By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka
While Africa remains our beloved home, some of us are pained by the persistent horror tale of disputed elections across SADC and the rest of Africa as well as State-sanctioned excesses against innocent citizens, opposition and civic leaders.
Surprisingly, both SADC and the African Union appear to have no solution even in cases where they would have adopted an evidence-based position informed by their own election observer missions and independent rights groups that would have witnessed massive electoral irregularities and citizen abuse respectively.
We recently saw the SADC summit adopting the report of its own observer mission that said the election in Zimbabwe was a farce. Yet the same SADC has no cogent roadmap to steer Zimbabwe out of the illegitimacy engendered by the same sham poll, meaning the country continues to be run by what the region acknowledges to be an illegitimate regime.
SADC formally agreed that the election in Zimbabwe fell short of the country’s electoral laws, of its own Constitution and the SADC electoral guidelines that were first adopted in Grand Baie, Mauritius, in 2004.
Yet SADC and the AU have done nothing about the August 23 charade in Harare. As we saw from ED’s recent meeting with SADC ambassadors accredited to Harare, the region continues to hobnob with Mnangagwa and to treat him as a legitimate President of Zimbabwe.
To further confirm the illegitimacy of the regime in Harare, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission, an independent chapter 12 institution, last week issued a damming report that explicitly stated that the 2023 poll in Zimbabwe was an unmitigated sham.
Yet again, a SADC observer mission preliminary report this month noted yet another farce in Madagascar in the November 16 poll where Andry Rajoelina was controversially re-elected in a sham poll that remains unendorsed by opposition leaders.
In the election in Madagascar, the SADC Electoral Observer Mission, headed by Zambia’s former vice President Godfrey Miyanda, noted violence in the capital Antananarivo, raised concerns on a tampered voters roll and inadequate funding for the country’s electoral Commission, among other serious anomalies that dented the credibility of the plebiscite.
Notably, while in Zimbabwe millions were disenfranchised when ZEC failed to deliver ballots on time to Harare and other urban areas and illegally allowed a shadowy organisation called FAZ to run the plebiscite, in Madagascar there were other laughable developments noted by the SEOM. The regional observer group noted that the ballots in the Indian ocean island were transported by unescorted bicycles and motorcycles, raising valid rigging concerns among other electoral players.
Yet Rajoelina was re-elected. And he wasted no time in sending emissaries to Harare to meet with ED, a fellow electoral thief. Now we are learning that Emmerson Mnangagwa will attend his counterpart’s inauguration in what could turnout to be a festival of electoral thieves.
Judging by what we have seen so far, we all know now that SADC and the African Union have not and will not do anything about these sham elections and the illegitimate governments bred therefrom. As others have said before, the sooner individual African countries know that they cannot bank on SADC and the AU, the better for everyone.
SADC’s lack of teeth in dealing with sham elections is hugely disconcerting considering that the region has overseen elections in Zimbabwe, Eswatini and later this year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the same SADC region, there are elections set for next year in Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Mauritius and it will certainly be more of the same.
No one is holding their breadth as we all know that whatever sham election will be held in those five countries next year, SADC and Africa will simply fold their hands and watch.
Judging by what we have seen so far, we know they will accept illegitimacy, even if SADC and AU observer missions note massive irregularities that may make some of these elections laughable charades.
It does not help matters that some of the elections next year will be held when Zimbabwe will be chairing the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security. This means the illegitimate ED will have a role in monitoring the credibility of those elections.
Much like asking a chief witch in the village to lead the crusade against rituals and sorcery!
As Mnangagwa and Rajoelina brazenly steal elections under SADC and Africa’s watch, there is little wonder why an increasing number of army characters in Africa are mounting coups to remove civilian governments.
They are doing so because the electoral route on the continent has been virtually closed given the rising number of sham polls taking place while regional bodies and the African Union helplessly watch the pilferage of the people’s vote.
When the electoral route is closed, citizens end up resorting to other unpalatable means to remove their governments. There is little wonder therefore why we are seeing an upsurge in the phenomenon of coups across Africa whose frequency had down in recent years.
Dear reader, it is notable that between 1956 and 2001, there were 80 successful military coups in Africa, 108 failed coups and 139 reported coup plots. Between 2001 and 2019, only 12 coups were recorded, indicating a decline in coup frequency.
In Zimbabwe in 2017, Zimbabwe experienced its first ever military coup, which means coup risk persists, even in countries without a coup precedent.
But in the past three years, as authoritarianism and the electoral route becomes closed, we have seen over 15 reported military coups in Africa.
SADC and Africa must take this seriously, especially the implications of the closure of the electoral route as a the only legitimate way to change governments.
In Zimbabwe, it could happen again now that the coup hymen was broken in 2017!
When the electoral route is closed, ordinary citizens start partaking in and celebrating coups and other unconstitutional changes of government. This explains the popular 2017 coup in Zimbabwe.
In his much-acclaimed work titled Coups from Below that mentioned the coups in Africa that had garnered huge public support, Kandeh (2004) cited the coups in Benin 1963, Uganda 1971, 1979, Liberia, 1980, Mali, 1991, Sierra Leonne, 1992, the Niger 2020. Africa and SADC risk taking us back that route if they allow the electoral route to remain deliberately closed by authoritarian governments.
Dear reader, kindly note that iI am not trying to incite a coup. No. I am simply giving insight on the thriving black-market route that the AU and its subregional bodies could be opening if citizens, as they are now doing, start losing faith in the official market of elections as the only credible route for regime change.
Put simply, when SADC and the AU duly acknowledge sham elections, as they did in Zimbabwe and Madagascar and yet proceed to do nothing about it, they must know that they are unwittingly incentivising coups and setting very dangerous precedents in our beloved continent.
The region and Africa could feel they are hamstrung by the notion of sovereignty and yet, as I pointed out some weeks ago, sovereignty is no longer an absolute concept.
By acceding to regional and continental protocols, a country will be surrendering part of its sovereignty and there is no harm therefore in SADC or the AU intervening in a country in respect of sham elections or a deteriorating human rights situation, as is the case with Zimbabwe.
Apart from a sham election which bred an illegitimate government, there is a huge case for intervention in Zimbabwe in respect of the deteriorating human rights situation in the country.
Only recently, a pastor was kidnapped and murdered, human rights activists, civic society leaders and opposition MPs and councillors have been abducted while Job Sikhala has spent almost two years in prison without trial. Yet Africa idly stands by and watches without intervening to save the situation, despite the existence of several regional and international statutes that exhort other countries to intervene in the event of such crises.
Two days ago, social media was awash with disturbing and touching images of a prostate Sikhala on a hospital bed undergoing surgery while cuffed in leg irons. Yet he is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
This was gross inhuman and degrading treatment, which is a brazen violation of the Constitution of Zimbabwe and other UN and international covenants.
Notwithstanding Africa’s traditional and cultural philosophy of putting a premium on the collective and not the individual, the continent’s duplicity was exposed at a UN general assembly meeting in May 2021 through a rogue vote in which several African countries, Zimbabwe included, voted against intervention on the grounds of convenient grounds of sovereignty.
In the very month when Africa day is celebrated, in May of 2021, the world witnessed a rogue vote that put our beloved continent to shame when a number of African States voted against or abstained in a key resolution that is in keeping with the cardinal African values of solidarity and intervention.
No absolute sovereignty in *Africa
The principle of sovereignty has become the perfect cover by rogue African regimes to stop intervention in their respective countries even in the wake of gross human rights violations. In fact, I will posit that the notion of sovereignty is an alien principle in Africa where the collective has always been regarded as more important than the individual.
On our beloved continent, ‘ We are therefore I am ’ is the underlying dictum as the community as a whole is more important than the individual, whether the individual is a person or a State.
In fact, sovereignty is an alien concept in Africa.
