day world, news of violations is highly saleable.

The world knows of no position by the official agencies in Haiti, whether domestic or international, on this important instance of inhumanity. When this matter was raised from the floor at a Conference on Haiti’s children at a University in San Diego, USA, the Ambassador of Haiti to the USA made a spirited response. Not only did he establish the non-involvement of the government of Haiti in the kidnapping of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, but he effectively defended the government, assuring the audience that it had no hand in the unfortunate affair. No one had even suggested that it had. He said that Mr Pierre-Antoine was probably a rival candidate of some other person and hinted that in such circumstances disappearances have sometimes occurred. I do not have a record of his statement before the gathering, and I am open to any correction he or any other party may wish to offer.

All the Ambassador was able to do was to vindicate the Haitian government. But Mr. Pierre-Antoine’s lawyer was present and rose to rebuke the government for its silence and its alleged failure to exercise its national responsibility.

The government of Haiti being ruled out as complicit in Mr. Pierre-Antoine’s absence, the hemisphere to which Haiti has always been central turns its searchlight on that multinational force considered to be of vital assistance to a historically crippled domestic government, and on the leadership of that force, the Republic of Brazil, a major hemispheric partner. Their presence there leads the uninformed to presume that they are there to supply the kind of expertise and clout which cannot be expected of the government in Haiti’s present circumstances. In these times of secretly employed but widely known intrusive surveillance, satellite observation on land, sea and air, clandestine wiretapping and other equipment useful in both offence and defense, there is a credibility gap. The public is not inclined to believe that a few thugs in Haiti have so completely baffled the human capacity of the leading States of the hemisphere.

This matter of the disappearance of Mr. Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine must therefore be taken to the bemused population of the hemisphere and the world at present waiting with impatience for some word of encouragement from the United Nations and its peacekeeping forces.

These forces must be aware of the kidnapping and disappearance of Haiti’s first Prime Minister, Toussaint L’ouverture. The French regime of that time, a regime of soldiers, treated TOUSSAINT’S fate with a silence similar to that with which Mr. Pierre-Antoine’s kidnapping is now being treated. Is this French model the model for the UN troops and its officials?

Questions rush to mind. The hemisphere certainly and the international community wish to know what task force has been set up to track the disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine and other persons, regardless of their political attachment, who may be less well-known but in similar circumstances.

It is possible to have wrong notions about what happened to LOVINSKY. It is possible to make statements and then find the need to revise them. Is it possible in an age such as this, known for invasive surveillance, for criminal secrets to be so well-kept?

In the military context of a peacekeeping force, silence for two weeks on the part of the Commanding Authority may be advisable, after it has made an initial statement of concern assuring the public of its active pursuit of the offenders. Silence for three weeks may be cause for concern, yet understandable if it had given the necessary assurances. Silence for nine months becomes its opposite, and is no longer silence but an eloquent confession of incapacity, or worse, lack of concern.

If a citizen of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine’s prominence and popularity can be “caught up in the air”: then the fate of the unknown citizen in Haiti under the aegis of the United Nation’s force is not an enviable one.

Questions persist: When did the authorities first hear of this kidnapping? What specific steps have they taken? Who is keeping PIERRE-ANTOINE’S wife and their children informed? Are there no suspects? Is the kidnapping seen as self-inflicted? Have the suspects, if any, evaded the UN’s multi-national capacity? Were there secret landings of aircraft unknown to the official guardians? Was he spirited away in a small boat and have all suspects been called in? Has Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine been rendered? Where are the international media, famous for increasing effectiveness? Have state and media conspired not to investigate the fate of this man? Is he held by the forces of law and order, and if so where are his rights? If he is held, on what allegations or reasonable suspicion? Was this man, who was well known for his committed to non-violence and aimed to become a senator, suspected of planning to blow up the parliament?

Your Excellency, Ms. Theresa Maria M. Quintella, I ask you to transmit this letter to your government in Brazil without delay. Out of respect for President Lula as an elected Head of State the author shall release it to the international media in the Region and in all continents not before the end of the second day of its dispatch to the Head Consulate Officer of Brazil in Los Angeles.

