SADC must treat Zimbabwe as firmly as it is apparently planning to treat Madagascar

If SADC is considering imposing sanctions against Madagascar’s presidential candidates, why not also Zimbabwean leaders who frustrate efforts to hold credible, free and fair elections?

What’s good for the Madagascar goose is surely good for the Zimbabwe gander. These two countries, which have been the main irritants on the agenda of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) for years, though different in many ways, reveal some significant similarities – at least as issues.

In both countries, SADC has been trying to persuade a reluctant incumbent president to allow free, fair and credible elections. Without a great deal of success in either case. And now illegitimate elections are looming in both countries and SADC is being called upon to put its foot down more firmly than it is accustomed to doing.

In Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina, the ex disc jockey who deposed elected President Marc Ravalomanana in a coup during March 2009, flatly defied SADC decisions that he should allow his rival to return from exile in South Africa to contest presidential elections. In frustration SADC eventually resorted to persuading both Rajoelina and Ravalomanana to agree to pull out of the race. Then Ravalomanana put up his wife Lalao as the presidential candidate for his political movement. That provoked Rajoelina to renege on his agreement and to re-enter the race. Apart from breaking his promise to SADC, Rajoelina also broke the law because he missed the deadline to register as a candidate, SADC says.

Lalao Ravalomanana also broke the law because she had only recently returned from South Africa and so did not meet the legal requirement of at least six month’s residence in Madagascar before the elections. Another former president and contender in the upcoming elections, Didier Ratsiraka, similarly broke the law because he has been living in exile in France for a decade. Nonetheless the electoral court accepted all three candidacies and then stuck to that decision last week even after SADC and the African Union (AU) had threatened not to recognize any of them if they were elected. The Malagasy authorities also postponed the presidential election for a month, from 24 July to 23 August, because they said the country needed more time to prepare.

In Zimbabwe meanwhile, SADC has managed to effect some changes; including a unity government and a new constitution. But it has had no real success in persuading President Robert Mugabe to make any meaningful reforms to the security agencies or the public media to make them impartial in the election campaign. Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party insist that the country is ready for elections now and they were given ammunition when the Constitutional Court decided recently that elections must be held by 31 July. The two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) parties say that is impossible because it does not allow enough time for the necessary reforms.

On Saturday SADC is to meet at summit level in Maputo to discuss the Zimbabwe and Madagascar elections and also, probably, the chaos in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Officials are saying that the SADC leaders will consider imposing travel and financial sanctions against Rajoelina, Ratsiraka and Lalao Ravalomanana if they don’t withdraw from the presidential race. Later this month those sanctions could be widened to include the AU and the international community when the AU Peace and Security Council meets the International Contact Group on Madagascar in Addis Ababa.

It is a little surprising to discover that SADC, hitherto rather timid, might impose sanctions on the leader of a member state, even if that state has been suspended. The question now is why does SADC not consider using the same measures against any Zimbabwean leaders who frustrate efforts to hold credible, legitimate, free and fair elections there too?

That does not seem to be SADC’s current disposition. After it met the last time on Zimbabwe in Addis Ababa in May, it seemed impatient to get shot of the Zimbabwe issue and therefore ready to accept the 31 July election deadline, mainly on grounds that Zimbabwe had adopted a new constitution approved by all three parties in the unity government. But the country is patently not ready for proper elections. The security agencies that have played such a decisive role in past elections are far from being impartial.

Human Rights Watch last week quoted the Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander, General Constantine Chiwenga, talking to The Sunday Mail just last month. He was asked if he would meet Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main MDC party, to discuss security sector reforms. He answered: ‘We have no time to meet sellouts. Clearly Tsvangirai is a psychiatric patient who needs a competent psychiatrist.’ He then repeated the familiar line of all the security force chiefs that they would not serve anyone who had not participated in the liberation struggle – i.e. only Mugabe and definitely not Tsvangirai.

This was an outrageous, mutinous act by a military officer who is supposed to serve Tsvangirai as head of government. Likewise the state-owned TV, radio and newspapers that dominate the media, continue to ply an unashamedly pro-ZANU-PF line. Meanwhile ZANU-PF negotiators continue to resist all efforts by the MDC to reform these sectors and others.

SADC leaders should now abandon the illusion they have been cherishing so far that ZANU-PF is capable of making the necessary reforms alone. Guided by President Jacob Zuma’s facilitation team that knows the terrain backwards, they should lay down their own markers of what they would consider an acceptable level of reform and other measures such as credible election monitoring. Then the election date should be pushed back far enough to give Mugabe enough time to implement those reforms. And SADC should threaten to suspend Zimbabwe and impose travel and financial sanctions on Mugabe if he does not do so.

If not, how would they justify treating Zimbabwe differently from Madagascar? The latter was suspended from SADC in 2009 because Rajoelina came to power via a military coup. That violated SADC – and the AU’s – rule against unconstitutional changes of power. Now SADC is also contemplating sanctions against him and others because they are defying SADC. But all of this is equally valid for Zimbabwe. The suspension rule applies not only to an unconstitutional seizure of power but also to an unconstitutional retention of power, which is exactly what Mugabe and ZANU-PF will be doing if they win elections under present conditions. And refusing to implement reforms mandated by SADC would defy the organisation just as surely as Rajoelina and co are doing.

Peter Fabricius, Foreign Editor, Independent Newspapers, South Africa

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