Zimbabwe: Mired in Transition: Zimbabwe: Mired in Transition

5. Exorcising the Spectre of Electoral Authoritarianism in Zimbabwe’s Political Transition

125 Exorcising the Spectre of Electoral Authoritarianism in Zimbabwe’s Political Transition Eldred V. Masunungure & Jabusile M. Shumba 5 Introduction and a brief methodology Zimbabwe’s recent political trajectory has been a source of much frustration to many citizens and promoters of democratic polity. Its democratisation seems to be moving at a glacial pace. The reality, though, is that its transition from authoritarianism was never going to be easy, nor was it going to be linear. As it is, the transition is occurring in bits and pieces, forward and backwards, up, down and sideways, and the outcome remains inherently indeterminate. Zimbabwe ’s case also reinforces those who question the notion that transition is unidirectional; rather, it is moving in multiple directions that add complexity and great confusion to the whole political drama. Andreas Schedler’s (2006:1) ‘spectre of electoral authoritarianism’ has haunted Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. Post-2000, it hardened into what Michael Bratton and Eldred Masunungure (2008:42) have called a ‘militarised form of electoral authoritarianism’. This will no doubt be the greatest, though not necessarily intractable, challenge that the country’s transition trajectory will face as it painstakingly moves to another set of elections that will hopefully deliver a credible and indisputable outcome. However, as of May 2012, the spectre is stubbornly resisting exorcism. This chapter analyses Zimbabwe’s political transition from the standpoint of efforts to craft the road map to democratic elections. We 126 EXORCISING THE SPECTRE OF ELECTORAL AUTHORITARIANISM … proceed from the premise that transparent, free and fair elections are of central importance to the country’s transition and can be a vehicle for further democratic development. One of our core arguments is that unless the ghost of electoral authoritarianism is exorcised, elections in the country will be a mere replay of previous ones, that is, elections without a choice, which are a mere institutional facade of democracy. Methodologically, the chapter relies on a combination of research instruments, principally desk-based research, survey data and findings from focus group discussions. Where applicable, key informant interviews were conducted to enrich the study. For the past ten years, one of the authors has been privileged to be associated with a research institution that has been at the forefront of collecting both quantitative and qualitative data on a range of governance issues in the country, including on elections. Substantial literature on electoral politics in Zimbabwe has also accumulated over time and this will be referred to in order to inform the study. Lastly, both authors are keen watchers of the unfolding political drama in the country and their ‘participant observation’ is invaluable in a study of this kind. Electoral authoritarianism The chapter does not embrace the simplistic and naive equating of elections with democracy but rather recognises that elections are a critical and irreplaceable component of modern democracy. We endorse Bratton’s dictum that ‘while you [can] have elections without democracy, you can’t have democracy without elections’ (Bratton, 1998:52). Indeed, V.O. Key regards elections as a defining feature of a democratic polity when he writes: Perhaps the basic differentiating characteristic of democratic orders consists in the expression of effective choice by the mass of the people in elections. The electorate occupies, at least in the mystique of such orders, the position of the principal organ of governance; it acts through elections. (Key, 1955:3) In sum, without elections, democracy loses its very essence. Zimbabwe easily fits into the category of electoral authoritarian states with the added post-2000 feature of being a militarised one. Considerable literature is now available on electoral authoritarianism and most 127 Eldred V. Masunungure & Jabusile M. Shumba accounts agree that such a regime occupies a zone in between electoral democracy and ‘closed’ autocracies that ‘refrain from staging multiparty elections as the official route of access to executive and legislative power’ (Schedler, 2006:5). According to Schedler, electoral authoritarianism is where elections are broadly inclusive as well as minimally pluralistic, minimally competitive and minimally open. Empirical evidence suggests that under electoral authoritarian rule, the incumbent regime (variously called ‘semi-democratic’, ‘quasi-democratic ’, ‘competitive authoritarian’, ‘hybrid regimes’, among others) delineates the elective offices and allows some of them to be successfully competed for by the opposition while fencing others off as reserved for the regime. Put another way, the elective political offices are arranged in concentric circles, with the outermost circle occupied by local government...