Yours sincerely,
Eusi Kwayana

Cc: United Nations Secretary-General
Congresswoman Maxine Waters
Amnesty International
Pax Christi
Global Women's Strike, Los Angeles
Haiti Action Committee

* For more information on the disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, see also: and [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/382/48924zimviolence.jpgRather than deflect and defeat the likelihood of political violence, the construct of a Government of National Unity would formally integrate it into the lifeblood of the Zimbabwean democratic dispensation. For South Africans, this situation recalls the kind of power sharing arrangements that former South African President F W De Klerk had in mind at the start of the 1990s negotiation process, where the share of actual voter support would not determine power arrangements. This proposal was not acceptable in the new South Africa then, and it is not acceptable in the new Zimbabwe now, writes Grace Kwinjeh examining the upcoming Zimbabwe presidential elections rerun.
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In March 2008 Zimbabweans voted in the most peaceful election since independence, resulting in an unambiguous victory for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai. Three months later, the country is hemorrhaging from a massive and rising tide of political violence not seen since the state sponsored terror of the early 1980s. The ruling party and its supporters are responsible for the vast majority of the current attacks [1]. As if to underscore his party’s public embrace of violence, President Mugabe now openly threatens to “wage war” beyond the June 27 Presidential run-off election, if his candidacy should be rejected by the people for a second time. Meanwhile the MDC government-elect, MDC party structures and much of the party’s leadership have been forced into hiding as they seek to convince voters of their right to select – and see installed in place – a president of their choice.

For SADC, the Zimbabwe conflagration has become the most comprehensive diplomatic failure in the region since the resumption of the Angolan war in the 1990s. But unlike Angola, the Zimbabwe crisis is one for which SADC, President Mbeki and the international community bear a central contributing responsibility. By pushing for secretly brokered power-sharing arrangements leading to a “government of national unity” (GNU), the international intervention in Zimbabwe has relegated hopes for a new democratic dispensation built on the foundations of the expressed popular will of Zimbabweans. By refusing to actively acknowledge the MDC’s electoral victory and insist on its recognition and acceptance by ZANU PF, regional leaders and the international community effectively ignored and silenced the democratic voice of the people. As a consequence, the MDC’s hard-won legitimate authority has been erased, and the way has been opened for ZANU PF to recover by the bullet the authority it had lost at the ballot box.

This violent outcome of a proposed GNU strategy should not have been unexpected. ZANU PF’s violent riposte is reminiscent of the period immediately prior to Independence around the Lancaster House Conference, and even more so of the party’s violent campaign before the 1987 “Unity Accord” with the ZAPU opposition: indeed, it is a tried and tested tactic of ZANU PF to threaten and deploy intense violence as a strategic bargaining tool. Since independence the party has singularly distinguished itself among Zimbabwean political parties by demonstrating a capacity for – and indeed claiming the right to wage – mass violence in defense of its “national” interests. No longer heading the majority party, Robert Mugabe now cynically portrays violence as a means for defending the people from their mistaken choice.

This deeply cynical pathology is echoed more subtly in the GNU concept. Despite a clear rejection of ZANU PF under electoral conditions heavily tilted in that party’s favour, unity talks have been promoted as a means of bringing the former ruling party back into the centre of decision-making. Even though neither voters nor the MDC demanded this arrangement in March, the new government in waiting has come under enormous pressure to fall in line accordingly. Its leaders have repeatedly said that such an arrangement would deny the popular voice and reward anti-democratic, flagrantly illegal and often murderous behaviour – while only deferring, and certainly not solving, the problem of organising the transition to a new political order. It is indeed difficult to understand why those who previously promoted engagement with ZANU PF as a means of strengthening a deeply flawed electoral process, should now effectively reject that improved process and insist on power sharing terms with the author of electoral fraud and intimidation.

In contrast, it is clear that the promotion of a GNU is integral to the facilitation of an elite transfer of power which would vitiate the popular will of the electorate. This is why the idea of a GNU has been explicitly rejected by the leading membership-based civil society organisations in Zimbabwe, from the trade unions to human rights networks. These groups challenge the credibility and viability of a compromise that according to its proponents, would bring about some sort of “normalisation” of the political space without addressing the growing democratic deficit in Zimbabwe. For the Zimbabwean democratic movement, political normalisation requires before all else, recognition and acceptance of the expressed will of dominant social interests – not its circumvention through brokered elite ‘pacting’ carried out under the threat of violence.

In Zimbabwe, there is abiding consternation over why ZANU PF and its militia were given the opportunity by SADC and the international community to ignore the electoral results in the first place. What would have happened if the election results – deemed legitimate by observers – had been recognised and enforced? And what would happen if a similarly free and fair process were enforced in the current second round, by insisting on the disarming of ZANU PF and its militia, and the confinement of the security forces to base? Have those mediating and promoting mediation raised these issues – the clearest and most profound obstacles to democratic practice in Zimbabwe in the current moment?

It is widely acknowledged that demilitarisation is a central precondition needed to advance a democratic outcome and ensure its consolidation in the medium term. Yet, the perpetration of violence has been treated as a negotiable right – not as an act which invalidates claims to the process of a democratic transition. Remarkably, it took 10 weeks of deteriorating conditions for SADC’s official mediator Thabo Mbeki to publicly raise his concerns about the spiralling violence. But even then he avoided commentary on responsibility, despite ample documented evidence heavily implicating ZANU PF and state security forces in commanding the terror. His spokesperson claims he is precluded from doing so by virtue of his position as mediator. However this is a hollow rationale in the face of open and mounting ZANU PF belligerence.

For ZANU PF, with few political repercussions arising from the deployment of its violent supporters, there seems little incentive for abandoning this approach– and perhaps much to be gained from pursuing it. Robert Mugabe’s public declaration earlier this week that his party would go to war in the event of his defeat in the second round of voting was met with paralysing silence by Thabo Mbeki. The deployment of weapons and violence may be logistically difficult to confront: the deployment of words and threats is not.

THE ELECTION FIX: BACK TO THE FUTURE

By focusing on the GNU, rather than the actual election results, the SADC mediation has effectively allowed ZANU PF to return to the brokerage scenario it had anticipated in the post election period. This scenario, broadly shared by ZANU PF reformers, SA, some EU governments and others before the election, was premised on the belief that the MDC-Tsvangirai party’s support would be diminished by support for MDC-Mutambara and for Simba Makoni, the former Finance Minister and ZANU PF reformer who was a candidate for President. A split opposition vote would enable victory in the Presidential election and at least a plurality in Parliament. Moreover, the dispersion of opposition representation across three groupings would present options for developing a ‘Kenyan-style’ negotiation that could lead to a ZANU PF dominated GNU. Makoni – the “modernising” reform face of ZANU PF - could be parachuted in under Mugabe, to soon replace him as the consensus politician. And ZANU PF could argue that, if this kind of arrangement was acceptable for Kenya, why not in Zimbabwe? There was a lot of this kind of talk amongst MDC-M and Makoni supporters in advance of the election.

For ZANU PF this scenario both enabled the departure of Mugabe, a political liability whose presence would continue to block the party’s return to legitimacy and the resumption of desperately needed, stabilizing financial assistance for the world’s fastest-collapsing economy; and the retention and renewed consolidation of power by the ruling party. Confident of a mediated victory and needing a “legitimate” result to back its claims to rehabilitation, ZANU PF significantly loosened control over the electoral process in the first round of voting in March.

As it turned out, the party’s electoral assumptions were wildly naïve. At the election support for the MDC-M collapsed – and notably for its leadership, which was roundly defeated. Makoni was overwhelmingly rejected by voters, gaining perhaps just 10 percent of the vote. At the same time, ZANU PF’s traditional voters deserted the party by voting for the opposition or by boycotting the poll, as they had done in the benchmark defeat of the party in the 2000 Constitutional Referendum. In contrast, the MDC Tsvangirai party surged across the country, including in former rural strongholds of ZANU PF that for the first time ever had been rendered easily accessible to opposition campaigners – and to opposition polling agents and officials. This combination of factors meant there were too few votes to rig with, and that the conditions allowing the playing off of opposition forces within a prospective GNU did not materialize [2].

The shock of the election result and the resulting conundrum for the ruling party were quite literally written on its face. The headline of The Sunday Mail, the most slavishly loyal of the state-controlled newspapers, screamed the day after the election, “Anxiety Grips Zim.” Many other state media, including the country’s only radio and television broadcaster, ZBC, effectively fell silent, bewildered. No party leader of note addressed the nation for several days.

It was apparent that ZANU PF was reassessing its game plan. Over the next month it developed and then rolled this plan out, as SADC first patiently accommodated repeated inexplicable delays in the processing and announcement of results by ZEC, and then sat motionless as ZESN, the key civic election monitoring network, and MDC itself were raided by state officials in search of independently collected polling data that could be used to disprove manipulated official figures. Even after the long delay, only limited details of the presidential poll were eventually released [3].

