President Mnangagwa’s spokesperson and permanent secretary
in the Ministry of Media, Information and Broadcasting Services, George
Charamba's recent statement on the scheduled 2018 harmonized elections should
have quite literally stopped the press. Or at least had one or two an activist apoplectic about the pre-empting of what would/should be a democratic process.
At a conference organized by the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission (ZEC) and the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) and other media stakeholders, he is reported to have said that these elections are about international re-engagement and (international)
legitimacy of the Zimbabwean government and the country.
To quote him at the length,
“This election is about restoring international
re-engagement and legitimacy; that is where we are. It must be flawless, it
must be transparent, it must be free, it must be fair, it must meet
international standards, it must be violence free and therefore it must be
universally endorsed because it is an instrument of foreign policy...it’s about re-engagement and legitimacy; we are playing politics at
a higher level.”
This was a statement said with a great amount of
confidence. Not only on the basis of its
assumed irrefutable political logic but also its evident link with the
expected political fortunes of Mnangagwa’s short tenure government.
Read in another way and looking for nuance, Charamba’s
statement is a declaration of intent on behalf of the ruling establishment/party. And its most obvious intention is to win this
election. Not in aide of true democracy. But instead only in order to further its
re-engagement with global powers and capital while at the same time shedding off
any international concerns about its ‘electoral’ legitimacy beyond accusations
of coup-de-tats.
So for the ruling establishment this election is a mere formality
to what it considers a consolidation of its intended long duree hold on political
power. All the while currying favour with global capital and giving pretense to concerns of a liberal international political gallery.
Everything else therefore around the 2018 election is not
necessarily driven by any deep notions of commitment to democratic practice let
alone values. At least not by those with
incumbency.
So as they say, this election will appear to be the most normal,
the most peaceful, most observed or monitored and even most reported in decades. The end effect however is pretty much
choreographed and elitist.
Choreographed in the sense that it is almost the equivalent
of a political rite of passage for those that would have been accused of undemocratically/forcibly
removing a president from power. They therefore
need this election, not as a rite of passage fraught with the risk of an
electoral loss, but more with a guarantee of a legitimacy that may be more for
the outside world than it is for the country’s own citizens.
This may not matter as
much as most elections on the African continent have to pass the test of
global capital in collaboration with global superpowers (if you can tell the
difference between the two).
What makes Zimbabwe’s case unique is that the collusion
between the incumbents, global capital/superpowers may be enough to ensure the
election passes the legitimacy test and enhances the re-engagement
(neoliberal) agenda.
And I do not think that Charamba’s statement demonstrates
any fear of the mainstream political opposition, let alone an unexpected ‘cliffhanger’
political situation in which his party loses the election. The opposition, divided as it is, fits snugly
into the broader scheme of things. The ruling
establishment needs an opposition for it to pass the test. If the MDC-T was not there on its own, they
would, for the purposes of 2018, have invented it.
But there is an opposition which appears to have greater
freedom to campaign than it had under Mugabe.
The only regret is that the opposition may be too preoccupied with itself to
miss the full import of Charamba’s statement.
And in any case, the whispers in the corridors of opposition political power
is that the 2018 election is a dress rehearsal for 2023. So a greater majority of opposition leaders don’t
expect to win this year. They however
want to either be in parliament or be considered strong enough to have the ear
of a ‘victorious’ establishment and hopefully be around to be presidential
candidates in 2023.
So what Charamba calls ‘high stakes’ is not so
sophisticated. Its basically a new
cohesion of the ruling party leaders, private capital and religious leaders in
order to consolidate a new hold on power with an intention at permanence in it. The main opposition players, mostly by
default, but others a little more deliberately, are bit part players in this
(with due recognition and material reward to be realized at a later stage).
You may ask, does any of this really matter to the
people? A well-considered response would
be yes it does and where there is any doubt, yes it should. What we are
witnessing is a coagulation of two types of elites. The political and the economic. The former
being those at the head of Zanu Pf (with a sprinkling of opposition individuals/leaders) and
the latter being global and local private capital(ists). They are all united in one thing, their (long
term) right to dine exclusively at the high table of the free market.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
(takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment