Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) finds itself in a ‘damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t’ regarding its participation in next month’s elections. Warning that the credibility of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was at stake, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai called on SA and the region yesterday to try to delay the parliamentary elections planned for March. (27-JAN-05) 

This article was written by Jonathan Katzenellenbogen for yesterday’s edition of the South African newspaper Business Day. It has been edited for republication here. 

Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is due to decide whether or not it will participate in the elections after an executive committee meeting next week, but believes the earliest the poll should take place is June. On Tuesday, Tsvangirai indicated in an interview that the MDC’s decision will depend heavily on guarantees about the poll offered by the SADC. Tsvangirai, who visited the Human Rights House in Oslo last November, warned that the SADC’s credibility was on the line over how it chose to apply its principles and guidelines on elections to Zimbabwe and how it monitored the poll. It remained to be seen whether the SADC was just “another institution that adopts principles that it will never want to enforce”.

-SADC must deliver
“Obviously the burden is on SADC to deliver on the conditions in which they say elections should be conducted,” he said.  At a summit in Mauritius last year SADC leaders endorsed a document on principles and guidelines on the running of elections. Tsvangirai warned yesterday that it was of little use for election monitors to arrive in Zimbabwe a few days before the poll they should already be in the country to observe the run-up to the election.  A high-level SADC team is due in Zimbabwe soon to assess the country’s compliance with the guidelines.

-We won’t legitimise a farce
President Robert Mugabe has indicated that the elections will be in March, but has not yet given a date. By law the poll could be delayed to June, when the present parliament’s term expires. Tsvangirai has been in SA since the weekend to speak to MDC supporters in SA and deliver an address at a conference on opposition politics in Africa. Speaking to Business Day on Tuesday, he said his party was “damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t” take part in the poll, but he would not be drawn on what strategy the party would follow if it decided on a boycott. The decision was not a foregone conclusion, although the current environment in the country supported those who said “we don’t want to legitimise a farce”.

-Mbeki still has the benefit of the doubt – just
Tsvangirai criticised the official SADC election observer mission that gave the all-clear to Zimbabwe’s presidential elections in 2002, a finding that was not shared by the mission sent by the region’s parliamentarians. “There is a convenience of complicity which is very evident in some of these missions,” he said. Tsvangirai said talks with Zanu (PF) had “reached a dead end”, although President Thabo Mbeki, who has been trying to bring the political opponents together, was a “critical player” in the resolution of the crisis. “We give him the benefit of the doubt on that,” he said, although “people are disappointed because (quiet diplomacy) has not resolved the issue”.

MDC appreciates the changing signals from Pretoria
But Tsvangirai said he found great encouragement in the change in Pretoria’s view of the MDC to be “part of the solution, and not part of the problem”. ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe’s criticism of Zanu (PF) for not allowing the MDC to campaign freely was “a very progressive step, (but) they have to follow up on that statement”.