I have been
keenly following the Kenyan 2022 election court case. Mainly because as a
Zimbabwean I have to reflect on electoral result disputes as they occur in my
own country. As it turns out the Supreme
Court of Kenya has decided, at law, that William Ruto is the duly elected president
of Kenya.
And the
reasons that court gave are varied. At
least on the nine (9) points that they gave. What is important is the fact of
the disputation of presidential election results. Both as a general expectation and as a
general electoral habit. A development
that remains completely understandable.
Even if
when presented before a court off law, the mathematics or legal argumentation
appears to fall short of expected requirements.
What is apparent
is the fact of all elections in Africa, South of the Sahara being expected to be
disputed. Or at least ending up at one constitutional
court or the other.
This is the
case in Kenya and Angola. As will be the
case in Zimbabwe, Botswana or Nigeria when they hold their next elections.
What remains
in vogue is the fact of the disputability of election results. And how such disputes will always end up
being presented to a Supreme or Constitutional Court. Together with the fact
that in most insistences this becomes an international relations issue. Almost as a force of habit. With the expectations that after every other
five year election period, this is actually an expectation. Meaning that no matter the assumptions of ‘electoral
reforms’ there will always be disputation as to the results. Even if the same assumptions are made in
Global North countries.
What is
apparent is the fact of an emerging culture that we should and can dispute electoral
results. For the sake of it. It is almost an electoral campaign that so
long we run for political office we should be able to dispute electoral results. Or in other words, we cannot lose an election. Especially if we have the sympathy of the Global
North and its foreign policy intentions.
In this
what emerges is the assumption of what is an election? Who actually votes and
for whom? Even if the candidate is as straight forward as can be, we have to
realise that it reflects more the interests of those that prefer that
particular candidate than they would an opposing one.
But this
may not matter as much. The essence of electoral
campaigns’ in contemporary Africa is a specific populism. One that manages materialist desire and
legality of the same. And this is a complicated
point. “We are what we are not. That is the paradox of fiction”. I am quoting here from Dambudzo Marechera
from his novella “The Black Insider”.
The fact of
disputation of elections is one that means we are what we are not. Our anticipation is that we will always have victory. Yet victory always eludes us. As though it
was a curse.
Our
abstract struggles at liberatory beings are those that tend to belong to the
immediate. The struggles for the organic
understanding of the future of the people of Zimbabwe is not abstract. It is immediate. And we know that those that fought the war of
liberation understand this. If they do not then we have to have a conversation about
the fact of the reality of what it meant actually fight the oppressor in the
most trying of circumstances.
It is
apparent that the liberation struggle was complicated. And that it remains an historical
reality we can never wish away. Even if
we were in the political opposition. The importance of Zimbabwean being is that
we do not dispute the war of liberation.
We also do not argue with the fact of desire for electoral change. Nor the reality that democracy has mutated to
mean many things to many people. Some in
power. Others close to power.
What we do
know is that democracy represents a political culture that is essentially about
posterity. It is not about the immediate.
And more about the future. Where
we embrace it for posterity we will be alright.
*Takura
Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
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