Multimedia: It’s about election strategy, stupid!

IN Zimbabwe, Zanu PF supporters in the throes of victory have been walking through the streets carrying shovels, calling on their re-elected president Robert Mugabe to bury the Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

RANJENI MUNUSAMY

But Tsvangirai saved Mugabe the trouble by burying himself long before the elections.

Zanu PF supporters in the throes of victory walk through the streets carrying shovels, calling on their re-elected president Robert Mugabe to bury the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Picture: Simphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

Tsvangirai’s lack of political strategy and assumption that Zimbabweans would choose him over Mugabe led to a sweeping victory for Zanu PF — with the aid of some old-fashioned vote rigging. The lesson South Africa should learn from the Zimbabwe experience is that no matter how bad leaders are, do not assume that voters will punish them at the polls.

No matter how bad leaders are, do not assume that voters will punish them at the polls. Picture: Cynthia R Matonhodze

Yes, of course Zimbabwe’s electoral process was flawed. It was always going to be. From previous experience, the MDC — in all its incarnations — should have known it would be. Yet there is no indication that the Zimbabwean opposition anticipated this, particularly the massive discrepancies in the voters’ roll, and set in place a plan to deal with the eventuality before, during or after the elections.

From the time Tsvangirai founded the MDC in 1999, he was quite aware that Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the securocrats behind him do not play nicely. Tsvangirai has been arrested several times, charged with treason and incitement to violence, severely beaten and faced threats of assassination. A crackdown on the opposition led to hundreds of his supporters being killed, assaulted, imprisoned and harassed.

Tsvangirai became the biggest threat to Mugabe’s grip on power, and in the 2008 presidential elections he won the majority of votes with 47,8% of the poll. In the month between the election and the announcement of the official results it looked for the first time like Zimbabwe could be prized out of Mugabe’s iron grip.

But because neither party had an outright majority (Mugabe had 43,2%), a run-off election was held, which Tsvangirai withdrew from. Without much hesitation, Mugabe took the gap and retained his presidency.

With the intervention of Sadc, and South Africa acting as facilitator, the MDC and its smaller breakaway entered into a power-sharing agreement with Zanu PF. Although Tsvangirai’s role as prime minister was not clearly defined, his and other MDC leaders’ entry into the Cabinet gave them access to resources and insight into the workings of the state. Although unwieldy and problem prone, the unity government brought some level of stability to Zimbabwe with tangible improvement to the economy and a cessation of state-sponsored violence.

But what did Tsvangirai and other leaders of his party do with the leverage, resources and status they gained through senior posts in government? Did they use it to break the stranglehold of the securocrats? Did they use it to understand and defuse Mugabe’s grip on power? Did they take advantage of their strategic positions to work towards electoral victory?

No. They became complacent and enjoyed the fruits of high government office. Tsvangirai became too consumed with his own personal life and his party allowed him to take his eye of the ball. It was only when the July 31 election date was announced that the MDC snapped into crisis mode. But there was still the expectation that the Sadc and African Union would come to the rescue.

Morgan Tsvangirai was quite aware that Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and the securocrats behind him do not play nicely. Picture: Aaron Ufumeli

Even though the MDC did not get access to the voters roll in time, it still went into the election like sheep to the slaughterhouse. By participating in the flawed poll, the MDC gave it legitimacy and had no backup plan as to how to challenge Zanu PF if the election swung in its favour. And now that it did, moaning about flaws in the process and challenging the results in court can do little to reverse Zanu PF’s massive 76% of the parliamentary vote.

The total lack of foresight and reliance on people’s instincts led to the MDC effectively handing Mugabe a runaway victory and his seventh term in office. Tsvangirai was arrogant enough to believe that people would naturally choose him over Mugabe, without him doing any heavy lifting in the run up to the election.

The MDC never interrogated whether Tsvangirai was the right person to lead the electoral battle and rode the 2008 wave, assuming it would miraculously produce even better results in 2013.

Even with large numbers of ghost voters and ballot stuffing – which the MDC still has to prove in court — there are indications that Zimbabweans are less enchanted with Tsvangirai than they were in 2008. They saw what he did when he had access to power and clearly did not like what they saw.

The MDC also resorted to negative campaigning against Mugabe, rather than putting out a proper governance and recovery plan for Zimbabwe. But it’s not as if Zimbabweans are oblivious to Mugabe’s 33-year destructive reign. It was just that for many of them, Tsvangirai did not appear to be a better alternative.

Ebrahim Fakir, political analyst at the Electoral Institute for the Sustainability of Democracy in Africa, says the MDC was “horribly strategically inept”, and should have stepped out of the poll particularly in light of the pre-election environment so clearly stacked against them. He said the opposition did not pay sufficient attention to the registration process and should have made an urgent court application to have access to the voters’ roll ahead of time.

With regard to the MDC’s election campaign, Fakir said there are a series of issues the opposition should have defined clearly, including what their tactics were, their constituency and what were they promising them, and whether these promises were realistic, viable and valuable.

“They did make some promises, but the negative campaigning overshadowed the positive messaging. There was also a lot of over-confidence,” Fakir said. He said voters tend to switch off when there is excessive negative messaging and wild accusations.

“Even if the MDC won, the election should still have been null and void. The conditions, context, framework, logistics and preparation were not conducive to running an election. They ought not to have had an election,” Fakir said.