IN the aftermath of fresh and spirited attempts by Western powers to interfere in our electoral processes and the announcement last week by Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa that Zimbabwe would choose countries and institutions it desires to monitor its elections, the suggestion that the country only takes the easy option should be disregarded immediately as nonsense.
It is simply not true and for many reasons.
Within the West, there is a nagging thinking that elections in Zimbabwe can only be free if they (the West) participate.
But Zimbabwe has held elections since independence and all have received widespread approbation from the United Nations, African Union, Southern African Development Community and other countries.
In all these instances, it is only Britain, the United States and Australia and their protégé, the desperate MDC-T, who have frantically but unsuccessfully sought to disregard the poll outcomes.
And there is a compelling pointer to this.
When Zimbabwe embarked on the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme at the turn of the millennium, Britain accosted the European Union (EU) and its cousins across the Atlantic to tarnish everything about Harare, including its electoral processes.
Such is the real political identity of what Western media networks and their governments tell the world that ‘free and fair’ elections must, curiously, be won by the opposition that the EU, at the instigation of the usual suspects Britain and US, wants Government to allow the UN to supervise the 2018 elections.
But VP Mnangagwa, who also oversees the Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Ministry, asserted that it was the prerogative of the Government of Zimbabwe to choose who participates in the country’s electoral processes.
“Our position as Zimbabwe has not changed. We are a sovereign state and we run our own elections like a sovereign state and we choose as to who will observe our elections,” said VP Mnangagwa.
“I hear that the media is talking about such a push but as Government, we have not been approached by the EU to say they wish that the UN observes our elections.
“Normally, we always have our sister countries in SADC who send observer missions. We always have the African Union which also sends missions to observe elections. Also other member-countries may do so in Africa and a few from outside Africa whom we accept to come and observe.”
VP Mnangagwa’s statements also dovetail with President Robert Mugabe’s presentation at the recently held 26th African Union Summit where the Zimbabwean leader castigated colonisers who are in Africa as spies, pretenders, some say they are here in Africa to assist us, even in armed groupings in our territories effecting regime change.
History is the best teacher in this regard.
In 2007, the West, again stung by President Mugabe’s continued endorsement as Zimbabwean leader, embarked on a new strategy with the MDC that clearly sidestepped the ballot box as the road to power.
With its firm support in the rural areas where the majority of the people live, ZANU PF hasn’t been and still cannot be, removed via the numbers games at the heart of ballot box politics.
Polls for both parliamentary and local government by-elections held during the last week of February 2007 in which both factions of the MDC lost dismally, clearly fortified the belief that the way to oust President Mugabe would have to be through ways that included, among other things, pressing for Western observers to monitor the March 29 2008 polls.
Both MDCs had lost in local government elections in urban areas and in Matabeleland, both of which had been viewed as opposition strongholds.
Against the background of a massive decline in the 2005 general poll, it was clear the MDC was nowhere near the State House.
And the watershed March 2008 harmonised elections beckoned while loaded with their own fair share of controversy from the West, as usual.
As Zimbabweans went to the polls on March 29, fresh in their memories was the extraordinary brazenness in interfering in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe by the West, particularly Britain.
This was because former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, had personally, written and signed a letter to the Vice-President of British Law Society one Holroyd on February 4 2008.
The letter sought to respond to a plea for British funding of the opposition in Zimbabwe, following serious lobbying by the MDC-affiliated Law Society of Zimbabwe to its equivalent, the British Law Society.
In Brown’s response, the British Government confirmed what was already known to most Zimbabweans, that it was funding the opposition.
What was worse, its funding was increased from Pound Sterling 2,5 million to Pound Sterling 3,3 million, hoping the combined opposition would win the March 29 2008 elections.
This massive funding of the opposition through slash funds was clearly meant to destabilise Zimbabwe and challenge its sovereignty.
Ironically, the British law, namely Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act (2000), disallows foreign funding of British political parties.
Brown’s Labour government, which was already in breach of that law at home, did not hesitate to export its lawlessness to Zimbabwe.
It was contradicting its own national laws and values by breaking the international law which forbids interfering in the domestic affairs of sovereign nations.
The same letter made it plain the goal of recolonising Zimbabwe through an opposition-led ‘regime change’ ‘remains a priority for (Brown’s) Government’.
Zimbabwe saw this as a continuation of the same subversive and destabilisation measures which began well before 2000 when the British government founded and funded a number of political NGOs, including Amani Trust, which got slash funds through the British Embassy based in Harare.
Above all, Zimbabweans would resist this regime change call by the West.
So any calls by the West and the MDC-T for observers from hostile nations are not only misplaced but a gross violation of Zimbabwe’s sovereignty.
Elections do not become free and fair simply because the West has said so.
Let those with ears listen.