Zimbabwe's Presidential Elections 2002: Evidence, Lessons and Implications (review)

At first glance it seems very impressive to have what is almost a book (an 88 page 'discussion paper') out within weeks of the event with which it is concerned. Zimbabwe's Presidential Elections 2002 is noteworthy on that score and more —even if many of the nasty things one could say about the crooked victory the book marks could have been said (and often were) about the June 2000 parliamentary elections, and even if the structural context of both elections was substantially the same (see Bond and Manyanya 2002, for a view taking structural adjustment and debt as the relevant fundamental constraints, or even causes). Indeed, the book could almost be entitled 'Zimbabwe's Long Election'. The Zimbabwean African National Union-Patriotic Front (not 'popular' front: Ian Taylor makes a double slip with that one) was shocked into more repressive action than usual by its defeat at the February 2000 constitutional referendum. It had been pushed into holding that contest in order to meet a challenge mounted by the National Constitutional Assembly, but that provocation also signalled a contest with the September 11, 1999-born Movement for Democratic Change. From then on ZANU-PF and its ageing but cagey leader used every trick in the book to maintain power in the midst of economic meltdown —and invented a few new ones, learning as the 'long election' moved along through the June 2000 parliamentary election to its final stage in March 2002. Perhaps the most intriguing new wile was the 'land invasions', apparently led by the war veterans association (with lots of help from the army).

To get to the root of that phenomenon would entail examining yet another power struggle, going back at least to the southern spring of 1997 when a group of 'war vets' confronted the president to make demands that would destroy Zimbabwe's fiscus and catalyse the latent powder-keg of land redistribution for many years. When one looks to that moment and its consequences,¹ one is forced to ask another 'election' oriented question: will Zimbabwe's next era be ruled by any 'party' in the sense of which orthodox political scientists are familiar, or will it be ruled by 'warlords'? Melber's team does not quite grapple with that question, or the antecedent of just what is the nature of the relationship between the 'veterans' and the ruling party, although there is lots of evidence in the book to force one to ask it, especially if one has been reading Norma Kriger (2001 and forthcoming) or Joanne Macgregor (2001) in the context of writers such as William Reno (1998) and Mark Duffield (2001) on the nature of war-torn Africa (Moore 2002).

There is enough evidence in Zimbabwe's Presidential Elections 2002 to contemplate seriously the probability of Zimbabwe slipping down into the vacuum of shadowy states and networked wars. Kenneth Good's 'Dealing with Despotism,' at 23 pages the longest essay in the book, admirably rounds up Zimbabwe's most recent events with a comprehensive historical scan. Reminding us of the Matabeleland massacres in the mid-1980s, and Zimbabwe's involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's war, his words bring in both domestic and international aspects of President Mugabe's penchant for solving problems with force and leaves plenty of room for contemplating 'warlords' gaining accumulative power abroad and at home. Tandeka Nkiwane's observations on the motley crew of election observers and Ian Taylor's prognosis on Zimbabwe's effect on NEPAD's hopes for peer reviewed good democratic governance illustrate how well ZANU-PF's foreign policy makers can manipulate global 'democracy' promoters and their closer peers' alacrity to rally around perceived threats to their 'sovereignty': thus it looks like Zimbabwe's near and far neighbours will leave it to its fate. Amin Kamete persuades us to ask just when the urban 'rebellion' will become more violent: what will happen, for example, if MDC-run Harare demands that ZANU-PF (note...