Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has failed to use his leverage as incoming Southern African Development Community (SADC) chairperson to influence the regional body to withdraw its election observer mission report which was endorsed by its extraordinary summit in Angola last year and a special ministerial meeting in Zambia prior to that unprecedentedly rejecting his re-election as flawed, disputed and a fraud.
The Sadc report stands as the official record of how the regional body viewed the Zimbabwe general elections held in August last year won by Mnangagwa and Zanu PF amid a series of illegalities and fraud.
The Sadc election observer mission said the polls did not comply with Zimbabwe’s own constitution and the Sadc principles and guidelines governing democratic elections.
Although Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, who did not physically attend the Harare summit in protest, said elections in different Sadc member states held during his tenure as chairperson of the Sadc troika of the organ on politics, defence and security were “reasonably peaceful”, he did not withdraw the official report of the Sadc election observer mission which he presided over when he sent former vice president of his country Nevers Mumba to lead the delegation to Zimbabwe.
This means Sadc stands by its report and Mnangagwa in their official eyes thus remains a leader who came to power through fraud which they called out and recorded and endorsed officially.
Mnangagwa’s installation as Sadc chair is rotational and has not resolved his legitimacy crisis as long as the report remains the official record, although it has also exposed regional leaders’ failure to take an open and firm stand against undemocratic practices among their ranks – the Hichilema way.
Hichilema’s stand has sparked a diplomatic row between Zimbabwe and Zambia, which Lusaka has appealed to have it resolved by Sadc and the African Union.
Zimbabwe’s August 2023 election had glaring irregularities, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) declared in a final report published a month and a half after the polls.
A spirited attack by Harare to discredit the SEOM and its head, Nevers Mumba, a former Zambian vice president, seems to have been ineffective in swaying the final report from the initial condemnation of the way the elections were conducted.
Prior to the release of the final report, Zambian president Hakainde Hichilema, in his capacity as chairperson of the SADC troika on defence and politics, convened a meeting in which the Zimbabwean elections were up for discussion.
During the meeting, he raised concern the attack on the SEOM undermined SADC’s role.
The Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) that was led by Nelson Chamisa at the time, said the report supported its demand for fresh elections because it revealed numerous glaring irregularities that occurred during the elections.
The CCC added it believed fresh elections should be held in Zimbabwe on a level playing field, but only after a transitional authority, guided by SADC, ran the country for a while.
In its final report, SEOM reiterated the views on a plebiscite that earned President Emmerson Mnangagwa a controversial second term.
“The SEOM noted that … some aspects of the Harmonised Elections fell short of the requirements of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, the Electoral Act, and the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections (2021),” reads the report.
SEOM further questioned ZEC’s independence after some of its commissioners were closely related to senior Zanu PF officials.
“In event that the concerns from stakeholders that some ZEC Commissioners are closely related to the senior members of the ruling party are found to be true, there is a risk of violation of Section 11(2) of the Electoral Act and Section 4.1.9 of the SADC Principles and Guidelines SEOM, therefore, recommends that such practice be considered as one of the disqualification criteria in recruitment of ZEC officials,” it said.
In its recommendations, the mission urged ZEC to avail the voters roll to stakeholders to allow enough time for inspection and verification in line with the Electoral Act.
Launching its Eswatini observer mission last September, SADC wrote: “SADC Electoral Observation Missions ONLY observes elections. SADC DOES NOT conduct elections in its Member States but observes them. We then make recommendations. Understand the role of SADC when it comes to observing elections. Our mandate is only to observe and issue a report.”
In absence, Zambian President Hichilema Hakainde cast a shadow at President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s parade on Saturday as he assumed the rotational chairmanship of SADC.
Mnangagwa had pulled all stops to ensure everything went smoothly, splurging millions in taxpayer funds on road repairs, engaging a Swiss company to build luxury villas to house regional leaders and also locking up over 120 political rivals to stymie planned protests.
To Mnangagwa’s embarrassment, the villas never got finished and only a handful of leaders required overnight accommodation in Harare anyway as some elected to arrive on the day of the summit including South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Mokgweetsi Masisi of Botswana and Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique.
An official government schedule had showed that all the leaders were expected to have arrived by Friday, the eve of the summit, including Hichilema who as outgoing chairman of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation was due to preside over a meeting of the troika at 4PM that day alongside the leaders of Tanzania and Namibia.
With no known intervention by the AU or SADC yet, Hichilema has avoided meeting Mnangagwa, including in July when he boycotted a three-nation wildlife conservation summit in Harare, attended by Nyusi and Mnangagwa.
