A glimmer of change in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe's senate elections on 26 November have been dismissed by many, including the United States state department, as a non-event, but I think the polls mark a significant turning-point in Zimbabwean politics.

Certainly there are compelling arguments against the importance of the senate elections. The voter turnout at 19.6% of the 3.2 million registered voters was a record low for the country.

It was a foregone conclusion that victory would go to President Robert Mugabe's ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), because so few of the fifty elected seats were contested and because Mugabe controls the appointment of sixteen additional seats. In the end Zanu-PF took fifty-nine of the senate's sixty-six seats and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won seven.

Also in openDemocracy about Zimbabwe’s political, social and human travails:

Bev Clark, “Mass evictions in Zimbabwe” (June 2005)

The Zimbabwean, “Zimbabwe’s opposition: a house divided” (November 2005)

Wilf Mbanga, “Zimbabwe’s election blues” (November 2005)

Netsai Mushonga, “Two nights in Harare’s police cells” (November 2005)

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It is obvious to all that the senate will serve merely as Mugabe’s second rubber-stamp, following his control of the lower house of parliament, in endorsing the president’s will.

Zimbabwe had a senate once before, at independence in 1980, but Mugabe abolished it by a constitutional amendment in 1990, saying that it was unnecessary and expensive. Mugabe gave no explanation as to why the senate is more useful now when he resurrected the legislative upper chamber in September 2005, with yet another constitutional amendment – Zimbabwe's seventeenth.

It is clear he needed to increase patronage for his party faithful. Zimbabwean commentator Daniel Molekele aptly summed up the new senate as "just more carriages on the Zanu-PF gravy train".

However the senate elections are noteworthy because they came at a critical juncture in Zimbabwe's history and have changed the shape of opposition politics. The opposition's different responses point the ways to the Zimbabwean people’s ability to cope with their country's deepening humanitarian crisis.

The senate elections are significant partly because they prompted a split in the opposition party, the MDC. For six years, from its birth in September 1999, the MDC has posed the most serious challenge to Mugabe's rule since he came to power in 1980. The MDC formed a broad alliance that brought together Zimbabwe's blacks and whites, Shona and Ndebele and citizens from rural and urban areas.

Despite blatant rigging and state violence in which hundreds of MDC members were killed, the new party came within a whisker of winning a majority of seats in the 2000 parliamentary elections. However the stacked results of the 2002 presidential elections and again in the March 2005 parliamentary elections made it glaringly clear that Mugabe completely controlled all aspects of elections, from voter registration to vote counting. The opposition didn't stand a chance.

When the new senate elections were announced, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai argued forcefully that the party should boycott the polls, maintaining that the upper chamber is a meaningless body and the elections would be rigged. The MDC should not lend legitimacy to the senate polls, said Tsvangirai.

But a significant part of the MDC, especially the wing centred in the second city of Bulawayo, insisted that the party must contest the elections and have as much representation as possible. The MDC's national executive council voted narrowly – thirty-three to thirty-one – in favour of taking part in the elections. Tsvangirai ignored the vote and announced the party would boycott. The pro-participation side put up twenty-six candidates for senate seats. Tsvangirai expelled them. In return, the Bulawayo element said that Tsvangirai himself had been kicked out of the party.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and most of the Shona side of the party support Tsvangirai. MDC secretary-general Welshman Ncube and deputy-president Gibson Sibanda lead the Bulawayo group and represent the more intellectual side of the party. The split appears irretrievable.

Tsvangirai has alienated a large, influential sector of the MDC, but he is pointing a new way forward. He is calling on the party to give up on the electoral route and instead concentrate on mass action to bring change. It has been argued since 2002 that mass protests were needed to curtail Mugabe's dictatorial rule. Tsvangirai has already been charged twice with treason for urging protest against the government. It is a risky route but, Tsvangirai argues, it is necessary.

A people on the edge

Certainly the situation on the ground is dire. Four successive failed harvests have left the once well-fed Zimbabwean population perpetually hungry. The United Nations humanitarian envoy, Jan Egeland, confirmed on 7 December after a four-day visit to the country that the “humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe is very serious” and added that the “need for international aid is big and growing”.

It is not just the seizures of white-owned farms that have caused the collapse of agriculture. The Mugabe government has also failed the poor black subsistence farmers who cannot get seeds and fertiliser. They are ill-fed and unhappy, but Zanu-PF has thrown a net of party agents, traditional chiefs and security agents across the countryside to intimidate the rural people.

Andrew Meldrum lived and worked as a journalist in Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2003, when Robert Mugabe’s government expelled him. He is now based in Pretoria, and reports for the Guardian on Zimbabwe and southern Africa. He is the author of Where We Have Hope: A Memoir of Zimbabwe (John Murray, 2004)

Also by Andrew Meldrum in openDemocracy:

“Who won Zimbabwe’s election?” (April 2005)

The cities were better off until June 2005 when the government started its infamous Operation Murambatsvina (Shona for “clean out the filth”) in which thousands of homes were destroyed. It was a strike against the urban population that had voted consistently for the opposition and which was demanding better government. An estimated 700,000 people are now homeless or jobless and living by the sides of roads in the rain.

Inflation is at 411%, unemployment at 80%. An estimated 70% of Zimbabwean people are now living below the poverty line. These are not dry statistics. Even people with jobs are surviving on one meal a day; others are enduring desperate hunger.

Zimbabwe's once-vaunted public-health services are breaking down at an alarming rate. Garbage collection has become sporadic, running water is no longer safe to drink and lengthy power failures are routine. Sewage management has broken down. It is no surprise that Harare has an outbreak of dysentery.

The cities are restive and resentful of the government officials speeding by in Mercedes sedans. Mugabe has relied on the army and police to enforce his rule. But even the security forces are finding it difficult to feed their families.

The senate elections enabled Robert Mugabe to deliver his “state of the nation” speech on 6 December – interrupted midway by a power cut – in a strong position. The MDC has divided just when Zimbabwe most needs effective opposition. But the simmering discontent across the country, and the extraordinary vitality and resilience of Zimbabwe’s people and civil society, does not bode well for Mugabe. They need domestic leadership and international support to overthrow the dictatorship and restore Zimbabwe's democracy and the prosperity the country once enjoyed.