In a typical African village, there is no sovereign individual or sovereign household. In the village, if a man brutalizes even his own children and wife, neighbours and relatives will breach the sovereignty veil. They will march into his sovereign compound at any sight of trouble, barge into the homestead, break windows even, in response to the shrill cry of a troubled soul.
In Africa, we assist each other even to raise lobola, we communitize all our activities and even when we were growing up, there was no sovereign plate for the individual at the family dinner table as well ate from a common bowl.
In this our beloved continent, we swim or sink together as households, as families and as communities. We are a continent that puts a premium on the collective and it is duplicitous when African leaders laud individualism by conveniently choosing to hide under the tattered veil of sovereignty.
In Africa, we are a communal people where the collective has always been more supreme to the individual. There is absolutely no reason for the AU to fear intervention even when the situation on the ground demands so.
That is the Africa we know and that must have been the logic behind Article 4 (h) of the AU charter—the notion that our neighbours will not fold their hands at the slightest hint of trouble at a neighbour’s house. They will involve themselves.
And indeed, there is trouble in Zimbabwe.
The case for intervention
Through the Constitutive Act of the African Union, Africa as a regional body has already domesticated the principle of R2P or the Responsibility to Protect, which allows for intervention in the event of “ grave circumstances ” in a particular African country. Interventionism is very much consistent with the African value of solidarity, collegiality and our celebrated collective approach to issues.
Yet in 2021 Zimbabwe was part of the roll of shame when it opposed a United Nations General Assembly resolution that sought to urge intervention to protect vulnerable groups against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
In this African contingent of shame, Zimbabwe was joined by fellow African nations Burundi, Eritrea and Egypt while Angola, Algeria, Cameron, Kenya, Namibia, Mali and Ethiopia abstained In a key vote supported by our neighbours Botswana and South Africa.
Yet the intervention these African countries were opposing at the UN General assembly is already part of the African charter, the Constitutive Act of the AU which most of these countries had acceded and consented to.
Indeed, the AU charter allows for intervention, despite the unwillingness of the AU to intervene in to protect human rights and the credibility of elections against rogue government behaviour.
It was reprehensible that on the eve of Africa Day in 2021, Zimbabwe would join rogue African nations in opposing intervention in circumstances of heinous crimes that offend the very precept of humanity.
On 4 October 2019, I wrote a piece which remains pertinent especially against the wake of uninformed African nations that still remain unaware that by being signatories to the AU Charter, they have in fact acceded to the chastity of R2P or the Responsibility to Protect, the largely noble principle under which some are today calling on the rest of Africa to intervene and save Zimbabwe from the precipice.
Authoritarian regimes in Africa might not want intervention but they are naively unaware that the AU Charter, to which they are all signatories, including Zimbabwe, has already domesticated the doctrine of R2P on the continent.
Under Article 4 (h), other African States are empowered to intervene in a member State in respect of “ grave circumstances .”
And by any definition, sham elections, genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity are grave circumstances.
The African Union must, for the sake of its reputation if not for anything else, intervene in Zimbabwe. The AU must intervene not only in respect of an illegitimate government but to save the lives of innocent citizens that are at serious risk from the murderous, vampire regime of Mr. Emmerson Mnangagwa.
In Harare, we have an illegitimate regime in office that continues to brutalise, assault, arrest, abduct and murder innocent citizens. Tapfumaneyi Masiya, the slain Mabvuku pastor, is the latest victim of the regime’s murderous instincts.
The AU charter provides the continental body with adequate provisions that deal with dire situations such as the one in Harare where innocent citizens, including doctors, teachers, journalists, civic and political activists have been murdered, abducted and brutalized by their own government.
Notwithstanding the controversies of the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the excesses of the powerful nations after the invocation of the principle in Libya in 2011, the R2P principle remains relevant in today’s World, especially in Africa.
R2P remains a laudable promise to brutalized citizens that the world will not fold its hands while innocent citizens are being brutalized, even by their own governments.