Meanwhile, reports surfaced of remobilised war veterans and youth militias, and of the first violent penetrations by state security forces of “turncoat” former ruling party strongholds. ZANU PF aimed to create conditions that would make the run-off so difficult and dreaded that prospects of averting violence through some form of GNU and power sharing arrangement would be welcomed: a replay of the ZANU-ZAPU Unity Pact of 1987. ZANU PF’s transparently obvious “spin” on the violence –which has often been taken up by SADC leaders, and swallowed whole by much of the regional media as well – has been doubly damaging for Zimbabwean democrats. One the one hand, substantial evidence that the violence is disproportionately organised against the MDC has drawn muted criticism from SA, SADC and the GNU advocates like Makoni; on the other, the small amount of retaliatory violence attributed to the MDC is deemed to suggest a “crisis” and raise possibilities of “civil war” – reinforcing the need to avoid a run-off and the urgency for a negotiated solution [4].

African leaders have thus far studiously avoided apportioning responsibility for violence, in most instances couching reactions in terms of cautioning both sides and invoking dialogue. Widespread violations of SADC’s election ‘norms and standards’ have failed to elicit coherent responses from them. Neither has SADC cautioned or castigated the ZANU PF government for failing to ensure its constitutional responsibility for safety and security, despite overwhelming empirical evidence that the primary perpetrator is ZANU PF and its proxies.

Rather than address the issue of destabilizing violence and impose political censure for its deployment in this period of uncertainty, the SA government, SADC, some EU diplomats and the Makoni grouping actively talked up the need for a GNU – ostensibly as way to avert the threat of violence coming from ZANU PF. Indeed, independent and MDC reports demonstrated that increasing numbers from the MDC’s ranks were being beaten, tortured, abducted and murdered, the rationale for a GNU – and a political counter-attack to the wave of violence – was publicly reinforced by SA and SADC.

While mediation does not preclude processes of accountability, this approach appears to have been absent from the Mbeki initiative. As a result the SADC intervention has directly facilitated ZANU PF’s unfolding strategy for manipulating the conditions and issues that would have to be negotiated. SADC’s tentative response to the March vote allowed space and time for ZANU PF to regroup and ramp up the violence and threats of more of the same – both fuelling a defensive “demand for GNU”, and reasserting ZANU PF’s leading place in the setting of terms for any negotiations. The latter now focus on ending violence and averting civil war, rather than implementing the results of the peaceful election or ensuring that the next round of elections are conducted in a free and fair atmosphere – something that it appears can no longer be ensured.

THE GNU PROBLEM

If the GNU is primarily being proposed as a means to avoid a violent tragedy, rather than as a basis for a establishing a new inclusive democratic politics, skeptics are right to question the idea’s aims, objectives and predictable outcomes. Just as importantly, we need to pose a question for those advocating a non-democratic negotiated resolution to Zimbabwe’s election crisis: by what principle can the rights of the popular democratic will as expressed by voters be equated with, or rendered secondary to, the rights of discredited elites and perpetrators of violence? For this is precisely what the idea of a GNU proposes, in the name of an elusive, highly unstable and temporary peace.

Even if the MDC were able to extract considerable concessions from ZANU PF, it is highly unlikely that Robert Mugabe’s party would cede its effective control over its levers in the bureaucracy and particularly, in the security forces. Why would it: these are the instruments of war and obstruction that have enabled ZANU PF to climb out of the hole of electoral defeat on more than one occasion, to protect its networks of power. To suggest that these determinants of power would be given up willingly is to accept the notion that ZANU PF would be willing to abdicate. The last two months have exposed this view as profoundly delusional. Those who have put stock in the GNU have failed to assess their model of peace-making in light of ZANU PF’s strategic understanding that violence is a political asset and an effective substitute for popular legitimacy, which will not be negotiated away.

Rather than deflect and defeat the likelihood of political violence, the construct of a GNU would formally integrate it into the lifeblood of the Zimbabwean democratic dispensation. This is a remarkable solution to put before a political party that has just won an election based on its abiding commitment to non-violent democratic participation – and to the voting majority who supported it. For South Africans, this situation recalls the kind of power sharing arrangements that former South African President F W De Klerk had in mind at the start of the 1990s negotiation process, where the share of actual voter support would not determine power arrangements [5]. This proposal was not acceptable in the new South Africa then, and it is not acceptable in the new Zimbabwe now.
to the March election has facilitated a strong and violent response by ZANU PF.

