South Africa's failure in Zimbabwe

JOHANNESBURG
PARLIAMENTARY elections will be held tomorrow in Zimbabwe in conditions that assure they will not be free and fair.

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This is due to the systematic evisceration of every vestige of due process in Zimbabwe under the regime of Robert Mugabe, whose Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front has ruled the country since 1980.

In 2000 the once invincible ZANU party lost some support to an emerging opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, led by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai in parliamentary elections that independent observers, with the exception of the African National Congress, pronounced neither free nor fair. In 2002 Mugabe narrowly beat Tsvangirai in a presidential election, pronounced neither free nor fair by most election observers, again with the exception of the ANC.

Since 2002 Mugabe has cracked down on political opposition, conducted a reign of terror against MDC supporters and party workers, expelled foreign journalists, and shut down the independent media. He has packed a once independent judiciary with hand-picked ZANU lackeys and used the courts to prosecute opponents on trumped-up charges. He has had Tsvangirai tried for treason (he was acquitted). The ZANU-controlled Parliament has passed laws that restrict freedom of association and assembly. Government-sponsored militias were sent into the countryside to intimidate, terrorize, and, if necessary, kill. With elections tomorrow, the electorate is unlikely to forget the likely consequences of voting the wrong way.

The people starve, in part because the land seized from white farmers in 2000 and thereafter was turned over to liberation war veterans, Mugabe cronies, an assortment of landless peasants, farm tenants, and party loyalists, few of whom can farm. In the country once regarded as the agricultural breadbasket of the sub-Sahara, the World Food Program estimates that about half of Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people are at risk of starvation while Mugabe bans food aid, the better to use what food there is as a political tool.

Earlier this month, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch each issued a report that said the systematic human rights violations by the Zimbabwean government made free participation in the elections impossible.

Mugabe is in substantial breach of every election protocol of the Southern African Development Community, of which Zimbabwe is a member; he has failed to implement the recommendations of the African Union's Commission on Human and People's Rights; he flouts international law, and he has banned the presence of observer teams from all countries and nongovernmental organizations that might conclude that the elections might not be free and fair (China qualifies, the European Union does not).

Rather than rebuke Mugabe for his crimes against his own people, South Africa assists in their persecution. When Zimbabweans, desperate for food and work, sneak their way into South Africa, they are incarcerated in the Lindela Repatriation Center, a prison that would put any apartheid-era prison to shame.

Sadly, black South Africans seem to have forgotten that all of Africa took them in and championed their cause, often at risk to themselves. Just weeks ago, President Thabo Mbeki pronounced, ''Nobody in Zimbabwe is likely to act in a way that will prevent free and fair elections being held" -- the blithe sentiment of the mightily unperturbed.

A mere 11 years ago, South Africa held its first free, fair, and nonracial elections, which brought 40 years of apartheid ignominy and 300 years of institutionalized racial discrimination to an end. It ushered in an era of democratic governance, with the ANC the lead actor. However, before the ANC would agree to elections in 1994, it insisted on a level political playing field. The actual casting of a ballot, the ANC well knew, is the next to final act in the process of a free and fair election, not the first. The world supported the demands the ANC made on the white minority government. It stood in solidarity, and across the globe people took to the streets on its behalf, on behalf of millions of black South Africans. It flooded the country with election observers from across the world to ensure free and fair elections.

The result is history, and South Africa has been eager to share the secrets of its success with other democracies in the process of transition.

Except with its next-door neighbor.

In the days ahead, the South African government's observers have a chance to redeem their country's honor, but few here are holding their breath.

Padraig O'Malley is a senior fellow emeritus at the McCormack Graduate School at UMass-Boston.