Electoral autocracy has replaced democracy, with its expected full free and fair elections, in much of the troubled world. Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodia Sunday conducted an “election” without allowing opponents to compete against his ruling party. Guatemala suspended a favored opposition candidate. Senegal locked up President Macky Sall’s main opponent. China, Russia, Iran, and pretend democracies like Egypt, Tunisia, and El Salvador are persistent electoral autocracies. Zimbabwe is yet another, with a compromised election set for August 23.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s heavy-handed authoritarian government has controlled the destinies of Zimbabwe’s 12 million people since a bloodless coup in 2017 transferred power from dictator Robert G. Mugabe, who had oppressively controlled Zimbabwe from 1980. Mnangagwa had been Mugabe’s long-serving adjutant and orchestrator of the massive onset of corruption that engulfed Zimbabwe (and profited Mugabe, Mnangagwa, and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriot Front (ZANU-PF) from 1990.
Now Mnangagwa and military commandant and Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga are in charge. Their functionaries have produced a voters’ roll with more than 100,000 names struck off and untold erasures and constituency shifts. Under Mnangagwa’s direction, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has gerrymandered wildly across the country, devaluing urban seats (where half of the population resides) and doubling the number of rural parliamentary seats. Whereas about 25,000 voters fill each “rural” constituency, about 50,000 people are crammed into each urban seat.
The military, obedient to Chiwenga, has always made sure in previous elections that rural chiefs and headmen marshal their followers obediently to cast ballots only for ZANU-PF candidates. That method will this time once more reduce opposition turnout and votes. (There has not been a fully free and fair election in Zimbabwe since a referendum in 2000.) Cheating, in other words, is expected, as well as outright rigging of the results (blatantly in 2008).
This year, the government recently prohibited criticism of Mnangagwa’s rule. By signing the draconian Patriotic Act last week, Zimbabwe outlawed any speech or commentary that could be deemed “unpatriotic,” without specifying what that meant. But anyone speaking against government rule or in favor of Western sanctions can be arrested. But the looseness of the categories of forbidden utterance chilled even lunch and dinner gatherings of which I was privy in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, last week.
To make opposition operations even more untenable, the government also compelled opposition candidates for parliament in pay large sums in U.S. dollars to stand against ZANU-PF regulars. Nelson Chamisa, the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) candidate for president had to pay $20,000 – a huge sum in an impoverished country like Zimbabwe.
Amid wild kleptocratic corruption thanks to gold and diamond profits and state theft, Zimbabwe’s inflation last week was running at 170 percent. The local dollar lost 80 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar as the Zimbabwe central bank printed its own scrip feverishly.
Zimbabwe also exports tobacco, ferrochrome, platinum, and coal, and is exploiting a large lithium deposit. China, Russia, and Belarus are big players in the economy, with large shares in resource profiteering going to Mnangagwa, Chiwenga, their families, and a range of close associates. Al Jazeera exposed the extent of the ruling elite’s skimming the cream of returns from gold shipments to Dubai, Moscow, and Beijing.
Several experienced independent local observers of Zimbabwe’s economic machinations assured me that whereas the Mugabe regime wanted all-out power and was also corrupt, the current rulers of Zimbabwe had captured the state entirely so that they could loot its wealth for their personal coffers. Corruption, they averred, was far more blatant and brazen than under the lamented rule of Mugabe and his enablers.
Under Chamisa, the opposition is campaigning against the ZANU-PF juggernaut, but with existing weights around their ankles. CCC is also handicapped financially. Chamisa told me that “the people” were contributing to party coffers, but there is little indication that there is abundant popular enthusiasm for the CCC. Fatalism about the likely outcome of what many local observers called a “farcical” election; ZANU-PF holds so many of the cards and military intimidation as well as outright manipulation of the results is expected.
South Africa, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the African Union are all ignoring kleptocratic authoritarian cases like Zimbabwe’s. Unlike the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is trying to curtail or moderate Myanmar’s despotism, none of the African organizations and neighboring nations is willing to intervene to influence Zimbabwe for the better. South Africa has immense leverage economically and geographically but has long refused to use it.
With Mnangagwa and Chiwenga’s hands firmly on the electoral scales, expert observers said that they would be surprised if the CCC won more than 43 of the 210 parliamentary seats being contested next month. Mnangagwa is not going to forfeit his presidency either, no matter what the real vote count is.