For the time being, it seems increasingly likely that the GNU route will be not followed. This is not due to any lack of effort by the likes of Mbeki and many in SADC, or the distasteful posturing of the rejected Makoni, who cites rising violence as the need for inclusive negotiations without naming and condemning those – his erstwhile colleagues – who have created the unstable terrain on which he hopes to re-launch his ambitions. Rather, both the MDC and its supporters are wary of legitimizing the political role of those holding the gun to their heads and the torch to their homes. War is not something to be prevented: it is here already. And the only non-violent way to confront and defeat it is the ballot box, even if that option too is flawed.

If the current pressures for a GNU do indeed fail, all is not lost for ZANU PF: Makoni or another ZANU PF senior reformer could return to the forefront if Mugabe were to win the run-off, further destabilize the MDC and civil society, and then retire on his own terms – handing over power to a reformer to negotiate a new GNU from a position of regained legitimacy and strength. But this first requires another successfully manipulated election result, and a frontal assault on MDC and civil society resistance. The arrest on treason charges this past week of MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti does not bode well; neither does the relative weakness of the SADC response to this latest development. And is there any reason to think that additional ZANU PF manipulations during and after the second round of voting will not take place, given the success of such interventions in the first?

ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY, ACTING RESPONSIBLY

The options chosen by SADC and the international community for dealing with the March 2008 election have directly contributed to the options chosen by ZANU PF. It was a choice not to recognise the MDC victory and to allow the illegal charade over the recount to occur [6]. It is enough here to point out that the MDC won the Parliamentary elections, that Morgan Tsvangirai won the Presidential election, that nearly 3 million Zimbabweans did not vote, and consequently it is very clear that Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF do not enjoy the support of the vast majority of the population.

This set of circumstances allowed for an alternative political response; a recognition of and call for an MDC government to be accepted by ZANU PF. However, the failure to support this option has contributed directly to the current confusion between promoting conditions for a free and fair re-run and negotiations for a GNU. Despite a widespread acceptance that conditions cannot be free and fair for the June 27 poll, and calls for a GNU, the MDC is sticking to the electoral path and holding out prospects for an inclusive government of national healing in which it would play a lead role after the elections. This position, openly supported by SADC, will promote an elitist management of transitional arrangements under the auspices of a power sharing arrangement that will effectively insulate and protect those responsible for perpetrating violence and gross human rights abuses –as happened with previous election amnesties for party violence, and most seriously with the Unity Accord in 1987.

As regards the re-run, although it is no longer possible to create the conditions for a free and fair poll, with less than 10 days before the poll, there could and should be certain steps taken to remedy the most egregious violations and potential for destabilisation. This should include: deploying adequate numbers of election monitors, especially in areas where violence and intimidation has been reported, and playing a more active role in monitoring the activities and decision-making processes of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission; promoting an agenda of disarming ZANU PF and its militia/war veteran proxies hands; censuring the role of the security forces, censuring hate speech and talk of war by any political parties; commenting on access of candidates to state media; question and establishing a strategy with rewards and penalties for compliance/non-compliance with SADC election guidelines.

Thabo Mbeki did state ahead of the 2005 elections that there would be consequences if the SADC Principles and Guidelines were seriously violated, but this was said against the background of woefully inadequate provisions for monitoring on the ground [7]. Meanwhile, in June 2008, the corpses of MDC officials and suspected opposition supporters are accumulating, thousands have been displaced by the political violence, likely thousands more beaten and brutalised, hate speech fills the airwaves, and a discredited President threatens the majority with war – and still, there is no sign of serious electoral censure in the air.

It is time for fresh thinking and fresh action. In advance of the second round of presidential voting, problems need to be anticipated and prevented before they arise. Several critical questions emerge:

What would have happened if SA, SADC and the international community rejected the delays by ZEC and ZANU PF, demanded the transparent compilation and immediate release of results - and ensured that all parties abided by them?

What would have happened if all civil society organisations and democratic parties and politicians had stood firmly behind the MDC government-elect, rather than soliciting for all-inclusive extra-electoral GNU? If more support for the winning party MDC had been expressed, what options then would have remained for elite transitions?

Who, then, really enabled ZANU PF’s violent election strategy sending the defeated party, its leaders and violent supporters inside and outside the state all of the wrong signals in the immediate post-election period?

And consequently, whose responsibility is it now to end the violence by terminating discussions about an all-inclusive GNU, and insisting on a government of transition and renewal headed unambiguously by the party elected by the people: the MDC Tsvangirai.

* Grace Kwinjeh is an NEC member of the MDC and the Chairperson of the Global Zimbabwe Forum.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

* For further notes, see below

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