It is commendable that with the advent of the AU in 2000, the continental body came up with its own version of R2P that is steeped in the founding charter of the African Union. Article 4(h) of the constitutive Act of the AU unequivocally grants the continental body with the right to intervene in a member State in respect of “ grave circumstances .”
Indeed, “ grave circumstances ” are an apt summation of the situation in Zimbabwe where an illegal regime is in office and where over 25 people have been callously murdered by the Mnangagwa regime.
I will posit that these callous murders constitute a crime against humanity and the world, particularly Africa, cannot afford to fold their hands while an illegitimate government metes out such heinous brutality against its own citizens.
Africa must prove to all and sundry that it can stand up and be counted. Africans have reposed their faith and trust in the subregional and continental body and SADC and the AU must not be allowed to let us all down.
Indeed, they must not, as they are now doing, confirm the negative script of detractors who never see anything good coming out of our beloved continent.
The collective African conscience must be pricked when a government assumes office through a sham election and then becomes a threat to its own people. Zimbabwe is a belated case where provisions of the AU charter must be invoked.
Sadly, Africa has let us all down.
What else is the purpose of government if it not only fails to protect citizens but becomes the biggest danger to their lives? The world, particularly Africa, has an inalienable responsibility to protect when a State on the continent, an illegitimate one for that matter, becomes a threat to its own citizens.
Zimbabweans are not safe. Citizens are not safe. Elected MPs are not safe. Elected councillors are not safe. Pastors are no safe. Civil servants are not safe. Comedians are not safe and the citizens’ democratic right to protest and petition government has in the past been callously proscribed, if not violently quelled.
Indeed, no scarfed pretence can mask the mammoth humanitarian crisis unfolding in Zimbabwe
And before we plead with the broader world, SADC and Africa must stand up and be counted, which both have dismally failed to do.
The provisions in the AU charter are not ornamental. They should be invoked when the situation demands. And the situation in Harare is slowly becoming a threat to peace and security, aspects also covered by Article 4 (j) of the AU charter.
Kofi Annan, an African himself and the then United Nations secretary-general asked a poignant and timeless question at the UN Millennium Summit in 2001: “ If humanitarian intervention is indeed an unacceptable assault on sovereignty , how should we respond to a Rwanda , to a Srebrenica — to gross and systematic violations of human rights that affect every precept of common humanity ?”
I posit that any procrastination in taking decisive action against the illegal regime in Harare may yield another Rwanda. Africa has a responsibility to protect the citizens that are under siege from their own government in Harare unless the AU wants to wait until rivers of blood are flowing across the planes of our savannah grass.
Africa should not fold its hands while citizens are under threat.
After all, when the principle of R2P was sculpted, Africans were heavily involved.
The African contingent that was part of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) that came with the principle of R2P included Algerian top diplomat Mohamed Sahnoun and our very own Stanlake Samkange, a lawyer.
These Africans were part of the history-making team, led by the Australian Gareth Evans, that came up with the noble principle of R2P—the responsibility to protect.
Rogue regimes such as the illegitimate, blood-soaked administration in Harare need decisive action taken against them.
At a personal level, I feel that SADC and Africa cannot watch while the spectre of illegitimate elections and State-sanctioned violence continues to unfold.
Africa should step up to the plate. Africa must show that stern and decisive action will be taken if African citizens are threatened by their own governments, especially an illegitimate government that brazenly stole an election as confirmed by the subregional body itself
Otherwise we must all simply agree that this continent that we call home has become our collective shame.
Luke Tamborinyoka is a change champion in the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) led by Advocate Nelson Chamisa. He is a multiple award-winning journalist and an ardent political scientist. Tamborinyoka was awarded the Book Prize for best student when he graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree at the University of Zimbabwe. He also has a Master of Science Degree in International Relations obtained from the same institution. You can interact with him on Facebook or on the twitter handle @ luke_tambo.
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