Robert Mugabe Turns 90

Robert Mugabe, the longstanding president of Zimbabwe, celebrates his 90th birthday today. There is no question he has seen significant changes occur over his lifetime, from the end of colonialism to the rise of globalization. But being the only president Zimbabwe has ever had since its transition to majority rule in 1980 also means that no other person has defined the political and economic landscape of his country more than he has.

Looking at the state of Zimbabwe today, that is neither a positive legacy nor one that many in Zimbabwe hope continues.

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Here's Exactly How Robert Mugabe Stole the Zimbabwe Election

On July 31 Zimbabweans went to the polls in the highly anticipated national elections that marked the end of the Government of National Unity established in 2009. In the end, President Robert Mugabe won with 61% of the vote over MDC-T’s Morgan Tsvangirai. Mugabe’s ZANU PF party also took two-thirds supermajority in parliament, the most they have held since the MDC first contested elections in 2000.

Now, in what is becoming a Zimbabwe electoral tradition, the aftermath of the election and its credibility is being fiercely debated between key stakeholders while members of the international community line up to take sides in the debate. 

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Zimbabwe's Un-Credible Elections

In less than a week, Zimbabwe will go to the polls in the first presidential and parliamentary elections since the violent 2008 election and formation of a Government of National Unity (GNU). Analysts generally agree that this election may be the most important in determining the country’s path since Zimbabwe’s first election in 1980. As such, the whole world is watching. Yet while the run up to the election has not been as violent as 2008, there are still plenty of concerns about the legitimacy of the election given a rushed and flawed process to get to the polls on time.

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Civil Society Under Fire in Zimbabwe

The last time Zimbabwe made widespread international headlines occurred as the country descended into violence following the contested 2008 presidential elections. That chapter in Zimbabwean history ended with the Global Political Agreement (GPA) that split power between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The final conditions of the GPA are set to be fulfilled this year with a referendum on a new constitution and new presidential elections. But despite the appearance of moving forward, a closer look at recent events shows that all is not well in Zimbabwe.

A rash of new arrests of civil society leaders are just the tip of the iceberg but also highlight the problems facing a legitimate transition of power later this year. ZANU PF’s national conference in December ended with a commitment to deregister “errant NGOs.” Almost immediately, the government started targeting the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) by arresting multiple employees and the organization’s director along with charging the organization itself with illegal voter registration. More recently, the government introduced a new law that harshly regulates youth organizations as members of the National Youth Development Trust were arrested and their office in Bulawayo raided. Last week, police raided the office and seized equipment from the Zimbabwe Peace Project which tracks political violence and also broke up a peaceful protest by Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) with arrests, beatings and teargas.

These incidents depict the general backdrop of Zimbabwean politics today as the referendum on the draft constitution approaches in March. WOZA’s Magodonga Mahlangu and Jenni Williams spoke at a roundtable event in Washington, DC last month about these challenges and the difficulties of pushing for progress in such a politicized setting. Both women were optimistic then that in the end, real reform could be made this year. But in some corners, such cautious optimism is waning. At this point even if the referendum and subsequent election are peaceful, the lack of legitimacy for the result is pretty much guaranteed.

The reason for this largely lies in the first sentence of this post: the last time people paid attention to Zimbabwe was during the violent aftermath of the 2008 election. Once that subsided, attention turned elsewhere. Meanwhile, not much actually changed inside the country even with the GPA. The pro-democracy group Sokwanele released a report in December 2012 detailing gross violations of the GPA by all parties involved, although ZANU PF dominated in the number of infractions. The political violence and corruption seen so clearly in 2008 never fully stopped which means that the reforms needed for a legitimate democratic process are still lacking. Along the way, regional actors such as SADC largely enabled the lack of reforms by consistently siding with ZANU PF, leaving few avenues for the people of Zimbabwe to seek government accountability.

With the constitutional referendum set for March 16, the consequences of such crackdowns are growing. Regardless of the outcome, the referendum is just a warm up for the general elections. The recent attacks on civil society are just one sign pointing to a repeat of the contentious elections of 2002 and 2008. If that is to be avoided, now is the time for the world to start paying attention to Zimbabwe again.

Originally published by Foreign Policy Association

The African Commission Takes on SADC

One of the classic debates within the development field is the interplay between rights and economic prosperity. On one side of the debate are those who argue that development should come first, even if it is at the cost of civil and political rights of the population. On the other side are those arguing that they must come hand in hand, as the suppression of rights often leads to political instability and conflict, which harms any possible gains made in economic development. To be sure, the importance of dependable property rights and accessible due process in legal disputes has been linked by several scholars as general requirements to sustained economic growth. Indeed, this was the thinking behind incorporating human rights into the regional economic communities that sprung up across Africa following the end of colonization.

But the part of the equation often left out is the reality that human rights are only worth as much as they can be enforced, and often that requires enforcing these rights against national governments committing the abuses. Consequently, it did not take long before the three major regional economic communities in Africa – The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community – established their own regional courts of justice that addressed the issue of human rights.

Unfortunately for SADC, that legacy may be approaching its end. In 2008 the SADC Human Rights Tribunal ruled against Zimbabwe on the infamous land seizure policy the government put into place in 2000. The ruling set up a showdown between the Tribunal and Robert Mugabe, who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the decision.  Rather than support the legal judgment of the tribunal and the importance of upholding human rights in the region, the 14 member governments suspended the tribunal in 2010 and recently rewrote the admissibility procedures to prohibit individuals from filing complaints with the tribunal, limiting it to state complaints only.

Several key figures in the region spoke out against these developments, to no avail. But it looks like the issue may be getting new life as the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights ruled a complaint by Luke Tembani and Ben Freeth against all 14 SADC member states admissible on the basis that the suspension of the tribunal violates the African Charter on Human Rights and the rule of law.

Tembani and Freeth are no strangers to the intricacies of human rights litigation. Tembani became one of the first black commercial farmers following the Zimbabwe civil war in 1980 while Freeth came to prominence as a farmer activist along with his father-in-law Mike Campbell. Both families were evicted from their commercial farms as part of Mugabe’s land reform program and both filed cases in the national Zimbabwean courts and finally the SADC tribunal where they won. In many ways, they have become the faces of the fight against the farm seizures and the political violence and corruption it has come to represent, especially following the death of Campbell who succumbed to health issues after being abducted and tortured by militias associated with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party in the 2008 post-election violence. By bringing a complaint against all SADC governments, the case makes the struggle of everyday Zimbabweans a regional issue and demands better action by SADC than capitulating to one leader’s demands.

If the African Commission rules in the favor of the complainants, it could be a landmark decision for the entire continent. But with new presidential elections expected in 2013, the decision to hear the issue could add fuel to what is already looking like a volatile political fire. The issue here in not just the controversial land reform process that Zimbabwe adopted, but ability of citizens to hold their governments accountable for violating their basic rights, even when the national courts fail to do so. Enshrining this ability enforces human rights and the rule of law, but is also critical for economic development. As Africa continues to come out from behind the economic shadows, it is cases like this that will define the path of the continent and help decide what kind of standards future governments will have.

Originally published on November 27, 2012 at www.foreignpolicyblogs.com