The ogre of Harare

In the US presidential election, candidates pay millions to flight campaign spots in states where primaries or elections are to be held. Each is tailored to the region in question. Though they’re often banal, promising the undeliverable, pandering to prejudice or exploiting economic illitaracy, the idea of targeting your limited campaign funds seems sensible. It is also possible in a free and fair society.

There is, therefore, a terrible irony in the fact that candidates standing in opposition to Zimbabwe’s brutal dictator, Robert Mugabe, in tomorrow’s election there, are buying advertising in newspapers and on prime-time TV in neighbouring South Africa. Both Simba Mokoni, the outcast from Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, have spent a lot of money here.

There are several reasons for this. One is that a large number of Zimbabweans are in South Africa, legally or otherwise, and may be inclined to return to vote tomorrow. (Expats are no longer permitted to vote abroad.) They’re here because they cannot survive with the hyperinflation, empty grocery shelves and political violence — the legacy of Mugabe’s long rule and failed policies — so one hardly needs a survey to tell you that about 100% of them would want to see political change. NGOs are urging the two million or more expatriate Zimbabweans in South Africa — many of whom will risk arrest and deportation in South Africa, or worse in Zimbabwe — to go home and vote.

The more sinister reason is restrictions on free speech and repression of opposition campaigns in Zimbabwe itself. The picture alongside, tellingly named “Policeviolenceagainstanoppo.jpg” was taken last year, and republished on This is Zimbabwe, the must-read blog if you’re following events in Zimbabwe. Its “election watch” series gives a good impression of how free and fair elections are likely to be. Voting districts have been gerrymandered, voter rolls are being tampered with, and election laws have just been amended, contrary to pre-election agreements with opposition parties, to permit police to enter polling stations to “assist illiterate voters” to vote, for example. (In South Africa’s historic 1994 election, there were dozens of parties on the ballot, most voters had never voted before, and illiteracy was a major concern. So the ballot came with pictures of party logos and photos of their leaders, and extensive voter education campaigns were run by the Independent Electoral Commission and a myriad NGOs, explaining how the ballot would work. This elegantly solved the problem. No apartheid-era police officers were needed at polling stations to “help” people vote.)

It is no surprise that Zimbabwe has banned most foreign media. Among broadcasters, the state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation is one of only two networks permitted a bureau in Zimbabwe (the other is Al Jazeera). SABC rival e-tv says it will be reporting the election diligently, from the Beit Bridge border post. As I was on the Burma issue, and often am on issues of foreign policy, I’m ashamed to call myself a South African, considering the tacit and overt support my country gives to nationalist dictators, communist despots and murderous tyrants, such as that geriatric scum, Mugabe.

For tomorrow, election observers are not permitted, except for the South African Development Community delegation led by South Africa. Why them? Because they were the only bunch of reprehensible clowns to declare the previous election free and fair. The simpering idiots will do so again this year. South Africa’s highest officials have already laid the groundwork for a conclusion that panders to ogre of Harare, as has SADC itself. Human rights campaigners are not so sure.

So political parties are turning to non-traditional means of getting their messages of change out, and those means include campaign advertisements in countries other than where the election is being held.

In words that make him sound like the biggest bully on the school playground (”Just dare try it. We don’t play around while you try to please your British allies. Just try it and you will see.”), Robert Mugabe has threatened dire consequences for anyone who dares dispute the outcome of the election. After all, it’s already rigged, so the outcome is almost a foregone conclusion.

The sad fact is that Mugabe’s sham elections are unlikely to restore freedom to Zimbabweans. They’re unlikely to reverse the economic disaster that Mugabe shamelessly blames on Western sanctions and colonial plots, but are actually the result of wholesale expropriation of land and assets, price controls, cronyism and outright kleptocracy.

Perhaps nothing short of violent revolt will reverse the disaster. I can’t possibly make a case for such a revolt by the people of Zimbabwe, since South Africa’s constitution limits my freedom of speech when it comes to “propaganda for war”, but at Commentary South Africa, John makes a good case, using Tibet as a case in point, why the superficial nobility of peaceful opposition against violent repression masks the fact that it seldom, if ever, produces a free and fair outcome.

That Zimbabwean political candidates are campaigning in South Africa against an 84-year-old ogre merely underscores the limits of “quiet diplomacy” and “peaceful opposition”. While Zimbabweans try to vote themselves a better future tomorrow, I will spend the day mourning the empty breadbasket of sub-Saharan Africa. I will spend tomorrow remembering why free people and free markets (to pilfer a tagline) are the “basis” of “basic human rights”. Why political and economic liberty are prerequisites for a fair, prosperous future.

I wish you well, Zimbabwe. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.